johnbowman.net

Since I’m no longer writing consumers news, I’m gonna take down the feed in the right-hand column.

I should put my blogroll there.

I don’t think I’ll be doing a rant today. I haven’t heard anything from the station, so I’ll assume they don’t need it.

There’s a meeting today about the new CKLN morning news show.

I don’t think they have a name for it yet, but I think “I’m Up” would be groovy.

If you love retro lesbian pulp-fiction novel covers (and who doesn’t?) you gotta check out Strange Sisters.

Printed out and posted next to my desk at work:

Once Upon a Time in the Playground: Part the First and Part Deux.

Here’s the news rant I read last week on WOM:

Human rights report slams U.S. terror investigation

The U-S government has ripped up the rulebook in its investigation of the September 11 attacks, says Human Rights Watch.

The organization says the American government has detained people arbitrarily, impeded their access to counsel, engaged in secret arrests and has used coercive interrogation techniques.

The 95-page report also says the Department of Justice has broken the rules on immigration violations to overstep its powers in its terrorism probe.

The director of the organization’s U-S program had this to say: “By restricting judicial oversight and blocking public scrutiny, the government has exercised virtually unchecked power of those it has detained.”

The allegations are part of a 95-page report called “Presumption of Guilt: Human Right Abuses of Post-September 11 Detainees.”

The report is based on interview with dozens of current and former prisoners and their attorneys.

The report details cases where the government has kept people prisoner for months without charges, in some cases in solitary confinement.

Some of the detainees were physically and verbally abused because of their religion or national origin.

The government’s September 11 investigation has netted about 12-hundred non-U-S citizens, the report says. The U-S hasn’t released the exact number.

The arrests were made in secret and, in some cases, the arrests were made with no other motive than a neighbour’s suspicion about a person’s possible link to terrorism based on national origin or religion.

The report also says the Department of Justice has turned the presumption of innocence on its head.

The department arrests hundreds of men on immigration charges and held them until they decided they decided the prisoners had no links to terrorism.

Human Rights Watch demanded that the U-S release the names of everyone detained in its September 11 terrorism investigation.

Doublespeak in Israel, Palestine and the U-S

A story from the Associated Press today detailed the euphemisms and doublespeak the Israeli army and the Palestinians use when talking about the conflict in the Middle East.

For example, when the Israeli army talks about tracking and killing a Palestinian militant, something we might call an assassination, they call it a “pre-emptive strike” or a “focused prevention.”

It’s almost like they have a minority report on who is going to attack.

Hamas, on the other hand, when it claims responsibility for a suicide bombing calls it a “heroic martyrdom operation.”

Israeli officials and the White House press secretary, though, prefer the completely nonsensical “homicide bombing.”

I mean, any bombing that kills people is a homicide bombing. If the attacker himself or herself dies too, that’s a suicide bombing. It’s just description of the act.

Of course, Hamas doesn’t say that it has attacked “Israel” because they to not recognize it. They call it the “Zionist entity,” as if it where something attacking the Enterprise.

Last week, I talked about the Israeli army forcing Palestinians to don bulletproof vests and knock on the doors of suspected militant hideouts.

Human rights organizations call that a “human shield.” The Israeli army calls it a “neighbour procedure.”

To the army, flattening a house or an olive grove with bulldozers is “engineering work.”

And riot control gear, well that’s “dispersal tools.”

And the name of the conflict itself, the violent Palestinian uprising against Israel, the “intefadeh,” that’s just Arabic for “shaking off.”

But the article doesn’t talk about the Orwellian language of the U-S government.

The Office of Homeland Security might as well be the Ministry of Peace.

And the Office of Strategic Influence, a Pentagon plan to spread disinformation and manipulate public opinion, that’s the Ministry of Truth.

And through the Terrorism Information and Prevention System, the TIPS corps of citizen spies, Big Brother is watching.

Chretien

And the big news in Canada this week was Jean Chretien announcing that he would not be dictator for life as he originally planned.

At first, I didn’t think too much about the announcement. Big deal, he won’t run again.

But then I realized that we’re now in for a year and a half of back-room party politics as three different federal parties decide who’s going to lead them.

The news will be full of intrigue and in-fighting and Martin this and Liberal that.

And not a damn thing is going to get done. The Liberal will have had three full terms of majority government and we still won’t have a Species at Risk Act or a housing plan or national day care or anything.

People wonder why it’s the courts that are making all the decisions, like gay marriage, and not the government. Now we know why.

The politicians are too busy playing politics rather than actually making policy.

Andy Stochansky’s CD release last night was amazing. Five Star Motel has some amazing songs on it. I was singing “Stutter” all the way home last night.

And Danny Michel came on for one song, so Alison was in heaven, of course.

I’m listening to the CD right now, but don’t tell Alison. She’ll be pissed that I got to listen to it before she did.

I can say Stochansky. It ain’t hard.

And tonight’s it’s Starling. I’ll be all indied out.

Word of Mouth is airing as I write this. My interview went OK, even though I forgot my scripts in the other room. I had to mumble off a lame question and then run get them.

I delivered my rant alright, but I wasn’t really prepared for the pre-taped section of the show that’s airing right now. I ended up reading the same intro that the host on the recording had read.

All in all, better than last time.

I’m going to host Word of Mouth on CKLN, 88.1 FM this Thursday at 7:00 p.m.

I’m actually going to write a script for myself this time, so I don’t screw it up as badly as I did last time I tried this.

Personally, I think it’s hysterical that the Web site of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada has a recipe for brownies (PDF file) linked from their press release condemning Ottawa’s marijuana policy.

From the release:

“Someone who smokes two or three marijuana cigarettes per day likely faces the same risk of lung-cancer risk [sic] as a pack-a-day cigarette smoker.”

Dude, someone who smokes two or three joints a day would be too busy talking to his shoes to worry about cancer.

Here are the news headlines I presented on World of Mouth yesterday. I’ll be sending Jon Stewart a royalty cheque today.

Israeli army uses Palistinian teen as human shield

Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has condemned the Israeli army for its alleged use of Palestinians as “human shields.”

The group’s statement came after a Palestinian teenager, Nidal Daraghmeh was shot dead Wednesday night in the West Bank villiage of Tubas.

Witnesses say Israeli soldiers put him in a bullet-proof vest and forced him at gunpoint to knock on the door of a house sheltering a Hamas militant and tell him to surrender.

“Using civilians as if they were bullet-proof vests and turning them into objects whose sole purpose is to protect soldiers in neither legal nor moral,” said B’Tselem.

“Whatever the circumstances, soldiers must not endanger the lives of civilians to protect their own.”

B’Tselem says the Israeli army has been using Palestinians as human shields since the start of the current uprising nearly two years ago.

The Israeli government did outlaw the use of human shields by the army — this April — but drew a disitinction between human shields and “neighbourhood procedures.”

See, a neighbourhood procedures is when they use Palestinian cilivilians to help soliders enter homes where there might be militants. The army said they used the teen to prevent cilivian deaths by having him warn any civilians that might have been inside the house.

B’Tselem said this incident proved neighbourhood procedures are just as dangerous as the ones that were banned.

After Daraghmed was killed in a hail of bullets, some witnesses said the shots came from the soldiers and not the house, the army then bulldozed the house and killed Hamas leader Nasser Jerar who was inside.

The army said Jerar was continuing Hamas activities despite losing both legs and one arm while trying to plant a bomb last year.

Rice tells BBC Hussein is “evil”

U-S National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice says the United States have … NO CHOICE but to bomb the hell out of Iraq. No choise, you see, because Saddam Hussein, Rice says, is … EVIL.

Condy Rice told BBC Radio, “This is an evil man who, left to his own devices, will wreak havoc again on his own population, his neighbours and, if he gets weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them, all of us.”

She said the U-S has a strong “moral case” to remove Saddam and replace him with… someone else… I guess.

Said Rice, “History is littered with cases of inaction that led to have grave consequences for the world.”

Yeah, like the first three years of World War Two? Hmm?

Rice said that if U-S action led to a regime change, there “would be an obligation for all of us to make certain that things are better for the people of the country and the people of the region.”

Does anyone else find that just scary? The U-S making sure that things are better for people in the Arab world?

Y’know, though, I think Condy’s right on this one. History tells us inaction is bad.

And rushing in without just cause, bombing people, “removing” leaders and installing puppet governments… well, history tells us that that always works.

What I would like to see is the U-S intervening in international situations where there’re “evil” people and a strong “moral case” and NO oil involved.

Gerald Kaufman of the U-K’s Labour Party wrote in Spectator magazine today that “Bush, himself the most intellectually backward American president of my political lifetime, is surrounded by advisers whose bellicosity is exceeded only by their political, military and diplomatic illiteracy.”

Bush said he would respond to the allegations as soon as his advisors told him what all those big words mean.