truth

Blackest Day in Canadian History

Officer in charge, RCMP War Crimes Section
110 Place d'Orléans, Room 2200
Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0R2
Attention Officer in Charge of RCMP War Crimes Section;
George W. Bush is reported to be planning to visit Calgary Alberta on or before March 17, 2009 as a guest of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce.
We are writing to report that:
• George W. Bush, former President of the United States and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, is inadmissible to Canada under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA), section 35(1)(a) because of overwhelming evidence that he has 'committed, outside Canada, torture and other offences referred to in sections 4 to 7 of the Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes Act (CAHWC); and,
• the George W. Bush Administration has engaged in "systematic or gross human rights violations, or a war crime or a crime against humanity within the meaning of subsections 6(3) to (5) of the CAHWC.
We request that the RCMP War Crimes Section immediately take the following steps:
• begin an investigation of George W. Bush for aiding, abetting and counseling torture between November 13, 2001 and November 2008 at Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba, Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Bagram prison in Afghanistan and other places; and,
• advise the Prime Minister, Attorney General of Canada and Ministers of Immigration and Public Safety that the George W. Bush administration is a "government that has engaged in torture and other war crimes and crimes against humanity and therefore G.W. Bush, as former President, is also inadmissible under section 35(1)(b) of the IRPA.
Overwhelming evidence of these allegations against both G.W. Bush and the Bush Administration is widely available. These allegations have triggered Canada's duty to act to use all legal means to ensure the appropriate investigations, remedies and responses. Canada's international legal duties specifically prohibit treating these acts as legal, as ignoring the IRPA and allowing Bush into Canada would do.
Under sections 4 to 7 of the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, "crimes against humanity" include murder, enforced disappearance, deportation, imprisonment, torture and imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law, committed against any civilian population or any identifiable group. War crimes include willful killing, torture and inhuman treatment, unlawful confinement and willfully depriving a prisoner of war or other protected person of fair trial rights.
If there are reasonable grounds to believe a person has been complicit in any of these crimes, entry to Canada must be denied. Reasonable grounds, according to the Supreme Court of Canada are "something more than suspicion but less than...proof on the balance of probabilities."
Many have concluded that the available evidence establishes conclusively that Bush and the Bush Administration committed torture and other war crimes and crimes against humanity and that Canada and other states now have a duty to condemn, investigate, prosecute and punish those crimes.
U.N. General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, on March 4, 2009 concluded, "The [Bush Administration] aggressions against Iraq and Afghanistan and their occupations constitute atrocities that must be condemned and repudiated by all who believe in the rule of law in international relations,"
U. N. Special Rapporteur Martin Scheinin, in February 2009 concluded, 
"...the United States has created a comprehensive system of extraordinary renditions, prolonged and secret detention, and practices that violate the prohibition against torture and other forms of ill-treatment....States must not aid or assist in the commission of acts of torture, or recognize such practices as lawful, ...Under international human rights law, States are under a positive obligation to conduct independent investigations into alleged violations of the right to life, freedom from torture or other inhuman treatment, enforced disappearances or arbitrary detention, to bring to justice those responsible for such acts, and to provide reparations where they have participated in such violations."
The RCMP has a duty to investigate and prevent such crimes at common law and also under the War Crimes Program. This program, as you know, was established specifically to meet the challenge of investigating crimes committed outside Canadian territory. The mandate of the War Crimes Program to, "...ensure that the Government of Canada has properly addressed all allegations of war crimes..." is achieved by, "...the RCMP, with the support of DOJ [Department of Justice], investigating allegations involving reprehensible acts that could lead to a possible criminal prosecution."
Lawyers Against the War is ready, on request, to provide references to evidence of torture. We are confident that other organizations such as the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, National Lawyers Guild, American Civil Liberties Association and the Center for Constitutional Rights would also be ready to assist by providing references to evidence.
We request a reply before March 17, 2009
Respectfully,
Gail Davidson, Lawyers Against the War
Copied to: Prime Minster Stephen Harper; Attorney General Rob Nicholson; Peter Van Loan, Minister of Public Safety; Jason Kenney, Minister of Immigration; Lawrence Cannon, Minister of Foreign Affairs; Jack Layton-Leader of NDP; Joe Comartin, NDP Justice Critic; Paul Dewar, NDP Foreign Affairs Critic; NDP Don Davies, Critic on Immigration; Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff; Bob Rae, Liberal Foreign Affairs Critic; Dominic Leblanc, Liberal Justic Critic; Maurizio Bevilacqua, Liberal Immigration Critic; Leader of the Bloc Quebecois Gilles Duceppe; Real Menard, BQ Justice critic; Serge Menard, BQ Public Security critic; Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc Immigration critic ; Paul Crete, Bloc Foreign Affairs critic.

Let the Dinosaurs Die.

Dig Up the Roads!

Is This the End of the Age of the Automobile?

By HARVEY WASSERMAN

As a dominant form of transportation, the automobile is dead. So is GM, which now stands for Gone Mad.

But the larger picture says that the financial crisis now enveloping the world is grounded in the transition from the automobile---and the fossils that fuel it---to a brave renewable world of reborn mass transit and green power.

If GM lives in any form, it must be owned and operated by its workers and the public.

But the larger transition is epic and global, based on a simple structural reality: the passenger car is obsolete. Auto sales have plummeted not merely because of a bad economy, but because the technology no longer makes sense.

Franklin Roosevelt took GM over in 1943-5 to make the hardware to beat the Nazis. Barack Obama should now do the same to beat climate chaos.

Make streetcars, not passenger cars.

Hybrids are too little, too late, with problems of their own. Solar-powered electric cars will help phase out the gas guzzlers.

But in the long run, the automobile itself needs to be dismantled and re-cycled, not retooled or rebuilt.

Cars still kill 40,000 Americans/year, and thousands more worldwide. No matter how much less gas each may burn, they all consume unsustainable resources to manufacture, operate and terminate.

We need to dig up roads, not build more. We need rails and coaches, bio-diesel buses and self-propelled trolleys, Solartopian super-trains and in-town people movers, not to mention windmills, solar panels, wave generators and geothermal piping.

In America's corporate-conceived “love affair with the automobile,” our first spouse---mass transit---was murdered. Now the unsustainable obsolescence of the private passenger car is collapsing a global financial system built on the illusion of its constant growth.

Mother Earth can’t sustain the old four-wheeled carry-one-person-around-the-block paradigm, be it hybrid, electric or otherwise.

If the automobile and its attendant freeways continue to metastasize in India, China and Africa as they did in the 20th Century United States, we are doomed.

Our true challenge is to envision, engineer and build a Solartopian transportation system that moves people and things cleanly around a crowded planet with diminishing resources and no margin for ecological error.

For that we need every cent and brain cell devoted to what’s new and works, not what’s failed and could kill us all.

Harvey Wasserman, a co-founder of Musicians United for Safe Energy, is editing the nukefree.org web site. He is the author of SOLARTOPIA! Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org. He can be reached at: Windhw@aol.com