September 2006 Archives

Dirty Low Down and Bad - Keb' Mo'

Wednesday, 27 September:

Ottawa takes small knife to bloated spending

... Another $266-million in savings is tucked under the value-for-money category, including the elimination of the court challenges program that provided $5.6-million for non-profit groups to participate in significant Charter of Rights cases -- often involving participants opposed to federal laws. As Treasury Board President John Baird observed: "I just don't think it made sense for the government to subsidize lawyers to challenge the government's own laws in court."

...

... But there is no rule that existing programs must continue forever. Surely, Status of Women Canada, for one, which lost $5-million in funding for administration, does not need to exist in perpetuity.

Thursday, 28 September:

Aging dilemma

...

The aging population is a fact of life. Even under its medium population-growth scenario, Statistics Canada says deaths will exceed births by 2030; immigration will provide the only growth. What should Canada do? The C.D. Howe report looks at a scheme to eventually raise the retirement age to 70 from 65, by pushing it back one year every four years, starting in 2008 and stopping in 2024. Even that modest change does more to increase the number of working-age adults than extreme changes in immigration policy.

Such results should put politicians on alert. Immigration is a tool of limited use. They should also reduce incentives to retire early, improve productivity so fewer workers can produce more with better processes, and encourage more Canadians to enter the labour force. They should also examine ways to encourage women to have more children ...

Do we really need to comment much on the self-contradictions?

I just voted in the Globe and Mail's latest online poll. The question? "How concerned are you about global warming?" What surprised me was the results. As of this writing, over 18,000 people had voted and the results are: Very - 37%; Somewhat - 19%; Very little - 19%; Not at all - 25%.

At this point, after all the publicity of recent years, 44% of the poll's respondents still have few, if any, concerns about global climate change. Even taking into account that the G&M's right wing leaning readership tends to be reality challenged to begin with, this is pretty appalling.

It's going to be awfully hard to get all that sand out of their ears when they finally pull their heads out of the beach.

Top Mountie's tough day

RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli admitted yesterday he knew shortly after Maher Arar was deported to Syria in October 2002 that Canadian investigators had wrongly labelled him to American authorities as a terror suspect.

Yet Zaccardelli could not explain why he did not clear Arar publicly in Canada after news of his deportation broke, or fully acknowledge the RCMP's errors to his political masters for more than a year after, following Arar's release.

At the conclusion of Zaccardelli's testimony, he went out the back door of the committee room, and his boss, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, came in the side door.

Day publicly confirmed Zaccardelli and all members of the RCMP "have the confidence of the government of Canada."

Day said later it was the "forthrightness" of Zaccardelli's response to the issues raised in the O'Connor report that won him the government's confidence.

As for Doris, I seem to recall at the time that he was one of the first and the loudest to ask why the government was defending a terrorist when it attempted to intervene on Arar's behalf. I wonder when he'll apologize.

Both Houses of Congress in the United States have now approved legislation that would suspend the right of habeas corpus, allow the President to authorize interrogation methods that are illegal according to international law and retroactively grant American officials and their agents immunity from prosecution for previous human rights abuses.

In light of the fact that the American government has now formally repudiated international laws and norms governing due process and the human rights of detainees, can the Minister tell us what steps he plans to take to ensure that no Canadian intelligence or law enforcement officials and no members of the Canadian Forces* will be complicit in human rights abuses, and what steps he plans to take to, in so far as is possible, protect the rights of Canadian citizens in their dealings with the American government and its agents?

* Or should a separate question be directed to the Honorable Gordon O'Connor?

Here some interesting news from the world of private health care. It seems that employer-provided health insurance plans in the U.S. cost workers 7.7 percent more last year, which means it rose by twice the amount of inflation, and twice the amount by which wages increased. In fact, health care insurance costs to workers have risen by 87 percent since 2000. That's right, 87 percent.

It’s always a bit embarrassing to watch a government minister co-operate in the humiliation of her own department, don’t you think? Poor Bev Oda. You just know what the heavies in Stephen Harper’s PMO were thinking when they gave her Canadian Heritage and Status of Women Canada, two departments that the New Canadian Government obviously doesn’t respect very much. You’re the sacrificial lamb at the cabinet table, Bev Oda.

Out of sympathy for poor Bev, who just presided over a 40 per cent cut to the operating budget of SWC, Polly Jones at Marginal Notes suggested this meme to the progressive bloggers a few days ago. We can tell that poor Bev hasn’t been able to think of any very good reasons for defending SWC on her own, so we are here to help her.

If you have a blog or blogspace, please join, and let Scott Tribe at progblogs know you’ve posted. My five things:

1. I am an ancient women’s libber who is grateful to have made friends with a lot of younger women over the last few years. I still can’t get over how smart and strong young women are, how forthright they are in asserting their own equality and then just getting on with the work and the living. Even the ones who are nervous about calling themselves feminists (why is that?) seem to start out smarter and stronger than I did, than I usually feel even now. So above all I owe to the women’s movement and its many successes all the beautiful young women who have renewed my tired old world for me, who will go farther faster because they started out knowing that they had a right to live unafraid, unintimidated, and unashamed.

2. And then there are all the nice young men. Wow. If you’re my age, you have definitely noticed that there are a lot of nice young men about. They cook; they do the laundry; they don’t think they’re “babysitting” when they are looking after their own kids. If you don’t think that’s new, trust me: it’s new enough. Even some of my fellow old farts colleagues of the male persuasion – not thinking of anyone in particular, of course – seem to have taken a few notes as they’ve watched the nice young men getting ever so co-operative. So for all the nice young men in our lives, I figure we must owe quite a few great feminist mums who have wanted the humane best for their boys as well as their girls, and are succeeding pretty well, I’d say.

(The scandalous bits follow on the flip.)

The Conservatives have finally gotten around to doing what it is they do: slash public spending. It does not matter that the federal government is running a massive surplus - what matters is that they cut spending, then promptly position themselves as the champion of the working folks for doing so.

A department significantly hit was Canadian Heritage. The department's Status of Women Canada, an agency which promotes gender equality, stands to lose $5 million from its annual $23 million budget.

Some pro-Conservative groups, such as REAL Women Canada, mounted a campaign over the summer to scrap the agency created under the Pierre Trudeau government.

Priority areas

But neither Finance Minister Jim Flaherty nor Treasury Board President John Baird are making apologies, saying the cuts reflect the priorities of "working families."

"I think we want today to look at the way government spends money and say, 'are we getting effective results, accountable spending and value for money?'" he said Tuesday on CTV's Canada AM.

"Does the money that we spend as a government reflect the priorities that Canadian families have for their federal government? Those were the base lines that we looked at."

Baird said "priority areas" such as health care, cancer control strategy, safer streets and greater tax cuts for senior citizens, for instance, will all benefit from the cuts.

As for the Court Challenges Program, Baird said it doesn't make sense for the federal government to "subsidize lawyers to challenge the government's own laws in court."

"We are investing more resources in programs that are important to ordinary Canadians such as child care and safer streets," Flaherty added. "We won't apologize for our capacity to say no to bad ideas."

When asked on Canada AM why an $11 million program meant to deal with B.C.'s pine beetle infestation is being cut, Baird said it was "unused spending" from the previous Liberal government's strategy.

"Prime Minister Stephen Harper has committed to spending literally hundreds of millions of dollars for a new strategy, a far more aggressive and effective strategy that will have greater results for combating the pine beetle problem in British Columbia," he said.

The Tories are also eliminating the $78-million Goods and Services Tax rebate program, which was intended to help foreign visitors to Canada by allowing them to recoup the GST they pay while in the country. Liberal finance critic John McCallum said the move will hurt tourism.

This story crept up on me in slow stages. When we were first alerted to how far it had gone, in a comment on this post below, I couldn't quite believe it, nor could pogge, as you will see from our first comments. I still can't quite believe that it has received as little media attention, mainstream or alt, as it has. It bugs me. I keep chewing away at it. I gotta spit it out.

At least this story was a good reminder to me never to get all my news about anything from the Globe and Mail, especially news about ... the Globe and Mail.

As a Globe reader would have known it, the chronology of the scandal went like this: on the Saturday following the shootings, murder, and suicide at Montreal's Dawson College two weeks ago, Globe features writer and Montreal native Jan Wong wrote what was clearly a features article about the trauma of some individuals directly affected by the shootings. ( I have used the word "features" twice in the sentence preceding for a reason.) Midway through her narrative, centred mainly on a mother and son caught up in the crisis, Wong shifted to a personal reflection on the impact of the "decades-long linguistic struggle" in Quebec on allophone immigrants, and their consequent alienation. You can read the relevant passage of her article in the comments section of the post I've linked to above. Although it was the source of the controversy that followed, and although I and other contributors here criticized it as well, that passage is not my present concern.

On the Wednesday following, the Globe printed a long and affecting letter from Premier Charest reacting to Wong's analysis. I didn't object to that letter at the time, given his position and his genuine closeness to events, although I wonder now about his concluding paragraph. On the same day the Globe published a column by the editor of La Presse, similarly critical of Wong's analysis of Quebec society if predictably more detailed. A day later the Globe printed a letter from Stephen Harper that characterized Wong's analysis as "grossly irresponsible" and "prejudiced" but that interestingly managed to sound more like a personal than an official condemnation. Right next to Harper's letter ran the Globe editorial board's first reaction to the reactions, in which the standard, anondyne defence of the journalist who raises questions was balanced by an earnest acknowledgement of the offence taken by many.

And then this past Saturday, Edward Greenspon, Globe ed-in-c, weighed in with his summary of the controversy, still sort of defending his writer although seeming to retreat a step or two, taking refuge in that old distinction between "reporting" and "opinion" and conceding that Wong's analytical paragraphs should have been excised from the article or run in a separate piece clearly labelled "opinion."

Perhaps unbeknownst to Mr Greenspon, his own letters editor was publishing the same day a noble piece of writing that the Globe editors should days before have been capable of composing on their own. It was a better piece of reporting than the Globe itself had done, on a development crucial to Canadian democracy that the Globe had finessed, and it was a ringing reminder of principle that editors and politicians all seem to have forgotten in their scramble to save their own public images.

I have written a few posts about health care lately which have resulted in quite a few comments and some dissenting posts on centrist or right of centre blogs. I have been labelled a fearmonger for being concerned about an advocate of private health care being elected head of the Canadian Medical Association and was called a supporter of - I love this framing - "enforced state-run health care". Well, hey, guilty as charged on that one.

My simple thesis is this: health care costs in this country are not spiraling out of control. Instead, the system is being purposefully underfunded to make way for corporate involvement in health care delivery. There are billions of dollars at stake here, and lobbyists have been pounding the federal government for decades to let them get at it. Aided by a complicit media and their cronies in government, these lobbyists have succeeded in undermining Canadians' confidence in our public health care system, which was strong and stable until the disastrous funding cuts of the Chretien years. Even though the funding has been largely returned since then, public confidence in the system has not rebounded. But why should that be surprising when the same message is endelessly repeated by our governments and parroted by a credulous media: public medicare is unsustainable. Propaganda, after all, is hard to resist.

In today's issue, The Tyee lays out exactly how this scam has worked in British Columbia, where the finance minister sends out portents of doom about skyrocketing health care costs, and the media passes on this dire news to a population too numb to resist the message any more. The problem is, it simply is not true. Health care costs in B.C. are not exploding, and in fact are shrinking as a percentage of the province's GDP.

(I take a certain perverse pleasure in knowing that the title of this entry will appear directly above the subject of my last entry.)

Two weeks ago I promised that I would follow up the carrot mulligatawny with a squash soup, but then life got very sad for a bit, and seasonal celebrations didn't seem quite the thing.

The season is bearing down hard upon us, though, isn't it? We still have some lovely summery days here. Yesterday, a friend and I lucked into a perfect two hours on a sunny patio, noshing on Mediterranean flatbreads and dips, half-convinced that the sultry air would never leave us.

But it has. I'm watching a dark downpour at this very moment, as I have off and on over the last week. Summer here is one of those dear but slightly annoying guests who take a long time to leave after they've said they're going. G'bye, g'bye, g'bye, and oh, one more thing ... Sort of like Lieutenant Columbo.

Never mind. Summer is so wonderful for us Canadians, but autumn has its music too (as Keats said), its intense colours and twisty swelling shapes, and nothing does a colourful twisty swelling shape like a squash.

Do you ever wonder where the prime minister of the New Canadian Government learned to talk like this?

On Afghanistan, Harper said: "I don't really accept that Canadians are opposed to the mission.

"I think what hurts Canadians a lot is seeing their brave men and women in uniform lose their lives. I think that's a reaction.''

Now, that's odd, if touching, isn't it? He has seen the polls where we said what we think, but he doesn't "really accept" that we think what we said we think. There's one reality -- what we think we think -- and then there's this other reality that only Stephen Harper can see, where he just knows that we think something different from what we think we think, or maybe what we said we think we think. Well, at least our Steve knows that we're hurtin', and he feels our pain. There's that.

Oh, c'mon, skdadl, I hear you cry. No, we don't wonder where that curious logic came from. We have known for some time that any old "unnamed Bush official" knows that the project for the New Canadian Government new American century requires a creative view of reality:

when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality--judiciously, as you will--we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

Now, Dick Cheney is not just any old "unnamed Bush official." And Joan Didion is not just any old frustrated American liberal, either. In American terms, she has never been a liberal at all.

This Toronto Star article reports on the "second annual test of government openness organized by the Canadian Newspaper Association." By and large, government failed.

The article documents some of the atrocities and is worth a read, but here's a conclusion for you.

Federal information commissioner John Reid, who is retiring this month after eight years in the position, says bureaucratic secrecy has remained firmly entrenched during his tenure.

"I would say the culture of secrecy has not significantly altered with the bureaucracy. Politicians that become ministers become easily seduced by the attractions of secrecy ... To maintain those legal rights of access to government information, citizens have to take an active role in preserving what is there and pressing for improvements."

And as my colleagues at Flu Wiki prepare for our second Pandemic Flu Awareness Week (Oct. 9 - 15), I was less than impressed to see this:

Federally, five of the six written requests for information on pandemic preparations remain outstanding more than five months after being filed with the government.

Health Canada responded to just one request — reporting that the records did not exist — and asked for a 60-day extension on the other requests, beyond the legislated 30-day limit. Those extensions expired without response on July 4.

And one more thing: the top-down media come in for a lot of criticism around here but the CNA is to be congratulated for this effort. Credit where credit's due.

Willie Dixon gets Nervous.

I thought I would remain quiet on the topic of the big rally that took place in Ottawa today. These are military families after all, exactly the kind of people I grew up with. Decent, salt-of-the-earth folk who live in fearful times - their loved ones are off in a distant land doing terribly dangerous work. Something like this gives them a sense of comfort, and a sense that there are people who understand the sacrifice military families are called on to make. But I really have to say how dismayed I am to hear them import the Republican cudgel "support our troops."

Look, for the record, you can be very, very pro-military, love sailors and soldiers all the live-long day, be grateful as all get-out for the freedoms we enjoy, and still be an opponent of certain military deployments. The two are not mutually exclusive, and the whole "support the troops" trope is all about clubbing people who don't agree with each and every military deployment. It's about equating opposition to a mission with opposition to our soldiers on a personal level, and that has simply never existed in this country in any significant way.

Please, people, get over that shit.

As for Stephen Harper, he took the rally as an opportunity to show just how utterly classless he truly is:

Although billed as a non-partisan rally, Mr. Harper used the occasion to slip in a not-so-subtle jab at NDP Leader Jack Layton, who has called for the withdrawal Canadian troops from the combat portion of the mission.

"Friends, I believe you cannot say you are for our military and then not stand behind them in the great things they do."

Yes, you can, you piece of shit, and by the way, you just told everyone in this country who opposes the Afghanistan deployment that they don't "support the troops." You're a piece of crap, Harper, just like the shaved chimp in Washington you admire so much. Using our military's deployment as a political tool is loathesome. And very, very Republican.

Softwood producers face steep U.S. export tax

Canada's lumber exporters will get their first taste of the new softwood lumber agreement with the United States starting next month and it won't be pleasant.

The current 10.8 per cent combined anti-dumping and countervailing duties levied by U.S. Customs will be replaced by a 15 per cent Canadian export tax.

That's because the agreement, which is headed for implementation Oct. 1, bases the export tax on the prevailing composite market price of framing lumber set by Random Lengths, an industry news service.

The price this month, which will be the basis for October's tax rate, is well below the US$315 per thousand board feet that triggers the maximum 15 per cent border tax. Random Lengths' mid-week price Thursday was US$294.

The tax rate starts at five per cent when lumber prices fall below US$355 and jumps to 10 per cent at US$335.

The money will be collected by Ottawa and funnelled back to the lumber-producing provinces where exporters are based.

So it's a windfall for the provinces but the lumber companies get snookered. Unless, of course, the provinces just give the money back to the industry. Which would be corporate welfare and would likely be viewed by the American lumber lobby as unfair subsidization.

Confused yet?

One of the most painful aspects of the government of Stephen Harper is their penchant for importing American ideas, even when they are really, really stupid ones. And boy, is this a stupid one.

OTTAWA — The federal government is preparing three-strikes-you're-out legislation that would make it easier to label criminals as dangerous offenders after a third serious conviction.

The bill — part of the Conservative anti-crime package — will be tabled this fall, says Justice Minister Vic Toews.

He says that after three convictions for violent crimes, people would have to prove to a judge why they're not dangerous — which is a reversal of the traditional innocent-until-proven-guilty principle.

Mr. Toews says criminals should be presumed guilty — not innocent — after three such convictions.

Got that, enlightenment principles of justice? You're wrong and Vic Toews is right.

Setting aside for a moment the repugnant inversion of one of the bedrock principles of our justice system, it is worth noting that the three strikes law, pioneered in California in 1994 and now in place in about two dozen other states, fails to reduce violent crime.

One of the remarks famously attributed to American movement conservative Grover Norquist is:

I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.

The NDP reports that our Shiny New Imitation Canadian Government (I embellished Steve's preferred term a bit -- always trying to help) is following Norquist's advice on a smaller scale: one program at a time.

The future of women's organisations across Canada is being threatened as the Conservative Government is taking too long to review Status of Women Program applications - forcing prominent women's organisations to close their doors.

"By not responding to funding applications, the Conservatives are allowing programs to shut down, one by one.," said NDP MP critic for the Status of Women Irene Mathyssen. "What's next? The entire department? It looks like Bev Oda is spoiling to dismantle the Status of Women department."

As of Sept. 12, The National Association of Women and the Law, has closed their doors due to insufficient federal funding. The Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA) will shut down on Sept. 26. Organizations have put in applications for funding, but have heard nothing from the Minister responsible for Status of Women, Bev Oda.

"It is clear that this government is not interested in consulting with the experts in the field and has no intention of investigating what is really needed to promote women's equality in Canada" said NDP President Anne McGrath.

Women's groups have complained that the Minister has not consulted them on the program review and will meet with them only after the Status of Women Canada mandate has expired on Sept. 26 this year.

Cute, eh? Malign neglect. It's possible that if this attracts enough attention and complaints the Conservatives will have to backtrack. But by then, some of the damage will have been done. Which is the point.

Hat tip to Accidental Deliberations.

General John Abizaid, the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East, was asked by reporters on Tuesday whether or not the U.S. was winning the war in Iraq. He gave the long answer:

"Given unlimited time and unlimited support, we're winning the war."

The short answer would be "no."

(Via The War Room)

The Conservatives are pushing for an entirely new regulatory regime for Canada, and as one might expect, it leans rather heavily in favour of business over the interests of average citizens.

The Federal government is developing a new approach to regulating health, safety and the environment. This new approach will give deeper consideration to business interests when creating new regulations or reviewing existing ones. They are holding hearings across Canada, with the first hearing to be held in Moncton on Monday November 14th.

Let's give them a true New Brunswick welcome. Please come out to this event and let the government of Canada know that you want the government to regulate in the public interest and that you will not stand by and let business interests weaken health, safety and environmental regulations.

What's interesting is that unflattering portrayal of the process came from David Coon, a member of the government's external advisory committee on the new regulatory regime. It doesn't sound like he is much of a fan.

Updated: see below

Let's hear it for the Banff Crag and Canyon. As far as growing numbers of Canadians can tell, they are the only Canadian newspaper to have picked up the news of a major conference on continental integration held last week at the Banff Springs Hotel, in spite of the fact that vivelecanada.ca sent up news of this conference a week ago.

And while we're handing out the bouquets, let's hear it for Mel Hurtig, who first let vivelecanada.ca know:

They're at it again.

The sellouts, the usual suspects.

September 12th to 14th, at the Banff Springs Hotel, a conference on North American Integration.

Among the long list of those who will be there are Perrin Beatty, Peter Lougheed, Thomas d'Aquino, Stockwell Day, Wendy Dobson, Roger Gibbins, John Manley, Anne McLellan, Gordon O'Connor, James Schlesinger, Donald Rumsfeld, George Shultz and a long list of others.

Among the topics: "A Vision for North America", "A North American Energy Strategy", "Demographic and Social Dimensions of North American Integration", "Opportunities for Security Cooperation".

Many prominent high level U.S. government people will be there.
Lots of military. Lots of Deputy Ministers.

Lock up your valuables. Hide your children.

The full list of those who attended (by invitation only) is on the updated vivelecanada.ca site now. And if, as Susan Thompson notes, the hotel doesn't want to talk about the conference, and the Globe and Mail and the National Post and the Toronto Star don't want to talk about the conference either, the Banff Crag and Canyon has managed to do us all proud by scooping them good:

On the day after a public inquiry reports that a Canadian citizen was imprisoned and tortured due in part to incompetence on the part of a Canadian police force, we get this.

Anyone who makes a false complaint against the Toronto police could lose their home or their car under a controversial new policy being proposed by one of the candidates in the race to head up the force's powerful union.

If there is "clear and convincing evidence" that the complaint made against an officer was false, that person could be sued by the Toronto Police Association, says presidential hopeful Mike McCormack, stressing the threat of a civil suit would be only in "extreme cases."

But critics claim such a move by the union would have a chilling effect on legitimate complaints against police officers.

"Scary and intimidating" is how Toronto councillor and police services board vice-chair Pam McConnell described McCormack's proposal.

"I defend the right of all people to voice complaints," she said in an interview last night. "We want a system where people can come forward if they have a complaint, not a system where people are frightened to speak up against the police."

Stephen Harper is full of rhetorical bombast today on Canada's mission in Afghanistan.

OTTAWA — Canadian troops will not leave Afghanistan until their job is done, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said yesterday as this country prepared to receive the bodies of four more soldiers killed in the course of the mission.

"The exit strategy is success," Mr. Harper said. "There will be no other conditions under which this government leaves Afghanistan. We will succeed in our security mission and we will see that country moving in irreversible progress to being an economically prosperous and peaceful society. That is the only way this government will leave."

His comments come as four more Canadian families prepare to receive their loved ones in flag-draped caskets. And they come hard on the heels of this report, which offers some sobering news about the death toll among Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.

Canadian troops in Afghanistan are three times more likely to be killed by hostile activities than their British counterparts and 4½ times more likely than Americans, a study says.

"Canadian Forces are incurring a disproportionately heavy burden of casualties among coalition forces in Afghanistan," said a statement that accompanied the release of the report on Monday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

The study from the non-profit research organization also suggests that Canadian troops are six times more likely to be killed than U.S. troops in Iraq.

David Neiwert at Orcinus has written extensively about what he refers to as transmitters - commentators who introduce extreme rhetoric into the discourse and repeat it exhaustively in an effort to push it into the mainstream. Pretty soon, it isn't extreme any more, it's accepted. It's worked so well in the U.S. that some of the extremists themselves are now mainstream. Consider Glenn Beck at CNN or Ann Coulter on the cover of Time. As Neiwert has noted, talk radio has been a particularly successful medium for pushing extreme and eliminationist rhetoric.

Now go read Stageleft. It can happen here. It is happening here.

All of these are pdf links:

Factual Background - Volume I

Factual Background - Volume II

Analysis and Recommendations

Or bookmark this page for later reference.

I'm going to have to go out and buy more paper.

Updated almost immediately. Please see below.

Public inquiry absolves Arar of terror suspicions

There is no evidence to indicate that Syrian-born Canadian Maher Arar committed any crimes, the federal inquiry into the purported torture case concluded in a report released Monday.

The report by Justice Dennis O'Connor absolved Arar of all suspicion of terrorist activity, CTV's Roger Smith reported from Ottawa.

The inquiry also found that no Canadian official was complicit in the U.S. extradition of Arar to Syria, where he claims he was tortured while detained.

However, the RCMP were targeted in the report for passed misleading, erroneous and unfair information to U.S. authorities that "very likely" led Arar's arrest and deportation, the report concludes.

So far, if I'm Maher Arar I'm not entirely happy. Yes, his innocence has been reaffirmed but the responsibility for what happened to him has been left hanging. "Mistakes were made" hardly seems satisfying at this point.

And so far, if I'm the RCMP I'm figuring that I'm getting off lightly.

The commission's website hasn't been updated yet but I expect the full report -- or the portions we're allowed to see -- will be made available. It will be interesting to see what's really in there as well as what gets reported once the media have digested the whole thing. And of course I look forward to our Conservative government's reaction. On the one hand, Harper can point to the Liberals as the government in charge during this fiasco. On the other hand, any reminder of the incident is a reminder that it was, after all, the Bush administration that made extraordinary rendition not quite so extraordinary.

And O'Connor's next report which deals specifically with the Mounties and ways to make them more accountable is due next month.

Updated with Globe and Mail coverage on the flip.

I'm cribbing the title of one of Edna Staebler's classic compilations of Canadian Mennonite cookery, the series that began in 1968 with the fabulously successful Food That Really Schmecks, because, well, who could ever resist Edna's titles? Any more than anyone could resist her cooking, or her hospitality? Few who met her, in person, through her writing, or through broadcast interviews, could ever resist the woman herself.

Edna Staebler died last Tuesday. She was one hundred years old, and a few weeks ago was still judging submissions to a creative non-fiction writing competition that she had established and endowed. Four years ago she was still living at home, in her cottage on Sunfish Lake near Kitchener, and turning down dates with Jay Leno:

When one of the show's producers called to invite her to California, "I told her it was too far and I hope I said 'Thank you very much,' " Ms. Staebler wrote in her diary on Oct. 2, 2002. "I'd never seen the Tonight Show or heard of Jay Leno."

Ms. Staebler stayed up late and tuned in that night, with her cat, Mally, for company, but was unimpressed with the noise and spectacle of it. "He is tall, with grey-black hair, a long face with a big chin like Brian Mulroney's," she wrote. "Mally stayed in the wing chair all thro' the program. I said to her, 'We're quiet people. That show is not for us. All those Americans screaming at the sight of TV celebrities. We're not part of that. What could I possibly contribute to a show like that?' And we went to bed."

Witty in her sheer forthrightness, always generous but sharply perceptive too, and stubbornly committed to her work and her independence -- Edna Staebler sounds to have been all those things, as the tens of thousands who treasure her cookbooks can testify.

Oh dear. This is going to drive a certain segment of the North American population beserk.

The controversial British film Death of a President, which depicts the assassination of U.S. President George W. Bush, has won the international critics' prize at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Death of a President, directed by Gabriel Range, was chosen "for the audacity with which it distorts reality, to reveal a larger truth," said a statement released by the festival.

Let the festival of wingnut outrage begin. I'll bring the popcorn.

Ladies and gentlemen, The Fabulous Thunderbirds.

(Picked up on a trick to smooth out the playback. Click on play and then immediately click on pause and watch the slider fill up. Then click on play again. Seems to smooth out the glitches though there's one near the beginning that's alway there. Have fun.)

The time to make sense will come, but it must come later.

Anastasia De Sousa, Stacey to her family and friends, a vibrant young woman who had just stepped forth from adolescence towards a bright future, was pitilessly and repeatedly shot at point-blank range, we are told, in her Montreal college cafeteria on Wednesday afternoon. Four of her killer's other random victims are still in critical condition; more than a dozen others have physical wounds to recover from, and then there are the hundreds coping with severe wounds of another kind.

A young man, Kimveer Gill, is dead as well, by his own hand, in a murderous public consummation that he predicted and apparently desired.

Not everyone wants to make sense of Kimveer Gill. What he did was senseless to almost all of us, an outrage to life itself. I believe there must come a time when we go beyond repeating words like "senseless" to describe Kimveer's eruption (and yes, his murderous crimes), but that time is probably not yet, not now.

In this morning's Globe and Mail, Roy MacGregor quotes the note that has been left on a purple candle at the shrine now building near the Dawson College gates closest to where the shooting began:

For the victim that died on September the 13th 2006. And to the shooter that died long before.

U.N. Inspectors Dispute Iran Report By House Panel

U.N. inspectors investigating Iran's nuclear program angrily complained to the Bush administration and to a Republican congressman yesterday about a recent House committee report on Iran's capabilities, calling parts of the document "outrageous and dishonest" and offering evidence to refute its central claims.

Officials of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency said in a letter that the report contained some "erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated statements." The letter, signed by a senior director at the agency, was addressed to Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, which issued the report.
...
Yesterday's letter, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post, was the first time the IAEA has publicly disputed U.S. allegations about its Iran investigation. The agency noted five major errors in the committee's 29-page report, which said Iran's nuclear capabilities are more advanced than either the IAEA or U.S. intelligence has shown.

Among the committee's assertions is that Iran is producing weapons-grade uranium at its facility in the town of Natanz. The IAEA called that "incorrect," noting that weapons-grade uranium is enriched to a level of 90 percent or more. Iran has enriched uranium to 3.5 percent under IAEA monitoring.
...
Privately, several intelligence officials said the committee report included at least a dozen claims that were either demonstrably wrong or impossible to substantiate.

I'm not a prude by any measure, but as the father of a three-year-old girl, I have to say I was stunned and disturbed by this:

Breast-enhancing padded bras for girls as young as six are being sold in Victorian shops.

Childhood experts have warned parents they could be baiting pedophiles by dressing their young girls as raunchy women.

Tiny matching lingerie sets of lacy bras and knickers in many children's brands including Bratz, Saddle Club and Barbie, have hit the shelves aimed at girls who are barely old enough for school.

The Herald Sun last week revealed the latest Bratz Babyz range included sexually provocative baby dolls dressed in leather and lingerie.

The padded Bratz "bralettes" were among more than 30 different junior bra styles starting at size six on sale at a city Target store visited by the Herald Sun yesterday.

The Australian Family Association warned parents against sexualising their children. "We have a growing problem with pedophilia and people viewing children as sex objects," spokeswoman Angela Conway said.

"Children do not need these products and I am appalled. It is more than bad taste. The sexual portrayal of children in this country is illegal and these products are pandering to just that."

Australian Childhood Foundation CEO Dr Joe Tucci said padded bras were "the most ridiculous piece of clothing a parent could buy".

Bratz distributor Funtastic defended the range.

"The idea of the padding is for girls to be discreet as they develop," a spokeswoman said.

"It is more about hiding what you have got than showing it off. It is certainly not there to make children look like they have breasts."

Target also stood by the underwear range. It provided "fashionable items that give girls modesty and style as they go through development changes", a spokeswoman said.

Private involvement in public medicare will help everyone, say the anti-public health care folks. Those who are suspicious about corporate involvement in medicare are just paranoid. We're not going to do it wrong like the Ameircans did. Well you're right, everyone. We're not going to screw it up like the Americans did. We're going to find our own made-in-Canada way of screwing it up.

VANCOUVER — Patients willing to pay up to $1,400 to a private medical broker have been able to receive MRIs within days at one of British Columbia's largest public hospitals, while those sticking with the public health-care system languish for months on long waiting lists.

Heidi Bozek, who suffers from painful tumours on her knees and right hand, said this week that she paid the money to Timely Medical Alternatives Inc., after learning she faced a four-month wait for a publicly funded MRI.

A few days later, much to her surprise, she received a daytime MRI session lasting three hours at busy St. Paul's Hospital in downtown Vancouver.

"I couldn't quite understand how a public facility could be contracted out to a private organization for me to have my MRI," Ms. Bozek told reporters, adding that she had expected to be referred to a private clinic.

"I do believe I've pushed people out of the queue [for MRIs]."

Calling the practice a clear violation of the Canada Health Act, which bans so-called medical queue-jumping, B.C. Health Minister George Abbott said yesterday that his ministry is now investigating as many as 100 similar incidents at St. Paul's.

"This is disappointing, even perplexing. We are very concerned," Mr. Abbott said.

Despite the minister's concern, however, the head of the referral agency used by Ms. Bozek said that British Columbia provides the best climate in the country for private clinics to flourish.

While Alberta and its Premier, Ralph Klein, get all the headlines and brickbats from medicare advocates worried about privatization, medically necessary procedures performed in B.C.'s scores of private clinics -- for a fee -- are commonplace, said Rick Baker, founder of Timely Medical Alternatives.

"It's not supposed to happen, but it's happening all the time, on a daily basis," said Mr. Baker, noting that under the Canada Health Act patients are not permitted to pay for better access to services covered by medicare.

"There is no question that B.C. is the best place for [private health-care clinics], followed by Quebec and Alberta, followed by nobody."

I see the Blogging Tories have truly given in to their terrified inner children, and have decided to try to frighten the rest of us into living in the same wretched state of fear as them.

On this page - draped in funereal black - you will find Canada's right wing on-line pundits using the dead of 9/11 to justify their worldview, issuing charges of racism against any who disagree with them, and turning our soldiers into some sort of fetish. All of this advice on condemning Islam, hating the left and exhortations for more war and increased security is gathered together on one helpful site which screams the right wing mantra - we're all gonna die!

While I appreciate the effort, no thanks. I'll take reality.

It is still often sweltery hot here by day, but the light is going. The rains come and go, and now when they come they are suddenly cold.

Who knows what to wear? We'll be back to +26 by the weekend, so who's going to put away the shorts and sandals yet? At least the furnace is off for a while -- on cooler nights, it's enough to be able to fumble for the eiderdown and pull it over the shoulders, and it is wonderful to stop worrying about keeping the house energy-efficient for a time, to live with the windows open to the moon and the cicadas and crickets and the dawn squabbles among the racoons and the cats and the birds.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. (Yes: I'll do the poem at the end.) But so: when you're still too warm to turn on the furnace but you've just dashed in with cold wet toes, what would make you love autumn best of all?

I was going to leave a comment at this post at The Sir Robert Bond Papers but since the good Sir Robert doesn't appear to accept comments, I decided to post here.

From what I've seen so far, the NDP policy on Afghanistan is simplistic and incoherent. But it's certainly no more so than our government's policy, to say nothing of the complete muddle coming from the Liberals who are torn between supporting their own short-sightedness when they were in government and pretending to be a real opposition.

Whatever we think we're trying to accomplish in Afghanistan, we may very well be losing. And before you snort and tell me it can't happen, consider the fact that the most powerful military force on the planet invaded Iraq three and a half years ago and it's blatantly obvious that unless the real goal was mass mayhem and increased instability, Iraq was lost long ago.

We have a problem, Sir Robert, and your empty sloganeering and your raising of a straw army does nothing to help clarify the situation. All this faux moral outrage looks like nothing more than politicking. So here's a clue for you: it's not about your moral outrage or the opportunity to sneer at another political party, it's about the people who actually, you know, live in the region and, yes, the troops who are being maimed and killed in what looks increasingly like a misguided effort. I think my coblogger skdadl nailed it when she suggests that you can't simply look at Afghanistan in isolation, chant "Stay the course and support the troops" and hope to accomplish anything.

But I suppose I should just stop trying to look beyond the bullshit story line we're being sold and actually trying to understand what's going on. There's obviously no future in it. Far better to pick someone else's position, point fingers and sneer.

Rant over.

As usually happens around POGGE, a milestone of some significance passed a few days ago without comment. So I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate our founder, pogge, and those others who have contributed to this project on the occasion of (according to sitemeter) the 400,000th page view on Peace, Order and Good Government, eh? Thanks to all for your efforts and to 'The Boss' for getting it all started. And thanks to those of you who stopped by, made those page views and give us a reason to keep working at it.

There will be another milestone in about a month. We'll try not to let that one slip by so quietly.

Mellow Down Easy seems like a good tune for a Friday night. Carey Bell with Debbie Davies on guitar.

ABC. Naughty naughty. Tsk tsk.

[Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor and Publisher,] is among the privileged few who have seen the film ... The reason, as he notes in the clip, is that ABC only distributed screeners to sympathetic right wing sites and pundits -- a clear sign that something is amiss.

ABC now claims that the film, which airs on Sunday and Monday, is still being edited and that "criticisms of film specifics are premature and irresponsible." Funny. Some might call a film about our national tragedy that incorporates fake history a fairly irresponsible decision. Potato/po-tah-to I guess...

The film is a Disney docudrama called "The Path to 9/11." According to Mitchell, it tilts heavily towards laying blame for 9/11 at the feet of the Clinton administration, and it does that in part simply by ... making things up. The actions and views of three still very-much-alive people -- Sandy Berger, Clinton's national-security adviser, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and Richard Clarke, counter-terrorism adviser to both the Clinton and Bush administrations -- have been dramatized as if factual, but in the process distorted and/or purely fantasized, as all three have complained. And then there appear to be the lies about the dead, who can't talk back -- John O'Neill, Ahmed Shah Massoud. Or those purely fictional CIA snatchers on the ground in Afghanistan in 1998.

I am of several minds about this story, although it does seem to confirm Rufus's sudden insight in another discussion hereabouts today, that at least you can't often accuse the deluded propagandists of the right of simply mirroring reality.

Sometimes we become so used to responding to the latest outrage from Wingnutlandia that we overlook the odd bit of good - or, at least, better - news that comes down the pipeline. So, in the interests of sending everyone off for the weekend with a positive thought, we have some better news from the Government of Manitoba and Manitoba Hydro. The government and it's crown corporation electric and natural gas utility have announced a four fold increase in the province's wind generating capacity.

Manitoba to quadruple its wind power
Province aims to add 300 megawatts of 'green' power
The Manitoba government plans to build enough wind towers over the next two years to quadruple its wind-generated power, Energy Minister Dave Chomiak announced Thursday.

The province, along with Manitoba Hydro, hopes to add 300 megawatts of wind power to the province's energy grid — enough power for 100,000 homes....

The strategy is expected to generate $2 billion in investments, $100 million in wind-rights payments to landowners and $150 million in property taxes to local municipalities, according to the province.

The proposed wind towers will be an addition to the 99-megawatt wind farm near St. Leon, which is in full operation.....

Chomiak said having more wind turbines will boost Manitoba's profile as a "green" energy provider.

"Further wind development is in keeping with Manitoba's green energy policy," he said.

"We're the leader in geothermal [energy], we're the leading exporter in Canada of hydro, we're becoming a leader in ethanol, biodiesel is going to see significant growth in Manitoba. It makes good economic and energy sense."

The province will host the 22nd annual Canadian Wind Energy Association Conference in October in Winnipeg.

While Manitoba Hydro's record in hydroelectric development has numerous black marks (some of them pretty large) this is, overall, a positive development. And please note the stated economic benefits. It's time for a lot of people and many politicians (who shall remain nameless) to stop thinking of greener solutions as a "cost" and start looking for the economic benefits that can come from not beating the crap out of the environment on a daily basis.

So lets give credit to the government of Manitoba and Manitoba Hydro for getting it right. And in the process say "We won one." for a change.

Major Matthew Sprague was wounded in the friendly fire incident over the weekend, and will probably return home to Canada after recuperating in a military hospital in Germany. As he is a soldier serving his country in dangerous duty, I respect his service, but this comment really makes me wonder about his judgment.

Sprague says the U.S. pilots who accidentally shot the Canadians probably saved dozens of lives because they quickly realized their mistake and stopped firing.

I'm sorry to disagree with the major, but no, the U.S. pilots did not save dozens of lives. They ended one and endangered many, including his own. Everyone understands that awful stuff happens in the fog of war, but its wrong to try to spin a massive screw up as a heroic event. Especially when that screw up claimed the life of one of the major's comrades.

Update: Dave at The Galloping Beaver also has some opinions on so-called "friendly fire" incidents.

Look folks - Pope Benedict the Extreme has sent a shot across the bow of Canadian lawmakers:

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict hit out Friday at Canada for allowing same sex marriage and abortion, saying they result from Catholic politicians ignoring the values of their religion.

“In the name of tolerance your country has had to endure the folly of the redefinition of spouse, and in the name of freedom of choice it is confronted with the daily destruction of unborn children,” the Pope told a group of bishops from Ontario.

Such laws, he said, are the result of “the exclusion of God from the public sphere.”

Yes, they are. And thank God for that.

Moonbat far-left planet earth once again showed its blatant liberal bias when scientists revealed that a "slow motion time bomb" in the form of frozen methane could be released into the atmosphere as the permafrost melts, triggering a rapid change in climate.

WASHINGTON — New research is raising concerns that global warming may be triggering a self-perpetuating climate time bomb trapped in once-frozen permafrost.

As Earth warms, greenhouse gases once stuck in the long-frozen soil are bubbling into the atmosphere in much larger amounts than previously anticipated, according to a study in Thursday's journal Nature.

Methane trapped in a special type of permafrost is bubbling up at a rate five times faster than originally measured, the journal said.

Scientists are fretting about a global-warming cycle that had not been part of their already gloomy climate forecasts: Warming already under way thaws permafrost, soil that had been continuously frozen for thousands of years.

Thawed permafrost releases methane and carbon dioxide. Those gases reach the atmosphere and help trap heat on Earth in the greenhouse effect. The trapped heat thaws more permafrost, and so on.

“The higher the temperature gets, the more permafrost we melt, the more tendency it is to become a more vicious cycle,” said Chris Field, director of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. “That's the thing that is scary about this whole thing. There are lots of mechanisms that tend to be self-perpetuating and relatively few that tends to shut it off.”

The effect reported in Nature is seen mostly in Siberia – but also elsewhere – in a type of carbon-rich permafrost, flash frozen about 40,000 years ago. A new more accurate measuring technique was used on the bubbling methane, which is 23 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than the more prevalent carbon dioxide.

“The effects can be huge,” lead author Katey Walter of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks said. “It's coming out a lot, and there's a lot more to come out.”

Another study earlier this summer in the journal Science found that the amount of carbon trapped in this type of permafrost – called yedoma – is much more prevalent than originally thought and may be 100 times the amount of carbon released into the air each year by the burning of fossil fuels.

It will not all come out at once or even over several decades, but the methane and carbon dioxide will escape the soil if temperatures increase, scientists say.

Fortunately, it is at times like this when the heroic commandos of denial spring into action, hacking at the earth's liberal bias with their mighty sword of selective facts!

In the past few days we've seen two accusations of plagiarism thrown at Liberal leadership candidates. The first involved Stephane Dion and the second, Michael Ignatieff. As reported in those articles, both charges originated with Blogging Tory Steve Janke.

Lord knows I have lots of problems with the Liberal party but this isn't one of them. If Dion had submitted an academic paper, or had signed his name to an article for publication in the media, and it was discovered that he'd lifted passages from someone else's work it would be a different matter. But these are policy proposals written by committees in the first place and I would have thought the idea would be to actually examine the policies and see whether they work or not.

Note to CanWest, Sun Media, CBC and the Globe and Mail: when an Iranian newspaper scoops you on a story that happens in your own backyard, you should really be pretty frigging embarassed about it.

Just sayin'.

(Tehran Times link via Buckdog.)

The much-touted anti-corruption legislation, pushed by the Conservatives as part of their Accountability Act, is actually weaker than the rules it seeks to replace. Why am I not surprised?

OTTAWA — The Conservative government's proposed anti-corruption legislation is weaker in some instances than the rules it aims to replace, the former and current federal ethics czars told a Senate hearing yesterday evening.

Former ethics counsellor Howard Wilson and current Ethics Commissioner Bernard Shapiro said the old code of conduct kicked in even in instances of the appearance of a conflict of interest. The new rules, which would be enshrined in legislation, would apply only to strictly defined cases of wrongdoing.

"By putting what is now the code for public office holders into legislation, it becomes weakened and it also becomes more rigid. That is clearly the case," Mr. Wilson said.

Under the old rules, he said, politicians could accept gifts only from "close personal friends." The Accountability Act would allow politicians to accept gifts from all of their friends, which is a much wider category, he said.

Mr. Shapiro said that to be truly efficient, the Accountability Act needs general principles that would guide the conduct of federal politicians and senior officials.

"There are no sets of rules, no matter how comprehensive, that will cover all contingencies," he said. "In the final analysis, ethics are more a matter of judgment than a matter of rules."

So Harper's government has once again slipped a loophole into the Accountability Act that undermines much of the stated purpose of the act.This pretty much shreds the last vestiges of credibility the Accountability Act had, and it didn't have all that much to start with.

The Conservatives have said the Accountability Act is going to be the most signficant accomplishment of the Harper government. Sadly, I think they are right.

There was a piece in the Telegraph on the weekend that tells us a lot about the state of play in Iraq.

The most influential moderate Shia leader in Iraq has abandoned attempts to restrain his followers, admitting that there is nothing he can do to prevent the country sliding towards civil war.

Aides say Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is angry and disappointed that Shias are ignoring his calls for calm and are switching their allegiance in their thousands to more militant groups which promise protection from Sunni violence and revenge for attacks.

"I will not be a political leader any more," he told aides. "I am only happy to receive questions about religious matters."

I'm going to quibble with one part of Red Tory's post.

Since the fall of Baghdad in 2003, Sistani has been a crucial ally of the United States...

But the real influence among Iraq's Shiites now is al-Sadr and he's a different animal. Notice how Bush's War on Terror™ has had exactly the wrong outcome: the (relative) moderate has been sidelined and the radical has been strengthened.

Last Tuesday, 29 August, in a sitting area near a nursing station in the transition-care unit of the Penticton Regional Hospital in Pentiction, BC, seventy-seven-year-old John McCadden sat holding hands with his eighty-year-old wife, Lorna, talking quietly and affectionately to her until the nurse on duty walked away from them and down the hall. Then Mr McCadden pulled out a handgun, shot his wife, and turned the gun on himself.

Lorna McCadden had "recently" been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, say the news reports, although two days later they offered a little more background to the McCaddens' situation:

Only weeks earlier, Mr. McCadden, 77, had three mini-strokes.

"He felt there was no way out any more and so he didn't know if there was anybody else to look after her because he might pass away," said Lawrence Isaac, the couple's landlord.

"It was out of compassion."

A day before the shootings, he became frustrated because he couldn't remember how to use the lock on his door.

Four or five years ago, Mrs. McCadden's health declined sharply, although Mr. Isaac didn't know exactly what her illness was. Her husband, a tall, thin man, took on the role of housekeeper and cook.

"John spent his whole time looking after her, you really could see his life was focused on her," said Edna Hills, who co-owns the couple's building. "He had no time to make the place fancy. They never really unpacked."

The couple lived in a modest apartment. There were no family portraits mounted, or pictures of children or grandchildren. There were never any visitors, neighbours said.

Signe Hansen, a four-year resident in the same three-storey building, said the couple rarely spoke to the other seniors in the complex, but she often saw Mr. McCadden doting on his wife and helping her into the elevator.

"He was a gentleman," she said.

I'm sure he was.

We know too little about John McCadden's beliefs or hopes or fears or frustrations to grasp why he chose such a hard way to end his wife's and his own trials. The earliest reports from CTV and the Globe quoted shocked healthcare workers and administrators on the scene who none the less testified to the same devotion between the couple that their neighbours had witnessed for years. We know that John McCadden was a marksman, so perhaps a gun did not seem the hard ending to him that it would to many of us.

Perhaps it is better barbeque weather where you are. Subjected for days to the last leftover low-hanging clouds of Ernesto (a pretty puny tropical storm by the time he got here) and the seriously irritating buzz-bombers of the air show at the CNE, the kitties and I have become grumpy this holiday weekend and have gone to ground for the duration.

We could have been out marching. Well, I could have been out marching. (It's a bit much to ask cats to think of themselves as workers, after all. Cats are the lilies of the field -- they toil not; neither do they spin -- and they know it.) But I wasn't marching today, and most Canadian workers weren't, I'm guessing. And thereby hangs this tale.

Could labour consciousness in this country be any lower than it is right now? Have you ever seen it this low? Do you know anyone under, say, thirty -- ok: forty -- who thinks that that matters? Do you think it matters?

Now, the Globe and Mail editorial board were opining this morning that life for labour in Canada is really pretty peachy these days. The editors of the Toronto Star were considerably more glum and heartfelt, as is their wont, but very quickly segued into a more general discussion of poverty, as though they couldn't quite face a topic quite so tough and rude as organized labour (or lack of same) head-on. The National Post seems to have been silent on the topic of Labour Day, and I suppose we should be grateful for that small mercy.

It's nice to see our minister of defence and the Globe and Mail catching up to reality. Maybe twenty-five years late, but better late than never, yes?

As the Taliban insurgency grows in southern Afghanistan, so do suspicions about Pakistan's role in the war ...

...

On a leafy patio in Kabul, a senior Western diplomat took a long sip of sparkling water when asked whether foreign troops are really fighting a local uprising in the country's south. What about the argument, he was asked, that the NATO forces have been drawn into a proxy war, a struggle against fighters whose instructions come from a neighbouring country?

“It's a bit of both,” the official said, with an uncertain shrug.

The answer wasn't vague for the sake of diplomacy. Nobody has a clear picture of the connections between elements in Pakistan and the Taliban, or how the insurgents draw support from inside the country without, apparently, any meaningful interference from Pakistani authorities. Analysts often point to the deep historical ties between Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which helped nurture the Taliban in the early 1990s, giving them support that helped the movement grow from a religious backlash against corrupt warlords into a theocracy that dominated most of the country.

"Suspicions grow"? Suspicions? Nobody has a clear picture? Analysts "often point"? "The early 1990s"?

Honestly. Which part of "great-power politics" is it so difficult for polite Canadian journalists (or long-sipping "Western diplomats" who live their lives on leafy patios) to grasp, or just to spit out without the exaggerated wind-up? We might put the same question to our grandstanding minister of defence, and then as well to the leader of the NDP, who got it half-right, as usual, and in getting it half-right has, as usual, probably sunk the best reasons we have for insisting on a complete reconception of our intervention in Afghanistan.

Dollar Got The Blues by Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. Hopefully this will spice up skdadl's breakfast a bit.

Stephen Harper is looking more and more like George Bush every day. One thing that has helped the Repbulicans cow the U.S. media into parroting their talking points has been the use of access to the president or to inside information as a way to reward or punish reporters. Those who spread the Bush message unfiltered are rewarded with face time and big scoops. Those who dare to bring a more critical aproach to their reporting find themselves frozen out.

Stephen Harper is using the exact same tactics to control his message. When he wanted to get the news out about the softwood lumber agreement, he gave an abrupt statement at a general press briefing but answered no questions. Yet the next day, Canwest News outlets had all the details of the agreement, and exclusive interviews with Harper on the subject.