"Holding the Bully's Coat"

From the introductory essay of Linda McQuaig's "Holding the Bully's Coat", an examination of Canada's complicity in and subservience to the American empire :

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"Although it received almost no attention in the Canadian media, the appointment of Gen.Bantz Craddock as NATO’s top military commander in December 2006 had a significance for Canadians. Craddock had been in charge of the U.S.’s notorious Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba, where hundreds of suspected terrorists have been stripped of their most basic human rights in defiance of international law.

His appointment as NATO’s military chief meant that Canadian troops serving in the NATO mission in Afghanistan were being brought under the ultimate command of a U.S. general deeply connected to the worst aspects of American foreign policy carried out in the name of defeating "terror."

In fact, there has been a significant shift in how Canada operates in the world, as we’ve moved from being a nation that has championed internationalism, the United Nations and UN peacekeeping to being a key prop to an aggressive U.S. administration operating outside the constraints of international law."

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The rest of McQuaig's essay can be read at the excellent Canadian monthly ColdType.

Offering free subscription in a downloadable pdf format, The ColdType Reader has attracted and published such writers as George Monbiot, Greg Palast, Chris Hedges, Robert Fisk, Robert Jenson, Norman Solomon, ... and Hugo Chavez.

Well, go on then. Why are you still here?

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UPDATE : Oh good lord. Catnip links to an Independent article on Craddock's old Gitmo stomping grounds from July of last year.

In a review of the military's own documents, a Seton Hall University study discovered that :"Only 8 per cent of prisoners are accused of fighting for a terrorist group, and that 86 per cent were captured by the Northern Alliance or Pakistani authorities "at a time when the US offered large bounties for the capture of suspected terrorists. "

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NASCO - Paving the way for stuff

According to their website, NASCO is "a non-profit organization dedicated to developing the world’s first international, integrated and secure, multi-modal transportation system along the International Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation Corridor to improve both the trade competitiveness and quality of life in North America."

For "quality of life" here, read "stuff".

Expanding the wealth and power of corporations at the expense of people and the environment.
A ten lane corridor almost a quarter of a mile wide with gas, oil, electricity, and water pipelines running up either side, extending all the way from Mexico to Winnipeg.

Containers from the far East to be offloaded at Mexican deep-sea ports and transported by truck to the new $3 mil Mexican Customs Office - in Kansas City!

Texas has already been given both federal funding and the go-ahead to begin their section of this toll-road, and the second "Hemispheria" summit to discuss this project was due to happen in Winnipeg earlier this month.

What could possibly go wrong?

Oh yeah... Terror, Terror, Terror! Big fences! Passports and tighter border security! Bad Canada harbours terrorists! Canadians are naive! says Harper. Beef up Canada's spy network! Get under the Ballistic Missile Defense Umbrella! says the Canadian Council of Chief Executives."

Hemispheria" was cancelled due to security concerns, over the objections of the mayor of Winnipeg and the (so far laughably small) Winnipeg arm of NASCO, after the Manitoba government evidently deemed the $8 mil cost of providing security for the expected 600 CEOs and US governors to be prohibitively expensive.

So the real issue is profit vs security then?

No. The real issue is profit and their security, how to free up the movement of capital while simultaneously controlling the movement of people.

Terror! Terror! Terror! is merely one way of getting us to agree to it.

We haven't yet, but they'll be back.

Cancún cowboys

The Canadian press was very quiet about the Cancún summit today.

Fortunately, the American papers are full of it...but not as 'full of it' as usual.

From the Miami Herald : italics mine

Bush will find soul mate in Canada's Harper

"While meeting in Cancún, Mexico, President Bush should find he has a lot in common with Canada's new prime minister, Stephen Harper.

CANCUN, Mexico - President Bush arrives in Cancún today for a two-day summit with Mexican President Vicente Fox and new conservative Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a political soul mate who is bent on improving his country's frosty relations with Washington.

While talks with Fox about immigration are expected to dominate the session at this Yucatán vacation resort, Harper will be pushing his own agenda, and when Bush sits down with him on Thursday, he'll see a mirror image of himself.

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Harper, a 46-year-old economist, rose to Canada's highest office by talking about his religious faith, vowing to cut taxes and end government corruption and promising to reconsider a same-sex marriage law that Canada's Parliament approved last June -- all themes that Bush campaigned on in 2000 and 2004.

In addition, Harper said he'll consider the White House's offer for Canada to join in fielding a continental ballistic missile shield, an invitation that former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin rejected.

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''If George Bush can't get along with Stephen Harper, he can't get along with any world leader,'' said David Taras, a political science professor at the University of Calgary. ``They're ideological cousins, if not twins.''

Sworn into office last month, Harper borrowed a page from Bush's playbook and secretly traveled to Afghanistan earlier this month to meet with Canadian troops, highlight his country's contribution to the war on terrorism and buck up domestic support for the mission.

The trip also sent a message to Washington, according to John Hulsman, an analyst for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

''That was to show the cavalry is back in town, that they're not going to be anti-American,'' he said. ``Harper, like Bush, has a black-and-white, good-and-evil view of the world -- they're cut from the same cloth."

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Now why can't we get great press coverage like that in Canada?