Let me get this straight...

So, because a tiny, whiny, paranoid minority of Canadian fans of Michelle Bachman found the anonymous mandatory long-form census intrusive and coercive, the Conservatives' Industry Minister Tony "Gazebos R Us" Clement decided to scrap the whole thing against the advice of just about everyone.
And because a small, but very vocal bunch of paranoid gun nuts backed by the NRA ("keeping deadly weapons cheap and readily available for Americans for over a century") thought the long gun registry was intrusive and coercive, the Tories will scrap the whole thing and destroy the database against the wishes  of the majority of Canadians and police across the country.
But, according to Conservative Public Safety Minister Vic "Lock'em up and throw away the keys" Toews, anyone who objects to the government and police being able to access all your internet records and find out every website your computer has ever accessed, whether by annoying pop-up, virus, unauthorized third-party use or what have you, is clearly  siding with the child pornographers.

Our country is being run by a bunch of jackasses.



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Congratulation Al-Qaida

 The overarching goal of any terrorist or revolutionary guerrilla fighter beyond the immediate removal of a given target and the ensuing intimidation is to provoke an overreaction by the authorities, to make things worse not better in the short term, to push them to crack down on civil liberties until their repression breeds more support for the revolutionary or terrorist cause.
As the result of a single attack more than a decade ago, Western democracies now as a matter of course engage in the kind of behaviour we once claimed made the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany our enemy: Domestic spying and electronic eavesdropping, indefinite detention without trial or even warrant, militarization of the police, torture, show trials, pass laws, demonization of entire ethnic groups - you name it, we, as a society, have now gone there.
Clearly, Al-Qaida has won.

(hat tip to Dr. Dawg)

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We spent a billion dollars for this?

Note that most of these people were arrested in pre-dawn raids BEFORE the G20 demonstrations began, thanks to the use of infiltrators and police spies and agents provocateurs. And it cost taxpayers about a billion dollars, not including the fake lake and Tony Clement's gazebo.

obviously these 17 people posed an serious existential threat to country and civilization and it was worth every cent of that billion dollars to lock them up for the last year and to arrest over 1,000 people, only about 100 of which still face charges.
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Boo-frickin'-hoo

If "Officer Bubbles" really wants to put an end to the shame and embarrassment he suffered as a result of his idiotic actions at the G20 being widely publicized, he might want to chose a different tack. After all, is getting  yourself saddled with the nickname "Constable Crybaby" really going to make things better? I'm sure this will make the other guys and gals in the squad room stop teasing him.

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Do we still have a right not to have confessions beaten out of us?

Seriously, because if we don't have right to have a non-police witness of some kind present at our interrogation by the police, then in practice the cops pretty much have carte blanche to do whatever they want to people. Without a right to a lawyer during interrogation, who knows how many people will "fall down the stairs" while in custody.
I just moved back to Canada from Japan and while I love the Japanese culture and people and all my friends there, civil liberties in Japan are something of a bad joke. The court system has a conviction rate of nearly 100% for a couple of reasons. First, many criminals turn themselves in due to the shame-based nature of the social contract in Japanese culture. Second, there is no real presumption of innocence in the legal system. Third, the police can arrest and hold people without charge for days and the people being held have no right to a lawyer during interrogation.
In theory, this allows the police to avoid those cases where some crook gets off on a "technicality" because he wasn't read his rights or because he lawyered up and was told to act in his own best interest instead of the best interest of the state. In practice it means that when a crime is committed and the culprit isn't giftwrapped and waiting for them, the police in Japan can pick up anyone they consider undesirable, hold them incommunicado for a couple of days pending charges and give them the phone-book-and-rubber-hose treatment until they decide to confess. Usually, it doesn't even take any physical abuse. Three or four days without sleep, a complete ignorance of the rules the game is being played by and constant browbeating is usually enough to get the average homeless person or teen slacker to confess to whatever petty crime the police want them to in Japan. For more serious cases, the police can hold someone for a few weeks. After a couple of weeks, most people would be willing to confess to the McKinley assasination. And any accusations of mistreatment invariably boil down to "who are you going to believe - us, the sworn officers of the law who protect you while you sleep, or this whining criminal scumbag?"
The supreme court ruling sends us down the path to exactly that reality.


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Don't be a Sucker

This bit of film was produced in 1947 by that notorious gang of liberal pinkos, the United States War Department. Does any of it sound familiar?



Let me be perfectly clear -- this is exactly where wedge issue politics leads. It is all part of a divide-and-conquer strategy to make sure we are too occupied with fighting our fellow citizens and neighbours to notice that the wealthy and powerful are bleeding us dry and making the lives of millions more difficult so that they can enrich themselves. The income gap between the top and bottom of the economic ladder is larger than it has ever been in North America and poverty is at an all time high in the United States as the middle class is being systematically eroded by debt and economic mobility is being stifled by the high cost of health care and education. But any suggestion that the rich are mercilessly exploiting the poor is greeted with pearl-clutching about "class war" and accusations of socialism by the people controlling public discourse.
We are treated to the latest tawdry escapades of people like Paris Hilton and reassured that the system works and is fair when she gets arrested for possession of cocaine, but ask yourself whether a 30-year-old hispanic hotel chambermaid with a couple of prior convictions would have gotten off as lightly in the era of zero tolerance? And while we are fed scapegoats ranging from Muslims to Mexicans, from "Cadillac-driving welfare queens" and "secular liberals who want to take your guns" to "ivory tower intellectuals" and "crooked unions" --we very rarely hear about the new robber barons like the Koch brothers, and when we do, the pushback in the media is massive and immediate. 

We are being played for suckers.

the hits just keep on coming

G20 Justice. com has been collecting all the horror stories from the G20 police riots. Some of them, like this one, show that the brutality started well before anyone in a black hoodie broke any windows.

 I was dragged into an interrogation room with the door shut to be held by officer 8830 & 8659, while the booking sergeant began to beat me in the face, body and kick my legs. I was never asked to remove my clothing nor would I have objected if a strip search was what they were attempting to do - but my clothing was forcibly removed in way as to flip myself around like a rag doll on the concrete floor. The buttons of my shirt were ripped open. At this point I was completely naked and the beating continued. At no time did I resist or fight back, nor did they perform a search of my areas. I had defensive bruising to my foreams and many welts, burns from being dragged along concrete which I have documented with a physician and taken pictures of. The booking sergeant advised that he was going to rip out a nipple ring that I had (which was not returned to me) and made an attempt to pull it out, however, either officer 8830 or 8659 advised him not to. This was torture. It was removed in such a forceable way that it was swollen and painful for days following the assault. I did not resist and would have removed it myself if I was asked to. I was taken through the booking hallway completely naked in front of female officers and forced to sit in a holding cell for approximately 4 hours - completely naked.

 When the two people arrived to question me they were in plain clothes and would not identify themselves as officers or provide (real) names, one stated "I'm officer C and this is officer SIS". They asked me about what I "allegedly said to the officers on Front Street", and if I was a part of any "labour group". I advised them that I wished to speak with counsel, which was ignored. I asked them for a glass of water, which was ignored. I did not have any information to share with them as I didn't even know what the G20 was, and I was placed back in my cell to await release, however this time - I was allowed to take my clothing into the cell with me.

In the morning when I asked for information relating to the booking sergeant and to provide the ID's of who interviewed me, I was advised that no information would be provided as to who the booking sergeant was, and even more shockingly - that no one came to interview me during my detainment - that it simply did not happen. 

All this because he had the temerity to wish a couple of mounties "good luck  with Saturday" as he left the Blue Jays game on the Wednesday before the G20.

They probably would have arrested Don Ho, too

"If that bubble touches me, you're going to be arrested for assault"

-Constable A. Josephs, Toronto Police 

Dear Constable A. Josephs of the Toronto Police,

You are such a dick.

Respectfully,

Rev. Paperboy



Seriously, arresting people for blowing bubbles? That is pretty much the Unabriged Oxford English Dictionary definition of cops without enough to do -- good thing there is no crime in Toronto.
(Video totally stolen from A Creative Revolution, who rock, bubbles or no bubbles)

Addendum: Perhaps we could all chip in and send Const. Josephs to some sort of relaxing event to help him unwind, perhaps a soccer match or something? I'm sure it's lovely in East London this time of year.

The Toronto Prison experiment

A lengthy account of what it was like to get swept up by the Toronto riot police and jailed in abysmal conditions for no reason at all. Read it and weep.  I especially recommend parts 11,12 and 13 -- and I hope someone or a group of someones catch up with "Special Constable Milrod" and few of the other sadistic disgraces to the law enforcement community someday soon.

 "A young guy on the new officer shift, with reddish hair and a goatee seems ready for a fight. He says to the guys in our cell “I want to see all you guys outside in the parking lot, then we’ll see what’s what. I’ll take you down.” Wow. He walks away laughing. I inform an actual Toronto Police Officer of what he said and his name. Next we saw Milrod, his nametag was gone and he didn’t look at us or speak to us. It’s on camera Milrod, with 30 witnesses."

From all I've read so far, this whole thing looks like the Stanford Prison Experiment writ large.

We keep reading about how the crowd of protesters should have taken control and stopped the actions of  the few vandals among them -- how about applying some of that reasoning to the police?
As discussed in the latest Maple Syrup Revolution podcast, this particular strategy is going to be a disaster the next time it is tried, because the next time a lot of people will resist being arrested for no reason and things are going to get bloody. Don't be surprised if there is a very expensive class action suit by the thousand or so people arrested and held caged and in cuffs for 20 to 40 hours, begging for water.
If you are not at least as outraged by the gross misconduct of sworn peace officers and political leaders as  you are by the misbehavior of a handful of asshole vandals, then you are part of the problem.

But Stephen Harper and the G20 leaders didn't have to be exposed to people shouting mean things at them, so I guess it was worth shredding the Charter of Rights and spending a billion dollars.

Let me be perfectly clear

A few commenters and correspondents have accused me of supporting or at least giving aid and comfort to the Black Bloc Anarchist protesters who grabbed so much attention in Toronto during the G20 summit. Such accusations are, to use the mot juste "crap."  My parents raised me much better than that.

I am most certainly NOT defending the brain-dead attention whores in the so-called Black Bloc, I think they are childish tantrum-throwing clowns. I am criticizing the ham-fisted police response to them, which is not the same thing.
As far as I can see the police played right into the hands of this tiny group of dingbats in Toronto by letting them run wild on Saturday smashing windows and giving them patrol cars to burn and then turned around let the frustrated riot cops off the leash to arrest and even beat innocent peaceful protesters. Entire blocks were surrounded by the police in a strategy called "kettling" in which they seal off an area and arrest everyone in it, protesters, reporters, residents - anyone and everyone on the street. This is a violation of the constitution. Add to that the Ontario government passing last minute laws of dubious constitutionality, in secret no less, and the Toronto police chief adding his own illegal addendums and lying about what the law allowed his officers to do and you a have the results of the G20 on Canada. Previous use of agent provocateurs by the police, such at the Montebello summit two summers ago, have lead to a situation where anytime the there is violence of this nature at a major event, there will always be some question of whether the police were involved. Public trust in the police has been drastically eroded, and not without cause. And THAT is what the anarchists really want.
In that sense, the Black Bloc were very successful. The police - who bragged they had infiltrated the group prior to the summit - did nothing to stop them, but fueled their antics by giving them free rein on Saturday and then used the damage they could have and should have stopped to justify an unconstitutional, heavy-handed response the rest of the weekend and as an object lesson to defend the ridiculous amount of money spent on security.
For the most part the television media lapped it up--pictures of burning police cars were all over the news and no one initially questioned any statement the police made.
One of your favorite journalists, Christie Blatchford, has been pushing this emotional story from Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair about how the black bloc protesters disrupted the repatriation ceremony in Toronto for a Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan. Except that video taken at the event shows absolutely no indication of any kind of disruption occurring. This further erodes the credibilty of both the police and the mainstream press -- another win for the forces of stupid black bloc anarchist wannabe revolutionaries.
I am not a fan of the black bloc hooligans by any means at all. I think they are dangerous, have no agenda except breaking the system and offer no alternatives. Mostly, I think they are bunch of self-important grandstanding assholes and petty vandals. They consider themselves revolutionaries and the job of a revolutionary is to provoke a response by the state, to get them to crack down on the population and thereby provoke antigovernment sentiment and expand support for the revolution. This only works if the state panics and gives the revolutionaries what the want by cracking down and pissing people off -- and that is what happened in Toronto this weekend.

If the cops had just done their job instead of playing PR and political games to serve their own ends, there would be about 50 of the Black Bloc  in jail for variations on the charge of aggravated jackassery, most of them with scrapes and bruises, the rest of the weekend would have gone smoothly and we'd be talking about how badly the government overspent on the summits. Instead, the police and government have sowed the seeds of increasing public distrust in authority and undermined the foundations of civil society--which is just what the Block Bloc wants.

Jail Bill Blair

The Toronto police chief apparently thinks it is a cute idea to play silly buggers with the law. 
Ha ha fucking ha.
This moral cretin has destroyed what was left of public trust in law enforcement in Canada's largest city, if not across the entire nation, for the foreseeable future.
Livid doesn't begin to describe how I feel about this completely wanton abuse of authority.
Dismissal in disgrace? 
Fuck that, I want the sonofabitch in jail.
Yesterday. 
Of all the crimes that can be committed, short of murder or child molestation I can't offhand think of any that are worse than a POLICE CHIEF making up his own laws. Call it breach of promise, breach of the peace, dereliction of duty, fraud, criminal negligence -- I don't care what charge they come up with, but this man - by his own smug admission - absolutely betrayed the trust placed in him as a peace officer and in doing so violated the civil rights of thousands of citizens. He should be in the Don Jail pending trial and if there is a single crown prosecutor in Toronto with any testicular fortitude at all, he will be in front of a judge by morning -- but I'm not holding my breath.

Toronto the good

Cripes, you leave the country for a dozen years or so and it turns into a fascist police state. Maybe my family should reconsider our plans and relocate to somewhere more agreeable. Like Iran.
Now, admittedly the cops here are restrained--in the United States, this guy would have simply been tasered after using the word "bullshit" and arrested for "public obscenity" or some other bullshit charge, but charging an apparently peaceful crowd like this? Not to get all teabaggy or anything, but I want my country back! Stephen Harper said we wouldn't recognize Canada when he was through with it, and he was right. This is the kind of thing that used to happen in Burma or Cuba, not Canada. I am ashamed of my homeland and at a bit of a loss as to how I'll explain to my kids that this is where we are going to live - a country where police beat up journalists like their father.
And fuck you, Dalton McGuinty.

"Gentlemen, get the thing straight once and for all– the policeman isn't there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder."

-Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, 1968

Update: My fellow inkstained wretch from the Galloping Beaver, Alison has some telling videos posted on the nature of the Black Bloc rampage, the widespread use of plainclothes cops in "snatch squads," many of whom, interestingly,  are dressed much like their Black Bloc counterparts.

More updating: The objections of my good friend and former tag-team wrestling partner Sanganjaya Boy in the comments respectfully acknowledged -- and yes, Japan has a reprehensible "guilty until proven innocent" system when it comes to policing, but we aren't talking about Japan here, we are talking about Canada -- if this isn't the action of a police state, or at the very least an appalling abuse of power by the police, then what is?

Because it's done such great things for American politics

It is unavoidable. Soon there will be a Fox News North based around the Sun newspaper chain. Goodbye reasonable discourse, nice knowing you.
Let be clear here - this is not going to be a channel dedicated to reasoned, objective journalism from a conservative perspective, this is going to be the television version of the Blogging Tories. The former press flak for the sitting PM will be running the network --- anyone care to place bets on how long it is before Michael Coren has a show? Or whether such august personages as Kathy Shaide are regular commentators?
It isn't as if Canada didn't already have a couple of conservative networks - how about CTV or Global? Hell even the eeeeevil liburl CBC gives regular airtime to Rex Murphy and Kory Teneycke. And this isn't a matter of people being able to pick and choose what channels they get at home -- they are applying for a "must carry" licence. Imagine the screeching that would ensue if the Playboy channel or some other kind of  porn network applied for a "must carry" licence that meant it would be seen in most Canadian homes. And make no mistake, this is going to be ideological porn, and it will have the same kind of effect that all porn has: It will arouse and excite by pandering to base instincts, while at the same time desensitizing viewers to non-mainstream content, pushing them to crave more extreme content to get their jollies.
Five years from now, when you wonder how in the hell the network that is screening "Alberta Uber Alles with Ralph Klein" or "Honky Night in Canada with Ezra Levant" ever got a licence, remember the  "freedom of speech" arguments that are being made now, and shed a tear for those well-meaning bloggers as Canada's Lowest Common Dominatrix Kate McMillan reads out their addresses on the air and urges her hordes of flying monkeys into action.

the other shoe

This is bound to work out well for the people of Afghanistan.

Boys and their toys

As mentioned below, the Canadian government is spending over a billion dollars on security for the upcoming Group of Eight and Group of Twenty summit dog-and-pony shows. This is more than five times the original estimate and dwarfs the amounts spent on similar summits in London (April 2009 $30 million) and Pittsburgh (Sept. 2009 -$18 million) both of which dealt with more protesters than can probably be expected in "Toronto the Good"
Some of the money has gone on shiny new toys for the RCMP, OPP and Toronto Police riot squads, crowd control units and motorcade cops as well as the usual close protection bodyguard types, though naturally all the world leaders will be bringing their own sizable security details. About a million dollars has been spent to buy the Toronto Police four "sound notifiers" aka sonic cannons capable of producing sound pressure/ decibel levels about the same as standing behind a 747 when it revs its jets. This isn't just a loud public address system, it is a weapon that causes extreme pain and permanent hearing damage.
Of course that leaves about another $1,099,000,000 for police y, new horses and motorcycles, riot gear, pepper spray, tasers, and lots and lots of "consulting fees" for "security experts" and plenty of contracts for private security firms. I bet this guy doesn't get any of it.
In fact, it is so much money that they could have simply paid every man, woman and child in the entire province of Ontario about $95 just to stay home for those two weekends and still have had enough to provide a similar level of security to the Pittsburgh summit. Or they could have paid everyone in the Greater Toronto Area about $200 to spend the weekend out of town. If that seems like overkill, we could strictly limit it to Metro Toronto, give all 2.48 million residents $400 and still have more than three times as much as they spent on the London summit to buy coffee and donuts for the Toronto cops.
In addition to the gratuitous skimming and graft bookkeeping problems, my real worry is that you can't give the boys their toys and not expect them to play with them. As we've seen numerous times since the needless pepper-spraying of demonstrators at the 1997 APEC summit to the over-reaction of police at Queen's Park in Toronto in 2000, in New York at the 2004 Republican Convention and at the Minnesota 2008 Republican Convention, if you bring in enough riot cops, you are going to have a riot.
Even if the cops have to try to start it themselves.

"Paging Vice Principal B. Brother, please report to room 101"

Pennsylvania's Lower Merion School Board's efforts to give every one of its high school students a laptop computer are doubleplusgood!

A Lower Merion family has set off a furor among students, parents, and civil liberties groups by alleging that Harriton High School officials used a webcam on a school-issued laptop to spy on their 15-year-old son at home.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court, the family said the school's assistant principal had confronted their son, told him he had "engaged in improper behavior in [his] home, and cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam embedded in [his] personal laptop issued by the school district."
The suit contends the Lower Merion School District, one of the most prosperous and highest-achieving in the state, had the ability to turn on students' webcams and illegally invade their privacy.

According to Philly.com, which is all over the story, this would not only be possible, but easy for the school board to do. The feds have gotten involved and felt the accusations were credible enough that they have subpoenaed school board documents and are investigating.

Setting aside the technological issues involved here, I have to wonder why the school thinks it has the right to regulate what a student does at home. Frankly, it is none of the school's business whether the student was shooting heroin, having bondage sex with goats or reading Ayn Rand aloud to his hamster while wearing nothing but swim fins and bacon grease-- he wasn't on school property, it wasn't during a school-supervised activity and there is no accusation that he was using the school-owned computer for an inappropriate activity like hacking or say, oh I dunno...spying on school board officials or his vice-principal.

Whether they were conducting completely illegal surveillance of this kid is separate matter. It doesn't really matter whether the information about the kid's activities outside school comes from a hidden camera, a nosy teacher or another student who is ratting him out - if it doesn't happen at school and it doesn't involve child abuse or a murder plot, it is none of the school's damned business what kid is doing and they have no right to discipline him for things that are not related to school.

As for the spying, where to start? If the school is doing this, it is so obviously, clearly wrong I can't imagine the kind of authoritarian protofascist numbskulls that are in charge and would sign off on this kind of program. A whole bunch of people should not only lose their jobs, but should end up in jail. Even prison inmates aren't under hidden video surveillance.

And just as an observation on the tendency of school administration not to pay much attention to things they are trying to teach in the classroom; While Orwell's "1984" was taught as part of the English curriculum and required reading for the students, clearly the officials either hadn't read it or had a sick sense of humor. The detention room at both my old high school in Ancaster, Ontario and the one attended by several friends in Sault Ste. Marie was room No. 101.

Stay Klassy Kate

Kate McVillan of Small-minded Roadkill has apparently clutched her pearls in a swoon at the incivilitiy of those of us on the left who took issue with her celebration of journalists dying on the job. She hasn't come after me, because I'm small enought to pass unnoticed in the larger scheme of things, but she has loosed her flying monkeys on some other blogs. In particular, she seems to be stamping her little jackboots in the direction of the esteemed Dr. Dawg. When she didn't get the retraction she demanded, she had this to say in an email reproduced by the good doctor:

I have to say I now wonder why anyone on the right gave you so much as a passing snort when your wife passed away. I know I certainly regret it now. I had assumed you were a human being.

Stay klassy, KKKate.

Canada's Lowest Common Denominatrix (tm PSA) apparently took offense to this post by Dr. Dawg in which he pointed to his own noting of McVillian's at the very least tacit, if not effusive approval of the deaths of dozens of journalists over the past year in the context of talking about the right wing fascist cult of death. While KKKate said little enough herself in her post, the comments that she let stand are illustrative of just how deep a sinkhole her blog is and give a general picture of the kind of people who hang out there, lapping up her every word.

I wish I'd bought the T-shirt:
"Journalist. Rope. Tree. Some assembly required."

Posted by: Jim at December 19, 2009 8:02 AM

Well darn. I thought I was linking to a story about something bad happening.What's that old saying..I'd rather have a mother as a whore then a journalist?

Posted by: Justthinkin at December 19, 2009 8:05 AM

I've said for years the only way to save the US is to hang all of the media first. Looks like my views aren't so out of the main stream.
"Freedom of the press requires you support it, not subvert it."
When your group works to subvert our freedoms (speech, guns, property rights, etc) don't be surprised if we wouldn't like to see you pay for it.

Posted by: paulcr39 at December 19,2009 8:11 AM

It isn't a pretty picture and it goes a long way to explaining why Canada has strayed so far into the weeds in the last few years.

more border shenanigans

While Canadian border authorities are acting like a bunch of dicks in worrying about whether a U.S. reporter coming into the country is going to say mean things about the Vancouver Olympics we learn via Boing Boing that the U.S. Fatherland Security blackshirts are beating up foreign citizens who are trying to leave the United States before leaving them to die of exposure in a snowstorm.
This is a big part of why I fork out the extra few hundred dollars to fly to Toronto via Vancouver on Air Canada rather than the cheaper route through Detroit on Northwestern - It means one less set of self-important paranoid authoritarian stormtrooper demanding my papers. These are not the 'droids you're looking for fellas, honest.

Bad day in Buffalo

In which a blogger and activist is detained and harrassed by fatherland security thugs at the Canada-U.S. border. IANAL, but I don't think a passport-packin' U.S. citizen can be denied entry to the United States. If they are suspected of a crime within the United States or are wanted for crimes elsewhere, they can obviously be held in custody pending trial or extradition, but I don't think the authorities can keep citizen out of their own country just because they don't like them. Nothing is more dangerous or more odious than a bully with a badge.

UPDATE: It appears we have antidemocratic bullies working both sides of the border. Unless they had some reason to suspect Amy Goodman was going to advocate machine-gunning the medal winners or something, her opinions on the Olympics are really none of the Canadian Border Services Agency's damn business.

Canada's New Conservative Government: Getting Things Done For to Canadians

Fellow inkstained wretch Alison brings us up to date on the case of Abousfian Abdelrazik:

Abousfian Abdelrazik spoke out this morning about his exile, his torture, the false charges against him, the harrassment of his dying Canadian wife and her family by CSIS before he returned to Sudan to care for his ailing mother in 2003.
.
He could identify by sight, he told us, the Canadian agents who questioned him while he was in captivity in Sudan, including the one who told him "Sudan will be your Guantanamo" and that he was never coming home.
He describes being interrogated in Sudan in 2008 by Foreign Affairs parliamentary secretary Deepak Obhrai, who questioned him about Osama bin Laden and what he thought of Israel.

Whoa, whoa, whoa - back that up a minute -- did I just read what I thought I read?

"He describes being interrogated in Sudan in 2008 by Foreign Affairs parliamentary secretary Deepak Obhrai, who questioned him about Osama bin Laden and what he thought of Israel.

WTF?

From Deepak Obhria's website:

"Deepak Obhrai was born in Tanzania and attended school in three separate continents: in Tanzania, India and the United Kingdom. He graduated as an Air Traffic Controller in the UK and worked at several airports in East Africa. After immigrating to Canada in 1977, Deepak worked in the accounting department for the City of Calgary before becoming self-employed. He and his wife Neena became owners of a chain of dry-cleaning stores and also formed a company to explore joint venture opportunities in overseas markets."

So was it his experience as an air traffic controller or as a dry-cleaner that made him an expert interrogator? What the in the name of Mata Hari is the parlamentary secretary to the Foreign Minister doing questioning a Canadian citizen about anything? If Mr. Abdelrazik is such a huge threat to our security why wouldn't the public safety minister be the one involved? Or the Justice Minister? What is any politician doing conducting interrogations?