More on the Bernier resignation ..

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080527.EBernier27/BNStory/specialComment

CTV.ca

Maxime Bernier resigns as foreign affairs minister CTV.ca, Canada - 27 May 2008 Maxime Bernier has resigned as foreign affairs minister, after he acknowledged leaving sensitive government documents out in the open -- apparently at his ...

CBC.ca

Opposition demands more answers in Bernier affair CBC.ca, Canada - 6 hours ago Maxime Bernier arrives to be sworn in at Rideau Hall in August. He is accompanied by Julie Co

Max attack

Was it only 12 days ago I had my ass handed to me for showing this cartoon to my caucus colleagues? My, my.

Don Martin: Bernier’s grave mistake
Aaron Wherry: Say Goodnight Boo Boo
Globe: Bernier resigns over security breach
Susan Delacourt: Information Explosion
Live blogging avec Julie
Mad Max and the mangled message
Prime Minister Harper’s statement on Bernier
Hell’s Angels web site (Eastern Canada)

Fresh Start on Afghanistan Debate

Harper: grow a spine.

Manley report: No one gets off easy, and that's good.

By Terry Glavin
Published: January 23, 2008

TheTyee.ca

It just might be that yesterday's report from John Manley's independent panel on Canada's role in Afghanistan will turn out to be the very thing this country needed: a kind of blueprint to build a sensible, non-partisan national consensus about how Canada should conduct itself in that poor, blighted country.

There's still hope.

But for it to happen, Canadians, and especially Canada's political leaders, will have to squarely face the hard, horrible and inconvenient truths that Manley and his panelists so thoroughly canvassed.

The report is essential reading for a clear understanding of what we're up against. It's the most serious and wide-ranging review of this country's engagement in Afghanistan since Canadian soldiers first set foot there in early 2002.

For any sort of national consensus to emerge from this, we're all going to have to start thinking very clearly about how to address the central question facing Canada, which the panel report put this way:

"At its core, the aim of Canadian policy is to leave Afghanistan to Afghans, in a country better governed, more peaceful and more secure. How can Canada, with others, best contribute to accomplishing that result within the limits of Canadian capacity and influence?"

To get to that particular conversation, however, will require a degree of humility, candour and leadership that none of Canada's national party leaders have shown on the Afghanistan question thus far.

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To do list for leaders

It means New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton will have to stop the hippie-speak about "George Bush's war" and start brushing up on some basic facts. Reacting to the panel's report Tuesday, Layton's first words, in an official statement, were: "For six years, the Liberals and Conservatives have had Canada involved in a counter-insurgency combat mission in southern Afghanistan." Actually, it was only a little more than two years ago that Canadian soldiers finally moved out of Kabul to take over in Kandahar.

It means Liberal leader Stephane Dion will have to abandon his sophomoric and illogical fixation with a 2009 departure date -- or any fixed departure date -- for Canadian soldiers in Kandahar. He might also dust off some of those stirring campaign speeches he once made about the necessity of a "Marshall Plan" for Afghanistan.

It means the next time Green Party leader Elizabeth May feels the urge to blame "ISAF forces from a Christian/crusader heritage" for the depredations of violent jihadists in Afghanistan, she might first recall that there are hundreds of brave Muslim soldiers from ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) in Afghanistan, from such countries as Turkey and Azerbaijan.

She might be reminded as well that Canada has no "crusader" heritage, and that the signatories to the Afghan Compact, which sets ISAF's agenda, include Iran, Jordan, Qatar and several other Muslim-majority countries. And that Canada's ambassador to Afghanistan, Arif Lalani, is himself a Muslim.

Harper's hash

It also means Prime Minister Stephen Harper will have to suck it up, grow a spine, and fix the mess he's made of the Afghan mission.

Harper has never shown any convincing moral dedication to the mission in the first place, his supine posture to the White House and his now-mothballed "hawk" persona notwithstanding, and he has made a complete hash of it from the outset.

Manley properly excoriated the Harper government for its conduct:

The weird muzzling of Canadian aid officials and diplomats. Ottawa's bizarre inability to engage in anything resembling a straightforward accounting of the mission's risks. Its absurd hobbling of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) in Afghanistan. The cabinet's irresponsible inattention to the equipment and transportation requirements of Canadian soldiers on Kandahar's front lines.

And on and on.

My role in new group

Whatever one makes of their criticisms, Manley and his fellow panelists produced a document that doesn't come close to the "stay the course" mandate we were told Harper handpicked them to provide, and which the same pundits even now insist is all the panel produced.

I'm fairly happy with it. And here I make a necessary confession.

I was privileged to co-author a submission to the Manley panel on behalf of the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee, a newly formed group of Canadian feminists, academics, campus activists, writers, former politicians, and concerned citizens. Manley's basic findings and recommendations are more than sufficiently consistent with what we recommended.

The Solidarity Committee's several dozen founders are a polyglot bunch: conservatives, socialists, liberals, Muslims, Jews, the lot.

They will have a diversity of ideas about the Manley panel report, and about any number of things. In this column I speak for no one but myself, but one thing all the committee's founding members shared was a simple but important proposition about Afghanistan: Human rights are universal, the United Nations wants us there, and a military component is vital and necessary.

What most Afghans want

There was another thing that united the small group that got the committee going, and it was our discovery that we were all fairly disgusted that all these years since 2002, there was still an almost complete absence of Afghan people, Afghan-Canadians, and Afghan opinion, generally, in Canada's mass media.

Read Canada's dailies and you'd think that the entire country was populated solely by President Hamid Karzai, a bunch of pro-American warlords, hordes of Taliban throat-slitters, and a certain quixotic and romantic personality, Malalai Joya, MP.

So, we set out to find what the Afghan people themselves had to say about their hopes for their country, and about the engagement of soldiers from nearly 40 nations on their soil.

What we found, for starters, was a dozen major national public opinion polls carried out in Afghanistan, along with regional opinion surveys and focus-group analyses. And they all added up to one unmistakable conclusion.

The Afghan people want democracy, they want to control their own destiny, and they want peace, security, and jobs. They're fed up to the teeth with all the savage misogynists and gunmen and religious fanatics who persist in terrorizing them. They don't want the Taliban back. And they want us to stay until we've finished our work there.

'We want you to stay'

Inconveniently, this completely contradicts the fashionable caricature of the Afghan people as incorrigibly reactionary and irredeemably priest-ridden basket cases who want nothing of democracy or modernity and want Canadian soldiers the hell out, fast.

It's something that Manley's panelists also noticed. "Whenever we asked Afghans what they thought ISAF or Canada should do," the panel report states, "there was never any hesitation: `We want you to stay; we need you to stay.' "

This is terribly inconvenient for all the "troops-out" polemicists and their similarly isolationist paleo-conservative chums who have so effectively framed Canada's public discourse about Afghanistan to date.

But it is a fact, nonetheless. And no less inconvenient for the "anti-war" left is the fact that the Afghan people are waging a liberation struggle. They're fighting imperialism -- of an Islamist kind. They're fighting for democracy, for literacy, and for the rule of law, and against barbarism, obscurantism and oppression.

Just ask them.

This truth is especially inconvenient for the left, precisely because this struggle is what used to be called the historic mission of the left. Its fruit, bitter though it has often been, is what the left contributed to human history.

Time for new debate

Funny thing about history. You can't start over.

We didn't choose the cruel alignment of historical and political forces that put our soldiers in Afghanistan. We didn't create the conditions that rendered our penchant for "peacekeeping" moot there.

And we can't pretend that the demand for "negotiations"' with the Taliban is anything more than a mélange of public naiveté and political sleight-of-hand. The Karzai regime, with Canada's backing, had already negotiated the surrender and rehabilitation of nearly 60,000 mujahideen fighters, Taliban militiamen and gunmen of various types long before the notion of talking with the Taliban got all trendy. The door is still open. It never closed.

One important thing we can do, though, is to move to a wholly new kind of debate in Canada about our country's role in Afghanistan. The Manley panel has laid the groundwork for precisely that.

If a new kind of debate emerges, it's got to be firmly rooted in a commitment to the universality of human rights. It's going to have to include a lot more Afghan voices, particularly women's voices. Most importantly, it's got to put behind us the sordid and crippling debates we've been having, for far too long, about how quickly we might simply extricate ourselves from their messy affairs.

There's still hope.

Related Tyee stories:

• Afghanistan: Wrong Mission for Canada
  The coolly reasoned case made by a leading expert in international law.
• Who's Still for the War in Afghanistan?
  Support dwindles among NATO allies.
• 'Like Giving Germany Back to Nazis'
  A Canadian in Kandahar on why Canada can't leave Afghanistan.

Canada losing moral standing over treatment of Omar Khadr: Dallaire

Canada has sunk to the moral equivalent of al-Qaeda by failing to treat Canadian Omar Khadr the same way it treats other child soldiers, Liberal Senator Roméo Dallaire said Tuesday.

Dallaire, who appeared before a foreign affairs committee on international human rights, said Khadr is clearly a child soldier who shouldn't be prosecuted by an illegal court system at Guantanamo Bay but reintegrated into society.

Canada is heading down a slippery slope by failing to obey the United Nations conventions on child soldiers to which it is a signatory, he said.

"The minute you start playing with human rights, with conventions, with civil liberties in order to say you are doing it to protect yourself … you are no better than the guy who doesn't believe in them at all," he said.

"We are slipping down the slope of going down that same route."

Now 21, Khadr has been in U.S. custody since 2002, after he was captured on an Afghan battlefield. The Pentagon says he threw a grenade that killed U.S. Sgt. Christopher Speer and are attempting to try him before the controversial military tribunals.

Dallaire, Kenney spar

In a testy exchange with Conservative MP Jason Kenney, Dallaire suggested by failing to treat Khadr as a child soldier, Canada has sunk to the moral equivalent of terrorists.

Kenney pointed to a number of al-Qaeda actions, including an incident in which the group allegedly outfitted mentally challenged young girls with explosive belts and sent them to their deaths in a Baghdad animal market.

"Is it your testimony that al-Qaeda strapping up a 14-year-old girl with Down Syndrome and sending her into a pet market to be remotely detonated is the moral equivalent to Canada's not making extraordinary political efforts for a transfer of Omar Khadr to this country?" asked Kenney.

"If you want a black and white [response] … I am only too prepared to give it to you: absolutely," said Dallaire. "You are either with the law or you are against the law. You're either a child soldier or you're not. You're either guilty or you're not."

Canada must be ready to deal with similar situations in the future, Dallaire said.

"If you think this is the last one, then we're really smoking dope because in this era, we're going to face similar scenarios and we've got to be prepared in this multi-ethnic country to handle it," he said.

Canada must protect all of its citizens, "whether we like them and their beliefs or not. That is irrelevant," he said.

Dallaire said Canadian soldiers have helped rehabilitate more than 7,000 child soldiers in Afghanistan. None of them have been prosecuted, he said.

"What is the political reason? What makes [Khadr] different from the others?" said Dallaire.

Dallaire said Khadr is being tried under an illegal judicial system at Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. prison on the eastern tip of Cuba.

"The thing is flawed, it is illegal and we're letting it happen," he said.

U.S. President George W. Bush would be "one of the happiest people on earth" if Canada removed Khadr from Guantanamo, Dallaire said.

"The way to sort it out is you get the prime minister of this country to call the president and say 'I want my boy out and we’ll fill out the paperwork after.' And that's it," said Dallaire.

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion said he disagreed with Dallaire's choice of words and hinted the senator could be disciplined.

"This is a matter … [for] the [party] whip, and we'll deal with that," Dion told reporters.

"I would express that in my own way. I would say that Canada should do like the other countries and ask the government of the United States to bring this Canadian home to be prosecuted in Canada. The inaction of the government is unacceptable."

U.S. expert calls for action

The former U.S. prosecutor for the UN's war crimes court in Sierra Leone also called for Khadr to be returned to Canada, saying he believes Khadr is a child soldier.

"I think it's important to bring Khadr back and have his case fairly and openly considered in Canada," said David Crane, who appeared before the committee.

Crane, a law professor at Syracuse University College, said children who volunteer for military duty shouldn't be held to the same standard as adults.

"Children, any child, just doesn't have the requisite mental capability of this situation, regardless if they volunteer or not," he said.

"Children shouldn't be placed in these situations. If so, we shouldn't prosecute them for what they did,"

he said.

"Legally, at the international level, they're not responsible for what they did. We just don't do this anymore."

Dallaire declared his intention to agitate on Khadr's behalf earlier this month, saying he would "harass" Prime Minster Stephen Harper until the government intervened in the case.

Washington maintains that the U.S. Military Commissions Act, which governs the trial process at Guantanamo Bay, doesn't have a minimum age, and is legal under international law.

My article on Romeo Dellaire that ran in NZ, Australia, it was picked up by Australian Broadcasting.
The owner of the blog was a ditz, had me publically attacked, so I no longer write for her despite the number of links, etc. I got over there!! She was paying me nothing and ABC didn't pay me anything either.

http://www.emotionalwellbeingblog.com/2007/06/learning-to-set-reasonable-goals.html

Cut Israel Off

This is NOT how I would say it.

This is however, what I think about the US'- and CANADA's - strategic "plan."

It will bring CANADA to its knees (or has), too. Although short term, Canada will look "good" sticking with today's present agenda. The Canadian dollar is about to take an UPWARD turn, again - and will get people lost in a slew of PROPAGANDA once again, making it appear as if The Harper is right. He is right of course, RIGHT OF the RIGHT WING, but WRONG in terms of sustaining the planet.

The "thing" is that we must keep a focus on what is good for ALL, and the current geopolitical alliances are certainly not that. We will just get more and more and more war with no focus on NEEDS of everyone.

By continuing the current short-sighted (what the right wingers' term mid-range strategy), we just get more and more and more war and no focus on how to end peak population, peak oil, peak money (Peak GLOBAL US dollar, about to collapse), peak climate change and so on from being SOLVED and that is where the POWER PLAYERS continue to play us all for PATSIES and SITTING DUCKS. We must get up to speed OURSELVES and learn about "economic" and power realities while the Magician does his sleight of hand tricks.

We are, in FACT, about to see a HUGE GLOBAL FALLOUT for the messing up of policy for many, many decades, based on BANKRUPT morality.

It is fueling the drive to use NUKES and nuclear power (see my OTHER BLOG, www.lowlevelradiation.blogspot.com if you want some documentation on what "they" are up to. And I mean the Chinese and Russian ruling elites, OPEC and ALL of them - as the "alternative energy" markets are being rapidly MONOPOLIZED during this recent currency/subprime crisis continues.

As for the STRAUSSITE, global rebels? Well, consider .. the US is left with ONLY the Isreali's and PAKISTANI dictators as allies these days. and this is despite Cheney having backed ALL SIDES. Putin is certainly capitalizing on that situation and all things are truly in flux.

The US people who trust any US politician outside of mainly Kucinich or Ron Paul (or Barney Frank, MAY BE) are just falling for the AIPEC lobby itself and its highly organized PROPAGANDA machine. (Ditto the Council on Foreign Relations' interweb of agencies.) or they are apathetic or just don't CARE.

They seem to think laughing at Jon Stewart and Colbert with a cold beer is highly preferential to figuring things out. Or just escaping into endless hockey nights .. SLAM! BANG! watch those pukes get the anger out, sideways of COURSE.

But their hard-earned money is going to fuel constant rounds of jet testing and war scenario games run by the Isrealis and the US and to keep them military bases comfortable. This is why The Harper gave all that money to the war-promoting BANKERS and to build nuclear fortifications in the Arctic. All he asks IN RETURN is that BuZh NOT call him "Steve" but rather STEPHEN. Aren't WE all lucky??

But to hand a world like this over to our children is avoiding our moral responsibility and we JUST MIGHT be able to save Iran from being toast. The US did enough damage in IRAK and AFGHANISTAN to last for hundreds of years. Sigh. (and do not forget Chernobyl, which is what happens when idiots are running things and use POISONS to prop up a political system obsessed with POWER ...) I do not wish to see nuclear winter in my lifetime nor hand that over to my sons, my grandsons nor any of their friends or potential friends, who are worldwide. Canada bailing out the US' ass in Irak by keeping forces stationed to keep them poppies making heroin is a horrible legacy for Canada .. and that IS what is happening.

My comments proceed down below in red.
It is totally clear to me that the CORPORATE PLUTOCRACY (give that a blog search, and the revision of the Canadian Senate "issue") is too blind to see its own morally depraved governmental "structures" will not even get us to the end of the 21st century. Their "culture" totally mitigates against finding Real Solutions to sustainability. Sigh. It is based on LOYALTY, mentorship, networking and not the Tough Love it is going to take to bail out this mess. It cannot create the type of structures will need to survive as it has Blind Spots, a result of the corrupt educational (and medical) culture.

I just refuse to sit quietly as CANADA goes down the NATO tubes. I cannot hand an unsafe Canada over to my son and his friends, as the Canada/Isreali ties are further cemented by a MADMAN named HARPER- and the resultant Israeli computerization database gets established in CANADA is happening.

All this is - and MORE - IS documented on this blog. Maybe one more of you chancing to c0me by this blog, can see the underlying framework and understanding I have been building for nearly 2000 posts.

Kapish???

Veeger

By Charley Reese

11/16/07 "<http://www.antiwar. com/reese/ ?articleid= 11920>Antiwar" -- - It is long past time for American politicians to quit carrying water for the state of Israel and its powerful U.S. lobby. Congress' craven obedience to the lobby is a disgrace.

America's strategic interests in the Middle East lie with the Arab countries. Israel is a strategic and economic liability. The U.S. government's slavish support of Israel brands us as a hypocrite and is responsible for most of the hostility toward the U.S.

Americans have been brainwashed into believing that it's the Arabs, and the Palestinians in particular, who don't want peace. That is a big lie. The Palestinians made an enormous concession when they agreed to settle for a state on 18 percent of Palestine. Saudi Arabia proposed several years ago a peace plan in which all of the Arab countries would recognize Israel in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. The Israelis rejected it out of hand, just as they reject Arab efforts to have the Middle East a nuclear-free zone.

Israel's goal is and always has been to take all of Palestine and to get rid of the Palestinians. The Israelis employed ethnic cleansing in 1948 and again in 1967 to make hundreds of thousands of Palestinians refugees. For 40 years, the Israelis have refused to give back the Palestinian and Syrian lands they seized in war. They have blatantly violated international law by building settlements on occupied land, and by violating the airspace of other sovereign countries.

Palestinians are the victims, not the villains, in this case. The Israelis make their lives miserable in the hope they will give up and leave. At the same time, the Israelis, in cahoots with the American government, maintain a charade of proposed peace talks. They of course never come to fruition. The Israeli government is not about to allow the Palestinians to have a viable state. If they give the Palestinians anything, it will be a patchwork of enclaves completely surrounded and controlled by Israel. Having created 700,000 Palestinian refugees, the Israelis have from the beginning refused to allow them to return to their homes, farms and businesses, all of which Israel confiscated on the specious grounds that they were "abandoned property."

Without U.S. aid, which now is conservatively estimated to total $108 billion (think of the infrastructure and schools that amount could build in the U.S.), and without the U.S. wielding its veto every time the United Nations tries to act, none of this would be possible.

It is not just the Muslim world that hates our pro-Israel foreign policy, for sound reasons that it is unjust and cruel. Europeans and others around the world are contemptuous of America's slavelike obedience to a small foreign power. It has gotten to the point that to be seen as an ally of the United States is viewed negatively.

The Arab and Muslim people, with the exception of al-Qaeda, (remember it is CIA funded, btw - they need them DRUGS to prop up all the OTHER dishonest relationships with so-called allies; thanks to Richard Gehlen! and project paperclip .. ) don't hate America or Americans. It is the pro-Israel foreign policy and, of course, our invasions of two Muslim countries that they hate. Virtually all of the anti-Arab and anti-Muslim propaganda generated in this country has its source in the Israeli lobby and in Israel itself. (which again is not JEWS nor the bulk of the Isreali population, anymore than the US Congress represents "the will of The "People" ... )

Thanks to the unconstitutional largess of the cowardly Congress, Israel is a rich country and one of the world's leading military powers. It doesn't need American aid. (IT does however need URANIUM .. and that is another place CANADA comes in.) It is time to quit dancing to the tune of a lobby with dual loyalties and to pursue America's interests. (However, take INTO account the US feels dependent on maintianing THEIR military bases in Israel with their "bookends" policy - Isreal and Pakistan as their ONLY allies. So this is SYMBIOTIC. Better to SWITCH to some REAL DIPLOMATIC intiatives, eh? Oh, no! The US would rather IRAN bash, even insulting their President on US soil. Barf.)

Americans are being betrayed by their own politicians, and it's time to treat those scoundrels with the contempt they deserve.

(And ditto CANADA ... as The Harper, and does he HARP! takes CANADA further and further INTO The Mess. If the LIBERALS want to see some support and money, all they have to do is QUESTION these highly awful NATO alliances built by Rick Hellier to start AND then get down to building a VISION for Canada that is SUSTAINABLE, nothing short of that is going to WORK.)

Global Demonstration to Free Burma

Burma: the global protests begin: Canada

Comment on a blog:

Wonderful report. Thank you. I feel really proud of ottawa turning our in great numbers to raise their voices. And of course, as usual, i am ashamed of the resident of Rideau Hall who fails - yet again - to show Canadian leadership in protesting brutal suppression. Remember a time when Canada was known for a leader in PEACE . Oh how we've fallen.

Global Demonstration to Free Burma

Photo Report of rally and march in Canada's capital city, Ottawa, on October 6, 2007

It was cloudy and threatening rain, but the mood was cheerful and determined. As you will see from the photos, this crowd also had great stamina.

This may have been the longest demonstration march ever held in Ottawa, from Parliament Hill to the Burmese embassy to the Chinese embassy with a brief stop on the way at the Russian embassy for good measure. These embassies are not close together.

You can follow the route from the Hill on a Google Map. Go here, and type in Parliament Hill in front of the word "Ottawa".

The following photos were taken while waiting for the march to get underway. Click on photos to enlarge them.

Canadian Friends of Burma

Free Burma

Free all political prisons Burma

Justice in Burma - Free Aung San Suu Kyi

Save Burma

Down with military dictatorship at once! Release all political prisoners! Give Kawthooler independence at once!

China hands off Burma; Burma is not Tibet; Hands off Salween Dam Project

Release prisoners of conscience

This is the UBC student famous for his highly popular Facebook section in support of Burma

Burmese organizers teach the crowd some chants

When I say "Free, free" you say "Burma, Burma"
When I say, "Release, release", you say "Aung San Suu Kyi"
When I say "What do we want?" you say "Democracy, and when I say "When do we want it? ... well, you know the rest."

The Program Manager of Inter Pares expresses her embarrassment and disappointment over PM Harper's failure to acknowledge the crisis in Burma.

Wreath to commemorate deaths of Burmese at hands of military junta

A family hoping for UN intervention


Tiny resistance fighter

Now the march gets underway, crossing to the opposite sidewalk and going east on Wellington Street toward Elgin:

Here they are turning off Wellington to go south on Elgin:


Proceeding south on Elgin toward Laurier:

A woman takes her turn at leading the chants, and she is really good at it!

In spite of the dire circumstances, the Burmese faces were joyful, probably because they were enjoying the freedom to express themselves. Often, during the march, we were reminded of how people in Burma are not allowed to assemble like this and protest.

Turning east onto Laurier, they march past City Hall:


Another sturdy little freedom fighter stops for a moment to let me take her picture:

Over the Mackenzie Bridge ...

... that spans Ottawa's famous canal which in winter is populated by skaters:


Still on Laurier, approaching the campus of the University of Ottawa:


Continuing east on Laurier toward King Edward, another woman leads the rousing chants ...


The same woman, reflecting a perfect blend of east and west in her attire:
(Note, the offices of Inter Pares in the background)


Crossing King Edward, continuing east on Laurier, the man holding the mic tells bypassers the purpose of the demonstration. Many vehicle drivers honk their horns in solidarity ...


A banner is unfurled displaying photos of victims of the military junta:


Here is a closeup of a couple of the photos on the banner, showing injuries inflicted by the military:

After many more blocks, we turn finally onto Range Road, the street on which the Burmese embassy resides at #85:

As the crowd marches south on Range Rd., residents are constantly reminded over the loudspeaker that they should beware of their neighbour at #85, Suites 902 and 903. "Don't let your children go near there; they are dangerous people," shouted the speaker, only half in jest.


The police were waiting for us, of course. (below) They wanted to know who was the organizer. Matt asked them why they wanted to know that, and they said they have to know who is responsible for the march. So Matt, the route coordinator, gave them his personal information and took full responsibility. Somebody warned him he might be put on a "list" but others said he probably was already on one, and he smiled in agreement.


Facing the building that houses the embassy and its staff, a beautiful, haunting prayer was sung, and a moment of silence observed. Someone in the building shouted an insult, to which some members of the march replied, "Shame!", but beyond that there was no reaction from the embassy.


Suites 902 and 903 are on the second floor from the top of the building (below). No one appeared to be there ...

... but someone on the second floor from the bottom of the building can be seen in a window recording the event:


Leaving the Burmese embassy, the march U-turns and proceeds back up Range Road to Laurier, on its way to the Chinese embassy:

The embassies are located in a very ritzy neighbourhood ...


... in fact, so ritzy that in the children's playground the sandbox has its castles pre-built:

The vast majority of the world's children can't even imagine such a playground.

Back on Laurier, the march heads further east and turns north onto Charlotte Street ...


On Charlotte they paused for a moment at the Russian embassy, letting Russia know that it is seen as complicit in the oppression of the Burmese people:


From the photos on the bulletin board attached to the strong iron fence guarding the Russian embassy, it would appear that Putin is proud of having been seen to shake Prime Minister Harper's hand.


Now the parade turns off Charlotte and onto Rideau Street, heading west back to King Edward ...


Arriving at King Edward, this time the parade turns north toward St. Patrick St...


At Murray Street (which becomes St. Patrick further south) they turn and trudge south toward the Chinese Embassy:


As a huge investor in the Burmese economy, the profits of which land mainly in the coffers of the junta, China is looked to all over the world as the country that could be instrumental in bringing about change in Burma. Below a plea is made to China to take responsibility for its part in the sufferings of the Burmese people:

That was a long trip, wasn't it. And then they had to go all the way back to Parliament Hill!

FREE, FREE, BURMA, BURMA!

Related:
CTV: Canadians protest against Burma's dictatorship
Demonstrators weathered clouds and rain in Vancouver to show their support for dissidents in Burma ... Rallies were also held on Saturday for Montreal, Toronto, Halifax, and Ottawa.
AFP: Protests around world against Myanmar crackdown
... thousands gathering in London and smaller actions in Sydney, Stockholm, Bangkok, Paris and elsewhere.
Burma dragnet still spread
The military claims that only 10 people died in the crackdown, but Burmese activists claim the total death toll was closer to 200, citing witness accounts of mass cremations following the mayhem and a steady flow of corpses from Rangoon's notorious Insein prison.