The first reason is that the US military recognizes conscientious objectors. The problem here is that the US only considers a person to be a conscientious objector if he or she is an absolute pacifist. A soldier who objects to the war in Iraq but is not opposed to all wars is not eligible for conscientious objector status.

The second reason is that US troops are all volunteers and that they knew what they were getting into when they enlisted. It is true that they are volunteers, but not that they knew what they were getting into. The Bush Administration justified the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that Iraq was in league with Al Qaeda and had weapons of mass destruction. Both of these grounds were spurious. The result is that soldiers who enlisted thinking that they would be defending the United States and fighting terrorism were sent to war for entirely different purposes. Furthermore, the US’s incompetent conduct of the war has put soldiers at risk in ways that they could not have expected. Finally, the US has engaged in war crimes, in which some soldiers naturally do not wish to be complicit.

The deserters who seek asylum in Canada now do so for reasons much like those that motivated the war resisters of the Vietnam era, and like them, they do not have the option of conscientious objection. Just as Canada did the right thing during the Vietnam War and gave asylum to US war resisters, so we should do so again.

Geert Wilders’ film Fitna, which Islamic organizations have tried to suppress sight unseen, has been released and is available here. Having just watched it, I can see why these organizations do not like it: it is an accurate portrayal of a segment of Muslim opinion. The quotations from the Qur’an are authentic; the footage of Islamic terrorism and its results is real; the interviews with Muslims expressing hatred of Jews consistent with others that I have seen.

The presence of Israel on the list is indeed questionable. The Supreme Court of Israel has explicitly prohibited any form of torture, and the evidence is that with the occasional lapse this prohibition is observed. The United States, on the other hand, is quite properly included. We know that the United States deports foreigners, like Canadian Maher Arar, to countries where they will be tortured, and we know that, as a matter of Bush administration policy, the United States engages in torture, including, notoriously, waterboarding. US Ambassador Wilkins did not even have the gall to deny that the United States practices torture - he merely whined about the inappropriateness of including a great country like the US in a list with evil countries like Iran and China.

I find it appalling that the government has so readily agreed to the demands of the United States. If they had any backbone, they would tell the US that it will be removed from the roll of dishonour only when it repudiates torture. The criminals of the Bush administration do not deserve special treatment.

ordered Microsoft to obey a March 2004 commission order to share confidential computer code with competitors.

In point of fact, the EU ordered Microsoft to provide the specifications for its protocols, not “confidential compute code”. The judgment
is as explicit as could possibly be:

In the contested decision, the Commission emphasises that the refusal in question does not relate to Microsoft’s ‘source code’, but only to specifications of the protocols concerned, that is to say, to a detailed description of what the software in question must achieve, in contrast to the implementations, consisting in the implementation of the code on the computer (recitals 24 and 569 to the contested decision). It states, in particular, that it ‘does not contemplate ordering Microsoft to allow copying of Windows by third parties’ (recital 572 to the contested decision).

Have the Times’ reporters not read the judgment? Do they not understand the difference between source code and specifications? Or are they deliberately lying on behalf of Microsoft?

in an open format, the computer code is public, which allows developers to create new products that use it without paying royalties.

This is just flat wrong. An open format is a format, not a computer program. It does not consist of code. Rather, it specifies how information about a document’s format is represented, that is, how one indicates that the next word is in italics or that a new paragraph is to start. The Times article gives the misleading impression that companies are being asked to disclose the source code for their word processors. They aren’t. Rather, an open document standard, like the existing ISO standard Open Document Format, ensures that one word processor can read files saved by another word processor.

The Times article is also misleading in that it refers to OOXML as “open”. The openness of OOXML is one of the main points of dispute. Microsoft is putting OOXML forth as an open format, but critics have rightly observed that it contains quite a few undefined features, that is, secret features that can be implemented only by Microsoft. OOXML is not open, which by itself is reason to reject it.

Yet another error in the Times article is the attribution of the Open Document Format to “a consortium led by IBM”. Actually, ODF is based on a format developed by Sun and was created by OASIS. The OASIS committee included members not only from Sun and IBM but from Adobe, Ars Aperta, Beijing Sursen International Information Technology, Design Science, Novell, Intel, the Royal National Institute for the Blind, the Institute for Defense Analyses, and Duke University. Microsoft could have participated if they had wished to.

These issues have been extensively discussed in the technical community, and there are excellent summaries available. A major source of information is Rob Weir’s blog An Antic Disposition. Another is Andy Updegrove’s Standard’s Blog. There’s really no excuse for the Times to get this wrong.

Professor Sharma is a sociologist whose work has focussed on his native India, not a historian and not a specialist in Tibet or China. He’s rather an odd choice for an authority on the status of Tibet. In fact, there are many reasons to disagree with his claim that Tibet has long been a part of China.

If you’re not familiar with it, you can get a good idea of the Chinese government’s position here.

Some of the arguments might be valid if the underlying facts were true, but others are simply infantile. One argument is that prior to the Chinese invasion Tibet was an oppressive, feudal society. That was, in many ways true, but it hardly justifies colonization. Here’s an identical argument: in the nineteenth century, China was an oppressive, corrupt, feudal society. The European powers would therefore have been justified in invading China and incorporating it permanently into their countries.

The people who take the opposite view include the Nobel Prize Committee. Here are a couple of excerpts from the Dalai Lama’s Nobel Prize citation, with my emphasis added:

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize to the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, the religious and political leader of the Tibetan people.

The Committee wants to emphasize the fact that the Dalai Lama in his struggle for the liberation of Tibet consistently has opposed the use of violence. He has instead advocated peaceful solutions based upon tolerance and mutual respect in order to preserve the historical and cultural heritage of his people.

There are actually two issues here. First, has Tibet historically been a part of China, and second, even if Tibet has been part of China, are Tibetans entitled to national self-determination? As for the first issue, the claim that Tibet has been part of China since time immemorial, or even for the past seven hundred years, is utter nonsense. Tibet has been independent of China for most of its history. Imperial China claimed nominal sovereignty over every state with which it had diplomatic relations, on the theory that the Emperor could only enter into the relationship of master to vassal, including Japan, Okinawa (an independent country until 1609), Korea, and Vietnam. If you aren’t familiar with Chinese history, you can get an idea of the Imperial style from this letter sent in 1839 by Imperial Commissioner 林則徐 Lín Zé Xú to Queen Victoria demanding that she put an end to the opium trade.

In spite of China’s nominal claims of sovereignty over Tibet, Tibet was de facto an independent state and did not acknowledge Chinese sovereignty. That is why, for example, China under the Manchus attacked Lhasa in 1720 and again in 1910. Tibet also fought wars with Jammu in 1841-1842 and with Nepal in 1854-55. Making war is of course one of the defining capacities of a sovereign nation.

The first point at which Tibet was actually ruled by the same government as China was during the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368), when both Tibet and China were under Mongol rule. It was, however, the Mongols who conquered Tibet, not the Chinese. The Mongols took over Tibet before they took over China, and once they were in power administered the two separately. In China they exerted direct control, while in Tibet they ruled via the local rulers. When the Mongol Empire disintegrated, Tibet regained its independence.

In the period leading up to the Chinese invasion, it is clear that as a matter of international law Tibet was an independant state. It had a distinctive population occupying a well-defined territory under the effective control of its own government. The government of Tibet issued coins, currency and passports that were internationally recognized. It entered into diplomatic relations as a sovereign nation with other countries, including Nepal, Mongolia, Great Britain, and Ladakh. Even the Republic of China negotiated with Tibet as a sovereign nation at the Simla Conference in 1913-1914.

The second issue is whether Tibet is entitled to independence, whatever its prior status may have been. Surely the answer is yes. Tibetans have a distinctive language, culture, and sense of identity. As defined in international law, they are a people with a right to self-determination. To this China opposes two claims. First, it claims that the independence of Tibet would violate China’s territorial integrity. International law does not recognize claims of territorial integrity by illegitimate governments. Since China does not govern Tibet with the consent of Tibetans and has engaged in massive violations of human rights in Tibet, China cannot legitimately make any claim of territorial integrity. The second is the argument already addressed, that Tibet was a backward country in need of enlightenment.

For a detailed examination of the question of Tibetan self-determination I recommend Tibet’s Sovereignty and the Tibetan People’s Right to Self-Determination by Andrew G. Dulaney and Dennis M. Cusack of the Tibet Justice Center and Dr. Michael van Walt van Praag of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization. You can download the entire document as a PDF file or read it online here.

In his column “Special Status Solves Nothing” in today’s Prince George Citizen, in which he claims, without the slightest evidence, that Lheidli T’enneh would have ratified the proposed treaty with Canada and British Columbia were it not for off-reserve votes, Bruce Strachan asks:

…name one other Canadian electorial jurisdiction where a resident of
another community has the special right to return home only at election time and cast a ballot

Okay, here’s a civics lesson for Mr. Strachan. In federal elections, Canadians resident abroad may vote by special ballot. In provincial elections, a resident of British Columbia who is temporarily outside the province may also vote by special ballot. See the Compendium of Election Administration in Canada. It is true that BC restricts the vote to those normally resident in the province. However, at the local level, BC also provides for non-resident property electors. If you live in one jurisdiction but own property in another, you may vote in both. This is a very explicit recognition that someone may live in one place but have ties to another that give him or her a sufficient stake in government to make it appropriate to vote there.

It turns out that, even without taking into account the special status of band membership, our electoral system provides close parallels to the practice of allowing off-reserve band members to vote.

Here’s another fact to consider. Most band members who live off-reserve live nearby. In the case of Lheidli T’enneh, most off-reserve members live in Prince George. These are not people who have voluntarily moved away from their home. They are people who are still living in their home community, but whose home has been chopped up and colonized by other people. The reserve represents a tiny fraction of Lheidli T’enneh territory. The reserve lands were deliberately located away from the resources of Prince George. The Lheidli T’enneh were deliberately pushed out of central Prince George to Shelley when the railroad came in in 1911. Many Lheidli T’enneh people simply cannot live on reserve because there isn’t enough housing for them.