Bad American

Call it a democracy? Oh Canada what has become of you under Harper?

CommonDreams from The Canadian Press

OTTAWA - A former diplomat and retired US army colonel said she was detained at Ottawa airport Thursday while en route to anti-war talks and a news conference with Canadian MPs blasting wrongful detentions. Retired US Army Colonel Ann Wright, was scheduled to speak to media at 1 p.m. local time (1700 GMT) alongside five opposition MPs, outside parliament.

Later, she was to join the wife of Maher Arar, a Canadian who was wrongfully detained as a terror suspect and tortured, and the head of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group for a panel discussion on civil liberties breaches tied to post-9/11 security.

“I’ve been detained and I’ve been banned from Canada for one year,” Wright told AFP. “Now, they’re sending me back to the United States on a 5 p.m. flight” because of a half-dozen US misdemeanor charges stemming from anti-war protests in Washington.

“It’s ironic that I find myself in this situation,” she commented, noting she was in town to spotlight the use of “watch lists and how people find themselves on these lists and are detained.”

Wright, who was denied entry into Canada earlier this month, faces a US jury trial in December for disrupting top US commander in Iraq General David Petraeus’s briefing to Congress in September, during which she demanded an end to the “Iraq occupation.” (snip)

“Apparently, she’s a threat to national security and is on US watch lists,” lamented an official with New Democrat MP Alexa McDonough, who invited Wright. “It’s silly because there’s no reason for her to be detained.”McDonough herself regretted that her guest underwent “three hours of interrogation” by customs officials, saying: “What happened today underscores how worrisome it is that we have these arbitrary kinds of decisions being made on the basis of FBI watch lists.”

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day told reporters everyone entering Canada undergoes a security check, and risks being barred from the country if they have a criminal record.

“The border officer doesn’t make a distinction between what were the extenuating circumstances that arose to a certain conviction,” he explained.

Stockwell Day is a snotty, sniveling little weasel who would warm the heart of any American neocon and I can think of no greater insult to a Canadian.

The border officers CAN and HAVE made distinctions at the border as I explained in a previous post. They’ve done it for a long, long time but not anymore. Now they are taking orders from Washington via Ottawa: anti-war people that Washington doesn’t like will not be permitted to liaison with their compatriots in Canada. This is exactly what is intended. The Canadian and American government are currently doing all they can to foster the swift flow of goods and commerce across the border. But get a misdemeanor arrest for protesting against the war, and, especially have a high public profile, and you get banned from Canada.

Money yes, political undesirables no.

The specter of fascism now stalks both the US and Canada.

UPDATE:

Rice Refuses to Apologize for Arar Torture

Reuters/CommonDreams

I linked this story here because Col. Wright was going to meet with Maher Arar and discuss his case with Canadian human rights workers. Of course the Bush administration wishes this story would just disappear.

From the story:

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted Wednesday that the United States had mishandled the case of a Canadian who was deported to Syria and who has said he was tortured there, but she stopped short of an apology.

Ms. Rice spoke in response to a lawmaker’s question about the man, Maher Arar, who was arrested during a stopover in New York in 2002 and deported to Syria, where he has said he was tortured and imprisoned for a year.

“We do not think that this case was handled as it should have been,” Ms. Rice told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “We do absolutely not wish to transfer anyone to any place in which they might be tortured.”

The Canadian government has cleared Mr. Arar of any links to terrorist groups. It has apologized and paid him $10.9 million in compensation and legal fees.

“I am pleased that the U.S. administration has taken the encouraging step of acknowledging that my case was mishandled,” Mr. Arar said in a statement from Canada. The case has become a sore spot in relations between Canada and the United States, and Canada has asked the United States to remove Mr. Arar from its security watch list.

Mr. Arar, a software engineer who was born in Syria, is still prohibited from entering the United States, although a Canadian inquiry found that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had wrongly told United States border agents that he was suspected of being an extremist.

Its the American creed once spoke by John Wayne: “Never apologize Mister: It’s a sign of weakness.”

Also read the comments under the story. This is to our national shame.