August 2006 Archives

Opposition anti-U.S. on softwood, Emerson says

International Trade Minister David Emerson said Thursday that threats to vote against softwood lumber legislation show the Opposition parties are anti-American.

"I know that both the NDP and the Liberals are staunchly anti-American in their inner core," Emerson told The Canadian Press in an interview Thursday.

Brison compared Ignatieff to Stockwell Day, who jumped from provincial politics to become leader of the now-defunct Canadian Alliance without any experience at the federal level.

Sorry, but I just had to share. That sudden vision of Ignatieff in a wetsuit gave me such a jolt.

We do have some solid archives and wonderfully serious and profound reflections on the candidacy of Michael Ignatieff for the Liberal leadership, most recently here.

But the leadership race is politics, after all, and Scott Brison (a flagging contender) is not so wrong to be worrying, as he was today, that Ignatieff's way of, ah, interfacing with the Canadian public is not going all that smoothly:

In the most pointed broadside yet against the acclaimed academic, Scott Brison said Ignatieff's repeated miscues suggest the rookie MP has poor political judgment and insufficient experience to lead a national party.

"These gaffes are damaging to a leadership campaign but they will be terminal to a national general election campaign," Brison said in an interview.

Brison's attack was prompted by what he called Ignatieff's "gaffe of the week" -- a refusal to commit to running in the next election if he doesn't win the party's leadership.

"Depends who's leader," Ignatieff told the Toronto Star's editorial board, adding that there are "all kinds of ways you can stay committed and involved and active in the Liberal Party of Canada, believe me, without being an MP."

Ignatieff clarified his intentions in an interview Wednesday with The Canadian Press.

"Let's be clear. I am planning to run in the next election in Etobicoke-Lakeshore. I love being an MP and I've enjoyed it enormously and I'm looking forward to doing it again," said Ignatieff, who first won election last January.

...

Asked why he didn't say that when the Star first asked, Ignatieff said he considered hypothetical questions about his political future should he lose the leadership contest to be moot.

So the gloves are off. Brison was not alone in prickling at Ignatieff's musings in the Star interview over his own level of commitment.

Lest you think the "harmonization" of Canadian and American business practices, border security laws and labour standards is just happening haphazardly, fear no more. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has handed all that busywork to a group of Conservative corporate flunkies, who are now part of the North American Competitiveness Council.

According to the US Department of State, the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) met in Washington on August 15 to find ways "to cut red tape or eliminate unnecessary barriers to trade in North America," and to set priorities for the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP).

"Corporations such as Lockheed Martin, Wal-Mart, Suncor and Chevron should not be shaping economic policy between Canada and the United States," says Jean-Yves LeFort, trade campaigner with the Council of Canadians. "The North American Competitiveness Council gives far too much power to business leaders who are clearly more interested in profit than in what's best for Canada."

Prime Minister Stephen Harper named ten corporate executives to the NACC at a meeting of North American leaders in Cancun, Mexico this past March. Nine of those ten appointees represent corporations that are members of the powerful Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), whose North American Security and Prosperity Initiative led to the signing of the SPP by Canada, Mexico and the US in March 2005.

The CCCE makes no secret of its ultimate goal: the integration of the Canadian and US economies, the harmonization of our foreign, security and immigration policies, as well as common environmental, health and other regulations. In a meeting this past March, the US branch of the NACC set five clear objectives for the SPP, including "energy integration," and "private sector involvement in border security".

If Canadians can take some small comfort in Iraq, it is because we wisely chose not to become involved in what has become a maelstrom of violence, kidnapping and religious strife. Unfortunately, we may not be so fortunate with the next quagmire: the coming confrontation with Iran.

The Bush administration is ramping up the same propaganda machine it used to dupe the American electorate into war with Iraq, only this time the target is Iran, with the awesome spectre of nuclear arms being held over the heads of frightened Americans. Author and media critic Edward S. Herman identifies the role of the media in acting as a mouthpiece for Bush administration goals:

Iran is the next U.S. and Israeli target, so the mainstream U.S. media are once again serving the state agenda by focusing on Iran’s alleged menace and refusing to provide context that would show the menace to be pure Orwell—that is, while Iran is seriously threatened by the U.S. and its aggressively ethnic-cleansing client, Iran only threatens the possibility of self-defense.

You might have thought that after the retrospectively awkward and embarrassing media service to Bush’s lies about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction and dire threat to U.S. national security, which greased the skids to the invasion/occupation of Iraq, that the media would be less prone to jump uncritically on war propaganda bandwagons. But you would be wrong. It is a pretty reliable law of media performance that whenever the state targets an enemy, the media will get on the bandwagon enthusiastically or, at minimum, allow themselves to be mobilized as agents of propaganda and disinformation. Given the power of the United States and the extreme weakness of its usual targets, the claims of the fearsome threat posed by the targets is always comical. My favorite remains Guatemala in the early 1950s, when the National Security Council claimed that this poor, tiny, and effectively disarmed country was “increasingly [an] instrument of Soviet aggression in this hemisphere” and was posing a security threat to the United States as well as its neighbors. As in the case of Iraq in 2002-2003, most of the neighbors failed to recognize the dire threat and had to be bribed and coerced into supporting the U.S. position and the UN had to be (and was) neutralized.

Updated. Please see below.

The Tyee has an excerpt from testimony delivered by an American trade lawyer to our own Standing Committee on International Trade. Not only does Elliot Feldman lambaste the Conservatives' softwood lumber deal as a rotten deal for Canada but he lets us in on something that ought to be a headline on every media outlet in the country: of the one billion dollars plus that we're allowing the Americans to keep under the terms of that deal, $450 million goes straight to the White House with no congressional oversight. The legalese in the contract says it will go for "meritorious initiatives". Feldman calls it a slush fund and suggests that it will be used to help campaigning Republicans who are desperate to maintain control of both houses of congress in November's mid-term elections.

This peace on softwood lumber will probably not improve Canada's relations with the United States, because this colossal sum of money is going to the White House, not the U.S. Treasury. When the Democratic party learns of it and understands it, it's not likely to be pleased, and it's possible that, despite the infusion of such money, the Democrats nevertheless will win in November. Canada may then have much improved relations with the Republican party but not with the United States.

It should be of great interest and concern to all Democrats and to all Americans that Canada has apparently become the primary financier of Republican election campaigns in the upcoming November elections

I'm so glad the adults are in charge. Aren't you?

Update:

Lambert at Corrente has a detailed post in which he dissects the language in the agreement to try and sort out what's going on here. His conclusion? It's a slush fund. The money will be controlled by a board that's established to oversee implementation of the Softwood Lumber Agreement and as Lambert notes:

No qualifications of any kind are required for the members of the board that will implement the SLA and disburse the $450 million, so Bush can appoint anybody he wants.

How very odd. Yesterday, the New York Times blocked access to one of its online articles for all readers in Britain:

Published in the US yesterday under the headline "Details emerge in British terror case", the article claims to reveal new information about the alleged terror bomb plot that brought British airports to a standstill earlier this month.

Online access to the article from the UK has been blocked and the shipment of yesterday's paper to London was stopped. The story was also omitted from the International Herald Tribune, the NYT's European sister paper.

...

Anyone from the UK attempting to read the article via the New York Times website is met with the message: "This Article Is Unavailable. On advice of legal counsel, this article is unavailable to readers of nytimes.com in Britain. This arises from the requirement in British law that prohibits publication of prejudicial information about the defendants prior to trial. "

It is believed to be the first time that the paper has stopped British readers accessing one of its articles because of worries about UK law.

The Times article is here, although if you are one of our faithful readers in Britain, you're probably not going to be able to read it, and I'm not about to flout anybody's law, although I have a few things to say about this one. The Times' own news story about this unprecedented step is here.

I'm going to skip most of Zolf's rambling and get right to the climax of his piece.

Anti-Americanism and the Canadian Identity

Still anti-Americanism is very much connected to the Canadian identity. Canadian hatred for George W. Bush and his war on terrorism is massive. Bush-hatred is definitely anti-American. Anti-Americanism has always been tied up with the Canadian identity. Anti-Americanism is dangerous and reeks of racism. Harper has been right in fighting it. The NDP and Liberals are too prone to be anti-American.

Anti-Americanism can be racist. It is a disease. It should stop being so essential a part of the Canadian identity.

Let's see. Financial mismanagement that has turned a respectable surplus into a huge deficit? Check. Foreign policy that has left Iraq in bloody chaos and made the Middle East, a region that was already dangerously unstable, even more unstable? Check. A War on Terror™ that has made the threat of terrorism even greater? Check. Policies that support illegal detention and torture? Check. A theory of government that asserts unqualified power in the hands of the executive in complete contradiction of the American system of government and the Constitution? Check. I could go on but you get the idea.

And so, the question, Larry: how bad does George Bush have to be before opposition to him and his policies stops being the kind of knee-jerk, racist anti-Americanism you describe and becomes, you know, a position that is at least acknowledged as a reasonable reaction to the last five and a half years? How low are you really setting the bar?

Chewing our cud in Ottawa: Canadian uselessness in Mideast

THREE CANADIAN opposition MPs go to Lebanon and suggest that maybe we should talk to Hezbollah. The Harper government freaks out. The prime minister’s parliamentary secretary, Jason Kenney, rages about how it would be like talking to Nazis. The muddled Liberals get even more muddled, and the Liberal among the three MPs resigns his post as foreign affairs critic.
...
...we’re going to talk to Hezbollah, terrorist status or not. This won’t be because either the Harper government or the Liberal party will have changed their minds, but because we’ll have to. Whoever speaks for the Western world will talk to Hezbollah in the same way as the British ended up talking to the IRA, or the French to the Algerian rebels in the time of Charles de Gaulle.

How little choice we have in the matter might be indicated by this little news item. Western aid agencies trying to deliver relief to Lebanon are in a bind because, on the ground, they’ve found that the only outfit capable of distributing aid efficiently is Hezbollah, which they’re not allowed to talk to. The aid, apparently, is being distributed anyway – through Hezbollah.

Michael Valpy's long biographical profile of Michael Ignatieff in the Focus section of today's Globe and Mail is destined to become a valuable resource (and guide to other sources) in future, so go find, save, and read.

I am struggling with my own thoughts about the Ignatieff saga. On the one hand, I think that, for most of us, the principled thing to do is to continue to focus on the man's published historical and political work or, now, his public pronouncements as a candidate for the Liberal leadership. The critic I know who has the best files on Ignatieff's political writings, who never writes an analytical word without attaching it carefully to Ignatieff's own words, is Stephen of No BMD, eh? Stephen takes the high road, and I am always aiming to emulate him in my small way. (I am also clearly aiming to tempt him to comment at length here.)

On the other hand (and you knew there was an other hand coming, didn't you), not only is Ignatieff's biography immensely revealing of several layers of character, but he has himself traded very publicly on his biography. Well: he has traded publicly on the lives of many of those closest to him, apparently in search of an identity for himself:

Because somebody ought to do it. (That's Stevie Ray Vaughan in case you can't tell.)

It is a sad fact that many Canadians are ignorant about the fascinating and rich history of this country. This is tragic, as we tend to lose a sense of ourselves as a people if we do not know the common roots that grow from the shared experiences that have shaped this nation.

I was encouraged by the tremendous interest that Canada: A People's History generated when it aired on CBC. It shows there is a hunger for well-told stories, and our history is full of them. But as admirable as such projects like C:APH are, television is a passive medium, feeding information to us without any need for us to engage in much in creative thinking. How to get people involved in doing their own searching through Canadian history, to discover for themselves the way of life of our ancestors, and the forces that have made us the people we are today?

The right wing blogosphere recently wanked itself dry over Stephen Taylor's catch of the CBC editing quotes, ostensibly to make Stephen Harper look bad. The CBC apologized, and the wingers sat back, secure in the fact that they have proven their "liberal media" trope once again. Interesting that no such outrage greeted the National Post's appalling "lapse" about Iran requiring Jews to wear special clothing, but hey, selective memory is nothing if not convenient.

But that's history. Let's take a look at two issues that have recently been highlighted in the blogosphere, and see how the allegedly liberal media has played them out.

The left blogging community erupted with righteous outrage when Conservative MP Jason Kenney was found addressing a group listed as terrorists just days after slagging a Liberal MP for suggesting it might be constructive to talk with Hezbollah in seeking a lasting peace in Lebanon. The progressive bloggers were responding to a story from the Toronto Star, which was eventually picked up by CBC and CTV.

As of this writing, the Globe and Mail has ignored the story (except for Dan Cook's link to the Star story in his political blog), as has the National Post, Global News and Sun Media. The huge reaction from the progressive blogs has not pushed the story an inch further. Yet this has everything that makes a good news story: hypocrisy, incompetence and a terrorist-related hook. What could justify ignoring it?

I'm wondering whether I should link to this once a month. Or even once a week.

What the Terrorists Want

I'd like everyone to take a deep breath and listen for a minute.

The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.

And we're doing exactly what the terrorists want.

We're all a little jumpy after the recent arrest of 23 terror suspects in Great Britain. The men were reportedly plotting a liquid-explosive attack on airplanes, and both the press and politicians have been trumpeting the story ever since.
...
Regardless of the threat, from the would-be bombers' perspective, the explosives and planes were merely tactics. Their goal was to cause terror, and in that they've succeeded.
...
Our politicians help the terrorists every time they use fear as a campaign tactic. The press helps every time it writes scare stories about the plot and the threat. And if we're terrified, and we share that fear, we help. All of these actions intensify and repeat the terrorists' actions, and increase the effects of their terror.
...
It's time we calm down and fight terror with antiterror. This does not mean that we simply roll over and accept terrorism. There are things our government can and should do to fight terrorism, most of them involving intelligence and investigation -- and not focusing on specific plots.

But our job is to remain steadfast in the face of terror, to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to not panic every time two Muslims stand together checking their watches. There are approximately 1 billion Muslims in the world, a large percentage of them not Arab, and about 320 million Arabs in the Middle East, the overwhelming majority of them not terrorists. Our job is to think critically and rationally, and to ignore the cacophony of other interests trying to use terrorism to advance political careers or increase a television show's viewership.

The surest defense against terrorism is to refuse to be terrorized.

Well, not really killed, but politically speaking, I think we should consider the odious Jason Kenney toast, done in by his own incompetence. After his offensive, pseudo-high minded comments about MPs Borys Wrzesnewskyj and Peggy Nash, he has been caught addressing a group designated as terrorists by Canada, the European Union and the U.S. on Parliament Hill(!). And he invoked the name of Stephen Harper in his welcome to them (! again).

OTTAWA—Conservative MP Jason Kenney, who likened Hezbollah to the Nazi party and condemned fellow MPs for urging dialogue with a terrorist organization, himself spoke to a rally organized by Iranian supporters of a banned terrorist group.

A photograph of Kenney, who is Prime Minister Stephen Harper's parliamentary secretary, appears on the website of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the political wing of the PMOI, or People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran.

The PMOI is one of the names used by the MEK, or Mujahedin-e-Khalq, an armed Iranian rebel group formally designated as a terrorist organization by the governments of Canada, the United States and the European Union. The Canadian government put the group on its official terror list in May 2005.

Kenney is shown addressing an April 6 rally on Parliament Hill, and the group says he welcomed participants "on his own behalf as well as the Prime Minister."

The group touts Kenney's support, saying "dozens of Iranians and supporters of the Iranian Resistance joined in a rally in front of the Canadian Parliament to condemn (the) clerical regime's plan to execute political prisoners in Iran, specially those affiliated to the PMOI."

The group has been lobbying to persuade governments in the United States and United Kingdom to remove it from their terror blacklists, and promotes itself as the democratic secular alternative to the Islamic clerical rulers of Iran.

But Human Rights Watch says the Iranian rebel group is itself responsible for serious human rights abuses. It interviewed former members of MEK who reported "abuses ranging from detention and persecution of ordinary members wishing to leave the organization, to lengthy solitary confinements, severe beatings and torture of dissident members."

The NCRI website says the April rally that Kenney attended was organized by "the Committee in Defence of Human Rights in Iran."

I see that my posts regarding the election of Dr. Brian Day as president-elect of the CMA have garnered some interest from bloggers on the right. If these criticisms came from virtually any other conservative bloggers, I would give them the consideration they deserve, which is little to none. But Damian and Andrew are two guys who I respect, but just happen to disagree with politically and philosophically on most points.

Both have expressed distress with my "apocalyptic" language in my posts regarding the CMA election. Since what we are looking at is an event that will most likely speed the end of public health care as we have known it in this country since 1963, I think apocalyptic tones are called for. And what pisses me off about this more than anything is that we are chucking the system not because it doesn't work, but because it has been made to not work.

Public health care in this country hummed along nicely for decades. The system worked well, our infant mortality rates dropped, our average lifespan rose, and people had good access to a broad range of services. In the early 80s, however, a major offensive in the media began: the public health care system is not sustainable, it is too expensive, it keeps Canada's taxes too high. Each of these myths was drummed out repeatedly, and people's confidence in a once successful system began to falter. These messages were being pushed by corporations who sought tax reductions for the sake of tax reductions, or desired entry into the health care market. They found sympathetic ears in the Mulroney government, but did not see their true malignant flowering until the bleak Chretien years. Between 1986 and 1999, $38 billion dollars was cut from health care funding. Despite these brutal cuts (most of which has since been restored), the system still works remarkably well, but each and every misstep in the system is parroted by a willing media and pushed by think tanks and corporations, thereby giving the impression of a health care system tottering on the brink.

Updated. Please see below.

Private health care advocate Dr. Brian Day has won the presidency of the Canadian Medical Association, defeating Dr. Jack Burak - a supporter of strengthened public health care - in the CMA election that took place today in Charlottetown.

Day's elections marks another victory for the corporate and government interests who have fpr decades been successfully undermining the integrity of our public health care system and our faith in its ability to provide quality care.

CHARLOTTETOWN (CP) — Delegates attending the Canadian Medical Association annual meeting have chosen Dr. Brian Day, an advocate of more private involvement in health care, to be their president-elect.

Day says that while he has never supported the privatization of health care he does believe there is a place for the private sector and more private-public partnerships in providing care for Canadians.

The election was an unusual break in tradition for the influential medical association which represents over 62,000 Canadian physicians.

Day, owner of a private surgical clinic in Vancouver, was the nominee chosen by ballot in British Columbia, the sponsoring province for the association's next president elect.

Usually delegates rubber stamp the association's choice.

This time advocates of a strengthened public system nominated Dr. Jack Burak from the floor to run against Day.

Although Day will be the spokesman for the association when he becomes president next year, policy is set by delegates at annual meetings and by the board of directors.

Every time I post something about an Eric Margolis article I manage to piss off people on both sides of the table who seem to be far more interested in condemning Margolis for some perceived past indiscretion than actually reading his current article. However, I see that both Tim and Skdadl recently quoted Margolis indirectly without the sky y'know falling and such.

In the article written after the one from which they quoted, Margolis does an assessment of Bushco's four fiascos to date. Whatever his past indiscretions may be, I think he hits it with this piece:

Amateur Warlords
For a leader who styles himself "the war president," U.S. Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush's military record now stands at 0 for 4. Even Italy's born-again "imperial Roman conqueror," Benito Mussolini, fared better.

- Fiasco I: Five years after Bush ordered Afghanistan invaded and proclaimed "total victory," U.S. and allied forces are fighting a losing war against Afghan resistance groups. Afghan heroin exports are up 90%. The U.S. just quietly deployed thousands more troops to Afghanistan to hunt Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri in a desperate attempt to save Republicans from getting clobbered in November midterm elections.

Updated. Please see below.

Far from bringing greater stability to the Middle East and increasing Israel’s security, it is obvious now that the military debacle that is Israel’s war against Hezbollah has achieved exactly the opposite effect.

The war that George Bush wanted as the opening act for his military intervention against Syria and Iran has instead given confidence to the Syrians and the Iranians, who see in Israel’s defeat signs of vulnerability in the west’s vaunted military prowess.

You remember Jeff Gannon, don't you? Karen Ryan? Armstrong Williams? Maggie Gallagher? Michael McManus?

[27 January 2005: "And Three Makes a Trend"]: Responding to the latest revelation, Dr. Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at [the Department of Health and Human Services], announced Thursday that HHS would institute a new policy that forbids the agency from hiring any outside expert or consultant who has any working affiliation with the media. "I needed to draw this bright line," Horn tells Salon. "The policy is being implemented and we're moving forward."

...

Horn insists that HHS was not paying Gallagher and McManus to write about Bush administration initiatives but for their expertise as marriage advocates. "We live in a complicated world and people wear many different hats," he says. "People who have expertise might also be writing columns. The line has become increasingly blurred between who's a member of the media and who is not. Thirty years ago if you were a columnist, then you were a full-time employee of a newspaper. Columnists today are different."

Land's sakes, but ain't that the truth. Right here at POGGE International we talk about this all the time, about how we have all this expertise and we're also writing columns, sometimes maybe a bit blurry, ok, and yet we're still not full-time employees of any network or newspaper. We've got the hats, though, quite the collection. The hats are good. They make up for a lot.

There seems to have been another outbreak of blur in the U.S. recently, or at least the head of the Federal Communications Commission has decided that it is time for his agency to draw that bright line all over again and even brighter, for the sake of television networks and local stations that may not have noticed it the first time. Well, the several preceding times:

Via Kevin Drum, Thomas Greene at The Register (my favorite cheeky British publication) provides some insight as to how those British conspirators of recent note would have prepared their liquid explosives while in flight. I hope he doesn't mind me stealing his subtitle for a title. For that matter, I hope he doesn't mind me stealing half his article. It's a long enough quote that I'm going to send you to the extended entry.

The Canadian Medical Association finds itself in a bit of an ideological war that could have grave repercussions for the future of our national health system. The CMA president is usually chosen by acclamation, but this time, two B.C. doctors - each representing very different visions of public health care - are vying for the position.

Almost always, CMA presidents are nominated early and approved by acclamation. This time, not only is there a contest, it has become increasingly bitter, complete with electioneering, whisper campaigns and hard feelings.

Much is at stake. Many believe the choice by delegates next week at the CMA's annual general meeting in Charlottetown could have a profound impact on the future of Canada's health-care system.

Two Vancouver doctors with radically different health-care philosophies — family physician Jack Burak and private-clinic operator Brian Day — are vying for the CMA'S top job, effective in 2007.

Dr. Day, universally acknowledged as a superb orthopedic surgeon, is a widely known, outspoken advocate of expanding the role of private, for-profit clinics in Canada to cure the system's perceived ills, particularly surgical waiting lists.

Dr. Burak, on the other hand, believes strongly in strengthening publicly funded health care by making necessary changes to the system without allowing private-sector competition.

According to University of Toronto health-policy analyst Raisa Deber, the CMA has traditionally been “an extremely progressive voice” on behalf of Canada's public health-care system.

But choosing Dr. Day as president of the influential organization that purports to speak for the country's 62,000 doctors would jeopardize that, Prof. Deber said.

“He has been quite negative about medicare, and if he sticks with those views, then that will be quite a significant change for the CMA.”

A federal judge has ruled that the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and must be halted immediately:

[U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor] on Thursday ordered an immediate halt to the program, but the government said it would request a stay during the appeals process, arguing that the secret surveillance program is crucial to stopping terrorists.

"We have confidence in the lawfulness of this program," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said in Washington. "We're going to do everything we can do in the courts to allow this program to continue."

The American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the lawsuit, said it opposed the stay but agreed to delay enforcement of the injunction until the judge hears arguments Sept. 7.

That would be the same Alberto Gonzales, by the way, who explained to a congressional committee and the press earlier this year that the administration hadn't gone to Congress for authorization because they knew they would be turned down. Ahem.

For a sketchy background to the many interlinked abuses of the lawfulness-challenged Bush administration, you could start here, with an earlier instalment in our ongoing series. For a superb early analysis of Judge Anna Diggs Taylor's ruling yesterday, as well as the Rovian backlash against her that has already, predictably, begun, here is Glenn Greenwald's running commentary, begun yesterday when news of the judgement first appeared.

Here's another sign that the London bomb plot may not have been quite as great a threat as it was hyped.

Transport Canada is expected to make a decision Friday regarding the sale of duty-free liquor at Canadian airports.

Business has dropped since new security rules were introduced prohibiting passengers from carrying liquids and gels in hand luggage. Across the country, nearly 200 workers at duty-free shops, operated by the Nuance company, have been laid off.

The Greater Toronto Airport Authority, Nuance and Transport Canada have held daily meetings with Transport Canada [sic] since last Thursday.

"We're hoping we can implement a system as soon as an announcement is made to get sales back up to close to normal," said Scott Armstrong, GTAA spokesman.

Armstrong said the GTAA expects to hear a decision on Friday but did not elaborate on how the current security restrictions might be changed.

The U.S. Transport Security Administration relaxed some of its rules this week, allowing duty-free goods to be delivered to passengers on planes.

Remember the mania around fingernail clippers and nail files after the 9/11 attacks? Those moratoriums continue to this day, despite their inherent absurdity. If this was serious threat, authorities would be telling duty free shops to suck it up, and adjust to the new security regime. The fact that they are rolling over on this a week after the alleged plot was uncovered tells me there is less to this than Bush, Blair and their legions of bedwetters would have us believe.

Kurds flee homes as Iran shells Iraq's northern frontier

Turkey and Iran have dispatched tanks, artillery and thousands of troops to their frontiers with Iraq during the past few weeks in what appears to be a coordinated effort to disrupt the activities of Kurdish rebel bases.

Scores of Kurds have fled their homes in the northern frontier region after four days of shelling by the Iranian army. Local officials said Turkey had also fired a number of shells into Iraqi territory.
...
Frustrated by the reluctance of the US and the government in Baghdad to crack down on the PKK bases inside Iraq, Turkish generals have hinted they are considering a large-scale military operation across the border. They are said to be sharing intelligence about Kurdish rebel movements with their Iranian counterparts.
...
There has been sporadic shelling of the region since May but officials worry that concerted military action against PKK bases in Iraq could alienate Iraqi Kurds and destabilise their self-rule region, one of few post-invasion success stories. Some analysts say Ankara and Tehran may be trying to pressure Iraq's Kurds, afraid that their de facto independent region would encourage their own Kurdish population.

Alan Baker, Isreal's ambassador to Canada, followed up on his recent and unfortunate public comments regarding a rally for peace in Montreal by writing directly to BQ leader Gilles Duceppe to protest what Baker has continued to characterize as support for Hezbollah. Duceppe has responded publically.

Mr. Duceppe said the Bloc made it clear to organizers before the march it would not tolerate any pro-Hezbollah demonstrators or flags or anti-Israel slogans in the march. The Bloc and many other participants did their best to get Hezbollah supporters to leave but they kept coming back into the throng even after police intervened.

Describing the group as a tiny minority, Mr. Duceppe said Mr. Baker did not realize he had singled out the Hezbollah supporters from the stage and denounced them in his speech.

"We had them expelled I can't tell you how many times," he said. "We told them we don't want any Hezbollah flags here. We also had them stop shouting certain slogans but some started up again. We can't have complete control of 15,000 people."

I wonder if we'll see an apology from Mr. Baker.

So it looks now like the British bomb plot was a big to do about not very much. British author and diplomat Craig Murray asks some interesting questions about the arrests, and reassembles the facts without the political spin.

None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for quite some time.

In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.

What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year - like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.

Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes - which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn't give is the truth.

The gentleman being "interrogated" had fled the UK after being wanted for questioning over the murder of his uncle some years ago. That might be felt to cast some doubt on his reliability. It might also be felt that factors other than political ones might be at play within these relationships. Much is also being made of large transfers of money outside the formal economy. Not in fact too unusual in the British Muslim community, but if this activity is criminal, there are many possibilities that have nothing to do with terrorism.

We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and Blair discussing the possible arrests over the weekend. Why? I think the answer to that is plain. Both in desperate domestic political trouble, they longed for "Another 9/11". The intelligence from Pakistan, however dodgy, gave them a new 9/11 they could sell to the media. The media has bought, wholesale, all the rubbish they have been shovelled.

We then have the appalling political propaganda of John Reid, Home Secretary, making a speech warning us all of the dreadful evil threatening us and complaining that "Some people don't get" the need to abandon all our traditional liberties. He then went on, according to his own propaganda machine, to stay up all night and minutely direct the arrests. There could be no clearer evidence that our Police are now just a political tool. Like all the best nasty regimes, the knock on the door came in the middle of the night, at 2.30am. Those arrested included a mother with a six week old baby.

As a tense UN-brokered ceasefire enters its second day in Lebanon, people have begun returning to their homes to find scenes of devastation and death.

AINATA, LEBANON — Once, this was a quiet market town, a place where poor farmers sold olives to rich neighbours who made their fortunes far away from Ainata, but still spent summers close to home.

But Ainata, like other parts of southern Lebanon, was a place of grief and despair yesterday as residents who had fled during more than 30 days of warfare returned to see what was left of their village, taking advantage of a truce that held for a second day. As the returnees took in the scope of the destruction — entire villages laid to waste with barely a building left standing, the dead still being counted — the victorious mood of a day earlier as they streamed back waving Hezbollah flags, quickly evaporated.

In its place rose a deeper-than-ever hatred of Israel, as well as something newer and rarely voiced: anger at Hezbollah for having brought the ire of the Israeli army raining down on their village.

Come on in, President Ahmadinejad -- the blogosphere's fine:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has joined a burgeoning international community - by starting his own weblog.

...

Mr Ahmadinejad's first posting, entitled autobiography, tells of his childhood, Iran's Islamic revolution, and the country's war with Iraq.

...

The move by Mr Ahmadinejad comes amid continuing internet censorship by the Iranian government.

In a country where the media is strictly controlled, the internet has become the main forum for dissident voices.

But in its bid to crack down on anti-government bloggers, the government uses one of the most sophisticated internet censorship systems in the world.

Such restrictions will not pose a problem for the president. However, at the end of his first posting - which runs to more than 2,000 words in English - he promises to try to keep things "shorter and simpler" in future.

"With hope in God, I intend to wholeheartedly complete my talk in future with allotted 15 minutes," he writes.

Now, quoting Ahmadinejad's closing lines that way is maybe just a touch snarky of the BBC. As you can see from the president's site, the English, Arabic, and French versions are courtesies to those of us who can't read Persian (Farsi, I believe), so it would behove us to be grateful rather than sniffy about any curiosities of translation.

One of the most vocal sources for scepticism about climate change in Canada is a Calgary-based organization called Friends of Science. Not surprisingly it turns out they should really be called Friends of the Oil Industry. Declan at Crawl Across the Ocean points us to an article that provides a little background on the Friends and their funding. Short version: thanks to a little cooperation from a political science professor at the University of Calgary, oil patch money is effectively being laundered before being turned over to the Friends so they can pursue their shameless public relations campaign selfless work on behalf of science.

And that political science professor? Barry Cooper, known associate of Stephen Harper.

As Declan says, go read. This is wingnut welfare at work.

Think the term wingnut is a little harsh? Consider this:

Mr. Jacobs says he suspects that the Kyoto Accord was devised as a tool by United Nations bureaucrats to push the world towards a world socialist government under the UN.

The bomb plot broken up by the British police has released quite a frenzy. Many on the right of the spectrum are keen to trumpet this as proof that we need to feed more human flesh into the meat grinder known as the "war on terror." Let's take a quick stroll through today's front page of the Blogging Tories and see what's up.

One Barry Stagg pulled out his Thesaurus of Liberty (TM) to express his outrage that someone might find war to be a less than effective method of dealing with terrorism.

There are some who prefer the suffocating intoxication of appeasement instead of the bleak truth that barbaric nihilists continue to proselytize among the ignoramuses and fanatics who wish death upon the entirety of Western civilization.

Or maybe they just want westerners to stop bombing their cities into the ground. Ah well, po-tay-to, po-tah-to, you know?

Israeli ambassador denounces MPs for marching 'under Hezbollah flag'

Israel's ambassador to Canada has denounced federal Liberals, Bloc Quebecois and other Quebec politicians for taking part in a weekend pro-Lebanese rally in Montreal and aligning themselves with what he described as "incited" Muslims who have taken over Canadian streets.

"We're seeing the leaders of opposition parties marching in Montreal under Hezbollah flags -- Hezbollah, which is an organization, a terrorist organization that's been outlawed by Canadian law," Alan Baker, Israel's envoy to Canada, said at a press conference yesterday on Parliament Hill.

"Any opposition party that expresses surprise at the fact that Canada, a democratic country, is supporting the right of another democratic country to defend itself really doesn't understand where they're coming from."

Mr. Baker also expressed gratitude for the pro-Israeli stand of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper since the start of Israel's attacks on Lebanon nearly a month ago, designed to destroy the Hezbollah terrorist organization based there.

Mr. Baker's position sounds a lot like: either agree with us or keep your opinions to yourself. It seems a strange attitude for someone representing "the only democracy in the Middle East."

And by the way, I wonder what would happen if someone stood up at a press conference and talked about "incited Jews who have taken over Canadian streets"? Somehow I don't think it would go over well.

Late in June it was reported that Sympatico had revised their customer agreement to inform its customers that they had no expectation of privacy. I didn't yell at Sympatico in particular at the time because as skdadl wrote in comments to that post "Sympatico have jumped the gun, but they didn't load it."

Sure enough, the other major ISPs are all on board.

Privacy advocates are raising fears that the country's Internet service providers are turning into Big Brother watching every move you make on-line.

Bell Sympatico, Telus, Bell Aliant, Primus and Rogers all have clauses in their customer service agreements warning customers that they could be monitored at any time.

Bell Sympatico set off controversy in June when it changed its service agreement to allow monitoring, but University of Ottawa professor Wade Deisman said the industry has been monitoring customers for several years.

Lawyer Lawrence Greenspon, an outspoken advocate of privacy rights, said the language in each Internet provider's agreement is too broad, suggesting that they are monitoring customers' activities.

Updated. Please see below.

What do you get when you try to keep the passengers in your care safe during a Prime Ministerial flight? Fired, if that PM is Stephen Harper. From Lawrence Martin's column in today's Globe:

By way of illustration, on a recent trip, the Prime Minister was asked by a flight attendant to turn off his cellphone and BlackBerry. Mr. Harper declined. The pilot then made a request, saying it was for safety purposes. The PM relented. But, at the end of the journey, one of his staffers gave the pilot some news: His services would no longer be required on prime ministerial trips.[Emphasis mine.]

The aviator should have known that this is the new Ottawa. In Harpertown, you fall in line or fall from favour.

This charming anecdote, which nicely illustrates Harper's authoritarian nature, is part of a larger piece describing the purge among senior bureaucrats by the Harper government. Interestingly, the purge is not taking place along ideological lines, but rather according to the temperament of the individual mandarin. Those who might challenge the word of the PM are out: in their place are tractable yes-people who will faithfully carry out the diktats of the presidential PM.

You know, it's getting easier and easier to find examples of how utterly false all the Conservative political rhetoric was leading up the last election. This site has already covered many of these, from Pogge's "watch what they do, not what they say" posts, to my own musings on the subject of discarded political principles.

Today, we find another example, and it is a particularly galling one.

OTTAWA — The Conservative government has used an extraordinary “national security” clause to take control of $8-billion in recently announced military spending, allowing it to dole out contracts to the West, Quebec and the Atlantic.

The federal government lost the power to steer contract work to specific parts of the country with the 1994 signing of the Agreement on Internal Trade with the provinces. But as part of the continuing purchase of new planes and helicopters, the government has decided to invoke a national-security exception (NSE), which effectively removes these contracts from reach of the agreement.

A federal official said the net result is that Ottawa will be able to impose regional quotas on the economic benefits of the contracts.

The process provides additional powers to Industry Minister Maxime Bernier and the rest of the cabinet, which will likely face intense lobbying over the distribution of the benefits from provinces and the industry.

This story is in no way controversial. It will not spoil your lunch, keep you awake at nights, cause family feuds or permanent ruptures with your second-best friends. This is an entirely cheerful story, and I do apologize for that.

Last week the British National Archives put Domesday Book online. Please: no hyperventilating.

Not quite a census, Domesday Book (1086 and 1087) was a survey ordered by William of Normandy (William the Conqueror), twenty years after his triumph at the Battle of Hastings (1066 and all that), of all the landowners in (most of) England, for the purposes of deciding who owed him both taxes and service:

The nickname ‘Domesday’ may refer to the Biblical Day of Judgement, or ‘doomsday’ when Christ will return to judge the living and the dead. Just as there will be no appeal on that day against his decisions, so Domesday Book has the final word – there is no appeal beyond it as evidence of legal title to land. For many centuries Domesday was regarded as the authoritative register regarding rightful possession and was used mainly for that purpose.

This week many have blogged Michael Ignatieff's simply appalling interview with Linda Diebel in Wednesday's Toronto Star -- to my mind, none so eloquently as Greg Morrow at democraticSpace.

Reading Greg's careful deconstruction of that interview and the op-ed piece Ignatieff published the day before in the Globe and Mail (follow Greg's instructions) got me to thinking about the value of repeating some things, over and over and over again. Greg's post, for instance, certainly bears repeating. Of Ignatieff's now infamous lines

"Qana was, frankly, inevitable, in a situation in which you have rocket-launchers within 100 yards of a civilian population. This is the nature of the war that's going on.

"This is the kind of dirty war you're in when you have to do this and I'm not losing sleep about that."

Greg writes:

On the surface, it’s a classic rookie mistake. Ignatieff is not used to his every word being scrutinized and so he says things off the cuff. In an election campaign, the politically seasoned Stephen Harper would eat him alive if he said something so stupid. Even if you agree that civilian casualties happen in every conflict, and even if you hold Hezbollah in part responsible for locating its facilities amongst civilians, you don’t say that you are not going to lose any sleep over children dying.

But that’s if you only look at the surface. Upon further exploration ... his position is really much closer to Stephen Harper’s than he would like to admit. Unlike many of his fellow Liberal leadership candidates, who called for a ceasefire on humanitarian grounds — the hundreds of civilians killed, the tens of thousands trapped in southern Lebanon because roads of escape were destroyed by Israeli forces, and over 800,000 displaced — Ignatieff only called for a ceasefire now, after George W. Bush finally got around to it, and even then, only because “a ceasefire on the Israeli side becomes logical for Israel when it has achieved its military objectives and when it reaches the point of diminishing returns, and that is the point we’ve reached now.” So, the only reason for a cease-fire is because the continued violence no longer benefits Israel. Not because of civilian deaths.

This is bloody sad. Tarek Fatah has been a progressive voice of reason and compassion, speaking eloquently on behalf of Canada's Muslims on a wide range of difficult issues. Unfortunately, that voice has been silenced by the fundamentalist lunatics whose only expression of Islam is through hatred and rage. Today, Mr. Fatah announced he is leaving his post as spokesperson for the Muslim Canadian Congress, driven out by death threats and fear for his family.

I like Bill Maher. Funny as hell, willing to puncture conventional wisdom from all sides of the political spectrum, and usually pretty accurate in his assessment of the world.

But here, Maher goes beyond being wrong and enters the world of wingnut wrong.

As I watch so much of the world ask Israel for restraint in a way no other country would (Can you imagine what Bush would do if a terrorist organization took over Canada and was lobbing missiles into Montana, Maine and Illinois?) - and, by the way, does anyone ever ask Hezbollah for restraint. you know, like, please stop firing your rockets aimed PURPOSEFULLY at civilians? - it strikes me that the world IS Mel Gibson. Most of the time, the anti-semitism is under control, but that demon lives inside and when the moon is full, or there's been enough alcohol consumed, or Israel is forced to kill people in its own defense, then it comes out.

Here's an interesting approach to international trade disputes: tell your domestic lumber producers to fuck off and leave them to the mercy of rapacious Americans. I have to admit, it's novel.

Softwood producers reacted angrily Thursday to Ottawa's threat that it will offer them no further help if they reject the Canada-U.S. timber truce, with one person warning that some CEOs might boycott next week's summit with International Trade Minister David Emerson.

The Conservative government delivered its hardball warning Wednesday even as Mr. Emerson invited two dozen forestry chief executive officers to Toronto Aug. 9 in an attempt to salvage the controversial deal.

“I am not sure CEOs are going to feel like it's a good use of their time to fly to Toronto just to have the riot act read to them,” said Jamie Lim, president of the Ontario Forest Industries Association.

An irate British Columbia lumber industry executive warned that some CEOs might skip next Wednesday's meeting if Ottawa doesn't abandon its hardball tone.

“I wouldn't be surprised: It all depends on the next few days if the party line [from Ottawa] remains hard, fast and firm.

“If it does, I can see them boycotting or sending a junior person,” said the executive who did not want to be named.

In a stern warning Wednesday to the industry, a senior Conservative government official cautioned deal opponents they “should prepare themselves for the consequences of rejecting it and . . . might want to start contemplating a world where Ottawa is no longer in the business of subsidizing softwood disputes.”

The former Liberal government spent tens of millions of dollars a year in legal fees fighting the dispute in international courts and doled out hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the sector — help the Tory official warned is at risk: “If industry rejects this deal, everyone walks away and absolutely nothing about the previous Liberal government's costly stopgap approach to the deal is guaranteed.”

The threat drew a sarcastic response from a Manitoba forestry executive who says the five-year-old dispute has forced him to lay off one-third of his employees.

“I think that's a fantastic idea,” said Brock Cordes, the chief executive officer of North of Fifty, a Winnipeg-based lumber remanufacturer. “You wash your hands of Canada's second-largest industry, at a time when it is being devastated by the actions of a U.S. lumber [lobby],” he said, referring to the hard-line Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports that triggered the trade battle with Canada.

I was settling the kids into their bath last night when a knock came on the door. I opened it up to see an impeccably dressed young woman with her hair in a bun so severe it would make a Puritan wince. She had a clipboard in one hand and greeted me with a warm smile.

"Hi...?" I said, doing the friendly-but-puzzled thing you do with strangers at your door.

"Hi there," she said. "My name is _______. I'm with CSIS. I'm wondering if I could speak with you for a few minutes."

I stared for a few heavy seconds - a random thought running through my head. [That fucking blog! I knew Harper was reading all along!]

Then my little spasm of self-importance passed. "You're with who?"

"The Canadian Security Intelligence Service. You've heard of us?"

"Uh, yeah, of course I have. How can I help you?"

"I'd like to ask you a few questions. Do you have some time?"

Uh oh. It seems someone forgot to tell Canadians that moral, resolute Stephen Harper is making all the right moves in forging our position on the Middle East. Dissatisfaction grows.

OTTAWA -- A new poll suggests Tory support is sliding over voter concern that Canada has become too cozy with the United States on Middle East policy.

The latest results by Decima Research, released to The Canadian Press, put the Conservatives and Liberals in a virtual tie nationally.

The Tories had 32 per cent support compared with 31 per cent for the Liberals and 16 per cent for the New Democrats.

But the Liberals widened their Ontario lead to 42 per cent of voter support compared with 33 per cent for the Conservatives, and have pulled in front of the Tories in Quebec for the first time since last winter's campaign.

The two parties had been neck-neck in Ontario as recently as mid-June.

"When we look at the combination of the alignment of the government with the current U.S. administration policy on the Middle East -- and in particular with respect to the Lebanon-Israel conflict -- it's reasonable to assume it's one of the factors that's driving Conservative support down in the near term," said Decima CEO Bruce Anderson.

"They clearly are encountering some pushback from voters in Ontario and Quebec in particular."

Liberals have also taken the lead in crucial urban ridings by a margin of 35 per cent versus 29 per cent, and are increasingly preferred by women and by voters aged 25 to 34, the poll suggests.

Middle East policy and hefty new defence spending announced by the Tories in June have apparently left some Quebec voters cold, Anderson says.

The province tends to be the most pacifist in Canada. It's also where Harper has invested most of his political capital in a drive for a majority government.

(Updated. Please see below.)

Few are arguing that Israel has no right to defend itself in the face of rocket attacks by Hezbollah. What has angered much of the world is the manner in which the Israelis are doing it.

It looks now like the softwood lumber deal recently trumpeted as a victory by the Conservatives will fall apart due to industry dissatisfaction.

Separately, Canfor chief executive officer Jim Shepherd said he doubts the July 1 softwood lumber deal will be implemented unless it is reopened and amended to address industry concerns -- even though his company is prepared to live with the current agreement.

"Common sense would say that if there are no changes to the deal, it is highly problematic that this deal will go ahead," Mr. Shepherd said during a conference call that was made to discuss the firm's second-quarter results.

"I think an awful lot of work will be done to see if we can salvage this thing, but at this point it seems very discouraging that this will happen."

Canadian softwood producers have what amounts to a veto over the deal.

It can't proceed unless this country's companies withdraw about 30 lawsuits filed against the U.S. government in connection with the five-year-old dispute.

Mr. Shepherd's comments were the latest in a series of predictions by industry and provincial players who warned the deal could die if it's not sweetened.

But Mr. Emerson rejected calls to amend the deal, repeating the Tory government's month-old position that "negotiations have ended."

Actually, that is misleading. Negotiations never took place. The Canadian team was given a series of demands by American producers, who went though the motions of giving ground while actually getting everything they wanted, and a billion dollars in illegal tariffs to boot. Good on the industry for refusing be one more victim of U.S. intransigence.

But I am not here to discuss the softwood lumber agreement, but rather what it represents. What is truly illuminating about the softwood lumber dispute is that it is a microcosm of Canada's trade relationship with the United States, which is essentially the surrendering of our national sovereignty to binding (for us, not the Americans) agreements that benefit corporations and limit the ability of our own governments to respond to national issues in ways that work best for all Canadians.

Canadians are told time and time again that there are no other options. We must pursue free trade or stagnate, as if the possession of vast intellectual and resource wealth does not give us both international leverage and the tools for substantial propserity within a framework designed for our own benefit. The Canadian media stands fanatically opposed to any fundamental change in how we deal with international trade. Free trade is considered to be a positive end in and of itself, and we get precious little commentary or intellectual effort focused on what other approaches might work better for us.

However, a recent article from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives posits that, by and large, NAFTA, and the many other "free trade" agreements we have entered into with the United States, have proven to be detrimental to most Canadians, while disproportionately benefiting the super rich.

A poll by Probe Research released on Friday shows the overwhelming majority of Canadians oppose bulk exports of water to the US. Despite an extremely pro export worded question, 74% of Canadians opposed the export of water to the US.

NATIONAL SURVEY SHOWS CANADIANS REJECT SHIPPING WATER TO PARCHED AMERICA
Despite vast untapped reserves of potable water and the promise of economic gain, Canadians remain remarkably resistant to the notion that they should begin exporting their surplus drinking water to the U.S.A. These findings emerged from a national telephone survey of Canadian adults taken by Probe Research, Inc. between May 23rd and June 17th , 2006 among a random and representative sampling of 2,106 Canadian adults. This research was conducted as part of Probe's third national syndicated drinking water survey, on behalf of subscribers from both government and private-sector organizations...

Three-quarters of Canadians surveyed coast-to-coast (74%) insist that Canada should not begin selling its surplus
bulk water supplies to the U.S. because: "...before long the U.S. will be demanding so much of our water that we
will ultimately lose control over our water resources".