March 2006 Archives

Journalist Murray Waas lays the whole Bush administration carnival of deception out for everyone to see in the latest issue of the National Journal. The article is lengthy but worth the read. When you are done, take a look at the BooMan Tribune for more.

The upshot of the article is that lies and deception are not just something the Bushies resort to when they need to push their agenda, it is in fact the modus operandi of their administration. WMDs, the Plame case, Saddam's alleged nuclear capacity: deception is their standard response to everything.

The story has been picked up and run with by the lefty blogosphere in the United States, but as Washington Post columnist Dan Froomkin points out, something very revealing has happened with the traditional media: the proof of Bush's duplicity, and that of his lackeys, has garnered not one single mention.

But in the traditional media, the reaction has been utter and complete silence -- both after Waas's well-documented March 2 story, and again today. There's not one word about it in a single major outlet this morning.

And that's just not acceptable. Waas's fellow reporters at major news operations should either acknowledge and try to follow up his stories -- or debunk them. It's not okay to just leave them hanging out there. They're too important.

So what have we learned here, girls and boys?

a) Bush and his staff are exactly what millions of us always suspected: lying lowdown weasels who invaded and destroyed Iraq based on a series of lies, and used other lies to cover those lies. He and his staff are criminals and unworthy to hold public office.

b) If you still believe Bush is not a liar, you are beyond help.

c) If you still believe in "the liberal media" in the United States, you are an absolute fool.

The fact that the media has shut down this story is particularly revealing. Even with the press in his pocket, Bush's approval ratings can't climb out of the low thirties. Can you imagine what a free and inquisitive press could do to him? In a just world, impeachment would be the least of his problems.

A few days ago in a comment to this post I saw the following:

Would those comments be similar in nature to those made about saddam never having any operational relationship with Al Qeada? Or Saddam not posing any real threat? Or...oh hell I'll refrain from rubbing in the fact recently released documents the US captured in Iraq show those and many other such statements to be wishful thinking at best.

I guess it's because of my own involvement in a wiki for the last nine months or so that I got a kick out of this. It's only been in the last 48 hours or so that the story of California state assemblyman Howard Kaloogian's little photo mixup became big news in the blogosphere. Now he's been immortalized as part of the English language. At least for the moment. Since there's a notice on this Wikipedia entry that it's being considered for deletion, I'm going to reproduce the whole thing.

Kaloogian (n): A term that describes a false or out-of-context image used in order to advance an agenda.

- That photo shown on O'Reilly's show last night was a Kaloogian!

Named for Howard Kaloogian, a California state assemblyman. While running for Duke Cunningham's vacated congressional seat, Kaloogian used an image of a street corner in the Istanbul suburb of Bakirkoy in order to promote the notion that "downtown Baghdad" was "much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be," blaming the incorrect perception on the media.

The day after the Kaloogian was uncovered, candidate Kaloogian attempted a mulligan by submitting another photo depecting a calm Bagdhad. Athough the newer photo appeared to be a picture of Bagdhad, it lack the detail necessary to support his claim, in effect representing another Kaloogian.

Hat-tip to Josh Marshall. If you want more on this story, do a search at Marshall's site on "Kaloogian". Hilarity will ensue.

This actually makes me feel pretty good. When advancing the cause of Quebec separatism is in the hands of laughable buffoons like this, I feel that national unity is reasonably secure.

MONTREAL — Its boosters see it as Sovereignty 101 -- a helpful educational guide that uses crafts, colouring and exercises to teach young Quebeckers about the ABCs of independence.

Instead, a textbook entitled Let's Talk About Sovereignty at School, put together by a pro-sovereignty group, was savaged yesterday as a masterstroke of propaganda that should never find its way into a classroom.

The Council for Quebec Sovereignty set off a firestorm with the unveiling of a 142-page textbook aimed at "demystifying" Quebec sovereignty for students.

The book actually undermines itself by inadvertantly illustrating some of the benefits of federalism. It was printed with federal government assistance(!). Before anyone gets too annoyed about that, I think it was a masterstroke to undermine separatism, really. This "textbook" makes the separatists look pretty damn feeble. The content is so wretched and offensive, and even the Parti Quebecois, which funds the group that produced the book, have disowned it.

Prime Minister Stephen Duceppe Gilles Harper is headed off to Cancun Mexico to offer tribute to meet with US President George Bush. Mexican President Vincente Fox will be hosting the meetings.

According to the CBC:

Softwood lumber, border security and improving U.S./Canada relations are the issues expected to top the agenda when Stephen Harper meets with President George W. Bush in Mexico for the first time as prime minister.

Our sources tell us there will be more substantive discussion between the two leaders regarding the relative merits of establishing a sycophantic Press Corps consisting of stenographers as opposed to operating the government out of a bunker and not talking to the media at all. Harper and Bush are both expected to make strong arguments in support of their respective approaches.

The CBC also tells us:

The U.S. wants to introduce tough requirements for cross-border travellers, starting in 2007. Trade and tourism experts fear the requirement to hold a passport or, for Americans, a new $50 US identification card, will cut travel dramatically.

We are also informed that Prime Minister Harper has been brushing up on his shorthand skills to be ready for President Bush to dictate Canada's new "Made in America" Foreign, Defence, Security and Immigration policies.

For his part, President Fox is expected to raise the contentious issue of US immigration laws. There will be some difficulties grappling with this issue since Bush has said:

... the way to control U.S.-Mexico immigration in the long term is for Mexico to improve its economy.

WTF is the matter with those people that they can't run a flourishing economy with 80 cent an hour wages. When I get our wages here down to 80 cents an hour I expect to see major economic growth.

because if I have to listen to those two wieners talk about their man-dates, I'm not going to do it sober.

Of course Canadians will not be informed of the outcome of the talks. It's none of their business.

One of my favourite times of year is when my take home pay jumps due to the completion of my Employment Insurance and Canada Pension Plan deductions. It always seems to arrive just when we are planning our family holiday: a nice little bonus that puts a little extra cash in my pocket just when I need it. Unfortunately, it looks like Stephen Harper, the anti-tax man himself, has decided we no longer deserve that little bonus.

If you're looking for Flu Wiki and wondering why you're getting a "Server not found" error, please be patient. We changed hosts yesterday afternoon and the internets take a while to sort these things out. We should be back later today or some time tomorrow. Meanwhile wash your hands a lot and cough into your elbow. (The editors made me say that.)

In the United States, the Bush administration goes to exceptional lengths to control their message. They meet with friendly reporters on Fox News, they give interviews to pet right wing "journalists" at the Washington Times, and at public appearances, the audiences are vetted to ensure that only well-rehearsed softball questions are lobbed at the president. Bush has held fewer press conferences than any president since television first became a major part of politcal messaging, and when he does hold one, they are tightly scripted.

Why he does this is quite obvious. Modern U.S. Republicans are the party of "say one thing, do another." They are a shell game which seeks to fool Americans into believing thier common-touch rhetoric, while all the while passing tax cuts for the rich, gutting regulatory regimes and slashing public services. They are aided in this by a fawning press corp thoroughly cowed by 30 years of right wingers shrieking "liberal bias".

If the public ever had unfettered access to information about the Bush agenda, his approval rating would be even lower than it is. Republicans are all about message control for a good reason: when one is running the world's largest con game, controlling who knows what is pretty important.

Rob Cottingham wears several hats. He blogs, he writes speeches and comedy, and with his partner Alexandra Samuel he runs a company called Social Signal which is all about using the power of the internet and tools like blogs and other content management systems. Towards that end Social Signal is running a workshop in May called Word Power.

Turn blogging into a strategic tool for engaging your critical audiences, starting with this four-day workshop. You’ll learn how to create an authentic, distinctive voice for yourself or your organization, and open a new, direct channel to your employees, members, stakeholders and the public.
...
Experienced bloggers and novices alike will learn how to use blogs to provide effective thought leadership, integrate blogging across communication channels, and tap the power of the networked world of bloggers – as well as what makes a great blog, and a great blogger.

Details, and a link to a pdf brochure, are at the last link above.

Updated. Please see below.

I had been chipping away at the reading I wanted to do before responding to issues raised in comments to a recent post on Afghanistan, but the Ottawa Citizen has saved me some trouble. The Citizen has a three-part series on the issue, here, here and here. Since the series hits a lot of the high points I was interested in as well as filling in some blanks, I would recommend it.

It turns out that it's a mistake to talk simply about our "mission" in Afghanistan because we have more than one. The recent deployment to Kandahar has nothing to do with our NATO mission - NATO doesn't take responsibility for security in that province until the summer. Instead there are a thousand plus Canadian troops assigned to Operation Enduring Freedom under the command of the American military.

There's been a lot of forensic sifting through the past comments of war supporters of late. It can be a bit of a mug's game, really. We're all wrong on certain issues at certain times, so it seems unfair to run every past comment through the truth machine to hold them up for ridicule. But some war supporters took their triumphalism to such arrogant lengths that their comments do bear highlighting, as a reminder of exactly how flawed the judgment of some of these pundits, journalists and would-be leaders really is.

Scott Piatkowski, writing at Rabble.ca, expands on an e-mail he received from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) listing some of the best (worst?) of these arrogant comments, and he offers them up for our enjoyment:

I was doing my morning blog tour and discovered this story mentioned in a Daily Kos post.

Fast-Food Ice Dirtier Than Toilet Water
Jasmine Roberts never expected her award-winning middle school science project to get so much attention. But the project produced some disturbing results: 70 percent of the time, ice from fast food restaurants was dirtier than toilet water.

The 12-year-old collected ice samples from five restaurants in South Florida — from both self-serve machines inside the restaurant and from drive-thru windows. She then collected toilet water samples from the same restaurants and tested all of them for bacteria at the University of South Florida.

we find four hundred times more bacteria on a desktop that we do on most toilet seats

For you folks living in Vancouver, Victoria, Iqaluit, Inuvik, Halifax, St. John's, Saint John, Charlottetown and innumerable coastal towns, hamlets and villages throughout the land, it might soon be time to get your gumboots on.

Toronto — If current temperature trends continue to the end of the century, Earth's climate will be warm enough to cause a massive melting of Greenland's ice sheet and a partial collapse of the Antarctic ice sheet, resulting in a global sea level rise of six metres from the torrent of melt water, according to two new research papers.

The jump in ocean levels would be enough to inundate many low-lying coastal areas around the world, place dozens of major cities under water and become irreversible at some point later this century ”unless something is done to dramatically reduce human emissions of greenhouse-gas pollution,” warns Jonathan Overpeck, a professor at the University of Arizona and one of the authors of the studies.

He said that if serious efforts to limit global warming aren't taken soon, ”we're committed to four to six metres of sea level rise in the future.”

The research is some of the most alarming to date on the possible impact of global warming.

Yes, that's right, it's me again being shrill on the topic of global warming. But as a Halifax boy, the thought of my hometown being swallowed by the briny is a bit disturbing, and the thought of London, Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Sydney, Boston, New York, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, amongst many other of the world's great metropolises, joining it is more disturbing still.

Long ago in a galaxy far away I had a friend who walked with a pronounced limp - the result of a childhood illness. The limp didn't prevent him from getting around but it did inhibit his mobility somewhat. Unfortunately for him, the shortcut to the university campus led by a house zealously guarded by a bulldog. Most days when he passed the house the bulldog would come flying off the porch after him, with much barking and growling, and my friend would have to scramble inelegantly to avoid being bitten.

At some point, my friend learned that, due to his aggressive behaviour, the bulldog had long ago had all his teeth removed. The next day, my friend walked by the house and, as usual, the bulldog launched with full sound and fury. This time my friend simply stood there. The dog gummed his leg a couple of times and went back to the porch smug in the conviction it had done its job. And this was the pattern for the rest of my friend's university career.

I have to ask you a question, Mr. Harper. In all seriousness.

Your agenda has gained a lot of approval from a gang of professional malcontents set on breaking up our country. In effect, they see your plans for governance as an aid to their ongoing project. And now I see that you are enlisting the help of the Bloc to avoid your government being brought down over the Throne Speech.

Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe described a meeting with the Prime Minister that included far more agreement than between Mr. Harper and Mr. Graham, although he said he will wait to see the Throne Speech before deciding whether to support it.

Mr. Duceppe said he made the case that there are several areas where the Bloc and Tory platforms overlap, such as pledges to fix the fiscal imbalance with the provinces, to give Quebec a role at international meetings and to hold votes on new troop deployments.

The Bloc Leader told reporters that Mr. Harper asked questions about these points and took notes, giving the impression that he was interested.

"He said he'll find a way to respect the deal on daycare centres with Quebec, he said also that he's open to having a vote before sending troops overseas in the future. So I said 'Well, you see, a lot of things are talked about and on certain of those issues you're coming with some proposals I'd like to see,' " he said.

Mr. Duceppe said the meeting was far more detailed than the pre-Throne-Speech discussions that he had with former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin.

Now I don't begrudge your seeking parliamentary allies. You're head of a minority government and doing what you have to do to survive. I'm talking about a larger issue here. Given that your platform and the separatists' platform seem to have large areas of overlap, my question is this:

Why do you still think your plans are good for the country?

'Cos trust me, if they were, Gilles Duceppe wouldn't be so keen on them.

Extended presence of U.S. in Iraq looms large

BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq - The concrete goes on forever, vanishing into the noonday glare, 2 million cubic feet of it, a mile-long slab that’s now the home of up to 120 U.S. helicopters, a “heli-park” as good as any back in the States.

At another giant base, al-Asad in Iraq’s western desert, the 17,000 troops and workers come and go in a kind of bustling American town, with a Burger King, Pizza Hut and a car dealership, stop signs, traffic regulations and young bikers clogging the roads.

At a third hub down south, Tallil, they’re planning a new mess hall, one that will seat 6,000 hungry airmen and soldiers for chow.

Are the Americans here to stay? Air Force mechanic Josh Remy is sure of it as he looks around Balad.

“I think we’ll be here forever,” the 19-year-old airman from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., told a visitor to his base.

The Iraqi people suspect the same. Strong majorities tell pollsters they’d like to see a timetable for U.S. troops to leave, but believe Washington plans to keep military bases in their country.

When we start hearing that Canadian troops may be in Afghanistan for years, or even decades, and when our prime minister starts relying on "cut and run" rhetoric that suggests leaving is losing -- period -- it makes me suspicious. Some may consider that to be a flaw in my character. I prefer to think of it as healthy skepticism.

Hat-tip to Atrios. (As if he needs the traffic, eh?)

Yes, you read that post title correctly. I agree with Stephen Harper on something. It's a little aside tossed in at the end of this silly story on Harper's recent weight gain, but it illustrates a hint of that political instinct which I so often razz the Prime Minister for lacking:

Cameras may be unkind to Harper these days, but that's not why he'll avoid them when Brigitte Bardot comes to Ottawa tomorrow, the Prime Minister added.

The French film legend announced last week her first visit to North America in 30 years and plans to hold a news conference with other animal rights activists to protest the East Coast seal hunt. She had hoped to meet with Harper but that won't happen.

"My responsibilities are about the ... needs of Canadians," Harper said. "I don't intend to participate in the actions of famous people for publicity."

If harvesting activities are seriously depleting resources, then I'm all for taking action, but renewable resources, when managed properly, are just that: renewable. Given that the harp seal herd's population is very healthy, and traditional harvesters in Newfoundland and other parts of eastern Canada still rely on the seal hunt as an important source of income, the fact that some folks find the whole thing a bit icky doesn't even register on my give-a-shit-o-metre. The continued use of the whitecoated pups in anti-seal hunt materials also bugs me to no end, since whitecoats cannot be hunted anymore. But that is one small part of the misinformation spread about sealing.

So well said, Mr. Harper. And for once, I don't mean that sarcastically.

Update: Robert McClelland takes the opposite side on this issue here.

The forces of villainy, wankery and just plain stupidity are on the land in such abundance that we, your humble scribes, could all blog full time without much more than scratching the surface of their exploits. Unfortunately, that would last only until our electricity was cut off since blogging contributes exactly zilch toward paying the bills.

I, for one, am getting tired of coming across many post worthy topics everyday and then dutifully dumping links into that cavernous portal to the twilight zone known as my bookmark list. From whence nothing, it seems, ever sees the light of day again. Rather than lose these items, it makes much more sense to put them out there for others who might choose to pursue them.

- The Archbishop of Canterbury channels Canadian Cynic. In an article from BBC, the Archbishop, head of the Anglican Church, has said schools should not be teaching the Bible-based version of the origins of the world. That should go over well in a few places I can think of.

- Life's diversity 'being depleted' from the BBC:

Virtually all indicators of the likely future for the diversity of life on Earth are heading in the wrong direction, a major new report says.

- from bonddad at Daily Kos an example of Conservative fiscal responsibility.

Bush started his term with total outstanding Federal debt of 5.6 trillion. Now that total has increased to 8.2 trillion. That's a 46% overall increase and an 8% compound growth rate.

- There is an oil spill in the Arctic Ocean from a ruptured BP pipeline on Alaska's north slope. The shape of things to come.

- The not so sleeping giant. Russia is to build two major gas pipelines to energy-hungry China, to deliver gas in the next five years.

There are many more items I could have included here but I thought I would test the format. Obviously, Drive by Blogging is not a substitute for the real thing but I put together this list in less time than it would have taken to write any kind of a post on any of these items. I think each of these stories is worthy of more comment but the unfortunate fact is that I probably would not post on any of them in a timely fashion. So here's where you come in. Is it valuable to you for us to put up a list of items like this even without any indepth research or commentary?

This ought to spur some discussion:

Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative.

At least, he did if he was one of 95 kids from the Berkeley area that social scientists have been tracking for the last 20 years. The confident, resilient, self-reliant kids mostly grew up to be liberals.

The study from the Journal of Research Into Personality isn't going to make the UC Berkeley professor who published it any friends on the right. Similar conclusions a few years ago from another academic saw him excoriated on right-wing blogs, and even led to a Congressional investigation into his research funding.

But the new results are worth a look. In the 1960s Jack Block and his wife and fellow professor Jeanne Block (now deceased) began tracking more than 100 nursery school kids as part of a general study of personality. The kids' personalities were rated at the time by teachers and assistants who had known them for months. There's no reason to think political bias skewed the ratings — the investigators were not looking at political orientation back then. Even if they had been, it's unlikely that 3- and 4-year-olds would have had much idea about their political leanings.

A few decades later, Block followed up with more surveys, looking again at personality, and this time at politics, too. The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity.

The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests. The girls were still outgoing, but the young men tended to turn a little introspective.

Block admits in his paper that liberal Berkeley is not representative of the whole country. But within his sample, he says, the results hold. He reasons that insecure kids look for the reassurance provided by tradition and authority, and find it in conservative politics. The more confident kids are eager to explore alternatives to the way things are, and find liberal politics more congenial.

In a society that values self-confidence and out-goingness, it's a mostly flattering picture for liberals. It also runs contrary to the American stereotype of wimpy liberals and strong conservatives.

Oh dear. If you look at the terrified conservatives in the U.S. right now who are so easily manipulated by the Bush adminsitrations terrorist boogeymen, the study's findings become even more interesting. Projected onto Canada, we can see similar parallels. Is there anyone more whiny than a right wing Albertan? Despite the fact this his province has all the money, all the jobs and prosperity as far as the eye can see, Instead of revelling in it, his mindset is defined by his fear of losing it all and inchoate rage at the rest of the country which seeks to "steal" from him.

I now open the floor for smug agreement from liberals, and sneering contempt from conservatives. Let the games begin, but keep the whining to a minimum please.

Allow me to join Sinister Thoughts and Accidental Deliberations (and hopefully others) in calling bullshit on the Liberals' sudden change of heart regarding Afghanistan.

The Liberals appear to be lining up solidly behind the Conservative government over the mission in Afghanistan, rejecting NDP calls for a parliamentary vote on the matter.

"We are against a vote because it's a responsibility of the executive and because we should not second-guess when we have an important mission to succeed," Liberal foreign affairs critic Stéphane Dion said yesterday on CTV's Question Period.

The Liberals have just reneged on their responsibilities and made themselves redundant. They've demonstrated once again that their only real priority is their own political fortunes and democracy be damned.

That post at Accidental Deliberations points to another Globe and Mail piece that summarizes why we do need to talk about Afghanistan.

Yet, here we go repeating [Bush's history in Iraq]. We have no exit plan for "our boys" in Afghanistan because we have no clear idea of what will constitute victory in this misnamed "war on terrorism." But if victory in Afghanistan means waiting until there is in place a democratic government capable of defeating any insurgency - which is Mr. Bush's goal in Iraq - we shall be there for many years to come.

I really don't want to sound shrill about this or anything, but since we are heading for a man-made ecological disaster of global proportions, I thought I'd highlight this story. We've got ten years, says one of world's leading climatologists. After that, we've reached the tipping point on global warming. Now, I have a little problem with the "we've got ten years" type of scenario, but the point is the urgency of the issue at hand: simply put, there is no doubt that human activity is having a catastrophic effect on the climate, and we are running out of time to do something about it.

What James Hansen believes is that global warming is accelerating. He points to the melting arctic and to Antarctica, where new data show massive losses of ice to the sea.

Is it fair to say at this point that humans control the climate? Is that possible?

"There's no doubt about that, says Hansen. "The natural changes, the speed of the natural changes is now dwarfed by the changes that humans are making to the atmosphere and to the surface."

Those human changes, he says, are driven by burning fossil fuels that pump out greenhouse gases like CO2, carbon dioxide. Hansen says his research shows that man has just 10 years to reduce greenhouse gases before global warming reaches what he calls a tipping point and becomes unstoppable. He says the White House is blocking that message.

"In my more than three decades in the government I've never witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public," says Hansen.

Hansen has had to battle a Republican administration intent on silencing climate scientists on the issue of climate change, but he's had enough of it. He has a warning to give, and he won't be muzzled.

Okay, so let's do a little tally here.

Stephen Harper has morphed from the Man who Would Run an Open and Honest Government to Arrogant Prime Minister in a surprisingly shorrt time. First, his commitment to honest government is shaken by his acceptance of floor-crosser David Emerson, who brings with him a lot of iffy baggage due to his past business dealings with the lumber industry. Then he appints a former defense industry lobbyist as his Defense Minister, calling into question his promise to reform the role of lobbying in government. Then, his commitment to an elected Senate is neutered by his appointment of his Quebec campaign chair to the Senate and subsequently Cabinet. Then he gets into a well-publicized spat with the Ethic Commissioer Bernard Shapiro by refusing to co-operate with him, despite banging the drum of ethical government for years. Quite a scorecard so far.

And today we learn that despite all his blathering about open government, he muzzles his Cabinet and limits their public statements to a few well-tested talking points. So much for his concern over the concentration of power in the Prime Minister's Office.

Now the Gilles Duceppe has made clear that what many of us feared about Stephen Harper's footsie-playing with the Bloc Quebecois, will he still go ahead with his plans to give Quebec an international voice of its own?

OTTAWA and QUEBEC -- The Conservative government's plan to give Quebec a greater role on the world stage is good news for separatists, Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe says.

Speaking to reporters on Parliament Hill, where he was taking part in a meeting of the Bloc caucus, Mr. Duceppe said the more independence Quebec receives at world bodies such as UNESCO, the Paris-based cultural wing of the United Nations, the easier it will be to argue for full independence.

"If he delivers and Quebec has a voice, let's say at UNESCO, that [would be] good for a sovereign Quebec in the future. All the sovereigntists are supporting the fact Quebec is having an international presence in the francophone summit. This is a plus not only for the sovereigntists, but for Quebec. It's preparing us for the day [when] we'll be a sovereign country and be present everywhere. So the more we're present, the better it is, so we'll support that."

Even though Mr. Duceppe said he supports the idea of a greater international role for Quebec, he said the Conservative plan for UNESCO will be no different from the previous Liberal government's if Quebec is simply part of the Canadian delegation.

"We will be making specific recommendations in our reply to the Throne Speech as to how Quebec, in full respect of UNESCO and international rules, can have a voice. We'll see if [Prime Minister Stephen Harper] is serious or not," he said.

Anyone who walks into this little beartrap after having the trapper scream "Hey, there's a trap right there!" deserves what he gets. Unfortunately, as Harper is the prime minister, we all suffer from his political ineptitude, not just him. Harper needs to develop some balls when dealing with the BQ, and step back from this particular precipice.

Thanks to Melanie at Bump for giving me a heads-up on this Globe and Mail story. (Yes, some Americans do pay attention to Canadian politics.)

Prime Minister Stephen Harper warned Afghan President Hamid Karzai yesterday that Canada's desire to keep troops in Afghanistan cannot be guaranteed if opposition parties at home resist.
...
The remarks appear to be an effort by Mr. Harper to apply political pressure on the opposition to join him in strongly backing the commitment while also strengthening his own vow.

Let's keep this in mind the next time the Conservatives accuse someone else of using the troops for political purposes.

So far our new prime minister is living up to all my expectations. That's not saying much. And before Harper continues channeling George Bush, someone really ought to bring the PMO's attention to Dubya's latest approval ratings. They might want to reconsider the wisdom of fighting today's battles with yesterday's tactics.

For a rebuttal of some of the rest of Harper's remarks, go read Skippy.

The Canadian Medical Assosication has made a grand cock-up of their relationship with the Canadian Medical Association Journal, one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical publications in the world. After the CMA fired the CMAJ's editor, 14 of 19 editorial board members quit over the lack of editorial independence.

There are benefits to being a member of a society that has chosen to approach world affairs in ways other than through force of arms. There are benefits to being part of country that has a reputation for peacemaking, not warfighting, and for international development, not exploitation. And those who advocate that we should have participated in the Iraq war or generally bemoan our general lack of U.S.-style aggression in our approach to world affairs would have us undo 60 years of positive name recognition (to put it in crass marketing terms) for our country.

Today, we hear of one concrete example of the benefits of Canada's positive reputation.

JERUSALEM — Mark Budzanowski could almost feel his captors' mood sag when they rifled through his pockets and found his passport. The word Canada on the cover was a blow to the dozens of masked men who surrounded him in the nondescript basement somewhere in the Gaza Strip. They thought they had kidnapped an American.

At first, the men in the masks didn't believe their eyes, and questioned the 57-year-old aid worker about Canada and about specific shops near Mr. Budzanowski's residence on Carlton Street in Toronto.

When they were finally convinced that Mr. Budzanowski was not an American in disguise, he said, they started treating him more politely, and handling him less roughly.

"When they were certain I was Canadian, they were very disappointed. Then, they told me, 'We love Canada.' That's wonderful to hear when you have guns pointed at you," an exhausted Mr. Budzanowski said yesterday in a telephone interview shortly after he was released after almost 30 hours as a hostage.

"It's wonderful to have a Canadian passport because it changes people's minds. One of the guards kept asking me to say hello to Canada, so it does stand for something."

Canada's approach to international affairs has been one of engagement through development and peacekeeping, and this approach has served us well in our relations with the world. Our citizens can travel more safely, our diplomats speak with moral authority and our country is seen as a positive place to visit and do business.

There is a reason our citizens can travel more safely. It is because Canada chose to approach international affairs in a new and unique way, and we reap the benefits of our citizenship when we go out into the world.

I am very pleased that Mr. Budzanowski is now home safe with his family, and that his Canadian passport was for him a shield, not a death sentence.

Update: A correction: As Jan notes in the comments, Mr. Budzanowski has opted to stay in Gaza City and continue his work.

In a few days it will be March 20. On that day in 2003, my wife and I were in an Edmonton hospital awaiting the birth of our second child. During hours of long labour through the night, my exhausted wife valiantly sought to obey the exhortations of the collected medical staff: pu-u-u-ush! At one point, shift change at the hospital occurred, but most of the doctors, nurses and internists who had already been with us for almost eight hours chose to stay on, and the new shift came in to join us. By the time my daughter was born shortly after seven a.m., there were 11 people in the room, cheering my wife on.

Gracie was the answer to our dreams. We came late to parenting, and for many years had no luck in conceiving. When our son was born in 1999 we were ecstatic, and the thought that we would most likely be a one-child family bothered us not in the least. The fact that we had a baby was thrilling, and it got more thrilling every day as I watched him change and grow.

Gracie was a bolt out of the blue. I came home from work one day and my wife told she had been dreaming incredibly vivid dreams lately, and remembering them in great detail. "The last time I experienced this I was pregnant with Ian." Then we both shared a "wouldn't that be something" laugh. It certainly was.

Fast forward to March 20, 2003 and she arrives. We had been hoping desperately for a girl, and when it became apparent our dreams had come true, my wife and I, neither of us religious people, somehow latched onto "Grace" for her name. It just seemed appropriate.

I remember leaving the hospital in a happy daze: my wife and daughter were both healthy and fine, my family was complete, and I could go and tell my son he had a new baby sister. We were staying with friends while we were in the city, and when I arrived at their house to share the news with them they were all glued to the television set.

The United States had just invaded Iraq.

Now I know it's just NASA, an not some authoritative oil industry front group, but I am inclined to believe them when they come down on the side of rapid climate change due to human activity.

Following two recent studies on changes to Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, NASA is touting a survey that it says confirms “climate warming is changing how much water remains locked in Earth’s largest storehouses of ice and snow.”

In a press release for the survey, NASA directly tied the changes to warming and described the survey as “the most comprehensive” ever in both regions.

That stand can in part be explained by lead author Jay Zwally’s warning.

“If the trends we’re seeing continue and climate warming continues as predicted, the polar ice sheets could change dramatically,” he said in the press release last Wednesday. “The Greenland ice sheet could be facing an irreversible decline by the end of the century.”

Nice to see NASA unmuzzled after the Bush administration had to can a Republican flnuky they put in place to silence scientists when said flunky turned out to be a liar.

Stephen Harper dropped by Afghanistan over the weekend to visit Canadian troops. Bully for him. I hope the troops enjoyed the visit, and the bit of positive media attention it brought them at home. They certainly deserve it, and Harper's visit was the first politically astute thing he has done since he was defaulted into office by disaffected Liberal voters.

I have no qualms whatsoever with his visit, but I do have issue with the rhetoric he employed while in theatre.

"There here may be some who may want to cut and run. But cutting and running is not your way. It's not my way, and it's not the Canadian way. We don't make a commitment and then run away at the first sign of trouble.”

Here, Harper has once again borrowed the demonizing language of the American right. Republicans use the unique phrase "cut and run" to denigrate anyone who does not support the U.S. misadventure in Iraq. They use it as code to imply cowardice, weakness and implicit support for America's enemies. They use it to marginalize those who commit the sin of being "anti-war", which has now become an insult in Bizarro-world America. Harper has quickly claimed this war as his war, not the mamby-pamby Liberal war we fought before. He is establishing his bonafides as a "commander-in-chief" lite, and there are already some who are swallowing this storyline. (Yes, I am aware that the Canadian PM is not the head of our armed forces, but he is deploying the same faux-military optics as George Bush, though thankfully without the flight suit.)

What does it say about a country that it will sell its future prosperity for short term corporate gain? That's what happened with the energy provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which commit the vast bulk of our future oil reserves to meet the needs of the United States, our own requirements notwithstanding. Now that we're nearing the end of our conventional reserves, the staggering shortsightedness of NAFTA is plain for all to see.

EDMONTON—A report on the Athabasca tar sands released today by Alberta’s Parkland Institute, in conjunction with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the Polaris Institute, warns of the potential enormous economic, social, and ecological threat from Athabasca tar sands development.

“We have been working on developing a comprehensive energy security strategy for Alberta and Canada,” says Parkland Director Gordon Laxer. “Any such strategy must begin with a thorough analysis of the development of Alberta’s tar sands.”

Fuelling Fortress America: A Report on the Athabasca Tar Sands and U.S. Demands for Canada’s Energy highlights the need for a coherent Alberta and national energy strategy. Neither government is doing the analysis or public consultation necessary to develop policies to meet the world energy crisis—let alone ensure a secure supply of energy for Canadians.

“The Athabasca tar sands project is the centerpiece of a continental energy plan to send massive new oil and gas supplies to the U.S.,” says Tony Clarke, Director of the Polaris Institute. “Canada is sitting back and letting George W. Bush and the big oil companies dictate our energy policy.”

Since the signing of NAFTA in 1992, gas exports to the US have sky rocketed from 41% to 56% of our total Canadian production, and oil from 44% to 63% of production. What’s more, as US exports continue to balloon, NAFTA prevents us from reducing this share to meet Canadian priorities. [Emphasis mine.]

“We have less than a 10-year proven supply of both conventional oil as well as natural gas remaining, yet most of the tar sands oil is earmarked for export to the U.S., and most of the natural gas from the Artic—by way of the yet-to-be-built Mackenzie Valley pipeline—is also intended for the U.S. market or to fuel extraction of the tar sands crude,” says CCPA Executive Director Bruce Campbell.

I rail a lot against corporate-controlled governance on this blog, and agreements like this are the central reason why. The long term interests of the citizens of Canada have been subordinated to the needs of the United States and the petroleum industry to the point that our future prosperity is severely threatened. Corporations are answerable to their shareholders only, and see national interests as nothing more than a barrier to their profitability. Agreements like NAFTA allow them to remove themselves the laws and regulations of the federal government and become supra-national entities that exploit our resources without fear of consequence.

Thank you, Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien, for ensuring that this energy-rich country will be desperate for oil in the next couple of decades. It is a tribute to the Canadian people that we have survived both these prime ministerial disasters with our country relatively intact. Yet their legacies reach on into the future, jeopardizing generations to come. I think I feel a book title coming on: The Mulroney-Chretien Years: A Study in Multi-Generational Screw-Ups.

Yeah, I know, this is pretty bleak for a late Friday post, but cynicism isn''t regulated under NAFTA (yet), so I think I'll indulge myself a bit.

This is actually a few years old, but I just found it recently so, hey, it's new to me. Anyway, I had to laugh, especially at the puzzlement and outrage of the apprehended sailors.

I knew it would be fun blogging with the Conservatives in power, but Stephen Harper has been making it more fun than a barrel of easily-discarded principles. What's the latest on his that-was-then-this-is-now agenda? Ethics Commisioner Bernard Shapiro, who stands to be tossed out of his job for - gasp! - locking horns with the Prime Minister.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper promised during the recent election campaign to "clean up Ottawa." He said "accountability and ethics will be at the centre of our governing agenda." He pledged to "improve Canadians' faith in public institutions." And he vowed to lead by example.

There was little of that high ethical purpose on display yesterday as Harper stiff-armed federal Ethics Commissioner Bernard Shapiro, who is trying to decide whether Harper broke any rules by recruiting former Liberal MP David Emerson into the Conservative cabinet.

Asked whether he is still "loath to co-operate," as his staff said last week, Harper yesterday affirmed "nothing has changed." He also grandly invoked prime ministerial privilege, saying he has no intention of "ceding" his constitutional right to appoint people to cabinet.

But no prime minister gets to decide unilaterally the legitimacy of an ethics probe. That is the commissioner's business. And Members of Parliament of all political parties are duty bound to assist.

Nor is Shapiro trying to subvert the Prime Minister's authority. He is responding to complaints that Harper's recruitment of Emerson barely two weeks after the election bent the rule that says "a Member shall not act in any way to further his or her private interests."

Granted, the complaints seem far-fetched. By that logic any MP who defects to get a fatter minister's pay and perks would breach the code. Emerson's switch looks like a political deal, nothing more sinister. It also looks like a deal that Shapiro should not be investigating in the first place.

Even so, rather than presume to judge the judge, Harper should do what he can to help. Anything less would betray the high principles he voiced during the campaign.

I agree that the complaint seems rather petty, and that the opposition is only seeking to make some political hay out of it, but why is Harper playing right into their hands? Let the complaint go forward, and when it is judged to have no merit (as it almost certainly will) , Harper can carry on confident that he has played by the rules. Instead, he chooses to attack Shapiro, and trample the principles he outlined in his campaign. And it's not the first time he has given the high hat to Shapiro, either.

Well before this crisis, Harper also refused to assist Shapiro during a probe of allegations that former Liberal health minister Ujjal Dosanjh offered former Tory MP Gurmant Grewal rewards for his support in a vote that could have felled the minority Liberal government. For four months, Harper said he was too busy to meet Shapiro. Dosanjh was cleared.

And so Harper once again shows his grievous lack of political instincts, leaving himself open to charges of illegal activity from opposition MPs.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's reluctance to co-operate with the federal Ethics Commissioner's probe of a former Liberal cabinet minister's decision to switch sides sets a “dangerous precedent” and flies in the face of both rules governing MPs and the Tories' own planned accountability legislation, Liberal MP Wayne Easter charged Thursday.

Mr. Easter – one of three MPs to launch the original ethics complaint over Vancouver-area MP David Emerson's decision to cross the floor – also said during a press conference in Ottawa that members of the House of Commons are required to co-operate with such a probe under federal legislation.

Oh, how quickly those principles go by the wayside when the tables are turned. Instead of the upright, honest-government party they portrayed themselves as in the election, the Conservatives are starting to look like nothing more than Liberals with new business cards.

Just to go off on a completely different tack, the CBC is finally getting around to showing its two part mini series on Tommy Douglas Sunday and Monday. I find I'm having a strange reaction to the prospect.

I was born in small town Saskatchewan a couple of years after Douglas became premier. My family were almost all die hard CCF supporters and Douglas was a major figure during my early years. I met Tommy a couple of times as a kid and heard him speak on several occasions. But I find myself having a curiously ambivalent reaction to seeing the series.

I've commented before that Stephen Harper has some idiosyncratic political tendencies, including his disdain for government itself, his need to blame others for his mistakes and his inability to admit to misjudgments of his own. These have led him into some choppy waters in his first month as Prime Minister, but I get the feeling the worst is yet to come. Although the Conservative communications shop has seen several major turnovers in staff already, I foresee major burnout in this area in the future, as Harper's media handlers struggle to keep decent relations between the press and a Prime Minister who clearly holds the media in contempt.

Members of the national media may already be on a war-footing with Stephen Harper and his staff over regular access to the centre of Canadian political power, but the new Prime Minister doesn't care.

Some newspaper columnists and reporters are flummoxed by the steely-eyed Prime Minister Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) who is holding imperial pressers in the Commons foyer, who fired his director of communications in a snap last week and who won't be dictated to by the national media.

"The Press Gallery's position is always going to be one of confrontation," said John Ibbitson, a columnist for The Globe and Mail, in an interview with The Hill Times last week. "It's no secret that Harper has a disaffection for the fourth estate, but it doesn't mean the relationship will be toxic."

With grumblings from the Parliamentary Press Gallery about the lack of accessibility to the new Prime Minister, Mr. Ibbitson said that it's all about how the relationship is managed. "It's not like, 'Oh my God, this hasn't happened before,'" he told The Hill Times. "I just don't buy it yet. It's too early. I mean, I didn't think Chrétien's and Martin's relationship [with the media] was very healthy either."

But in a column headlined, "A Conservative Pierre Trudeau is taking charge," Globe columnist Lawrence Martin said Mr. Harper would not likely be intimidated by the press gallery.

"Like a Pierre Trudeau, he suffers from few internal doubts and will be inclined to take orders only from above--the space between his eyes and hair."

Toronto Star political affairs columnist Chantal Hébert declared in one column last week, "In the week that followed their swearing-in, Harper's controversial Cabinet recruits were left to twist in the bitter wind of a national backlash while the Prime Minister perfected his media vanishing act."

When former Liberal Industry Minister David Emerson (Vancouver Kingsway, B.C.) crossed the floor to become the Conservative International Trade Minister, Prime Minister Harper made a statement after his first Cabinet meeting and was nowhere to be found commenting on the subject again.

Larry Zolf has a new article out. Since I got on him last time for 'Zolfing', it only seems fair to compliment him when he gets it right. There isn't that much new in this article but it features a good summary of the attitudes of our shiny slightly tarnished new Prime Minister and a couple of good shots at Jack Layton.

Will Harper defend medicare?
Ralph Klein has come up with a two-tiered health-care plan that has found a lot of support within the Conservative party. The Alberta premier's proposal would allow doctors to practise both in the private sector and within Alberta's public-insurance scheme....

The plan would drain funds away from the public sector and give it to the private sector. This is two-tier medicine....

Counting on the prime minister to save medicare may be a bit of a long shot. His track record on the issue is not quite that of the NDP, who invented medicare, and the Liberals, who enacted it.

Harper has a notorious aversion to the welfare state. His National Citizens Coalition fought medicare from day one and, as a Reformer, he opposed publicly funded health care....

Harper has publicly backed medicare because he knows how popular it is with voters. In 2004, the Liberals linked Harper with a hidden agenda of being pro-Klein and two-tier medicine....

However, the welfare state is anathema to the prime minister's right-wing, pro-business, pro-free enterprise agenda. He once promised that if Reform ever got in, all social services provided by the federal government, especially medicare, would undergo a microscopic re-examination.

He is on record as condemning Canada as a second-rate, second-tier socialist welfare state, and has cited medicare as proof of Canada's failure in the social-service area....

To Harper, medicare, old-age pension and unemployment insurance all sap individual initiative and make for a society of parasites. The prime minister wants a society of rugged individualists in a free-market economy. He likes Klein's reforms but does not consider it wise politically to say so.

That pretty much finishes it for Harper but Zolf isn't done yet. He has some choice comments about Layton that I'm sure will offend the faithful but I think are well deserved.

What is surprising here is Jack Layton's virtual silence on the issue. For days, the NDP leader said nothing about the two-tier scheme. He did not lay a finger on Klein nor did he voice any suspicion about Harper's agenda in all this.

Layton has no one to worry about. It was Layton who plunged the country into a snap election because he said the Liberals could not be trusted to defend medicare.

He has refused to criticize Klein, nor has he expressed any doubts about Harper's track record as a Reformer on medicare. It looks like the prime minister has reduced Layton to a trained poodle.

Odie had plenty of yap in him when he was questioning the Liberals' credibility on protecting medicare and he damn well better have saved some of it for the Conservatives. If Layton's mustache doesn't soon start showing up on the end of every microphone in sight, "trained poodle" is a whole helluva lot kinder than some of the things I'm going to be calling him.

Declan at Crawl Across the Ocean has been looking at our health care system compared to other systems in the world, and he does a great job of refuting the "unsustainable" myths pushed by advocates of privatization.

The series of posts is here, here, here and here, and he wraps the series up with a bunch of links to other well thought out posts on the issue of health care.

Superlative work, and a valuable resource for anyone looking to refute the many myths employed by those who advocate for the end of public health care in Canada.

The United States, home of personal entrepreneurship, economic innovation and solid conservative business values:

WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary John Snow notified Congress today that the administration has taken "all prudent and legal actions," including tapping certain government retirement funds, to keep from hitting the $8.2 trillion US national debt limit.

In a letter to Congress, Snow urged legislators to pass a new debt ceiling immediately to avoid the country's first-ever default on its obligations.

"I know that you share the president's and my commitment to maintaining the full faith and credit of the U.S. government," Snow said in his letter to leaders in the House and Senate.

Treasury officials, briefing congressional aides last week, said that the government will run out of manoeuvring room to keep from exceeding the current limit sometime during the week of March 20.

Snow in his letter notified legislators that Treasury would begin tapping the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund, which Treasury officials said would provide a "few billion" dollars in extra borrowing ability.

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains
And the women come out to cut up your remains
Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
And go to your Gawd like a soldier.

- Rudyard Kipling

Many an army has had its back broken on the harsh, blood-soaked hills of Afghanistan. From Alexander the Great to the British Empire at its peak to the mighty army of the Soviet Union, all have entered Afghanistan as conquerers only to slink out in defeat, with little to show for the precious blood spilled on all sides. Meanwhile, the locals remain, left to continue their existence in a culture forged by endless war, tribal rivalries and medieval social institutions.

Into the crossorads of Hell marches the Canadian Army, a brave and professional if under-equipped group of soldiers who carry with them a nation's honourable military history built on victory and peacemaking. How will our fellow citizens fare in a crucible that has burned up the mightiest military machines humanity has ever produced?

I was an early supporter of the Afghan mission and I remain so today. The Taliban were clear supporters of international terrorism, and needed to be excised like the tumour they were. That they made the people of Afghanistan suffer under their malignant rule was awful enough. When they chose to outsource their vile beliefs under the auspices of Al Qaeda, the world rightly took action. Had George Bush not chosen to largely abandon Afghanistan and move the bulk of his forces to the Iraq debacle, much progress might already have been made in building some lasting institutions (although given the proven incompetence of Bush and his cronies, that is by no means certain).

From DailyKos this morning:

HomeSecRuleBreak: Pay Off Your Credit Cards, Get Investigated
by lapin [Subscribe]
Fri Mar 03, 2006 at 12:56:24 AM PDT

Hey guess what! Paying off your credit card debt is now considered questionable behavior in New America. This post 9/11 world requires people who actually pay off their debt to be considered a threat to national security. Here's the link. A vital story too important to paraphrase. A retired school teacher in Rhode Island tried to pay off his Mastercard which had a balance of $6,522. His actions compelled his bank to report the transaction to Department of Homeland Security, which froze his transaction until it could be investigated.

First, my apologies for the stilted writing in this post. I have been experimenting with voice recognition software with very uneven results. This isn't one of the better ones but I have the material around for about twenty more posts so I'm not going to take the time to rewrite this one.

This is a followup on Tim's recent post on the the Restless Conservative Masses. The data comes from two SES polls released last week.

Oh my goodness, but aren't the right wingers excited. William Tierney, former UN weapons inspector who said God led him to the location of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction has circulated some old tapes of Saddam Hussein and his henchmen discussing, among other things, chemical and biological weapons. This, our friends on the right would have us believe, is PROOF CONCLUSIVE that Saddam had WMD and had to be invaded and Bush didn't lie and the EVIL "MSM" is hiding the truth from the masses!

Let's see what has the gang all up in arms:

(CNSNews.com) - Reportedly armed with 12 hours of Saddam Hussein's audio recordings, the organizers of an upcoming "Intelligence Summit" are describing the tapes as the "smoking gun evidence" that the Iraqi dictator possessed weapons of mass destruction in the period leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

The U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which according to the New York Sun has already authenticated the Saddam tapes, has reopened its investigation into the possible existence and location of the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD). But some long-time liberal skeptics are showing no inclination to change their minds.

David Emerson already has a whiff of sleaze about him after switching poltiical parties immediately after the last election, but if he actually screwed over Canada's softwood lumber producers by scuttling a deal at the last minute for political reasons, then it's time this boil on the body politic was lanced.

OTTAWA—Here's the plot of a real-life political thriller: David Emerson defected to the Conservatives this week carrying a multi-billion dollar softwood lumber deal that Liberals, for political reasons, didn't finalize before the federal election.

Former colleagues as well as officials and diplomats privy to the secret, backchannel talks insist Emerson was instrumental in delaying a breakthrough in the decades-old dispute that cost thousands of Canadian jobs. They say the former Liberal industry minister worried that a pre-election announcement would damage Liberal prospects in key British Columbia ridings.

In a telephone interview last night, Emerson confirmed he raised concerns about the proposal after discussions with the B.C. government and softwood industry. But he said it's a "false story" to suggest his resistance was politically motivated and insisted the deal on the table before the election wasn't good enough for Canada then and isn't now.

Liberals and non-partisan sources tell a different story. They say the B.C. government and its powerful forestry industry only lost interest in the plan after meetings with Emerson. His objections, along with concerns in Paul Martin's office that a pre-election deal would stop the then-prime minister from using George W. Bush as a campaign punching bag, convinced Liberals to delay formal negotiations at least until after the January election.

Informally discussed on parallel tracks here and in the U.S., the plan calls for Washington to reimburse about 75 per of the disputed $5 billion in tariffs imposed on Canadian lumber in return for Ontario and Quebec export quotas. In B.C., there would be higher stumpage fees to keep mills in the province's interior from flooding the U.S. market with cheap wood culled from forests hard-hit by mountain pine beetle infestations.

Those behind-the-scenes talks, led in Washington by Ambassador Frank McKenna and nursed in Ottawa by then-international trade minister Jim Peterson, were rapidly moving the two countries toward brief formal negotiations and a quick deal until they tripped over political realties. At the time, Martin's government was publicly resisting Bush administration pressure to return to the negotiating table, arguing that Canada had won serial tribunal decisions and would settle for nothing less than complete victory and full compensation.