Saturday, March 21, 2009

OH, NOEZZ!1!!11! Hamas! Terrorists! Oh, wait ...


Apparently, Canada's diaper-clad Jason Kenney has his George W. Bush Underoos in a bunch over George Galloway's support for Hamas, a "terrorist organization." Curiously (and under-appreciated by numerous brain-dead wanks), Hamas was legitimately elected. Go figure. And how exactly did that happen? Oh:

An inside story of how the US magnified Palestinian suffering

A million and a half Palestinians are learning the hard way that democracy isn't so good if you vote the wrong way. In 2006, they elected Hamas when the US and Israel wanted them to support the more-moderate Fatah. As a result, having long ago lost their homes and property, Gazans have endured three years of embargo, crippling shortages of food and basic necessities, and total economic collapse...

Hamas never called for the elections that put them in power. That was the brainstorm of Secretary Rice and her staff, who had apparently decided they could steer Palestinians into supporting the more-compliant Mahmoud Abbas (the current president of the Palestinian authority) and his Fatah Party through a marketing campaign that was to counter Hamas's growing popularity – all while ignoring continued Israeli settlement construction, land confiscation, and cantonization of the West Bank.

State Department staffers helped finance and supervise the Fatah campaign, down to the choice of backdrop color for the podium where Mr. Abbas was to proclaim victory. An adviser working for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) explained to incredulous staffers at the Embassy in Tel Aviv how he would finance and direct elements of the campaign, leaving no US fingerprints. USAID teams, meanwhile, struggled to implement projects for which Abbas could claim credit. Once the covert political program cemented Fatah in place, the militia Washington was building for Fatah warlord-wannabee Mohammed Dahlan would destroy Hamas militarily.

Their collective confidence was unbounded. But the Palestinians didn't get the memo. Rice was reportedly blindsided when she heard the news of Hamas's victory during her 5 a.m. treadmill workout.

See, Jason? That's what happens when truly stupid people fuck around with things that are beyond their intellectual capacity to control.

Will Jason have learned anything from that? Let's check back in a few months and find out.

AFTERSNARK: Curiously, there was not a peep out of Kenney regarding the possible inadmissability to Canada of one George W. Bush, who popped by recently to grab a honking big paycheque for an evening's work:

Canada should bar or prosecute Bush: lawyer

As George W. Bush’s St. Patrick’s Day visit to Calgary draws near, the federal government is facing pressure from activists and human rights lawyers to bar the former U.S. president from the country or prosecute him for war crimes and crimes against humanity once he steps on Canadian soil.

Bush is scheduled to speak at the Telus Convention Centre March 17, but Vancouver lawyer Gail Davidson says that because Bush has been “credibly accused” of supporting torture in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Canada has a legal obligation to deny him entry under Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. The law says foreign nationals who have committed war crimes or crimes against humanity, including torture, are “inadmissible” to Canada.

”The test isn’t whether the person’s been convicted, but whether there’s reasonable grounds to think that they have been involved,” says Davidson, who’s with Lawyers Against the War (LAW). “…It’s now a matter of public record that Bush was in charge of setting up a regime of torture that spanned several parts of the globe and resulted in horrendous injuries and even death. Canada has a duty.”

So, George Galloway gets barred, while George W. gets a limo to the Telus Centre. Raise your hand if you didn't see that coming.

3 comments:

Oemissions said...

Thank you!

CanadaHolly said...

Something I have always wondered...

...is it against the law to not uphold the law? I can't imagine that the law allows law enforcement (or in this case customs and immigration enforcement) to be purely discretionary. What does the criminal code say about this?

Noni

sooey said...

True. He's setting a very dangerous precedent. But it's not like those idiots think anything through. But I certainly hope we aren't having visits by any officials from Saudi Arabia or Pakistan or one of those ACTUAL terrorism funding countries.