Pacific Free Press was launched in March 2007 by Dutch-Canadian Richard
Kastelein of V.O.F. Expathos, in the Netherlands along with Chris Cook- CFUV radio journalist and Editor in Chief of Pacific Free Press. Cook is based in , Victoria, British Columbia.
The mission of Pacific Free Press is simple: to dig out nuggets of truth from
the slag-heap of lies, ignorance and witless diversion that has buried
public discourse today. Pacific Free Press provides a new venue for
disseminating hard news and insightful, fact-based analysis of the
harsh realities too often ignored or distorted by the mainstream press.
New complaint filed against Canadian in decades-old slaying
by CBC News
U.S. prosecutors filed a new complaint against a Yukon man on Friday,
less than two hours after a South Dakota judge dismissed his indictment
in the killing of a Nova Scotia woman almost 33 years ago.
John Graham and family
The ruling means John Graham's trial, which was to begin Monday, has
been cancelled. But the new complaint will probably send the case
before a grand jury again.
Guantanamo judge postpones trial for Omar Khadr
by CBC News
A U.S. military judge has postponed the trial of Omar Khadr, a young
Canadian man detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for the past six years
for alleged crimes committed as a teenager.
Khadr, now 21, is the only Western foreigner still being held at the
naval prison, widely decried as illegal by critics and human rights
activists.
The trial was supposed to begin next month at Guantanamo Bay, but at a
pretrial hearing Thursday the judge announced a schedule change as
prosecutors and defence lawyers wrangle over access to evidence and
expert witnesses.
3. Just Shoot Me (Opinion/Opinion)
Author : Chris Floyd
Just Shoot Me: A Further Observation or Two Regarding Guns
by Chris Floyd An observation, for what it's worth: Mention gun control in a post -- yea or nay, it doesn't matter -- and the world beats a path to your door (then proceeds to beat you over the head, but that's another story).
Traffic shoots way up, debate rages, people come from far and near to look on or weigh in. However, write a post about innocent people being slaughtered in Somalia -- with American bombs, American death squads, and American money fueling an act of aggression by a brutal dictator -- and nobody notices. Traffic sinks, there's no reaction; the dogs bark and the caravan moves on. "I just find that interestin'," as Ross Perot used to say.
AMMAN, Jan 29 (IPS) - Hundreds of thousands have fled the violence in
Iraq to seek refuge in Jordan, but refugees are now beginning to find
its borders closing.
Jordan and Syria are the only two countries where fleeing Iraqis can
hope to find shelter. Western countries have shut their doors to Iraqi
nationals - even to refugees.
And now much the same is happening with Jordan too.
"I had major eye surgery in Jordan, but my doctor told me it failed and
so I need to have it re-operated," Ahmad Khalaf of Saqlawiya, 62 km west
of Baghdad told IPS. "I arrived at the Iraqi-Jordanian crossing point
with my medical reports and a letter from the hospital in Jordan
demanding my arrival in Amman on a certain date in order to remedy the
damage of the previous operation."
Preparing the March On Wall Street
by Danny Schechter When you read about Jesse Jackson, it's often in the context of an appearance here or there or as a high profile individual, controversial or not, depending on your point of view.
He's thought of as a "black leader" but its rarely made clear who or what he is leading. So when you read that he is organizing a March at noon today on Wall Street against the foreclosures of millions of homeowners, some shrug dismissively, ' there he goes again," as if he's just a professional protester.
You'd lose that contemptuous stereotype fast if you had been with me this past Saturday, on his home turf in Chicago where he founded and runs the Rainbow Push Coalition out of a former synagogue turned church, community center, school, and TV station on Chicago's South Side.
Jose Padillas’s Fate — And Ours
by Ernest Partridge
The opening sentence of an August 17, New York Times editorial reads: “It is hard to disagree with the jury’s guilty verdict against Jose Padilla.”
There follows not a single word in support of this dogmatic editorial pronouncement — not a word presenting the charges against Padilla or the evidence in support thereof.
But take a close look at those charges and that evidence and I submit that you might find abundant reason to disagree with the jury’s guilty verdict.
Jelly Beans and Potato Soup
by Hal. C. Sisson, QC Jelly beans are funny per se; you never find them in discussion of serious matters, but usually used in a humourous or derisive manner.
Stephen Harper's spin doctors know this, which is precisely why they used jelly beans as an example when referring to the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) that is more transparently described as the North American Union (NAU). Couple of years ago people said the NAU was only a ludicrous conspiracy theory never to be implemented. Not any more. The question now is are we going to be a part of it?
Prime Minister Harper intimated in his August speech in Montebello, Quebec, that the terms of the SPP agreement being discussed between Canada, the United States and Mexico was nothing more than an attempt to harmonize the policies, laws, rules, and regulations regarding trade of jelly beans throughout North America.
The Prophesies of John McCain: Ambition Makes Fools of Us All
by Jack Random While on the campaign trail in Ohio, candidate John McCain allowed his followers a glance in the looking glass through the prism of his ambition, boldly predicting victory and a functioning democracy in Iraq, stabilization in Afghanistan, the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden, the disarming of Iran and North Korea, dominance of the world’s democracies over China and Russia, an open and non-political White House, an end to signing statements, more “accessible” health care, improved public education, a secure border, reduced greenhouse gas emissions and several years of “robust economic growth.”
Smiling as if the words themselves were a fait accompli, McCain declared “there has still not been a major terrorist attack in the United States since September 11, 2001.”
In April, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald filed a court document in the CIA leak case claiming his staff had obtained evidence during the course of the three-year-old probe that proves "multiple" White House officials were engaged in a coordinated effort to discredit former ambassador Joseph Wilson.
Those officials, Fitzgerald said, eventually disclosed Wilson's wife's covert CIA status to the media as retribution for his public criticism of the Bush administration's use of pre-war Iraq intelligence.
But the mainstream media has chosen to ignore those facts now that former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage broke his silence Thursday and admitted that he told syndicated columnist Robert Novak and Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA.
According to these mainstream publications, Armitage's mea culpa proves there wasn't a White House campaign to discredit Wilson or unmask his wife's identity.
Following the illegal deportation of Leonard Peltier to the U.S., Canadian Native John Graham has also been deported in a similar fashion. He was taken away in the early morning of December 6 and flown out of Abbotsford airport to Rapid City without his lawyer or his family allowed to see him.
His family immediately began trying to find out what had happened to him and were given the run around for a number of days. They phoned Rapid City saying their father had been sent there. The response was "we don't know where Canada is".
In the ongoing Congressional
investigation, the woman who earned her law degree from a school that
teaches courses on how lawyers in positions of authority can use their
power to identify and punish "sins," confirmed the crisis in the Bush
administration's Justice Department.
Regent University School of Law graduate Monica Goodling, whose
meteoric rise to the highest levels of the Department of Justice put
her in a position to aid and abet a program of politicizing
prosecutions by US Attorneys, opened her testimony before the House
Judiciary Committee Wednesday by invoking her Fifth Amendment right to
refuse to make statements that might incriminate her.
Increase in Iraqi Deaths Despite 'Surge'
by Juan Cole For all those journalists and politicians who keep insisting that there are new "glimmers" of "hope" in Iraq because of the new security plan started 6 weeks ago, here is a sobering statistic from the Iraqi government. (I'm looking at you, John McCain. See below for more on McCain).
Jesus Uber Alles – Christianity as Fascism
by Kent Welton Getting a little tired of this holier-than-thou political season? We might ask here when does "faith’ become fascism?
I would say that it is when you claim your prophet is the only one, the only son of God. Mind you, this is a God you’ve never seen or heard and one that you imagine you are somehow separated from, even though there is no such thing as discreteness in this energy-laden universe.
Indeed, we are all interpenetrated by the same waves of energy as everyone else. Separation from the universe, from these energies of life - i.e., from "God" - is then impossible in the very nature of things. Only the counterproductive mind energies of belief act to separate us.
Yet it is separation from heaven and God that is religion’s very old business. By creating a belief of separation from existence you create a guilt and admission-to-heaven business. You create sin and charge for its redemption. You create fear, even terror of "hell" and not going to heaven, and you can get people to do anything... even believe six impossible things before breakfast.
Jundullah: Iran-Contra Crimes Revisited
by Kurt Nimmo It is part Contra, part “al-Qaeda,” and part Taliban. “A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005,” reports ABC News. “The group, called Jundullah, is made up of members of the Baluchi tribe and operates out of the Baluchistan province in Pakistan, just across the border from Iran…
U.S. officials say the U.S. relationship with Jundullah is arranged so that the U.S. provides no funding to the group, which would require an official presidential order or ‘finding’ as well as congressional oversight.”
The Bush/Cheney acolytes keen on smearing Joe Wilson took a couple of gut shots at the Scooter Libby trial today. One of the documents released to the public confirms Wilson's account of how he came to be sent to Niger, what he found, and what he reported to CIA debriefers.
Part of the smear effort, which was led by Kansas Senator Pat Roberts from his perch as head of the Senate Intelligence Committee (SSCI), insisted that Joe's trip to Niger actually revealed that Iraq was trying to buy uranium. According to p. 46 of the July 2004 SSCI report on Iraq, the Republican's reported hearsay about what Joe found:
Not so fast boys and girls. During yesterday's testimony key documents were introduced into evidence. One of these was the INR memo about the Niger affair.
Buried in the appendix of the this document is the redacted intelligence report, known in CIA parlance as a "TD". Take a look for yourself at what the CIA debriefers reported:
CLICK ON THUMBNAIL AFTER PAGE LOADS FOR FULL IMAGE
Is This Heaven?
by Mike Palecek No. I'm looking at the map on my wall that my son made in fifth grade.
It is Iowa. Where we have high school baseball, the corn is 'bout head-tall, and we don't eat it until fall.
Did you know that there were bombs that went off inside the federal building in Oklahoma City and that the ATF officers in that building were told not to go to work that day?
Did you know that the FBI covered up the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993?
We are now as a nation held hostage to the predictable—and predicted—disarray that has followed the invasion of Iraq.” Senator Jim Webb (D-VA)
“A star is born” Mark Shields, political pundit on Jim Lehrer News Hour assessing Jim Webb’s Democratic responsel to the S.O.T.U.
Nothing scares the “powers that be” more than a straight-shooting populist who can rally people against government policy. And, yet, that’s exactly what happened on Tuesday night in the Democratic response to the State of the Union Speech (S.O.T.U.). In just 9 minutes, freshman Senator, Jim Webb took a sledgehammer to Bush’s policy in Iraq and left 45 million Americans cheering for more. It was a tour de force the likes of which we haven’t seen since Harold Pinter gave his Noble acceptance speech 2 years ago.
Webb was brilliant. He not only erased 40 minutes of Bush-blather and demagoguery; he lifted the country out of the squalor of pessimism by pointing the way out of Iraq and towards greater economic justice.
“The president does not have legal authority to go into Iran there’s no question in my mind about that; and he wouldn’t have the capability of doing that even if he wanted to.”
John Murtha (D-PA), ABC “This Week”
The traditionally-hawkish, Jack Murtha has been the standard bearer for the Democrats in his opposition to the war. He led the charge against the occupation of Iraq calling it “a failed policy wrapped in an illusion” and, now, he’s threatening to sabotage Bush’s plans for a troop-surge in Baghdad.
The crusty ex-Marine doesn’t mince words and he’s not afraid of the “Swift-boaters” and hatchet-men on the Bush team. He sticks to the facts (and his principles) and takes great pride in defending the interests of the men and women who wear the uniform.
John Yoo stands outside the Anglo-American legal tradition. His views lead to self-incrimination wrung out of a victim by torture. He believes a president of the US can initiate war, even on false pretenses, and then use the war he starts as cover for depriving US citizens of habeas corpus protection. A US attorney general informed by Yoo’s memos even went so far as to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Constitution does not provide habeas corpus protection to US citizens.
Yoo’s animosity to US civil liberties made him a logical choice for appointment to the Bush Regime’s Department of Justice (sic), but his appointment as a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, shatters that university’s liberal image.
Padilla Trial Highlights Bush Administration's Manipulation Of Justice
by Paul Craig Roberts The government gave assurances that the draconian measures only apply to terrorists. “Terrorist,” however, was not defined.
The government claimed the discretionary power to decide who is a "terrorist" without having to present evidence or charges in a court of law. The Bush administration’s policy comprises an end-run around any notion of procedural due process of law.
Sea Shepherd Whale Defenders
by Sea Shepherd Conservation Society Despite repeated demands by the captain of the Steve Irwin, the Japanese whaler Yushin Maru No. 2 has refused to release the two Sea Shepherd crew members he took hostage.
The much faster harpoon vessels have eluded pursuit from the Steve Irwin and have disappeared from the radar screens.
"Needless to say we are worried about our two crewmembers," said Captain Paul Watson. "The Japanese ship has not responded to a single message from Sea Shepherd and we have no way of knowing just how they are being treated. They have been kidnapped and they are being held against their will by outlaw whalers."
First the Republicans lost their majority status in Congress. Then the Iraq Study Group sent the White House its report card and gave it a failing grade. It looked like Dick Cheney had finally been put in his rightful place –- the ceremonial office vice presidents have traditionally occupied.
But this is a man who's alternately schmoozed and clawed his way to the executive heights in both government and business. Also, he's suffered four heart attacks and the onset of congestive heart failure. Not to mention undergoing a bypass operation, as well as an angioplasty, the implantation of a defibrillator, and the repair of an aneurysm in an artery.
Any resemblance to one of those horror movie characters that can't be killed is not coincidental.
So formidable a foe is Cheney that appointed dragon slayer Patrick Fitzgerald is either still girding his loins or has abandoned his quest to indict him as quixotic. In other words, counting out Cheney is premature. In fact, Robert Dreyfuss recently described him as "suddenly revived."
Those who persist in believing Bush has been counseled to sideline Cheney would be wise to ask themselves this: Which of Bush's advisors suffers from a death wish?
Washington – Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales, who is defending President Bush's
anti-terrorism tactics in multiple court battles, said Friday that
federal judges should not substitute their personal views for the
president's judgments in wartime. – Washington Post, Sept. 29, 2006.
History repeats itself. Welcome to Berlin, 1933.
Alberto Gonzales is a lot like Franz Gurtner, another conservative
nationalist lawyer and judge – who was appointed by Hitler to head the
Reich Ministry of Justice, and who got along very well with the Nazis
despite not being a Nazi himself. How did the German Legal system
change as a result of Nazi 'leadership'?
Fear-mongering was the main tool used to change the law, and to
undermine civil liberties. So where the constitution was changed, the
code of criminal procedure was also changed, extraordinary powers were
vested in the Executive, including extensive police powers; and the
powers of an independent judiciary were destroyed.
Undermining Military Justice
by Scott Horton It’s a cliché to say that “military justice is to justice as military music is to music.” It’s also far from fair to the American military. Over the last fifty years, the American military justice model evolved into something that—while always short of perfection, as all human works—nevertheless accurately reflects the basic values of a democratic society.
In fact, the American court-martial system has long been something that Americans could be proud of. And more than anything this is thanks to the diligent work and professionalism of the uniformed lawyers who make that system work, the JAG corps.
Within two years of its arrival in Washington, the Bush Administration began to take a crow bar to the American military justice system.
The Justice Department’s Truthiness Problem
by Scott Horton “Truthiness,” a phrase coined by the comic Stephen Colbert, has emerged as one of the hallmarks of the Bush Administration. Truthiness, Colbert tells us, is something a government spokesperson knows “from the gut”–without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. “Truthiness” has the outward appearance of truth. However, statements offered as “truthiness” are invariably false. Worse, the person who utters them usually knows they are false. But telling lies and getting away with it is a political art form. Call it the art of “truthiness.”
The Bush Justice Department has a huge truthiness problem. This helps explain why public confidence in the Justice Department just reached an all-time low point. Americans now have more confidence in the integrity and reliability of Post Office employees than they do in federal prosecutors and FBI agents. But is the Justice Department going to start coming to grips with its “truthiness” problem, or will it just plod along through inauguration day, 2009?
For Justice: A Light at the End of the Tunnel?
by Scott Horton In the past couple of months I have examined four cases handled by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility.
Through some time in 2002, OPR seemed to perform its function normally.
OPR acts as a professional ethics advisor and oversight mechanism for the Department of Justice. However, sometime in the course of that year a number of very strange things began to happen, and since then I have identified a series of cases in which the Office’s function seems to relate to the persecution and punishment of whistleblowers, and not to ethics enforcement. In sum, OPR suddenly became intensely political.
James Petras is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York. He's a noted academic figure on the US Left and a well-respected Latin American expert and longtime chronicler of the region's popular struggles. He's also an advisor to the landless workers in Brazil and the unemployed workers movement in Argentina. Along the way, he managed to find time to write many hundreds of articles and 62 books published in 29 languages including his latest one in which he discusses another vital world region he has extensive knowledge of and has written frequently about - the Middle East and specifically the state of Israel and its relations with its neighbors, the Palestinians and, most importantly and the subject of this book, the US.
Petras' powerful new book is titled The Power of Israel in the United States. It's a work of epic writing and essential reading documenting the enormous influence of the Jewish Lobby on US policy in the Middle East. It focuses like a laser to assure that policy conforms with Israel's long-term goal for regional hegemony. The Lobby's influence is broad and deep enough to include officials at the highest levels of government, the business community, academia, the clergy (especially the dominant Christian fundamentalists/Christian Zionists) and the mass media. Petras shows how together they're able to assure the full and unconditional US support for all elements of Israel's agenda going back decades even when that agenda harms our interests such as the unwinnable war in Iraq, any future one against Iran if it's undertaken, and the appalling and brutal subjugation and colonization of the Palestinian people that serves no US interest whatever. In spite of it, the Lobby is able to get the US to go along with Israel unconditionally with no serious opposition to it tolerated.
29. Jumping on Jihad (Opinion/Opinion)
Author : Stephen Marshall
The Passing Fad of Jihad
by Stephen Marshall My response to Terror remembrances of bombs past, an article written by The Globe and Mail’s London correspondent, Doug Saunders. In it, Saunders draws parallels between those Che-loving, bomb-making 70’s era urban guerrillas and today’s Islamic jihadists. As Saunders writes, “violent leftist revolution was a Seventies fashion… violent Islamism may be the same.” He couldn’t be more wrong.
Doug; as someone who has spent the past two years filming in countries like Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, Lebanon, and Israel/Palestine, with a specific focus on infiltrating jihadist groups, I found your Islamism article to be shockingly off the mark. There is simply no basis for comparing today’s Muslim terrorists/insurgents to the 70’s era urban guerrillas. And to do so isn’t only historically inaccurate but also extremely dangerous as it seriously deludes the public about the very real threat posed by these groups.
Derrick Shareef, the so-called terrorist who allegedly
plotted to blow up hand grenades in garbage cans in a Rockford,
Illinois shopping mall on the Friday before Christmas, was indicted
Thursday (January 4th) in Chicago.
Privacy Policy 
U.S. prosecutors filed a new complaint against a Yukon man on Friday,
less than two hours after a South Dakota judge dismissed his indictment
in the killing of a Nova Scotia woman almost 33 years ago.
A U.S. military judge has postponed the trial of Omar Khadr, a young
Canadian man detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for the past six years
for alleged crimes committed as a teenager.
An observation, for what it's worth: 
Of course Sir Ian Blair should resign. Hopefully he might finally do the decent thing once the inquest jury brings in a verdict of unlawful killing.
The opening sentence of an 
Jelly beans are funny per se; you never find them in discussion of serious matters, but usually used in a humourous or derisive manner. 
Following the illegal deportation of Leonard Peltier to the U.S., Canadian Native John Graham has also been deported in a similar fashion. He was taken away in the early morning of December 6 and flown out of Abbotsford airport to Rapid City without his lawyer or his family allowed to see him. 
In the ongoing Congressional
investigation, the woman who earned her law degree from a school that
teaches courses on how lawyers in positions of authority can use their
power to identify and punish "sins," confirmed the crisis in the Bush
administration's Justice Department. 
For all those journalists and politicians who keep insisting that there are new "glimmers" of "hope" in Iraq because of the new security plan started 6 weeks ago, here is a sobering statistic from the Iraqi government. (I'm looking at you, John McCain. See below for more on McCain).
Getting a little tired of this holier-than-thou political season? We might ask here when does "faith’ become fascism? 
It is part Contra, part “al-Qaeda,” and part Taliban. “A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005,” 
No. I'm looking at the map on my wall that my son made in fifth grade.
We are now as a nation held hostage to the predictable—and predicted—disarray that has followed the invasion of Iraq.” Senator Jim Webb (D-VA)
“A star is born” Mark Shields, political pundit on Jim Lehrer News Hour assessing Jim Webb’s Democratic responsel to the S.O.T.U. 
John Yoo stands outside the Anglo-American legal tradition. His views lead to self-incrimination wrung out of a victim by torture. He believes a president of the US can initiate war, even on false pretenses, and then use the war he starts as cover for depriving US citizens of habeas corpus protection. A US attorney general informed by Yoo’s memos even went so far as to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Constitution does not provide habeas corpus protection to US citizens.
Despite repeated demands by the captain of the Steve Irwin, the Japanese whaler Yushin Maru No. 2 has refused to release the two Sea Shepherd crew members he took hostage.
First the Republicans lost their majority status in Congress. Then the Iraq Study Group sent the White House its report card and gave it a failing grade. It looked like Dick Cheney had finally been put in his rightful place –- the ceremonial office vice presidents have traditionally occupied.
It’s a cliché to say that “military justice is to justice as military music is to music.” It’s also far from fair to the American military. Over the last fifty years, the American military justice model evolved into something that—while always short of perfection, as all human works—nevertheless accurately reflects the basic values of a democratic society. 
In the past couple of months I have examined four cases handled by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility. 
Petras' powerful new book is titled 
My response to 
Derrick Shareef, the so-called terrorist who allegedly
plotted to blow up hand grenades in garbage cans in a Rockford,
Illinois shopping mall on the Friday before Christmas, was indicted
Thursday (January 4th) in Chicago.
