February 2007 Archives

The must read for the week has to be the new Seymour Hersh article in The New Yorker about the Bush administration's evolving strategy in the Middle East. Though to speak of the strategy as evolving makes it sound a lot more impressive than it actually is. The phrase "Rube Goldberg" was used at one point and it fits. Cheney and co. are in way over their heads and a lot of their recent efforts are devoted to dealing with the consequences of the mess they made just a few short years ago. It's also more than a little interesting to see how involved in American foreign policy Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia remains.

Should the Democrats make good on their insistence to resume real oversight, watch for increasing activity around the Intelligence Committee. As Hersh has it, there's been a lot of off-the-books, clandestine activity and we may actually get to find out about some of it. Some of the names will be familiar — just think Iran-Contra.

On the other hand, the whole region could blow up before the hearings start.

Go read. It's scary.

The ongoing story of Katrina is fascinating, in a horrible sort of way. It's kind of incredible considered on its own, but look at it again and it tells an amazing amount about US political economy, the nature of imperialism, the international linkages between different examples of elite control, and on and on. Consider: Here we have one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and certainly by far the biggest country with such a level of wealth, the country with more surplus to muck around with than any other. So, a disaster hits one of their cities—one of the great American cities, a city whose cultural importance to the United States is incalculable. What do they do? Now, the utter and complete bungling of the immediate response, and indeed the obstinate refusal for years to put the money into maintenance that could have averted the disaster in the first place, were pretty heinous, but in themselves speak only to neglect, of poor priorities.

What has happened since goes far beyond that. I'm forcefully reminded of that by this article:

I'm still in New Orleans. It's so much like Palestine it's eerie. It's a different kind of devastation than right after the storm. Some of the worst wreckage has been cleaned up -- there are no longer throngs of people camping out on the I-10 Causeway or waterlogged bodies lining the streets. Now it's the emptiness that is most striking. Some parts of the city are like a ghost town.

We walked down street after street the other day, canvassing in the Seventh Ward, and it was hard to find anyone at all. There's an extreme sense of shell shock. Every time we found someone there was a strange feeling that they were the only ones left after a bomb had hit.

Most of the people we saw were construction workers. A few bulldozers were depositing the gutted remains of people's homes in dumpsters. It reminded me of Palestinian bulldozers cleaning up the remains of houses after the Israeli army destroys them.

If it wasn't already, given what happened to Maher Arar -- no: let me revise that: given what the Canadian state caused / allowed to be done to Maher Arar in your name and mine -- it should have been, and it had better be everyone's nightmare from now on.

Climb on a plane, any plane, any plane flying over American airspace, even if you never intended to land in the U.S. at all, and you too could be disappeared into the Bush-Cheney gulag ... even if you're Canadian-born and nine years old. They have facilities for you -- profitable privately run facilities too: nothing like good ol' American know-how, is there? -- and all your kidlets to live indefinitely in a state of suspended status. And Canada's New Government&trade may or may not be able to figure out what to do about you and your kidlets.

I'm just too angry to write a blogpost of my own on this outrage. Annamarie at verbena-19 has been tracking this story from the beginning. She is calling for urgent action now -- write to Peter MacKay today -- and she has all the links to fill in the background of what has happened to Majid, his wife, and their nine-year-old Canadian-born son Kevin, who is struggling with asthma in a converted prison cell with an open toilet in Texas, all because their plane was forced down in Puerto Rico (a U.S. possession) as they headed for the place Kevin thinks of as home. Canada.

From Annamarie's links, be sure to watch and listen especially to Amy Goodman's interview with Majid and Kevin. And note that Majid's family are not the only ones being treated to the tender mercies of the Hutto detention centre.

I'm so angry and ashamed I can barely type. But we have to do something this time. The bastards. The bastards. We have to stop them.

Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble. Texas Flood. The long version.

So what was the point of my reading all the live-blogging of the Libby trial at two sites and much of it at a few others and following just about any link anyone gave me to brilliant close readers like Dan Froomkin and Sidney Blumenthal and Murray Waas if I wasn’t going to sift a few nuggets out of all that data and bring them on home here to POGGE?

Search me. All I know is that I am now far too intimidated by the encyclopedic minds I’ve met along the way even to attempt an original or independent comment on the trial itself or the many intertangled dramas that led up to it (although I can give you on the flip a modest summary of what smarter people have said, plus one of the real-life flips to end all flips).

In Anatomy of Criticism Northrop Frye remarks that our trials work according to the structure of classical comedy. They open on some revelation of a disruption in the social order, the rights and wrongs and truths of which must be unravelled by the action of the play / legal process, and they close with a ritual of some kind that is meant to reestablish a general sense of order. The reading of a verdict hammered out among twelve citizens who have sworn to be fair-minded is not exactly a wedding, the classic happy ending (ha!), but in theory it settles disputes of significance for us all and directs us towards reconciliation.

So much for theory. As weddings tend in real life to lead to many other things (don’t get me started), so will the verdict that the Libby jurors are currently working on (late Wednesday and early yesterday they sent out a request for a flip-chart and easel, Post-Its, masking tape, and documents containing photos of witnesses), in all but one scenario.

Judge threatens to shut down Air India inquiry

The head of the Air India inquiry says he will shut down the probe into the 1985 disaster unless a dispute about how much evidence will be made public is resolved.

Former Supreme Court justice John Major called a halt to proceedings Monday until March 9 and said he would not resume the hearings if portions of documents from the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service remain secret.
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Major has said repeatedly he wants most of the proceedings to be accessible to the families who lost loved ones and to the media.

He said Monday it would take years of court proceedings to get the thousands of documents declassified, which would make his inquiry "disappear into the quicksand of bureaucracy."

The impasse over what evidence can be made public has a mild resemblance to the Maher Arar inquiry, the CBC's Terry Milewski reported.

I’ve been thinking it would be good to have a book-review column here at POGGE. That would require someone’s reading some actual books, of course. Others may be able to promise to do that regularly, but I just know I would fall behind. When John Allemang started up his “Book a Day” review column in the Globe and Mail a couple of years ago, I read it for a while because I thought it would be good for me, but fairly soon it started to feel like a marathon. It became overwhelming just to contemplate Allemang reading that many books that fast and writing about them day after day into infinity, never mind reading what he wrote and for sure never mind reading what he’d read, and from overwhelming the whole exercise seemed to me to go on to exhausting, so I stopped.

We could have a book-pile discussion. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s accumulating piles of books I mean to read but just haven’t got to yet (lo these two or three years), and I suspect that that is a pretty democratically distributed talent. If you have a book pile of your own, please tell us in comments what you’re reading or have every good intention of reading sometime in the imaginable future, and maybe why.

I do read a lot of book reviews, not just to stay current but because I admire a good essay as much as I do a fine novel, and I think we live in a time peculiarly suited to essay-writing. My two favourite essay mines are the New York Review of Books and its sometimes smarter younger cousin the London Review of Books; I troll Canadian sources more to keep current, although that’s probably lazy and unfair of me because there are some lovely Canadian essayists out there.

The essay that inspired all these reflections this week is Janet Malcolm’s review of Allen Shawn’s memoir Wish I Could Be There: Notes from a Phobic Life, which is unfortunately behind the NYRB subscription wall (although you can buy access to it for a week for $3, I believe).

Both Shawn’s and Malcolm’s names may ring bells for readers of various backgrounds.

Suppressed report shows cancer link to GM potatoes

Campaigners against genetically modified crops in Britain last are calling for trials of GM potatoes this spring to be halted after releasing more evidence of links with cancers in laboratory rats.

UK Greenpeace activists said the findings, obtained from Russian trials after an eight-year court battle with the biotech industry, vindicated research by Dr Arpad Pusztai, whose work was criticised by the Royal Society and the Netherlands State Institute for Quality Control.

The disclosure last night of the Russian study on the GM Watch website led to calls for David Miliband, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to withdraw permission for new trials on GM potatoes to go ahead at secret sites in the UK this spring. Alan Simpson, a Labour MP and green campaigner, said: "These trials should be stopped. The research backs up the work of Arpad Pusztai and it shows that he was the victim of a smear campaign by the biotech industry. There has been a cover-up over these findings and the Government should not be a party to that."

Hat-tip to Chris in Paris at AMERICAblog.

Here's a couple from Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee.
Stranger's Blues

Backwater Blues

"Extremist elements" in Liberal party making Dion soft on terrorism: PM

"Extremist elements" in the Liberal caucus are leading party leader Stephane Dion to become soft on terrorism, Prime Minister Stephen Harper alleged in the House of Commons on Thursday.

The prime minister went out of his way on two separate occasions in question period to attack Dion's decision to reverse his party's support of an anti-terror law measures that provides police with additional powers to stop suspected terrorists.
...
When Dion asked Harper a question about the auto industry during question period Thursday, the PM used his response time to attack Dion for his new position.

"For the first time in history we have a leader of the opposition who is soft on terrorism," the PM alleged. "He is refusing to take the advice of Bob Rae, John Manley, Anne McLellan and to back the anti-terrorism provisions that his own government put in place."

Later in question period, the Tories used one of their questions to have a backbench MP ask the PM about Dion's position.

Harper again noted the Liberals who want the special powers extended and accused Dion of "being led by extremist elements in his own caucus."

I think you should pursue this, Steve. Go for it. Try accusing Dion of giving aid and comfort to the enemy. After all, it's worked so well for your role models.

If Dick Cheney keeps an eye on Alberta’s oilfields, can al-Qaeda be far behind?

DUBAI (Reuters) - A Saudi wing of al Qaeda called for attacks on suppliers of oil to the United States around the world, saying targets should not be limited to the Middle East and listing Canada, Venezuela and Mexico as under threat.

...

“It is necessary to hit oil interests in all regions which serve the United States, not just in the Middle East. The goal is to cut its supplies or reduce them through any means," it said.

...

"Targeting oil interests includes production wells, export pipelines, oil terminals and tankers and that can reduce U.S. oil inventory, forcing it to take decisions it has been avoiding for a long time and confuse and strangle its economy," it said.

In Calgary, the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board -- the regulator responsible for overseeing the bulk of Canada's oil and gas production -- said it was taking the threat seriously, but had not raised security levels.

Canadian government officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Canada is the biggest exporter of crude oil to the United States, followed by Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

The muted reaction of Canadian security and government officials appears to be sensible in this case:

While foreign affairs expert Eric Margolis said the threat is cause for some concern, he said this particular organization has proven "quite ineffective and inefficient" in its attempts to take out oil facilities in the past.

"This group has adopted the name of al Qaeda but it's not part of al Qaeda," Margolis told CTV Newsnet in an interview.

The organization was behind the failed February 2006 suicide attack on the world's largest oil processing plant at Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia.

"A lot of its members have been killed or arrested by the Saudi government. Their attack last year on a major oil refinery was a fiasco," Margolis said. "Threats coming from them cannot be taken too seriously."

Further, Margolis said oil and gas installations pose a formidable challenge for terrorists to knock out. They cover enormous amounts of ground and the type of damage these groups could inflict would be minimal and easily repaired, he said. Margolis cited unsuccessful attempts by Iran and Iraq to destroy one another's main oil terminals during the Iran-Iraq war.

So that’s moderately reassuring. That our security and government officials are capable of reacting sensibly and calmly to rumours of terror attacks is also moderately reassuring.

The eyes of the powerful of our own continent are still on us, though, and some of our security and government officials appear keen on the attention. That is not so reassuring.

Shorter Allison Hanes (National Post): There can't be anything wrong with politicizing the judiciary because the Liberals did it, too.

Scott Tribe has spent some time this morning arguing that the Conservatives are going further down this road than the Liberals did, and that criticism of Harper's methods and goals here isn't just coming from Liberals. But even if Harper was only doing the Conservative equivalent of what Libs have done in the past, that doesn't make it right. Getting drawn into that debate is a distraction, which is the point of articles like the Hanes piece linked to at the top and the comments to which Scott is responding.

Politicizing the judiciary is wrong, no matter who does it. The debate should be about the best way to choose judges, not which set of partisan hacks commit the worst kind of hackery.

NDP to filibuster voter photo ID bill

The NDP vows to filibuster legislation that would require voter photo ID for the first time in Canadian federal electoral history and the handing over vital personal information about voters to political parties and election candidates.

Ottawa New Democrat MP Paul Dewar on Tuesday described the legislation as "a big brother bill" that risks widespread identity theft if voter lists with the birth dates of electors gets in the wrong hands.
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They said the legislation also threatens to prevent thousands of homeless people and the poor from voting because they don't have personal ID.
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The legislation would require Elections Canada to assign a lifetime identifying number for each of the more than 22 million electors and put their birth dates on the permanent list of electors, which would be updated annually and made available to the political parties and candidates in each voting district.

The bill specifically allows the parties to use the information for fundraising and soliciting electoral support.

Chris Bowers at MyDD follows up on the resignations of Marcotte and McEwan from the Edwards campaign.

Terrorism and the threat of violence against American citizens remains a key political tool for the American right-wing. This is true both in the sense of conservatives and Republicans trying to scare people into voting for them / justifying their legislative agenda, and in the sense of actual terrorism and threats of violence against Democrats and progressives who stand in their way. The most important lesson we should learn from the entire "Edwards bloggers" incident is not that Edwards caved (he didn't), not that Amanda and Melissa let us down (they didn't), not that the media is dominated by a Republican Noise Machine that justifies any right-wing smear (it is, but what else is new under the sun?), but that physical violence and the threat of physical violence is still successfully being employed as a political tactic against individual progressives in America. Make no mistake: without threatening violence, Donohue, O'Reilly, Malkin, and everyone else associated with this smear campaign would have lost, and badly, just as we thought they had lost badly at the end of last week. In the end, their campaign was saved via death threats. You won't read about that in any of the AP stories, but it is something we need to address front and center -- even if just on our own at first -- none the less.

If you're a regular reader of political blogs, you're probably aware of the fuss that's been happening over the past week involving two bloggers who were hired by John Edwards' campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. (And if not, you can get the gist from this post at DailyKos and the links it contains.) Dave at The Galloping Beaver noted yesterday that one of the bloggers, Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon, had resigned from the campaign. (The link Dave has to her post won't work right now -- Pandagon is down because it's been overwhelmed.) Today, Melissa McEwan of Shakepeare's Sister announced that she, too, has resigned.

In a post early this morning at The Agonist — actually in the comments that followed the post — Ian Welsh took the Edwards campaign to task for not doing due diligence, for not reading the two bloggers closely before hiring them so they'd know what they were getting. And it seems fairly obvious that due diligence wasn't done else why the lukewarm response from the Edwards campaign? The response Edwards should have given to an attack mounted by William Donohue and Michelle Malkin was: The former is an extremist and a bully, the latter a bottom feeder and they're both bigots so why should I worry about what they say? Instead he apologized, had the two bloggers apologize and tried to pretend that would throw the hounds off the scent.

No, it's not Friday night and this isn't blues. But who cares? Good for them.

My dad was born one hundred years ago today.

Actually, that would be “our dad.” There are five of us (plus significant others) sitting around today, in cybercommunion at least, swapping memories and old photos and feeling slightly stunned that we have personal memories of aunts born in the 1890s who still seem so present to us.

None so present as this fellow, though:

That’s Dad in 1948, pecking away at the old Underwood that each of us kids would practise on years later, that still keeps company in the little bro’s office. I don’t have to tell you that Dad was a reporter, do I. Spencer Tracy, Cary Grant: eat your hearts out.

Dad had also been a school-teacher, a cub reporter covering the Aberhart campaign in Alberta in 1935, a captain in the Canadian Army during WWII, and he would rise through the editorial ranks in later years. At heart he remained a reporter, though, and he knew that. We all knew that.

It seems I haven't offered up any James Cotton yet. How about a lesson in how to play a slow blues on the harp?

And here he and the band have a little fun with Mannish Boy.

Stéphane Dion and Gerard Kennedy have been thinking – albeit cautiously – about women in politics, which could be a moderately good thing. A bit of credit where a bit of credit is due.

I’ll get back to Stéphane and Gerard in a moment, but gosh, if I’d known they were going to start thinking, I would have blogged this story for them last week to get them seriously fired up. This, boys, is what we – ok, some of us -- call inspiring:

A unit of United Nations peacekeepers with a difference has arrived for work in Liberia - they are all women.

More than 100 female peacekeepers from India are there to work as an armed police unit to help stabilise Liberia which, after years of war, is trying to rebuild its own police force from scratch.

Stepping off the chartered plane in immaculate blue uniforms and berets, the 103 women were immediately on parade and probably bewildered by the media frenzy.

It is just a coincidence that the first all-female peacekeeping force is in Liberia, the first African country to elect a female president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.

...

"These girls are experienced and have been trained. They have worked in areas of India where there was insurgency. They will do a good job and the Liberian ladies will get motivated and inspired to come forward and join the regular police."

The UN mission in Liberia, which will cost around $750m this year, is helping rebuild the country's police force from scratch.

During the 14-year war, the police were involved in the fighting and were steeped in corruption. Having acquired a terrible reputation it is now hard to persuade women to consider the police as a career.

...

Liberia has an alarming incidence of rape which goes unpunished. The deployment of more female police officers could encourage the women and young girls to report the crime.

In the past, the UN mission in Liberia has been tainted by accusations of sexual exploitation: food given to teenage refugees by UN peacekeepers in return for sex. But Joanna Foster, the gender adviser to the UN Mission says that there is less sexual exploitation when more women are employed.

"It limits the sexual exploitation that our people get involved in. In the groups that have a lot more women we get very little reporting of sexual exploitation."

For reminders of the regional importance of Liberia’s still-tenuous recovery from the regime of accused war criminal Charles Taylor, see this BBC report and the reports on Liberia of the International Crisis Group.

Before you leave the UN peacekeepers, be sure to scroll down to that fine photo of them on parade:

"... Indian women are pretty so they are going to be whistled at and all sorts of things but they will have to take it in their stride."

But don't be deceived by the looks.

I saw an enthusiastic salute by one of the Indian peacekeepers almost knock a journalist's microphone half-way to Mumbai. Stand back - these women are serious.

That’s the thing about so many women these days, isn’t it? Which brings me back to Stéphane and Gerard.

It might be worth putting our minority government out of our misery if only to put an end to the gaseous emissions of pompous Liberals like this one (not that it would):

Jack Layton's New Democrats are alienating core supporters by "propping up" the minority Conservative government and attempting to influence the federal plan to tackle climate change, says deputy Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff.

"There's something nauseating going on which Canadians have to notice," Ignatieff told the Star. "Layton gets up and pretends to oppose a government that he's propping up. He's got to decide what the hell he's doing here."

Update:
You might recall that representatives of the Fraser Institute are planning to release an "independent review of the science section of the 2007 UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report" in London, England, on Monday.

Via Buckdog comes news that the tall foreheads at the Fraser Institute are just a touch miffed to have drawn attention to their deliberations from the, y'know, wrong sort of people (that would be us, as in citizens):

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(CCNMatthews - Feb. 2, 2007) - Proper identification will be required of all news media attending the 5th February media briefing on the release of the Fraser Institute's independent review of the science section of the 2007 UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.

Increased security at the media briefing has been prompted by information indicating that protestors will be present outside the venue and may try to disrupt the event.

Only reporters affiliated with recognized media outlets will be allowed into the briefing. All reporters attending will be asked to show identification or accreditation.

We regret this inconvenience brought about by those who would limit free speech and independent research.

The media briefing will feature noted climate researcher Dr. Ross McKitrick as well as Dr. Andrei Illarionov, former advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Professor David Henderson, former head of Economics and Statistics at the OECD, David Bellamy, noted environmentalist, and several of the 10 co-authors for the global launch and presentation of the Fraser Institute's Independent Summary for Policymakers.

Now, that's a knee-slapper, isn't it? The people, demonstrating peaceably and lawfully on the streets -- essence of democracy, yes? -- the people are trying to "limit free speech and independent research"?

Gosh. The fun they must have at the Fraser Institute. What cards.

What corking fun, as Wayne and Shuster used to say. Well, one of them did.

The fat days of summer are gone. The food supply is running low for many. The full moon of February is known as 'The Hunger Moon'.

Tonight is one of those strange winter nights when the full moon reflecting off the snow gives enough light to read a newspaper. Except that it is -32C with a wind chill of -44C. The blocks of firewood sound like chunks of steel when you bang them together. It has been this way for most of the last couple of weeks and will be for at least another.

Roy Buchanan. When A Guitar Plays The Blues

I said this was an oops and it looks like I got one right.

A senior Pentagon official resigned Friday over controversial remarks in which he criticized lawyers who represent terrorism suspects, the Defense Department said.

Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said Charles ''Cully'' Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, told him on Friday that he had made his own decision to resign and was not asked to leave by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Peace train for Iran

That is Tehran. Those are the people of Tehran.

To life. To the dignity of every human being, and to the beauty of our planet.

Thanks to brebis noire at breadnroses.ca.

Oh, I shouldn't do this. I'm so afraid I'll jinx it. Every time I think that Tony Blair is going, he ... stays. Longer.

So on Tuesday night, pogge writes to ask "Have you seen this?" So the next morning I write back to pogge to say no, and thanks, but I just saw this. So then I say to pogge, I'd better not. You know what will happen ... Which was probably the wise thought.

But there is something different about the tone of today's update on the cash-for-honours scandal in the UK:

The day after it emerged that the prime minister had been interviewed for a second time by police in connection with the allegations, Mr Blair insisted he was carrying on with his normal working routine. He still had "certain things" he wished to finish, he added.

Ok, some of them are big things:

Mr Blair repeated his pledge to leave as prime minister before the end of this parliament, but insisted there were still initiatives - including health service reforms - which he wanted to see through before going.

But "certain things I wish to finish" doesn't sound to me quite the Tony Blair who was until recently determined to end his legacy year with yet another grand performance as indispensable international linchpin at the G8 in June.

Some further details of the ongoing investigation on the flip, along with signs that the party elders are getting restless:

So the Conservatives have decided to run a bunch of television attack ads against Stephane Dion. I remember during the last election campaign how Conservative apologists were yipping and kiyiing about how unfair it was for people to bring up Steven Harper's more egregious past blasphemies against Canada and it's citizens. "IT'S NOT FAIR", they bleated in chorus, "to bring up statements someone made in the past and quote them back now".

How times change. Or, at least, how short memories are when it's convenient. Like everything else the Harpies have done since they assumed office, they say one thing and do the opposite. It looks like nothing so much as a major attack of desperation for a party flailing to even maintain its popular vote from the last election. The Conservatives also evidently lack the intellectual capacity to grasp even a concept as simple as "people who live in glass houses probably shouldn't practice the shot-put indoors". Everything Li'l Stevie has ever said about anything is now fair game and the Conservatives can say nothing when it's brought up. Have at it boys and girls.

When you read a statement like this, do you have the funny feeling you’ve heard this kind of argument a lot lately?

"Right now, the whole debate is polarised," he said. "One group says that anyone with any doubts whatsoever are deniers and the other group is saying that anyone who wants to take action is alarmist. We don't think that approach has a lot of utility for intelligent policy."

Sounds awfully reasonable on the surface, doesn’t it? Nuanced, even.

It comes from the guy who just sent out this offer to distinguished scientists and economists in the UK, the U.S., and elsewhere:

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.

Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered.

Gosh. The American Enterprise Institute. You’re right: we’ve heard of them before (back to the Guardian report):

The AEI has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration. Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of trustees.

...

Ben Stewart of Greenpeace said: "The AEI is more than just a thinktank, it functions as the Bush administration's intellectual Cosa Nostra. They are White House surrogates in the last throes of their campaign of climate change denial. They lost on the science; they lost on the moral case for action. All they've got left is a suitcase full of cash."

And gosh darn if there isn’t a Canadian connection too:

To follow up on this post about the resignation of the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and the closing of four Canadian consulates, James Travers has a piece in the Toronto Star that suggests Harper is continuing a process of sidelining DFAIT that began under previous Liberal governments.

Liberal and Conservative prime ministers contributed to the slide by using the department's remaining prestige to fix internal political problems.

Martin strengthened Quebec cabinet representation by bouncing Toronto's intelligent and competent Bill Graham for Montreal's smart but dilettante Pierre Pettigrew.

Harper both rewarded and isolated Peter MacKay by giving the unseasoned former Tory leader – and partner in uniting the right – with a job that puts a premium on experience.

No minister has made much of an international impression since Lloyd Axworthy proselytized soft power and protecting the world's most vulnerable people. Even he failed to give the department a lasting purpose or bring the most sensitive international files back under its control. Those are now Canada's relationship with the U.S. and the Afghan war. While more than a passenger, DFAIT isn't driving either.

Well, this will be a long entry and a somewhat odd one. Bear with me if you will.
I'm a fantasy and science fiction fan. It's often been said that science fiction is really about the times it's written in. That is, the science fiction writer (often perhaps unconsciously) uses a projected future to talk about current issues and what their implications might be, in ways that might not be possible talking directly about the present-day real world. Because of this, while there's a certain amount of knee-jerk mockery of “sci-fi”, trekkies and so on, in many thoughtful circles science fiction gets a certain amount of respect. And while SF has often been dominated by somewhat right wing thinkers, from Heinlein to Jerry Pournelle, and has at times been full of sexism, at the same time its subject matter has always been associated with liberation, acceptance of difference, and exploration of new ideas, and left wing and feminist writers have had huge impacts both within the genre proper and when writers such as George Orwell have adopted the form to make statements. And science fiction tropes have always lent themselves to an implicit or explicit rejection of racism. With all this going on, it's often accepted that science fiction has political relevance. Fantasy, on the other hand, tends to get brushed off as escapist fluff. Which, to be honest, lots of it is (as is lots of science fiction, while a lot of taken-seriously mainstream books are both fluff and not escapist enough to be much fun). Not only that, it's often considered inherently reactionary escapist fluff—that the tropes and environment of fantasy undermine progressive ideas because societies in the genre tend to be medieval with kings and gifted bloodlines and stuff. Magic is rarely something that everyone gets equally, there's unique children of destiny left and right. Oddly, even left wing fantasy writers like China Mieville tend to scoff at the possibility that more typical, Tolkienish fantasy could be anything but negative.

As you may have guessed by now, I disagree.