March 2005 Archives

How to sabotage the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol

1. Keep insisting that you're developing a really thorough and comprehensive plan that will solve all the problems and make everyone happy. When a deadline for presenting the plan approaches put it off but insist that the plan, when it's finally unveiled, will be even better than everyone is expecting.
2. Take advantage of the period between the presentation and approval of a budget and the presentation of the legislation that actually implements that budget to insert a clause that makes a drastic change to environmental laws with no warning or public debate. This is guaranteed to enrage the political opposition and cause environmental groups to protest that you're going about this the wrong way and possibly doing more harm than good.
3. When people insist on calling your half-assed plan, well, half-assed, throw up your hands and tell everyone that they've ruined the best chance they'll ever have to see the Kyoto Protocol implemented in Canada.

The federal government has slashed its emissions-cutting targets for large industrial polluters by more than a third from the goal set out in Canada's original climate change plan, The Canadian Press has learned.

Could Dithers have done it any better if he was trying?

Probe finds no systematic abuse - The Washington Times

An Army investigation has found no systematic abuse of prisoners in Iraq or Afghanistan and says nearly half of the accusations of mistreatment involved detainees "at the point of capture" on the battlefield.

"[Soldiers] face the daily risks of being attacked by detainees, contracting communicable diseases from sick detainees, being taunted or spat upon, having urine or feces thrown upon them and having to treat a detainee humanely who just attacked their unit or killed a fellow soldier," said the report released yesterday by the Army's inspector general, Lt. Gen. Paul Mikolashek.
...
The Army inspector general portrayed the abuses as sporadic, not systematic.
...
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said his review of investigative material shows no evidence that senior civilian or military leaders condoned or ordered the abuse.

General approved extreme interrogation methods - Guardian Unlimited

The highest-ranking US general in Iraq authorised the use of interrogation techniques that included sleep manipulation, stress positions and the use of dogs to "exploit Arab fears" of them, it emerged today.

A memo signed by Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez authorised 29 interrogation techniques, including 12 that exceeded limits in the army's own field manual and four that it admitted risked falling foul of international law, the Geneva conventions or accepted standards on the humane treatment of prisoners.

The memo, dated September 14 2003, also stated that the Iraq interrogation policy was modelled on the one used at Guant?namo Bay "but modified for applicability to a theater [sic] of war in which the Geneva conventions apply".
...
"The memo clearly establishes that Gen Sanchez authorised unlawful interrogation techniques for use in Iraq, and, in particular, these techniques violate the Geneva conventions and the army's own field manual governing interrogations," ACLU lawyer Amrit Singh said in a statement. "He and other high-ranking officials who bear responsibility for the widespread abuse of detainees must be held accountable."

When it says that interrogation techniques were "modified for applicability" to a jurisdiction in which the Geneva Conventions would apply, the implication is that techniques used at Guantánamo Bay were even harsher.

The "few bad apples" defence simply doesn't work anymore. When you let the troops know with a nudge and a wink that the law and the field manual don't apply anymore, you can't claim to be surprised when they go beyond what was in the memo.

Update:
And it appears that Gen. Sanchez may have lied to Congress.

Given the state of the American economy I've been expecting talk of protectionism in the U.S. but I didn't expect to hear it from the original boosters of free trade.

A man-bites-dog story of momentous implications is unfolding in Washington: The US multinational establishment, having successfully championed free-trade orthodoxy for decades, may now be flirting with protectionist heresy -- a stiff tariff against China to stanch America's hemorrhaging trade deficits. Fred Bergsten, the multinationals' leading economic authority, warns that the United States is in "big trouble," taking on foreign debt beyond anything any industrial nation has experienced and comparable to Mexico and Thailand just before they crashed in the 1990s. Bergsten, director of the Institute for International Economics, is lobbying elite circles to demand decisive action by the Bush Administration -- an "import surcharge" as high as 50 percent on all Chinese imports -- to avert financial meltdown.

Of course legislators probably wouldn't consider a surcharge that high. How about something just a bit less onerous?

Meantime, a bipartisan group of senators -- nine Democrats, five Republicans -- has introduced Senate Bill 295, which targets China with a 27.5 percent tariff. Charles Schumer, the lead sponsor, calls it "a tough-love effort." The co-sponsors include Democratic minority leader Harry Reid and, more surprising, Hillary Clinton, a longtime free trader close to financial leaders like former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, now an executive at Citigroup. The bill lets politicians express solidarity with constituents who lost their jobs, without offending big hitters.

Bergsten's strategy -- threatening tariffs -- is meant to bluff China and other Asian nations into letting their currencies appreciate and allowing the dollar to fall much further so the US trade deficits will shrink, at least enough to avert a financial crisis. The strategy is also designed to light a fire under George W. Bush. "It is virtually inconceivable," Bergsten wrote in the Financial Times, "that the Bush Administration could skate through four more years without addressing these issues decisively."

Schumer's bill provides for a six-month negotiating period -- time enough for Beijing to relent -- before the ax would fall (other Asian nations can't move on currencies unless China does because they'd lose their own export sales to Chinese goods).

There's no certainty that even the lower tarrif will be applied but take this as another sign that there's serious and growing concern about the American current account deficit. When Paul Krugman compared the U.S. to Argentina a while back, people called him shrill. He doesn't seem so shrill anymore. Or at least he's not alone since even heavyweights in corporate circles are considering playing a dangerous game with China in an effort to find some way out of the mess the American economy seems to be headed for.

And as Greider points out, there's political risk here too.

When "responsible" players break the taboo and talk up tariffs, it could ignite a more honest public debate on globalization. The major news media seem not to have noticed that Democratic leaders and some conservative Republicans are waving the big stick. The establishment probably prefers that this remain an inside-the-Beltway story. Why confuse the public with front-page stories explaining that tariffs are actually useful and legal? Organized labor and others should make sure this story becomes big news. People might begin to ask deeper questions. If free-trade agreements are the road to greater US prosperity, how did the United States wind up in this deep hole? If the government is willing to invoke the tariff weapon to protect US financial interests, why can't it use it to protect US workers and jobs? Why does US trade policy serve the multinational interests but not the nation as a whole?

This is the economy which John Manley and Tom d'Aquino -- not to mention Paul Martin -- want us to depend on even more than we already do. Is there a Plan B?

Hat-tip to Susan at Suburban Guerrilla.

Cross-posted at the E-Group.

Cellucci to write book about stint in Canada

Paul Cellucci was never one to bite his tongue, and now the former U.S. ambassador to Canada is getting ready to tell his story in a new book.

Cellucci has signed a deal with Toronto publisher Key Porter Books to publish Unquiet Diplomacy, due out in September.

A first draft is already in, the publisher said Monday.

Don't even think about it.

Atrios has already pointed to this so I imagine most of the planet has seen it by now, but I can't resist. This Yahoo! News story quotes a Pennsylvania pastor who's defending the teaching of Intelligent Design in science classes.

We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture

This is to announce that Andrew, with the able assistance of some of his fellow bloggers, has been busy performing a public service.

The story as I understand it is that Elections Canada at one point had a pretty spiffy searchable database online that could be used to find out who's been making contributions to political parties in Canada. And then people started using it and, you know, actually finding out stuff whereupon Elections Canada, in its infinite wisdom, decided to replace something that worked pretty well with something that was slower, clunkier and more difficult to deal with.

So Andrew and company have been gathering the data using methods that the less geeky amongst you probably don't even want to talk about and building the tool that EC should be providing. The post I linked to above is Andrew's latest progress report. The Unofficial Canadian Political Contributions Search Tool is here.

Shame on Elections Canada. That information belongs to all of us. And good for Andrew and the others (whom I don't want to name 'cos I know I'll leave some out) for taking the time and trouble to put this together. We can hope that they'll embarrass the government into doing the right thing.

But I'm not holding my breath.

On occasion I've seen blogging and what it's evolving into described as citizen journalism. In fact it seems to me that Jim Elve, our proprietor at the E-Group, has used that phrase himself more than once. Discussions on this subject often centre on the journalism part but I think we'd do well to remember that the word "citizen" is also part of that phrase.

Secret ballots are an accepted part of our electoral process. While anyone is free to advertise his or her preference for an elected office, it's accepted that some choose not to and that in no way invalidates their choices. When my ballot is counted, my name isn't attached to it. So when some suggest that a different standard should apply to a blog post than to a ballot, I have to wonder what they think the blogosphere is or what they're trying to turn it into. And I'm afraid that imposing that higher standard might take the citizen out of citizen journalism.

Close readers of the E-Group may have already figured out that I'm writing this in response to a conversation that played out in this thread where there was discussion on the pros and cons of pseudonymous blogging and anonymous commenting. A quick glance at the byline on this post should be enough to indicate which side of the issue I come down on.

At one point in the discussion Jim announced a new policy for this group blog: all new writers would be required to post under their real names. Even though it was clear to me that I would be grandfathered in as an established member of the group, I was uncomfortable enough with the idea that I immediately announced my intention to withdraw from the group if that policy was going to stand.

If I'm interpreting Jim's subsequent comments correctly, that policy has now been retracted or at least amended. Jim has indicated that as a consumer of blogs, he tends to be more sceptical of content when it's not published under a real name. He's inclined to examine the content more carefully and to look for more of a track record before he lends credibility to a blogger whose identity remains concealed and he intends to do the same when considering new applications for membership here. Fair enough. I don't approach blogs as a consumer in quite the same way — at least not consciously — but it's a perfectly valid approach. And if I was considering giving someone posting privileges at my own site I'd probably be fussier than Jim is. I just question whether an across-the-board policy rather than a case-by-case approach is the right way to proceed. And I'm concerned about the implications of too much policy imposed on blogging from the top down.

One of the wonderful things about this medium, and one of the main reasons it's growing and evolving so quickly, is the astonishingly low barrier to entry. Anyone with a minimally powerful computer and an internet connection can start a blog and join the conversation. That's why we call it citizen journalism. It provides a way for anyone to participate in the public debate in a way that didn't exist just a few years ago. So I think any policy that creates a new barrier to entry should be viewed with scepticism and approached with caution.

Some have argued that's it cowardly to present an opinion without attaching your real name to it and staking your personal reputation on it. That argument in itself acknowledges that there can be a risk attached to expressing some opinions. While full credit should go to those who knowingly face risk when they express themselves, why should risk be required? Isn't the blogosphere big enough to allow for those who are concerned about losing a job, being shunned by the family or even being stalked and harassed by some looney tune with a poor grip on reality and no impulse control? What would it say about a medium that many of us regard as a positive development for democracy if we started to deny participants in the debate the ability to decide for themselves how much or how little they care to reveal about their personal lives?

It's also been argued that criticism of the established media is invalid unless those who put the criticism forward meet the same standards that apply to the media practitioners themselves. At best that argument indicates a misunderstanding of what the blogosphere is and what it can be. At worst it's both self-serving and a pretty scary indication of where things stand these days. When we talk about what we traditionally think of as "the media", like most bloggers I'm not a member, I'm a consumer. Corporate consolidation in the press and the broadcast industry is moving us increasingly to a place where the media as institutions are accountable to their shareholders first with the public coming a distant second. If we as consumers are required to submit our resumés and pass muster before our complaints about shoddy service are even considered, then we're in even more trouble than I thought.

My own grip on anonymity is actually pretty weak and I suspect that the repercussions of dropping the mask wouldn't be all that significant for me personally. And I can certainly imagine circumstances where I would decide to do just that. If I was being paid to pontificate, if I was blogging on behalf of a candidate for elected office or working on behalf of an established lobbying group then I'd have to seriously consider whether different standards should apply. But right now I'm not doing any of those things. I'm an individual expressing individual opinions who happens to have chosen blogging as one way to do that.

In our society freedom of speech is a right, not a privilege. We don't require that an individual citizen meet some pre-ordained set of criteria before being allowed to express an opinion. Instead we err on the side of allowing free expression unless and until that freedom is abused. I'd like to think that blogging can continue to work in the same way. Certainly allowing for anonymity will mean that at times the blogosphere is messy and difficult.

The same can be said for democracy.

Cross-posted at the E-Group.

From the reading I did when Irwin Cotler became Justice Minister I gained the impression that he was something of a champion of human rights and civil liberties. That included being a vocal critic of Bill C-36, Canada's anti-terrorism legislation. So I can only assume that he's been possessed by an alien life form.

Cotler seeks expanded anti-terror arsenal

Canadian citizens with suspected terrorist ties could also be subjected to so-called "control measures" such as house arrest that are currently being developed for immigrant terror suspects, Justice Minister Irwin Cotler said yesterday.

The new measures, inspired by Britain's recent move to tone down its anti-terrorism laws, would expand the range of options authorities have to deal with non-citizen immigrants who are arrested as security threats to include measures such as electronic ankle bracelets and house arrest.

The changes are aimed at providing a less Draconian option than jailing such suspects indefinitely.

But Mr. Cotler revealed yesterday that he is considering expanding their use to Canadian citizens, not just non-citizen immigrants.

Authorities currently have a never-used power under Canada's 2001 terrorism law to arrest and jail citizens, with a judge's approval, if they have grounds to believe the detention would prevent an imminent terrorist act.

But adding so-called control measures such as house arrest and electronic ankle bracelets would expand the arsenal available to deal with terror suspects who are Canadian citizens when there is not enough evidence to convict them of a crime.

If you've been shaking your head at the way the American Bill of Rights has been shredded bit by bit, and thinking that at least you're relatively safe in Canada, you'd better think again. It can happen here and we'd better wake up to that fact.

Or perhaps that should be negotiation by dummies. Canada's Trade Minister Jim Peterson seems intent on providing a great demonstration of how not to bring the negotiation over a trade dispute to a successful conclusion. That's unless, of course, you measure success by how happy the other side in the negotiation will be.

The subject is softwood lumber. Negotiations to end the ongoing dispute surrounding punitive American duties on Canadian lumber are set to resume today and from the National Post here's a summary of the current Canadian position that Peterson thinks will resolve the issue.

The proposal suggests a deal where Canada would impose its own export tax on most lumber shipped to the U.S. in exchange for an end to the crippling duties that cost the industry about $150 million a month.

The tax would presumably be lifted once the U.S. Department of Commerce is satisfied that the provinces have implemented the changes American competitors say amount to unfair subsidies.

Where did they find this guy?

Scott Tribe, one of the newest members of the BlogsCanada E-Group, wrote a good rant a while back on this and the broader subject of trade disputes with our biggest trading partner. He suggested that we should let our elected representatives know how dumb Peterson's approach to this issue is. Yesterday Jim Elve picked up on that and his post provides some examples of a civilized way to say to Peterson et. al. what I've expressed with perhaps more snark than might go over well in a letter to a cabinet minister. If you're inclined to get in on this party, go read.

By the way, do you think Jim Peterson plays poker? I bet that would be fun.

We've all watched with varying amounts of shock and disbelief as the second-term Bush administration has assembled its new cast of characters: Condi Rice as Secretary of State, John Negroponte as National Intelligence Director, John Bolton as ambassador to the UN and most recently, Paul Wolfowitz as President of the World Bank.

Via Bump, get a load of this one. Bush's Interior Secretary, Gale Norton, has named as Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the former chief lobbyist for Safari Club International,

an extreme trophy hunting organization that advocates the killing of rare species around the world.

Union applies to certify another Quebec Wal-Mart

A union has filed applications to certify workers at a Wal-mart store in Gatineau, Quebec, near Hull.

The United Food and Commercial Workers Canada union tabled two certification applications with the Quebec Labour Relations Commission to represent workers in the main section of the Wal-Mart store in Gatineau, as well as for store's Tire and Lube Express shop.

Earlier today I blogged a news story about the federal government's new Smart Regulation initiative, which was presented as being based on the recommendations of a task force report. Thanks to Google, here's the English language website for the External Advisory Committee on Smart Regulation. It turns out that the committee's final report was delivered to Dithers on Sept. 23, 2004.

There are links there for both HTML and PDF versions of a full report and an executive summary. The full report in PDF format comes in at 148 pages. I'll be printing that out at some point since I can't handle reading documents that long on screen. (It'll join the several hundred pages of documents I've printed out from the O'Connor Commission. Do I earn some kind of blogger karma points for this?)

But there are a couple of bits from the Executive Summary I'll leave with you for now. The first is this:

The Committee has highlighted the myriad small differences between Canadian and American regulations as an important issue. The federal government should take immediate steps in this regard. A designated minister should invite interested stakeholders to identify, by the end of December 2004, those regulatory differences for which elimination would not impede Canadian social and environmental objectives. Each should be examined against the set of criteria for specific Canadian requirements proposed by the Committee. By June 2005, recommendations should be made to the relevant ministers, who should take steps to immediately implement the recommendations.

There's one other quote I'll share for the moment:

The Minister of the Environment should initiate discussions immediately with the provinces and territories to explore the possibility of creating a national approach for environmental assessments. The situation should be assessed by June 2005. Should there be no interest from provincial and territorial governments or if progress is too slow, the federal government should create a single federal environmental assessment agency and implement other measures to improve the environmental assessment process.

A while back when I house cleaned my blogroll I mentioned one link, in particular, that I was sad to remove. Its not that I wanted to see any of those bloggers stop but Tristero was one I particularly missed. I don't know if he was ever considered to be an A-List blogger but I read him faithfully until he announced he was hanging it up last November to go back to his career in music. His posts were always informed by a passion for peace and justice and a yearning for an America that would faithfully reflect the principles on which it was founded.

The events of the last few days surrounding the case of Terri Schiavo have brought him out of retirement and he's not pulling any punches.

Well, it happened.

On March 21, 2005 12:44 am, the extremists in charge of the US Government showed the world that when they don't like a law or a legally valid court decision - ANY law, ANY court decision, for ANY reason, no matter how carefully adjudicated - they are prepared to rip it up. There is a word for this.

The word is fascism.

And whether you agree or not with his invocation of the f word, the stakes are that high in this case. What the Republicans have done here is unprecedented and the precedent it sets can only do harm.

Maybe it's just my natural streak of cynicism acting up, but when a "senior official" of government tells me that something isn't a sovereignty issue it makes me think that it actually is.

Ottawa to cut red tape, boost productivity: Globe

In efforts to slash the regulatory red tape that's slowing Canadian productivity down, Ottawa plans to make sweeping changes to the way it regulates business, reports The Globe and Mail.

The newspaper obtained a draft copy of a report called Smart Regulation -- a 40-point action plan that will streamline Canada's regulatory approval processes with the U.S. in areas such as drugs and biotechnology.

The plan also aims to speed up environmental assessments of business projects.

Part of the report will be harmonizing "consensus standards" with the U.S., and eliminating small differences in the way Canada regulates products and services with its biggest trading partner.

Ottawa insists the report is not a deregulation exercise, and that it won't cut corners and compromise the health and safety of Canadians, reports The Globe.

A senior official also told The Globe that changes in regulations will have to be handled carefully because of political sensitivities, and points out that this is not a sovereignty issue.

Given Dithers' history of strategic leaks, I suppose it's always possible that this is just PR to impress Bush and the whole thing will fade away after this week. But this bears watching. Very closely.

U.S. Misled Allies About Nuclear Export

In an effort to increase pressure on North Korea, the Bush administration told its Asian allies in briefings earlier this year that Pyongyang had exported nuclear material to Libya. That was a significant new charge, the first allegation that North Korea was helping to create a new nuclear weapons state.

But that is not what U.S. intelligence reported, according to two officials with detailed knowledge of the transaction. North Korea, according to the intelligence, had supplied uranium hexafluoride -- which can be enriched to weapons-grade uranium -- to Pakistan. It was Pakistan, a key U.S. ally with its own nuclear arsenal, that sold the material to Libya. The U.S. government had no evidence, the officials said, that North Korea knew of the second transaction.

Pakistan's role as both the buyer and the seller was concealed to cover up the part played by Washington's partner in the hunt for al Qaeda leaders, according to the officials, who discussed the issue on the condition of anonymity. In addition, a North Korea-Pakistan transfer would not have been news to the U.S. allies, which have known of such transfers for years and viewed them as a business matter between sovereign states.

The Bush administration's approach, intended to isolate North Korea, instead left allies increasingly doubtful as they began to learn that the briefings omitted essential details about the transaction, U.S. officials and foreign diplomats said in interviews. North Korea responded to public reports last month about the briefings by withdrawing from talks with its neighbors and the United States.

The reaction to Bush's nomination of Paul Wolfowitz as president of the World Bank was predictable. All but the most diehard of Bush cheerleaders have responded with a mixture of shock, scorn and disbelief. Except for those among us who have shrugged our shoulders and asked "Well what else did you expect?".

But here's a reaction I bet a lot of people didn't expect.

Don't deposit Wolfowitz with us, plead World Bank workers

Washington's nomination of Paul Wolfowitz as the World Bank's next president has triggered an outcry among the bank's staff, who have demanded the right to have a say in his confirmation, it emerged yesterday.

The staff association has met the bank's executives to voice its concerns after it was swamped with complaints from employees over the selection of Mr Wolfowitz, the US deputy defence secretary and one of the architects of the Iraq war.

One bank employee said yesterday: "When you work for the bank you have to be a compromise-seeker. Everyone sees him as a divisive figure."

In an email to members, the staff association's chairwoman, Alison Cave, said: "While recognising that the selection and confirmation of the next World Bank president is the prerogative of the shareholders, staff are asking that their views be taken into consideration and taken seriously by the decision-makers."

"The staff association is preparing to act as a conduit for these views, and the executive committee is urgently considering the most effective way to help staff be heard."

Will this cause Bush to rethink his nomination? Of course not. Don't be silly.

Via Just a Bump in the Beltway.

In the wake of the verdict in the Air India bombing, there are calls for a public inquiry into the involvement of CSIS and the RCMP in the case. University of Toronto historian Wesley Wark has gone as far as suggesting that an in-depth look at Canada's "security and intelligence apparatus" is called for.

But there is already a public inquiry under way. The fact-finding portion of Justice O'Connor's mandate may involve the specifics of Maher Arar's detention but the policy review portion includes a broader look at the RCMP's role in national security. O'Connor has been asked to make recommendations on that role and on a better accountability mechanism for the force.

Even a brief review of the consultation paper O'Connor has released along with the eight background papers in support of it (available in pdf format here) will show two things:

1. The relationship between CSIS and the RCMP has changed significantly in the twenty years since the Air India bombing. For that matter it's changed significantly since 9/11.


2. The O'Connor Commission is already examing that relationship along with those between the RCMP and Canada's other security agencies such as the Communications Security Establishment (CSE). (I should note here that Wark believes we should examine the possibility of creating a foreign intelligence service. That's the main function of the CSE.) The commission is already looking at the whole issue of intelligence gathering and national security along with examing the way security issues are balanced against the need for accountability and transparency in eight other countries. In short, the O'Connor Commission is already laying the ground work for just the kind of review people are demanding.

But if the point is to examine the way agencies like CSIS and the RCMP function today, why not just broaden Justice O'Connor's mandate and let him get on with the job he's already doing?

And while we're at it, why not demand that the federal government take the brakes off and let that commission do the job it was asked to do instead of forcing it to go to court to release the information it has so far to the public? Yet another public inquiry that will be hobbled by the feds' insistence that everything about the way these agencies operate is secret won't accomplish anything.

Cross-posted at the E-Group.

Cellucci joins Stronach empire

Frank Stronach has recruited another high-profile politician to add lustre to his embattled Magna Entertainment Corp., hiring former U.S. ambassador Paul Cellucci as a senior executive at the gambling and race track company.

Sources said that Mr. Cellucci, who officially left the ambassadorial post in Ottawa yesterday, is to be named vice-president of development. It is understood that Mr. Cellucci will be based near his home in Boston, but he will travel frequently to Magna Entertainment's head office in Aurora, Ont.

Mr. Cellucci and a spokesman for Magna Entertainment did not return phone calls yesterday to confirm the appointment. During an interview with The Globe and Mail this week Mr. Cellucci indicated he had a new job, but declined to discuss details.

"My new duties will bring me to Canada on a regular basis," he said.

But his tenure as ambassador is over, so I'm removing the tribute to him from the sidebar. We'll see who takes his place.

Craig Chandler: The right way for Stephen Harper
Craig Chandler is chief executive officer of Concerned Christians Canada Inc., and a former pro-merger leadership candidate for the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.

We social conservatives have been Mr. Harper's loyal soldiers in the former Canadian Alliance party and in the new Conservative Party and we are the reason why Mr. Harper is leader. When we united the two parties in 2003, we burned the boats as Mr. Harper commanded and became one entity. Now, the cultural war begins. We will become an alternative to the Liberals or the party will die.

In 2002, Mr. Harper became leader of the Canadian Alliance with the support of many social conservatives. In fact, our organization brought several supporters to Mr. Harper's side from the camp of his opponent Stockwell Day. The next step was the merger of the Progressive Conservative and Canadian Alliance parties, of which our organization played a pivotal role. After the merger, social conservatives continued to support Mr. Harper in his bid for the party's leadership. We organized to insure he defeated Belinda Stronach, a well-known liberal who has successfully infiltrated the new Conservative Party of Canada.

In my conversations with Mr. Harper, we would always agree that doing what is right is more important then doing what is popular. We agreed that the objective is getting our conservative principles into power. We agreed that the majority of Canadians are both fiscally and socially conservative and would vote for a leader who would stick to these principles.

Now we fear that Mr. Harper is abandoning these conservative principles - the exact thing he once accused former Reform Party leader Preston Manning of doing. What irony.

It's going to be an interesting convention.

Canadian business groups plan push to fight missile defence decision

Canadian businesses losing contracts, jobs, research opportunities and investments because of Ottawa's decision not to join the U.S. missile defence plan say they'll press the federal government to reverse course.

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce plans a big push with all political parties because of the economic fallout, president Nancy Hughes Anthony said Friday.

"Some of our members equated it to the Avro Arrow decision, where they could see a brain drain that went south of the border with respect to engineers and people in the aerospace industry," she said.

"Certainly many of our members who are in the defence and aerospace industry and high tech . . . are very concerned that even Canadian subsidiaries in American companies will not be eligible to participate."

"It's another irritant that's very hard for the American side to understand," said Hughes Anthony, who met with State Department officials and U.S. business leaders.

"Not supporting the Bush administration is a strategic choice that in my mind just sours the atmosphere."

"We need the assistance of the Bush administration to get a number of things resolved in the next number of years," she said, including major trade problems over softwood lumber, beef and wheat.

"It may not be the end of the world but it certainly gives the impression that we're not part of the North American security team."

She also assured them that Canadian business leaders reject any notion of limiting energy supplies to the United States out of frustration over trade issues.

But she acknowledged that many in Canada are particularly upset their victories in softwood legal battles at a NAFTA panel and the World Trade Organization haven't made a dent in U.S. policy on punishing penalties on Canadian products.

"There are some in our country who suggest that U.S. interest in our energy resources must be accompanied by a greater U.S. willingness to live up to its trade obligations under NAFTA and the WTO."

"We reject this linkage," she said. "Nevertheless, we do feel strongly that we only hurt our collective good if both countries do not play by the rules and treat each other in a fair, respectful and equitable manner."

Many of us who are critical of the missile defence program have characterized it as a big corporate boondoggle designed mainly to shovel American tax dollars into the hands of corporations. Apparently the only criticism the Canadian Chamber of Commerce can come up with regarding Martin's recent decision is that its members won't get to line up at the trough alongside their American counterparts.

Isn't it nice to know that the Canadian Chamber of Commerce thinks its members' bottom lines should trump even the will of the Canadian people?

There are some decisions where the balance of trade shouldn't be the only or even the most important concern.

A couple of days ago Polunatic drew our attention to an American congressman who was attempting to strike a blow for the freedom of truck-drivers. He wanted them to be free to work an extra two hours a day without pay by extending their workday from 14 to 16 hours with a two hour unpaid break. Wal-Mart, along with some other retailers, thought it was a great idea. And I suspect it's no accident that John Boozman, the congressman in question, represents the district which is home to Wal-Mart HQ and has received generous campaign contributions from the retailer. Critics of the legislation dubbed it the "Sweatshop-on-wheels amendment."

Wal-Mart lost one:

Rep. John Boozman, an Arkansas Republican whose district includes Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s headquarters, withdrew a proposed amendment that would have extended the workday for truckers to 16 hours as long as that included an unpaid two-hour break.

I imagine that since Paul Martin was dubbed "Mr. Dithers" by The Economist, it was inevitable that the Liberals would try and hang a nickname on Stephen Harper just to even the score. This is the first time I've seen this one, though.

In an article about the National Citizens Coalition (which as far as I can tell is neither national nor a coalition of citizens, exactly) expressing its dismay at the way Harper seems to be moving to the left, Dithers' communications director Scott Reid is quoted thusly:

"Mr. Nicholls is frustrated that Stephen Harper has turned into Mr. Muzzle because he believes in the extreme policies they're trying to conceal," Scott Reid said.

"Canadians are frustrated with Mr. Muzzle because they just want to know what it is he is working so hard to keep hidden."

Terence Corcoran, writing in the National Post, delivers a rather scathing view of a documentary called The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream. He even goes so far as to title his article "Praise God and pass the propaganda." And I don't believe this can be blamed on an anonymous headline writer since it's also the closing sentence.

I had a little trouble taking his critique all that seriously once I got to the first sentence in the fifth paragraph:

Now I haven't seen The End of Suburbia yet...

There's our national newspaper at work. Must be that pesky liberal media bias.

There's a good piece in the Toronto Star that reviews a number of ways in which the agendas of law enforcement and corporate interests are combining, and conspiring, to make the internet a very different place than it is today.

Say no to Big Brother plan for Internet

Notwithstanding the Internet's remarkable potential, there are dark clouds on the horizon. There are some who see a very different Internet. Theirs is an Internet with ubiquitous surveillance featuring real-time capabilities to monitor online activities. It is an Internet that views third party applications such as Vonage's Voice-over-IP service as parasitic. It is an Internet in which virtually all content should come at a price, even when that content has been made freely available. It is an Internet that would seek to cut off subscriber access based on mere allegations of wrongdoing, without due process or oversight from a judge or jury.

This disturbing vision of the Internet is not fantasy. It is based on real policy proposals being considered by the Canadian government today.

Leading the way is the federal government's "lawful access" initiative. While the term lawful access sounds innocuous, the program, which dates back to 2002, represents law enforcement's desire to re-make Canada's networks to allow for lawful interception of private communications.

If lawful access becomes reality, Canada's telecommunications service providers (TSPs) will be required to refit their networks to allow for real-time interception of communications, to have the capability of simultaneously intercepting multiple transmissions, and to provide detailed subscriber information to law enforcement authorities without a court order within 72 hours.

The Minister of Industry, together with Liza Frulla, his Canadian Heritage counterpart, are also reportedly about to finalize new rules that may reshape the availability of Internet content to educational institutions. Acting on the recommendation of a parliamentary committee that was chaired by Toronto MP Sarmite Bulte, the government may soon unveil a new "extended license" that would require schools to pay millions of dollars for content that is currently freely available on the Internet.

While the committee recommendation excluded payment for content that is publicly available, it adopted the narrowest possible definition of publicly available, limiting it to only those works that are not technologically or password protected and which contain an explicit notice that the material can be used without prior payment or permission.

The committee is so intent on ensuring and enforcing the monopolization of content that it would do so even in circumstances where the creators themselves want the content freely distributed and without the expectation of payment. The control mechanism for its own sake has become more important than the rights and intentions of the owners, which is what copyright is supposed to protect. By taking "the narrowest possible definition" they ensure the commercialization of the content and of the internet. Commercialization becomes the default position and the public domain be damned because there's no balance here between the rights of copyright owners and the rights of the public.

And then there's this:

Moreover, those same ministers are also contemplating a new system that would allow content owners to file a complaint with an ISP if one of their subscribers has allegedly posted infringing content. Canada's rules for child pornography still require a court order before content is removed, yet if the Canadian Recording Industry Association and other well-funded interests get their way, the ISP will respond to a mere allegation of copyright infringement by "kicking the subscriber off the system."

With Canada conceivably ready to adopt rules that make it far easier to remove an allegedly infringing song than to remove dangerous child pornography from a new fee-based, surveillance-ready, packet preferenced Internet, it is difficult to overstate how out of touch our Internet policy process has become. Is this really what we want our Internet to be?

Music download prices to rise

The market for downloaded music is strong enough to take a price rise, according to the major music labels.

Several big labels are in talks with online music retailers to get them to increase prices,according to the FT. The labels are looking to increase the wholesale prices shops pay for tracks. Sites in the US typically sell tracks for 99 cents each. The wholesale price is currently 65 cents per track, according to the FT.

I've just finished some maintenance on the blogroll. I've removed a number of links to blogs that appear to have gone dormant, have disappeared completely or whose authors have announced that they're no longer posting. I hate to see them go (does anyone else miss Tristero?) but the list was getting pretty long and I wanted to make room to add half a dozen new entries - blogs I find myself returning to regularly. No doubt I've missed some that should also be added.

There are a couple I should mention in particular. If you think The Middleman has stopped blogging, you're wrong. He just moved, is all. And if, like me, you were saddened to see Counterspin Central shut down, know that Hesiod now posts as part of the team at The American Street. And I was going to edit The Poor Man's entry to reflect the new URL but it seems The Editors, in their infinite wisdom, have moved back to the old one. You gotta watch those guys every minute.

You may recall that on Feb. 22nd there was a red banner here and on other blogs that said "Free Mojtaba and Arash", referring to two Iranian bloggers who had been arrested for expressing their opinions. That banner was part of a campaign of support which doesn't seem to have had much effect.

Blogger Sentenced to 14 Years in Prison in Iran

Iranian blogger and human rights activist Arash Sigarchi was sentenced to 14 years in prison on charges of "espionage and insulting the country's leaders." His harsh sentence, given by a Revolutionary Court on February 22, 2005, sends a stark message to other bloggers and independent government critics in Iran.

Via Whiskey Bar.

Jim Elve has a post up at the BlogsCanada E-Group in which he's maintaining a list of the ongoing discussions on the web concerning the four RCMP officers who were killed in the line of duty yesterday. At this point I don't know what else to add except to extend my condolences to the families and friends of the deceased.

It seems to be my day to be a dittohead. Mahigan tackles the story of the delay in allowing Canadian beef into the U.S. You can read the whole post but here's the money quote.

Someone needs to give Mr. Dithers a rectal craniotomy and acquaint him with that most foreign of concepts "leadership". Some Canadian producers are calling for a meeting withing the week with the federal government to discuss a large expansion in Canadian processing capacity - a discussion that should have been held a year and a half ago. We need to implement 100% testing of all cattle for BSE - another decision a year and a half overdue. We can then ban the import of US beef as not meeting our standards and move on to compete with Brazil and Australia for the Asian market where we are likely to be well received.

At the same time we need to be imposing tariffs against US commodities as already authorized by the WTO. We need to be aggressively pursuing WTO authorization to recover the $4 billion stolen from us in the softwood lumber dispute. We need to withdraw from any further talks on the NAFTA+ agreement which will only bring us more of the same and we need to be aggressively seeking a wide range of new trading partners. Get off your ass Mr. Dithers. It's time to start earning your paycheck.

Mahigan's right: we should have raised our testing standards to Japanese levels long ago so we could compete in that market instead of waiting for favorable rulings from NAFTA tribunals and the WTO that American lobbyists and legislators will only ignore.

No, not Paul Martin. Paul Wells.

Wells points to the second example in a week in which Frank McKenna, our newly minted ambassador to the United States, has shot his mouth off and the Prime Minister has immediately had to state in public that McKenna's remarks don't reflect Canada's position. So, as Wells said, (and to repeat the link because I agree that strongly), "Frank McKenna should hand in his resignation."

You'd think we would have learned from the example of Paul Cellucci that ex-politicians don't necessarily make good diplomats.

I think I just got phished. I just received an email addressed to "All Royal Bank of Canada Customers":

Due to a recent security breach in the RBC computer systems, we are asking all customers to immediately login with the link below and immediatley report any unnoticed password changes, unexplained funds depletion or the likewise. Rest assured that we have the safety and privacy ofour customers as our top priority but please help us by following the instructions below:

Update and verify your information by clicking the link below:

When I do a whois on the IP address, it turns out to be in a block managed by the "Latin American and Caribbean IP address Regional Registry." Now I realize banking is an international business but...

Of course my first clue that something smelled wrong is that I've never done business with the Royal Bank in my life. If you do and you've received a message like this, I would strongly suggest that you avoid that link. If you're concerned, contact your Royal Bank branch by telephone.

And if you're not familiar with the term "phishing", Wikipedia will explain.

The coming crackdown on blogging

Bradley Smith says that the freewheeling days of political blogging and online punditry are over.

In just a few months, he warns, bloggers and news organizations could risk the wrath of the federal government if they improperly link to a campaign's Web site. Even forwarding a political candidate's press release to a mailing list, depending on the details, could be punished by fines.

Smith should know. He's one of the six commissioners at the Federal Election Commission, which is beginning the perilous process of extending a controversial 2002 campaign finance law to the Internet.

Opposition leader Stephen Harper has been extremely critical of Martin's decision to opt out of missile defence even though of late his own party has refused to come out on one side or the other on the issue. They want to know more before making a decision, says Harper, and they blame Martin for not filling them in.

Don't blame Canada for missile-defense snub

The Bush administration made major diplomatic errors in handling this topic with Canada. It asked for blanket endorsement of an open-ended US missile defense program, rather than for specific help with specific technical challenges and defensive weapons. This was a fundamental mistake, and the US has mostly itself to blame for the resulting fallout.
...
[Canadians] know what is in the Pentagon's long-term plan for missile defense systems. It isn't simply a pragmatic and modest defense against possible North Korean or Iranian threats, of the type now being deployed in California and Alaska. Although not yet formalized, it also envisions the possibility of a land-based and sea-based system that might be large enough to challenge China's deterrent (and even make some Russians nervous). And perhaps most controversial of all, it speaks of space weapons - be they small interceptor missiles or lasers to shoot down threats from wherever they might be launched.

These concepts remain red-flag topics in the great white north. Canadians are not wasting their time wallowing over the demise of cold war arms control; they are worried that the Rumsfeld Pentagon's missile defense efforts might damage future great power relations and might also result in the near-term weaponization of space - a prospect that most countries, including Canada, find highly objectionable.

I gave a talk on missile defense in Toronto last month, and was stunned by two things: the large turnout, which said much more about the degree of Canadian anxiety over the subject than my draw as a speaker, and the degree of confusion in Canada over just what the US president could have been requesting when he visited last fall.

In the two months since the Bush visit, American diplomats still had not clarified the subject for their good allies to the north - and now the US ambassador has had the audacity to publicly criticize the Canadian prime minister for his recent decision.

What Bush administration officials need to remember is that they almost surely could not get blanket endorsement for all of the above missile defense systems even in the US. Congress has provided funding just for deployment of a limited land-based system and for research and development of other possible concepts. It has not bought into a grandiose architecture of the type that many Pentagon planners still envision. Nor is Bush unwise enough to request such an open-ended endorsement from Congress.

Indeed, his budget request for 2006 cuts missile defense, in recognition of the facts that the relevant technologies are proving slow to develop and that other, nonmissile threats seem more pressing. Yet it was at this moment the president asked Canada for something he probably could not get from the Republican-controlled legislature in his own country.

Hat tip to The Gazetteer. [Updating moments later] And sean incognito too.

Wal-Mart workers in Windsor seek union, again

Some employees at a Wal-Mart store in Windsor are trying for the second time in nearly a decade to certify a union.

The United Food and Commercial Workers union was expected to announce today that it has applied to the Ontario Labour Relations Board for a certification vote at the Windsor store. The vote could be held as early as next Tuesday, a union official said last night. However, actual certification could take much longer if Wal-Mart Canada Corp. challenges the results as it has in other jurisdictions.
...
The fight in Windsor will be familiar to some of the store's long-term employees.

Nearly a decade ago, the Windsor store was the first in Wal-Mart's then 35-year history to certify a union and win a first contract. The United Steelworkers of America led the drive.

But the union walked away three years later after a long and bitter legal wrangle with a group of anti-union employees, who said the contract vote had been rigged.

Along the way, the government of Ontario changed hands, shifting radically from left to right in the transition from the New Democrats to Mike Harris's Tories, which brought in new labour laws that made it tougher to unionize.

Expert says Saudi oil may have peaked

Energy investment banker Matthew Simmons, of Simmons & Co International, has been outspoken in his warnings about peak oil before. His new statement is his strongest yet, "we may have already passed peak oil".

The subject of peak oil, the point at which the world's finite supply of oil begins to decline, is a hot topic in the industry.

Arguments are commonplace over whether it will happen at all, when it will happen or whether it has already happened. Simmons, a Republican adviser to the Bush-Cheney energy plan, believes it "is the world's number one problem, far more serious than global warming".

Speaking exclusively to Aljazeera, Simmons came out with a statement that, if proven true over time, could herald by far the biggest energy crisis mankind has known.

"If Saudi Arabia have damaged their fields, accidentally or not, by overproducing them, then we may have already passed peak oil. Iran has certainly peaked, there is no way on Earth they can ever get back to their production of six million barrels per day (mbpd)."

The technical term for damaging an oilfield by overproduction is rate sensitivity. In other words, if the oil is pulled out of the ground too fast, it damages the fragile geological structure of the field. This can make as much as 80% of the oil within the field unextractable. Of course, at the moment, virtually every producer is at full tilt. The most important among them is Saudi Arabia; their Gharwar field is the world's biggest.
...
"The faster you pull a reservoir, the faster you pull out all of the easy-to-produce oil," explains Simmons. "What happens is that you lose massive amounts of what the oil industry calls oil-left-behind still inside the field. These issues, as you can see, have been known about for years."

"This is dangerous stuff," warns Simmons. "If we say they have not peaked and then they choose to further increase production, they will only hasten their field decline, and waste huge amounts of valuable oil into the bargain. And oil, as we are only now coming to realise, is the world's most precious resource."

A flawed media, I suggest, leads to a flawed democracy. Ill informed citizens cannot make proper judgments about their leaders' actions, about the actions that take place in their names, about the laws that govern them. The media matter.

Via My Blahg News.