Thomas Friedman's New York Times columns have been behind the subscriber wall for some time (a fact for which I'm usually grateful). Sean-Paul Kelley has excerpts from today's column and I have to admit to being a bit blown away. It may be the surest sign yet that even if the Bush administration is bent on confrontation with Iran, significant portions of the media might do a bit more than stenography this time around.
They're on to us. We bloggers have finally been exposed for the disturbed and anti-social individuals we are. Apparently we're terrorists, too. Jim Elve has the details (and a not inconsiderable rebuttal).
The Globe and Mail has a report on yesterday's proceedings of the parliamentary committee following up on the Arar inquiry. The subject of the day was the leaking to the media by anonymous sources that was designed to smear Maher Arar and suggest that he really was a terrorist. And the two primary witnesses were Margaret Bloodworth, national security advisor to the Prime Minister, and William Elliott, associate deputy minister for public safety.
Ms. Bloodworth said she didn't know what more the government could do than let the RCMP investigate. Officials who betray the trust of the government by leaking information will lie about what they did, she added.Mr. Elliott told the committee that leaking information is a "breach of our fundamental values" within government.
Speaking with reporters later, Mr. Elliott said he thought there was nothing strange about letting the RCMP investigate itself.
"I don't think there is any indication the RCMP were the leakers," Mr. Elliott said.
So, back in the fifties and sixties and even seventies, the typical model (which had way more exceptions than anyone admitted, but leaving that alone for now) was that you had a husband and a wife, and the husband worked for money and the wife stayed at home and took care of kids, laundry, cooking, and general household maintenance. This was sexist and left women with ridiculously limited lives. OK, and now the model is both spouses and maybe a kid or three work for money and the kids, laundry, cooking and general household maintenance get taken care of (still mostly by the wife, which still ain't fair) in the gaps in between wage labour, commuting and sleeping. During all this, household income remains pretty much stagnant in real terms.
OK, so what happened? Well, a lot of reactionaries claim it's all the women's fault for being feminists and entering the workforce. So in this case, what's wrong with patriarchy on top of all the rest is it acts as a smokescreen for class struggle.
Consider this a companion piece to mahigan's post below.
"Why are you travelling so often to Canada?" the tough U.S. border guard barked. I was on Amtrak, going from New York to Montreal, as I'd done dozen of times before over several decades. This was my first experience (summer 2006) of the increasingly standard and intrusive "U.S. Exit Interviews" on trains crossing the border. I've been hassled on every train crossing since then, most recently January 2007. The U.S. now has a combined FBI-compiled file of all arrests and charges at all government levels for millions of Americans, and this is instantly viewable by police in many jurisdictions, including border officials of the U.S. and most other countries. In some cities, local police can access this file via one's license plate. The files do NOT show the favorable disposition of arrests that did not lead to charges or of dismissals and findings of innocence. "And what's this entry stamp from Canada, with no country of departure? Was that from Cuba? You know U.S. citizens may not travel to Cuba--you could be imprisoned and fined."This line of questioning has been part of every exit interview since.
Most media attention about new U.S. travel restrictions has focused on harm to tourism and other business--with considerable protest from border communities about across border trade, and from U.S., Canadian and Mexican travel agencies. A Canadian government website dedicated to international trade, Strategis.Ca, estimates that there has already been an 8% reduction of U.S. visitors to Canada and a 7% reduction of Canadian visitors to the U.S., but that this will rise to 14% or more by the end of 2007 for visitors in both directions. Gay tourism to meccas like Montreal and Vancouver is decidedly down--some say as much as 30%. This would reflect the greater likelihood that gay men and women, like non-whites and the poor, would fall afoul of U.S. laws more frequently due to discrimination.
Hat-tip to Melanie by email. I'd wonder if I should publicize that but I suspect it's already too late.
Bush Directive Increases Sway on Regulation WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 — President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president’s priorities.
This strengthens the hand of the White House in shaping rules that have, in the past, often been generated by civil servants and scientific experts. It suggests that the administration still has ways to exert its power after the takeover of Congress by the Democrats. Emphasis added.
com·mis·sar (kŏm'ĭ-sär')1a An official of the Communist Party in charge of political indoctrination and the enforcement of party loyalty.
1b The head of a commissariat in the Soviet Union until 1946.
2. A person who tries to control public opinion.
The Political LeaderThe basis of Party organisation is the principle of leadership. The community cannot rule itself, either directly or indirectly. Whoever is best fitted for such a job should be a leader. Such a man will be supported by the confidence of the Folk. All Political Officers are held to have been appointed by the Leader and are answerable to him; towards their subordinates they enjoy full authority. What matters in the selection of Political Officers is to place the right man in the right post. The offices of the Party vary to such a degree that the accurate selection of leaders requires considerable knowledge of human nature as well as long experience. Age and social position are irrelevant, character and aptitude decisive.
by Guess Who
Feds blasted for delaying NAFTA enviro studies
A spokesman for NAFTA's environmental watchdog has blasted Canada for failing to release two reports that examine Ottawa's alleged failure to enforce its own environmental laws.But the office of Environment Minister John Baird denies any intention to suppress the reports, and says Canada is working with its NAFTA partners to make them public.
...
Under CEC rules, environment ministers from the three NAFTA countries must vote on release of a report, but in practice it is generally left to the country that is being investigated to release the findings.Baird's director of communications, Mike van Soelen, said the reports will be released, but could not say when.
"They're complex, lengthy, very thorough documents so it requires all three governments to essentially review them and greenlight them."
So. Just as the Conservatives unveil attack ads designed to discredit Dion's bona fides on environmental issues we learn that they themselves have been sitting on bad news about environmental issues.
Perfect.
I’ve had an odd recurring experience when reading the news from Britain over the last couple of months. The Brits so often seem to be dealing with momentous events (or at least splashier tabloid headlines than Canadians usually get to play with), but then repeatedly, those stories just ... fizzle.
I suppose that happens everywhere to a degree. Perhaps I am oversensitized to the phenomenon in Britain because I have been trailing along behind Tony Blair for so long, convinced over and over again that the latest of his appalling mistakes (and I'm being polite to call them that) is going to sink him for good, but they never do.
Just last Monday, for instance, I awoke to this thrilling headline in the Guardian: “Blair likely to quit if aides charged in loans inquiry.” Omigosh, I thought. It’s the Capone solution – you know, if you can’t get him for his real crimes (like aiding and abetting his good friend George W. Bush in subverting international order and starting a disastrous and criminal war in Iraq, not to mention chipping away at civil liberties at home), then funny business with the accounts will do. It’s the wrong reason (you doubt that honours have been up for sale for some generations?) and thus a bit of a disappointment, but for a day or so I was humming happily along, “oh, you can’t always git what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find ...”
One of my favourite Canadian columnists is the Star's Walkom. Walkom writes today on the Mahar case and what it tells us about the US, Canada and the Candian government's approach to dealing with "security" concerns. And, frankly, it's a must read, for both Americans and Canadians:
Ottawa's decision to compensate Canadian Maher Arar for its role in his unlawful imprisonment and torture contains a warning and a lesson.The warning is that Canada and the U.S. are on fundamentally different paths when it comes to matters of terrorism and human rights. The lesson is that until Ottawa gets more aggressive with our friends in the war on terror, a Canadian passport won't mean much.
First the warning. The U.S. has chosen to subordinate the principles of individual freedom to what it sees as its security needs. It jails people indefinitely without charge, utilizes interrogation methods that the United Nations describes as torture, wages illegal wars and commits the very crimes against humanity it once helped to prosecute.
As someone who has been watching America closely for years this strikes me as an entirely accurate view.
But here's what this has done to weaker nations like Canada:
How Blue Can You Get. Artists too numerous to mention. Even if you don't recognize a face it's probably someone famous.
And a bonus track just 'cos I'm in the mood for it. Eric Clapton and Dr. John. St. James Infirmary
I see I'm not the only one who was prompted by this post from Paul Wells to do a little looking around. Wells wondered out loud whether the sudden resignation of the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs might be connected to the closure of four Canadian consulates.
At that first link, Lemon Chicken & Lawn Signs has a lengthy quote from the news story on the closures, a story that appears in the Embassy newsweekly but appears to have flown largely under the radar elsewhere. (And perhaps that's because Canada's New Government™ neglected to make any domestic news release on the subject.) Suffice it to say that a lot of people are puzzled and disappointed by a decision ostensibly taken as a cost saving measure.
In a Globe and Mail op-ed Peter Donolo, who was the consul-general in one of the affected consulates in Milan for three years, describes what Canada loses in this bargain.
Arar to receive multimillion-dollar settlement: CTV
Ottawa will announce a multimillion dollar compensation package for Maher Arar on Friday, CTV News has learned.The package includes personal compensation of more than $10 million, a $2-million payment for Arar's legal fees, and an official apology, CTV's Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife reported.
"After months of secret negotiations, a dark chapter in Maher Arar's life is finally coming to a close. CTV News has learned a formal legal settlement has been signed with Mr. Arar and his lawyers," he said.
"The prime minister, I'm told, is going to come out all guns blazing. He is furious that U.S. ambassador David Wilkins said that Canada had no business telling them to get Mr. Arar off the list," Fife reported."His view is that if it was an American who was falsely accused and put on a watch list, they would move heaven and earth to get them off. ... Perhaps he will even offer some legal assistance to Mr. Arar who wants to get his name off the list."
I'll be curious to see what Harper has to say. I've already said that I thought Wilkins made an error in judgement by pushing back the way he did but this isn't exactly what I expected. And Harper does have a temper.
Tonight is Burns Night, when Scots and lovers of poetry and liberty pay tribute to Robert Burns (1759-96), bard of his own people and their language and a fierce believer in the brotherhood of all mankind.
If you’re quick about it, you may still be able to bag a wild haggis for your supper tonight; the hunt ends at 3 p.m. GMT. Or perhaps you’re busy scrubbing out your own sheep’s tripe or veal caul right now, preparing to stuff it with some processed haggis parts.
If you’ve been improvident enough to find yourself short of the traditional casings, though, we can help. The finished haggis is, after all, the “great chieftain o’ the puddin’ race” – he’s a savoury steamed pudding, in other words, when he’s not a sort of sausage, and you can whip up a very fine haggis in an old-fashioned pudding bowl.
Wilkins slams Day for questioning U.S. on Arar
U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins on Wednesday criticized Ottawa's efforts to have Maher Arar removed from a United States security watch list, saying the U.S. alone will decide who to let into the country.Speaking in Edmonton after meeting with new Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach, Wilkins warned Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day to back off, because a U.S. review determined Arar should remain on the watch list.
I must have missed the part where Day actually threatened some kind of retaliation if the Bush administration didn't bend to his will.
So who else thinks we might see a Draft Jim Webb movement? (If you'd rather watch than read, there's a YouTube video of the speech.) Ian Welsh has an interesting post on Webb.
Actually, I am a feminist, and there have never been any ifs ands or buts about that. Back in my day (stop yawning) we were fighting for women's liberation, and it would be at least twenty years before I would start to pay attention to those strange confessions from younger women that always began as my title does: "I'm not a feminist, but ... "
Today our sisters in the U.S. are celebrating the 34th anniversary of Roe v. Wade by blogging for choice, and asking us all to speak out about why we support women's right to choose.
It frustrates me that we should still be doing this -- I have to admit that. I absolutely support this campaign, but I chewed nails at having to write to it. If American women were truly free to celebrate Roe v. Wade and Canadian women to breathe freely after the last Morgentaler decision (1988), we might be raising a glass or two or throwing something healthful on the barbie today, but we wouldn't still be blogging and writing and arguing our hearts out for choice.
Why do I support women's right to reproductive choice, aka women's autonomy, apart from the fact that I have really strong feelings about my own, y'know, existence?
Now that Hillary Clinton has officially announced her entry into the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, you can be assured of more news like this.
Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., may have just officially announced the start of her presidential run today, but already conservatives are planning a "documentary" that they suggest will expose new wrinkles to the former first lady's personal and political story.Dave Bossie, president of conservative non profit Citizens United, and Dick Morris, a political writer who has recently been critical of the Clintons, are working on the film, Bossie told ABC News Saturday.
The pair hopes to release the project sometime this fall, and Bossie, the film's executive producer, said it will present Clinton's story in a "unique and interesting way."
I like reading about Venezuela, so I think I'll start blogging about Venezuela. Here's the thing—as a progressive, and indeed a wild-eyed radical, every time I look around things are getting worse. Corporations are tightening their hold on everything. Right wing governments are doing amazingly destructive things. The environment is dying, the rich are getting richer, everyone else is getting poorer or less secure or generally run more intensely through the maze; culture is getting more debased and superficial. Bush keeps looking like he's stupid enough to really bomb Iran, and while I could gloat that that probably will really put the cap on the American empire, I have no confidence that their self-destruction will do anyone else any good, and what comes out of the rubble after the US economy crumbles could be fascism as likely as anything. Oil prices will skyrocket, but Canada probably won't use that money for anything useful, or indeed keep much of it.
When I start getting depressed like that, there's really just one place to turn—Venezuela.
Eric Clapton. Complete with horn section. Have You Ever Loved A Woman.
When I posted recently to question the wisdom of a series of single source contracts for military equipment, I ended up with a fairly lively debate in comments in which many defended the practice. The argument was that years of neglect had created a situation where the replacement of equipment that was at or near the end of its life cycle had made these procurements urgent and that justified taking short cuts in the process. It's a reasonable enough argument but it doesn't really deflect criticism of Canada's New Looking More And More Like Every Other Government™ if the matter isn't actually treated with a sense of urgency.
The delivery of Canada's first military cargo aircraft faces delays while Boeing is embroiled in a backroom battle with Public Works Minister Michael Fortier over Quebec's share of economic benefits flowing from the $3.4-billion purchase.The negotiations, which were scheduled to close last month, are running into overtime and jeopardizing the plan to deliver the first of four C-17 aircraft to the Canadian Forces in June.
To obtain the contract, U.S.-based Boeing Co. has to pledge to buy supplies and services worth the exact value of the purchase in Canada. This package of regional benefits can be spent directly to build or maintain the Boeing C-17s, or any other current and future Boeing aircraft.
With billions at stake, Boeing is facing political pressure to invest heavily in Quebec, where 55 per cent to 60 per cent of Canada's aerospace industry is located.
But the company plans to spend only 30 per cent of the economic benefits in the politically sensitive province, while directing the rest to other provinces, industry and government sources said.
If only ...
If only he would just walk in the door again one day, as though nothing had ever happened.
Or he could just ... materialize. If you’ve seen the movie, you know what I mean. I used to be afraid of ghosts but I’m not any more. He could walk through a wall and sneak up behind me and say “Boo!” and I’d jump, maybe even start to tell him off for leaving in the first place – “What the hell did you think you were doing, dying on us like that?” – but then we’d laugh ourselves silly and put on some of the auld songs and sing ourselves to sleep as the ancestors snuck back in too, to take up annoying residence in the guest room.
I hadn’t seen the movie until midway through this past year, when a wise friend nudged me towards it. Except for the happy ending, I loved it hard enough to wish it could come true. But it hasn’t. My ghost hasn’t come back, no matter how often I’ve invited him. I suppose I should stop troubling him before he and the other spirits who have gone before become exasperated and charge me with stalking.
He was so much to lose, though.
A year ago today it was over for him forever. He brought so much life to others. That was his life, animating others, drawing out the best in all sorts of different people and then showing them how to make their best live in the world. Until very late, just watching other people, how different they all are, we all are, one from another, was a source of purest joy to him. If I think to reach for it, the memory of the beautiful smile he had for life itself is right there. It was so much to lose.
If only he would just walk in the door again one day, as though nothing had ever happened ...
Group warns private sector workers retire later
Private sector workers have to retire later -- and get less expensive benefits -- than civil servants and other public employees, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business has warned.
...
The proportion of early retirees within the public sector was around 56 per cent in 2005, while in the private sector it was just over 33 per cent. For self-employed workers, only 20 per cent were able to take early retirement.
...
The CFIB says one of the key reasons for the disparity between public and private sector workers is a growing disparity between the types of pension plans being offered in both sectors.While the private sector has been moving toward defined contribution plans, the public sector has stayed with defined benefit plans, which are generally considered more generous for employees.
"In researching this issue, it became obvious that those of us who work in the private sector will not have the same means to retire as our counterparts in the public sector," CFIB president Catherine Swift said in a statement.
To follow up on this post regarding some rather unfortunate remarks by a Bush administration official, there's been a bit of a reaction.
A senior Pentagon official should be fired for suggesting a boycott of American law firms defending detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, four law organizations said in a letter to President Bush on Tuesday.
...
Stimson's remarks were aimed at "chilling the willingness" of lawyers to represent Guantanamo detainees and were contrary to the "bedrock principles" of the right to counsel and the presumption on innocence, read the letter signed by the American Association of Jurists, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, the National Lawyers Guild and the Society of American Law Teachers."The threats by Mr. Stimson are not subtle. They imply these pro bono lawyers are terrorists," the letter read. "The administration must not only disavow these remarks, but Mr. Stimson should be publicly admonished and relieved of his duties for making these allegations and threats."
Stimson was not immediately available for comment.
Here's hoping that no one is willing to settle for that.
Hat-tip to TPMmuckraker.
A short time ago, I promised (threatened?) that I'd bring up an article about carbon trading.
Where the Lipow article about carbon taxes was ambiguous, his article about carbon trading is, well, I'll let it speak for itself because it's just too funny.
"Mommy, where do carbon offsets come from?""Well, you see sweetheart, when a major polluter and a consultant love money very, very much, they express that love in a special way. Nine months later, the consultant produces an extremely large paper packet."
The article's here by the way.
From the BBC:
At least 70 people have been killed and scores injured in a double bombing at a university in Baghdad, sources say.A car bomb blew up outside Mustansiriyah University, and a suicide bomber targeted students as they fled.
Elsewhere in the Iraqi capital, at least 25 people died in car bombings and shootings.
The attacks came as the UN said more than 34,400 Iraqis had died in 2006 in violence across the country.
It also said more than 36,000 civilians were hurt during the year.
The UN's figures were almost three times the Iraqi government's estimate.
...
The BBC's Mike Wooldridge in Baghdad says the bombers apparently attacked at the front and rear entrances of the university building, catching many of the students as they emerged.
A car bomb exploded followed by a suicide bomber who blew himself up among people fleeing the first blast in the predominantly Shia area, police said.Pictures from the campus showed a scene of devastation, with wrecked and blackened vehicles scattered across a wide area.
"The majority of those killed are female students who were on their way home," Reuters news agency quoted a university official as saying.
"There's glass everywhere and the doors were blown out," the official said.
Police said 170 people were wounded in the blasts, the worst single attack in the capital this year.
The Ministry of Higher Education has issued a plea for blood donors.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki blamed the attack on "a hopeless group of Saddamists and extremists".
Dona nobis pacem, pacem,
Dona nobis pacem.
It looks as though copyright will be a hot issue when Parliament reconvenes at the end of the month. Saskboy draws our attention to this CBC article (and has a few pointed words to say himself).
Ever recorded a television show or a movie so you can watch it later? Or ripped a CD so you can listen to it on your MP3 player?With changes to Canada's copyright laws expected as early as next month, these mundane 21st century activities could theoretically be open to prosecution — unless the Conservative government steps in with expanded "fair use" or "fair dealing" protections for consumers.
Close observers of the file say all signs point to a new regime that will improve safeguards for major music, film and media companies and artists for unpaid use of their material, but neglect to make exemptions for personal use of copyrighted content.
So the environment is a big issue right now. Everyone likes it, everyone wants to protect it. The real question (except for certain corporate scumbuckets) isn't whether to protect the environment, control emissions and so forth. It's how. Some say the answer is in taxation policy, that the market will solve all our problems if we set the incentives right by taxing “bads” and so forth. Others say that more direct government action is needed, whether in terms of regulation or still more direct action. I've seen lots of arguments, and I've sure got an opinion myself, but much of it has come down to “That wouldn't work!” “Yes it would!” “No it wouldn't”, with everyone pretty much going on the basis of their personal experience and gut instincts about whether markets work and governments don't or whether governments work and markets don't or what.
So I found this article refreshing.
David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo has the latest on what increasingly looks like a campaign to scare lawyers away from providing legal representation to the detainees at Gitmo. The most notable item is, of course, the public statements by Charles Stimson, a lawyer himself and the bureaucrat now responsible for the prison. Writing at The Huffington Post, Jerralyn Merritt of TalkLeft has a review of editorial reactions to Stimson's comments -- all negative -- which attracted this comment:
This Stimson is a lawyer? Where do these "lawyers" - Gonzales, Yoo and this guy - come from? Did they get their law degrees by sending in matchbook covers? Because they certainly don't seem to know much law.As an example, in a first year class called "torts," everyone with whom I went to law school learned about intentional interference with monetary advantage, a civil wrong just like assault or fraud. Its essence is, in the words of the old Chinese proverb, in trying to break someone else's rice bowl.
When he named the firms in public discourse, in the context in which it was done, Mr. Stimson went as far as he needed to; all that is necessary now is for one of the law firms he named to lose one client because of Stimson's statement. Then he will be liable, and given the kind of clients at whom the remarks were aimed, he will be liable for quite a lot of money.
If the depositions reveal actual malice, which I think is likely, he could be on the hook for punitive damages as well.
That should be kind of fun to watch.
Hat-tip to Laura Rozen at War and Piece.
[Note: This post is a joint effort from the POGGE Collective.]
One of the reasons blogging has become so popular is that it provides readers with a way to give authors direct feedback in a way that the traditional media didn't, at least until we bloggers showed them that many readers actually enjoy the opportunity to be more than passive consumers. Over time those consumers can become a community. We at POGGE have been very fortunate in having many thoughtful and articulate visitors. As a result, we have rarely had to resort to banning anyone.
Unfortunately, at any given time there are one or two people who take up permanent residence in our comment threads. In some cases it seems to be because they can't or wouldn't get enough traffic on their own blogs so, instead of working to build their own traffic, they choose to post in our comments in a way that seems very much designed not to engage us but to bypass us and broadcast a contradictory message to our readers. Along the way it's not unusual for them to suggest that we're less than honest brokers, which makes us wonder why they visit so often if they find us so disagreeable. In other cases they are, as Canadian Cynic puts it, "commenters who wander in and decide to make themselves comfortable and set up shop for the foreseeable future, simply to pick fights with whatever I choose to write about." These are the people we call hijackers.
Aside from disrupting the community and the conversation and even chasing other thoughtful commenters away, there's a practical problem here: if every post that's published brings with it an additional burden of moderating comments to keep things on track -- and to keep World War XIV from breaking out -- it can actually make an author reluctant to bother posting. It can really ruin the buzz. So regardless of the reason for their presence, hijackers of our comment threads will no longer be tolerated.
POGGE is not now, never has been and never will be a free speech zone. The only people with a right to speak here are the people listed as contributors on the masthead. All others are here at the discretion of that group. We don't want to discourage those who honestly want to engage us and we appreciate there is a vague line between honest disagreement and hijacking but in the end, somebody has to make that distinction. Our house, our rules. Anyone who we feel has crossed that line will be banned.
With this message, I am signing off from all blogging duties here at POGGe.
I have quit blogging once before, and to be honest, my reasons haven’t changed that much since the last time. I find time to be an increasingly precious commodity, and I have a family that demands and deserves more of it. Anyway, you’ve heard all this folderol before from other bailing bloggers, so I won’t bore you with it any further.
I am proud to have been part of this group. It is great to see how the space has grown over the past year and change, and it has been extremely rewarding to engage the fantastic group of commenters we are blessed with. Some are so fantastic that we shamelessly snap them up and add them to the roster. (I’m looking at you, PLG.)
I must thank Pogge for welcoming me here, and for allowing me to voice my screeds on his pseudo-eponymous blog. This was already an exceptionally good site when he ran it alone, and he was generous in allowing writers with very different styles to invade this space. In the process, he fostered the creation of a political blog with one of the most interesting group voices around.
To mahigan, skdadl, nightingale and indeed all my fellow rabble-rousers at POGGe, I thank you for letting me part of such a superb team. Despite this place already having a formidable roster, the recent additions of Kevin, Ian and PLG have added tremendous depth and new perspectives to the commentary here. The readers of this site are in excellent hands.
Speaking of readers, I must thank you to. You folks agreed with me, disagreed with me and corrected me on a few occasions, and I have enjoyed the give-and-take tremendously. This conversation is, to me, the essence of blogging, and I appreciate the time you folks took to offer substantial responses to my posts.
With that, I revert to an old habit from my journalism days, and declare this my final take.
See you in the comments.
Mainly because of the Maher Arar case I've written fairly often in the last few years about law enforcement and intelligence agencies. One of the things I've said repeatedly is that I expect those agencies to lobby for powers they shouldn't really have. I can be critical of them for losing their objectivity but it's human nature and it's really government, and especially elected officials, that I expect to provide the balance and to ensure our rights as citizens aren't being lost in the shuffle.
I could say somewhat the same thing about military procurement.
The military branch at National Defence has grabbed control of the procurement process from the hands of the department's civilian branch, the former top bureaucrat on the acquisition file at DND said in an interview.Alan Williams, the retired assistant deputy minister for procurement, said the consequences of this recent change are massive: Canadians stand to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in extra costs in coming military purchases, with no guarantee of obtaining the best product.
I assume that most of us are past being astonished that President Bush is about to announce yet another new strategy for salvaging the débacle in Iraq. I assume that most people are even past hoping that the U.S. Congress will suddenly wake up, recognize that the emperor has no clothes, and refuse to play any further part in his fantasies:
A day before Bush’s nationally televised speech describing his proposal, Sen. Edward Kennedy, a longtime critic of Bush and the war, will propose legislation denying him the billions needed to send more troops to war unless Congress agrees first. Though it was unclear whether the bill would ever reach the full Senate, it could at least serve as a rallying point for the most insistent foes of the Iraq conflict.Democrats seem divided on whether to block funds for troop increases, but many were not ruling it out. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Democrats would "look at everything" in their power to curb the war, short of cutting money for troops already in the field.
One of the senators briefed by the president yesterday on the proposed “surge” of an extra 20,000 troops typifies the reluctance of American political elites, even now, to stop playing along with phony announcements of new commitments from the Iraqis, as if such new commitments are now or ever were in the power of the Iraqi government to make, no matter how often they are announced. From the G&M link:
Any sort of timetable to leave would amount to an about-face for Mr. Bush, who previously insisted that a departure date would only embolden insurgents. But pushing the Iraqi government to take the lead or face the grim prospect of a full-blown civil war after U.S. troops leave appears to be emerging as a strategy to force Baghdad's hand.Mr. Bush's plan had its genesis in a proposal from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who pledged to bolster security if the United States sends more troops, Republican Senator Gordon Smith said yesterday, according to Reuters.
The Iraqi commitments include more military divisions, using certain tactics without regard to religious sects, and a promise not to shield Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, Mr. Smith said.
"The President understands there's a real sense of urgency, [and] that it is done in such a way that also is going to put the Iraqis in leading positions, sooner rather than later," White House spokesman Tony Snow said yesterday.
When has that not been the line peddled for public consumption in both the U.S. and Iraq? It is precisely the line peddled by the administration from the start, even as Bremer and Rumsfeld eviscerated any effective Iraqi military or police force with their mindless de-Baathification program..
The renewed threat to al-Sadr is perhaps semi-news. Moving against him was stupid the first time that plan was tried – and abandoned -- in 2004. Now, with the insurgency in Sunni-held territory much worse and with al-Sadr’s power and prestige among Shiites consequently greater, given the failure of the American and British occupiers to establish any semblance of order, Prime Minister al-Maliki could have only one reason to announce that his pathetic regime is going to crack down on al-Sadr: pressure from Washington, where that kind of unreality-based spin obviously still works.
Apart from our sense of a common humanity with the people of a country now approaching bloody chaos and collapse, what strategic interest would Canadians have in President Bush’s latest new toy, his "troop surge"?
Katie Webster and Gatemouth Brown. Every Day I Have The Blues.
Will the internet start interpreting the USA as damage, and route around it?
In the US in particular, various powerful corporate forces envision the internet as basically something for email, maybe a bit of propaganda, and online shopping, some of the latter being overt and some relatively disguised. They don't have a lot of use for independent content. They'd be quite happy to make everyone pay through the nose to push content through “their” channels; their ideas of intervention make the Chinese censorship look pretty minimal by comparison. If your name happens to be Time Warner, you could probably get a deal that, while revoltingly expensive as a lump sum, isn't too prohibitive given how much crap would be covered under it. If your name happens to be Joe Blow internet hosting, or ZNet, or perhaps Peace, Order and Good Government, Eh?, or something like that, the situation could be somewhat different. There are various free blogging services; I don't pretend to understand how they continue to exist now, but it seems likely they'd start to strain if some cable company got to charge them any time one of said cable company's customers accessed one of their blogs.
So the idea of canning net neutrality is clearly a major threat to the anarchic nature of the internet as we know it. Hopefully there are enough countervailing forces, including disgruntled or even activist internet users, that it won't happen. But what would happen if they actually did it?
So Ontario is planning to increase the minimum wage and the usual suspects, who sort of remember Economics 101, are out in force bewailing the horrors that will ensure if the lowest earning workers are paid a slightly less lousy wage then they are right now.
Economic theory long held that if you increased the minimum wage, it ought to reduce employment. It only makes sense - presumably at higher wages it's less worth hiring some people who are marginally productive.
Unfortunately, as the line runs, this is a case of "a beautiful theory ruined by ugly facts". A number of studies have been done, and none of them have found more than a very minor loss of jobs - some have actually found that raising the minimum wage increases employment!
This is a story about correcting the record. You could file it under "Advice I should take myself but often forget." Or you could just read it as a book report, a short tribute to a story that moved me when I first read it many years ago and that often comes back to me in times of trouble.
The story is called "The Light-Years"; it is the second-last story in Italo Calvino's charming collection Cosmicomics (1965; trans 1968). The stories in Cosmicomics are all connected by one character, our friend and (usually) narrator Qfwfq, who has lived through all time from the Big Bang onwards and who domesticates the cosmos for us by relating his own adventures through some of its more significant moments.
At the beginning of "The Light-Years," old Qfwfq happens to notice, as he is observing the sky with his telescope one night, a sign hanging from a galaxy a hundred million light-years away. The sign says "I SAW YOU." Alarmed, Qfwfq quickly calculates the moment on earth (two hundred million light-years previous) that would date back to that sighting in the distant galaxy, checks his diary, and realizes, to his horror, that it was the one moment in his long life that he might be considered to have done something disreputable.
Bumped and updated
Some of you may have noticed that I'm in the process of rearranging the furniture a bit. I'm now working on the template that formats the page for the individual entry and comments and those changes don't show up until each individual entry is rebuilt. I mention that because it means that until the changes are finalized and I do a complete rebuild, things may be a little inconsistent around here. Please bear with us.
I'm testing my changes in three different browsers but that doesn't mean I've got all the bases covered. If I break anything beyond all recognition, feel free to yell at me in the comments to this post.
Update:
I had to remove the sidebar from the individual entry pages and revert to the old format after getting a report (and confirming) that it was misbehaving in some versions of Internet Exploder Explorer. I'll have to attack it a different way.
Update #2:
The sidebar is back on the individual pages but Internet Explorer is awfully fussy about what I put in there. Everything seems to be working and all the entries have been rebuilt. As always, yell at me if I broke it. If you can't comment, I'd appreciate you hitting my email link under Contributors and letting me know.
Apparently Jason Cherniak is upset. Again.
Jason wants the NDP to "clean up their web presence" because some people on a message board called Bread and Roses said harsh things about him. And we certainly can't have that. The trouble is, that message board has no connection with the NDP.
I've noticed a certain trend lately that's on the increase. So many fine young Liberal operatives respond to criticism of themselves and their party leaders by assuming that it must be partisan spin, usually on behalf of the Dippers. Since they apparently never express an opinion publicly without checking the latest edition of Liberal Talking Points™, they assume everyone else does the same. Except that a lot of us don't; we just say what we think. Jason really ought to consider the possibility that if a number of people thought a post he wrote yesterday was just dumb, it's because that's what they really thought.
I was hoping this silliness would fade once the Liberals straightened out their leadership situation. Guess I was wrong.
Here are my predictions for Canada in 2007:
Dave at The Galloping Beaver has begun a splendid two-part post on the history of Iraq's oil industry and the international politics that have swirled around it since the 1970s.
I can't even say I wish I had written that because I never could have. But I am very grateful that Dave has.
