Opposition parties abet cover up of Canada’s Afghan war crimes

By Keith Jones, wsws.org, May 21, 2010

Late last week Canada’s three parliamentary opposition parties and the minority Conservative government reached an “agreement in principle” to give a tiny number of specially vetted MPs uncensored access to all documents pertaining to the fate of the Canadian Armed Forces’ Afghan detainees.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper—whose government has repeatedly run roughshod over basic democratic rights and norms, including twice making use of the arbitrary powers of the unelected Governor-General to temporarily shut down parliament—joined the opposition in hailing the agreement as good for democracy.

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Rumblings of new war in the Middle East

Keith Jones, wsws.org, April 20, 2010

Recent days have seen a spate of developments that point to the danger of a new military conflagration in the Middle East.

Israel has warned Syria that it will face an Israeli attack if Hezbollah, the Shiite-based Lebanese militia, fires Scud missiles at Israel, the London Times reported Sunday. The newspaper cites an unnamed Israeli cabinet minister as saying, “We’ll return Syria to the Stone Age by crippling its power stations, ports, fuel storage and every bit of strategic infrastructure if Hezbollah dare to launch ballistic missiles against us.”

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