March 2008 Archives

Well, after Colombia and Burma, isn't it obvious? Tibet! The very kind of place that Canadian mining and marketing corpses, not to mention former Canadian ambassadors who have become investment bankers, are always looking for -- that is, miserable, strife-torn, its glorious beauty already ripped from the hands of the revolting natives, vast wealth underground ... I mean, what's not to like if you're a rapacious rampaging Canadian?

All credit to Geoffrey York for the way he has written this report. York is a serious reporter who has to write for the Globe and Mail, so imagine how clever he has to be to bury so many nuanced little bomblets in this story. For the hard facts about Tangula Group Ltd., Bombardier, Power Corp, Nortel (sheesh: why is it always the same hands?), Mr Balloch, Continental Minerals, and some corpse that is into bottled mineral water, read the whole thing, as they say. But here is the local colour on the luxury train that Canadian predators entrepreneurs have established for the pleasure of "travel connoisseurs" who wish to dabble in Tibet:

The company says it is offering "the ultimate in luxury rail travel" — a kind of Orient Express for today's wealthiest tourists. It promises an experience of "relaxed elegance" that provides "remote exploration in comfort and style." Passengers will have "privileged access" to "mystical Buddhist monasteries" and can enjoy the opportunity of "sipping tea with grassland nomads."

Its train cars will feature flat-screen televisions, wireless Internet service, entertainment systems, en-suite bathrooms and showers, gourmet meals, around-the-clock butler service, and in-room "wellness" treatments. "Every need is anticipated, every whim satisfied," the company boasts.

That's so dear, isn't it? Rich Westerners sampling the wonders of "mystical Buddhist monasteries" while the actual Buddhist monks are being corralled in Lhasa? Condescending to step off their sealed and protected culture capsule in order to drink tea with the grassland locals? And convince themselves of what? That they are anything but a disgrace to the whole of humanity for being so profoundly stupid and bratty?

(Sorry, CC: I couldn't stay rational and mature, although I did strike a word and I sat on my hands before I typed a few others.)

Thanks to Toedancer at Bread and Roses.

No, this isn't our first annual left-lib-sponsored Don't Slash Your Wrists Day -- that's next week, Monday, 7 April. And the Don't Run Your Genitals over a Cheese Grater Hour isn't till May Day (8-9 p.m.).

This is Canadian Cynic's Watch Your Blipping Mouth Day, or the Can You Be Measured, Mature, Rational, and Articulate When Talking to a Blogging Tory Challenge. I see that Red Tory, who is not, thank Francis Urquhart (aka F.U.), a Blogging Tory, has already answered in the shall we say negative. And it's a little redundant for me to be taking up this challenge since I almost never talk to Blogging Tories anyway and mahigan flunked me on my last Swearing l0l test.

But CC reminded me of this, so I send it to him with every polite wish for a speedy recovery about one minute after midnight.

Tom Lehrer, National Brotherhood Week

It's Friday evening. Time for the government to tell us the stuff that it really doesn't want us to notice.

Harper plays down NATO Afghan expectations

Prime Minister Stephen Harper appeared to dampen expectations Friday that all of Canada's demands on Afghanistan will be met during next week's NATO leaders summit in Romania.

While he remains confident the military alliance will come through with 1,000 reinforcements and extra equipment, Harper suggested it all might take more time to accomplish than the two-day meeting among 26 leaders.

I've only got one clip for you tonight. Get comfortable 'cos it's nearly sixteen minutes long. This is Luther Allison with a double header: Move From The Hood and Watching You.

Do you see now why even some of us who aren't card carrying Dippers are getting sick and tired of the whining?

Love,
pogge

I've been reading “On War” by Clausewitz. It's one of those books you hear about but never read—on the subject of military theory, people mention Sun Tzu and they mention Clausewitz. Clausewitz isn't as trendy these days, but he's the guy who coined the phrase “War is diplomacy carried on by other means”. Which is a cute soundbite, but in the book, he talks about the implications, which are broader than one might think, and in turn got me thinking about Afghanistan.

He was talking about how, because war is fought to achieve political objectives, the conduct of the war has to reflect and be shaped by those objectives. To take a slightly absurd example, if the point is to control an aquifer, there's no point driving the enemy forces off that terrain by poisoning all the wells. He also notes in passing something simple and obvious to everyone but neocons, that for this to work the objective has to be something you can achieve through war. And he says that the more crucial the objective, the more effort can be mobilized in prosecuting the war—both material and moral or psychological.

Which brings me to the point—we can get insight into whether the war in Afghanistan is winnable by looking at the relationship between the political objectives and the conduct of the war.

So what are the Cons' (and Libs’) objectives in prosecuting a war in Afghanistan? Near as I can figure it, mainly

1) Currying favour with the United States by backing their play, and
2) Favourable publicity, mostly at home because the international community doesn't care.

In a short Toronto Star piece in which provincial Progressive Conservative leader John Tory tries to pile on in the wake of Jim Flaherty's attacks on the Ontario budget, we find this little gem:

Tory says the Liberals have intimidated manufacturers, school boards and other agencies to keep them from speaking out against Tuesday's budget.

Nice factory you've got there. Be a shame if something happened to it.

If Pierre Poilièvre's criticism of yesterday's Ontario budget was anticlimatic — and it was really just a rehash of Jim Flaherty's talking points — Stephen Harper's newest Attack Poodle In Training tried to add a little something different to the mix today.

When the Ontario Premier was asked about the feds proposed immigration reforms at a news conference, McGuinty replied

... that his own ancestors were unskilled workers — just like the parents of some Canadian Rhodes scholars.

"I wouldn't want to shut out folks who don't have a skill. I wouldn't be here," Mr. McGuinty told a news conference.

"We were part of the exodus from Ireland at the time of famine. We had no skills, we couldn't speak English, and we were dirt-poor.

"But we were looking for opportunity and we brought with us a solid work ethic."

The National Post reports on a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal hearing that was held yesterday and that resulted in unwanted attention being paid to an innocent young woman. To hear the Post's Joseph Brean tell it, it's the CHRC's fault.

... [the awkward highlight of the day] came when the Tribunal appeared to wrongly out an innocent person as a Commission operative, thus exposing her to the unwanted attention of the vast army of bloggers who support Mr. Lemire, owner of the far-right FreedomSite.

For a government agency that has fought for months to protect the personal security of their own staff, even going so far as to (unsuccessfully) invoke national security to keep them off the witness stand, their handling of the "Nellie Hechme" question is remarkable.

I've been keeping one eye on the news today since learning yesterday evening that Conservative MP Pierre Poilièvre was set to make some noise after the Ontario budget becomes official. I've haven't seen any sign of him doing his best John Baird impression yet but in anticipation, Paul Wells has a post up in reaction to this whole series of attacks on Ontario by the Conservative party. I think Wells is more than a little annoyed at this latest posturing by Harper and his crew and it shows. Just to pick out one sample paragraph:

Now the truth, if anyone wants some, is that unemployment in Ontario is down nine-tenths of a percentage point from the days when Flaherty and his friends were running up a hidden $5.6 billion deficit. But then, nobody should depend too heavily on Jim Flaherty to pick a winner: he has the unique distinction of being the only man in Canadian history who managed to lose to both Ernie Eves and John Tory.

Oops. Excuse me. I've got the hiccups or something.

Hillary Clinton addressed economic issues today in an interview with the Philadelphia Daily News and, as reported at Attytood, commented on her own suggestion that former Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan should be part of an emergency group commissioned to deal with the ongoing financial meltdown in the U.S. The idea seems somewhat controversial since some hold Greenspan partly responsible for the subprime mortgage crisis in the first place. Said Clinton:

But he has a calming influence still to this day on Wall Street -- don't ask me why because I never understand what he's saying -- but nevertheless people respond to that Delphic oracle approach.

We're doomed.

Let us take a moment to marvel at the incredible influence that one man is having on politics in this country. Jack Layton has mysteriously managed to keep the Conservatives in power even while he and his caucus consistently vote against every Conservative motion that is a matter of confidence. His secret operatives have infiltrated the Liberals — Canada's natural governing party — and kept them off balance and unready for an election for over two years. Through his amazing powers of mind control he has managed to force otherwise stalwart and steadfast Liberal MPs to abstain on crucial votes and even to fail to show up at all. And despite the amazing popularity of the Green Party he has single-handedly prevented it from winning a single seat in parliament ever. And he has accomplished all of this while leading a party that has 29 out of 308 seats in the House of Commons and that lacks the support of any major media outlet in the country. Truly Jack Layton is awesome and we shall not soon see his like again.

That should take care of the next three or four days worth of commentary on Canadian politics.

We're unplugged this evening and featuring Tony Furtado on bottleneck acoustic guitar. I specify the instrument because he also plays the banjo and does it well enough to have won the National Banjo Championship twice. This first tune is one of the more mellow versions I've heard of a traditional blues song called Stagger Lee. (There may be as many versions of the title as there are versions of the song.)

If you're a faithful visitor at Firedoglake you may have seen this version of Cyprus Grove Blues a while back. I thought it was worth a second look.

And finally a tune Furtado wrote. He never does tell us what it's called.

The post below this one started out as a bit of a sarcastic rant based on a Toronto Star piece reporting that the length of Canadian Forces deployments in Afghanistan was being extended. The general idea was that the mission extension recently voted on in parliament would create a manpower problem. When the CBC reported later in the day that General Hillier was effectively contradicting the report and that deployments would remain at six months, at least for the moment, I bumped and updated that post.

Today the Toronto Star has a follow-up.

Any decision to extend soldiers' deployment in Afghanistan past six months will be based on recruitment efforts and a decision about what role soldiers will be performing post-2009, a senior Canadian Forces officer says.

The officer, speaking to reporters on background, said the military is engaged in a "continuous examination" to determine how best and how long to engage Canadian soldiers based in Kandahar.

When Harper and Dion had what passed for a debate that led to a motion both their parties could support, I don't recall the actual state of the Canadian Forces playing much of a part in it. When the Serious People were opining that our betters should decide this before it ever got near an election campaign... same thing. The powers that be were pleased to pay a lot of attention to a report offering tactical advice from a corporate lawyer but didn't seem to pay a lot of attention to the reality of making it work. So my sarcastic tone, and the reasons for it, stand. I'm betting that extension of the deployments will happen at some point. And I'm betting we'll hear that the extension of the mission has put a strain on the CF. I'm also betting, as I have all along, that whatever additional forces are offered up by other NATO countries will be deemed to be close enough even if the goal of 1,000 troops isn't actually met.

The whole "public debate" concerning Afghanistan looks like a piece of theatre put on by people who don't really know what they're doing.

Bump and update

From the CBC:

Canada's chief of defence staff said Thursday that no special thought is being given to longer rotations for Canadian soldiers serving in Afghanistan.

So did Petey stick his foot in it? Or did the journalists get excited about a non-story? The original post follows.

Longer Afghan missions eyed

Longer deployments for Canadian troops in Kandahar – perhaps as long as a year – are being considered as the military struggles to meet the manpower demands of a mission that has been extended by two years.

You'll see in the article that they're listening to advice from American commanders on how long deployments should be (even though a year ago Rick Hillier was saying that six months was "about right"). Those would be the same Americans who have been relying on a back door draft and have basically broken their army in Iraq. And to be fair, there are other reasons for favouring longer deployments. It's odd, though, that those reasons didn't come up until someone realized we had a problem.

Isn't it a good thing we have corporate lawyers like John Manley to rely on for advice on military matters? I seem to recall some silly blogger trying to warn us a while back that this extension of the mission would stretch the Canadian forces too thin. Good thing they didn't listen to him, eh?

Scooter Libby has been disbarred.

As EW's title suggests, that's one down and a whole lot of others yet to go. Most of these plots continue to thicken and sicken, and no one has yet figured out how to stop the spoiled-brat masters of the universe like Libby who have wreaked such bloody havoc on our world over the last seven years -- well, the last generation, really.

But symbolic repudiations of their amorality and hostility to democracy still matter. It's a shame that the prosecutor in the photo above isn't looking down on the mastermind of the crime, of so many crimes, but at least he caught the enabler. Many honourable Americans deserve congratulations today for grasping, through the story of the Plame investigation and the Libby prosecution, what was being done to them and to vulnerable human beings in many other places by the strange manifestation of evil in our times called Dick Cheney, and everyone who has ever sailed in him.

Thank you, pogge, for nudging me down this path.

Graphic © Jeralyn at Talk Left

Update: Kitteh wants tented fingers? (See comments.) Kitteh gets tented fingers.

Last Friday I noted that the Conservatives had stuck some serious immigration reform into a budget implementation bill making it a matter of confidence. Behold:

The New Democrats are preparing to force Stéphane Dion's Liberals to take the country into an election or vote for a bill that lawyers say will strip transparency from the immigration system and deny basic rights to foreigners hoping to come to Canada.

Olivia Chow, the NDP Immigration critic, said yesterday that she will introduce an amendment to omnibus 136-page budget legislation that includes two pages of changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act - a law bought in by the Liberals in 2002.
...
Voting against the bill - or voting for Ms. Chow's amendment - would plunge the country into an election.

"It is incredible that they went as far as they did. It's absolutely astounding that they would do this," he said. "It's just bad public policy."

Ms. Chow, who met yesterday in Toronto with representatives of more than 30 different immigrant groups and organizations, disagrees. "They are up in arms," she said.

Toronto lawyer David Garson said the Conservative proposals would "eviscerate" the Immigration Act.

So apparently it’s been five years since the US invaded Iraq, and people are taking stock. And one question that’s come up is, what exactly is the cause of the drop in US casualties of late? I’ve read a number of articles on that subject lately, and the various factors seem to me to add up to one thing. Casualties are down because:

The war is over. The Americans lost.

They control none of the country. The government they sponsor controls none of the country. Their Sunni opponents control the “Sunni Triangle” and have stopped attacking the US because the US gave up trying to take over their turf and paid them protection money to leave US troops alone. The Shia militias have gained control of their territory largely without firing a shot, because the would-be occupiers realized from the first that it would be suicide to seriously test them. The Iraqi “government” huddles in the Green Zone behind US troops, concrete barricades and barbed wire, exerting little influence in the rest of the city of Baghdad, much less the country of Iraq. Even the Kurds aren’t really listening to what the Americans want, as far as I can tell. And the Americans seem to have given up trying to change the situation in any significant way.

If you invade a country, after five years control basically none of it either directly or by proxy, and are doing nothing to change this, that’s pretty much losing in my books. And of course if the war is over, casualties are gonna decrease even if it's because you threw in the towel.

When the talk turns to hiring lawyers my usual if somewhat flippant response is that it's against my religion. I avoid it as much as possible and I'm fairly sure I'm not alone. So I'm not sure the growing tendency on the part of Conservative MPs and their staffers to file libel suits against their opponents is a good way to endear themselves to the average voter. It's bound to look like bullying no matter how hard the Cons argue that it isn't and that's especially so when we look at some of the things Conservatives say in the House of Commons where they're protected by privilege.

In fact I can envision a set of campaign ads for the next federal election that read something like this:

We'd like to tell you what we honestly think about the Conservative record on this issue but we're afraid they'll sue us.

I'm guessing we have still more of this to look forward to.

The Tories have slipped significant changes into Canada's immigration laws into a budget implementation bill introduced in the Commons Friday.

The changes, which amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, were included in the budget bill, making them a confidence matter.

If they're passed, the changes would speed up the processing of applications for skilled workers, but they would also throw other claimants to the back of the line and reject others outright.

Hopefully the opposition parties have now learned once and for all to read everything that the Conservatives put in front of them very carefully and take nothing at face value. But how much difference does it make when the Cons can do whatever they choose simply by making it a matter of confidence?

I've actually made a quick change in plans here because I stumbled across a piece I was hoping would turn up. I saw this Buddy Guy appearance on Austin City Limits when it first aired and I particularly remember this version of Leave My Little Girl Alone both because Buddy is Buddy and because there's a nice guitar solo by Scott Holt.

This second version, also from an Austin City Limits appearance, is very much like the first. But it's Stevie Ray Vaughan and he could "do" Buddy Guy if he wanted to. Watch your volume 'cos this has a little more pop to it than the first one.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A series of embarrassing incidents on federal property across the country, including the theft of a trailer of surveillance equipment from an FBI parking deck, is being blamed on budget cuts at the agency charged with securing federal grounds.

"We're seeing the near collapse of the Federal Protective Service," said Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-District of Columbia, who leads the congressional subcommittee that oversees federal buildings.

The service's budget and staff have been cut since it became part of the Department of Homeland Security in March 2003, according to the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office.

Forgive me -- I know it's a cheap laugh and a bitter laugh and I shouldn't be laughing at all -- but for some reason, when their feds or ours set up our national police forces to trip over their own feet even more than usual, I just can't help m'self:

A surveillance trailer with $400,000 worth of high-tech equipment was stolen from the parking garage of a federal building in Los Angeles, California.

CNN has learned that the trailer was stolen from the Los Angeles FBI field office in May. Contract guards watched the theft on surveillance cameras but did nothing to intervene and did not report the incident for three days, according to an incident report confirmed by the FBI and Norton.

The trailer was recovered with some of the equipment intact. The FBI investigation is still open.

Have a falafel. And feel safe. Heimat Security and Public Safety Canada are just joshin' us when they nag nag nag about all the terrists out there and how we need the FBI and the NSA and the RCMP and Blackwater-trained Canadian troops to save us. That's not really what they're working on, and it isn't the terrists we need to worry about. It's us they're after, but luckily, BushCo and Stockwell Day are on the case, ensuring that most of the time most of our counterterrist eavesdroppers people are still taking pratfalls.

Tribute to the U.S. House of Reps on just this turf to follow tomorrow, but I'm just too tired from learning about it today.

h/t rosalind in comments at emptywheel

As further evidence that our national government can always find new ways to be dysfunctional, Kady O'Malley has the text of a memo from Justice committee chair Art Hanger announcing that he's shutting down the committee until some apparently unspecified time after the Easter break. It seems Hanger, a Conservative, is upset at the insistence of the Liberals and the BQ that the Cadman affair is an appropriate subject for this committee's scrutiny.

This makes the NDP position — they've sided with the Conservatives because they think it should be left to law enforcement to investigate — look prescient since at this rate, the RCMP will get to the bottom of this loooooong before the Justice committee does. Of course that point of view would require believing that a potential breakdown in the committee was what the NDP feared. Unfortunately that rationale wasn't offered at the time. And I'm not sure why considering the way the Conservatives have played procedural games with other committees but I have to assume that the Dippers didn't actually anticipate this.

I haven't written anything about the Cadman business up until now because I had a vague suspicion that it wasn't going anywhere in a hurry. It would be nice if I could claim to be prescient too, but I can't. It was just a hunch coupled with the fact that short of Harper himself being frog-marched out of the House of Commons (can I be sued for writing that?) it isn't going to bring the government down until the Liberals are prepared to vote in favour of a non-confidence motion. And if the budget wasn't sufficient for them then it seemed unlikely that, in the short term at least, this particular scandal was going to do it.

A number of other bloggers have reported that Harper went ahead and filed the papers on the libel suit he threatened when the Liberals first started making accusations against him in this affair. They're all noting that instead of suing Dion, Iggie, etc. as individuals, the suit is against the Liberal party. I'm with those who say that seems odd, but the whole thing is just silly. It's like Bill O'Reilly shutting off his guest's mic when he doesn't like the answers he gets. Can I be sued for comparing Harper to Bill O'Reilly?

Edited for spelling. Can Art Hanger sue me for spelling his name wrong?

Inquiry launched over Afghan detainees issue

Canada's Military Police Complaints Commission is to hold public-interest hearings into the handling of Afghan detainees by Canadian military police.

The move announced Wednesday comes more than a year after the commission first started to investigate the matter.

"The principal difficulty which has given rise to this decision has been the government's refusal to provide the commission with full access to relevant documents and information under the control of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) and the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC)," commission chair Peter A. Tinsley said in a news release.

The government recently argued that it was under no obligation to prove that Afghan jails are free of torture. I guess that's about to be put to the test. Further down in the article the phrase "power of subpoena" is used. Works for me.

Almost immediate update:

Here's a link to the Military Police Complaints Commission page on the hearing which includes links to other relevant documents. Hat-tip to M. Spector in a babble thread for that.

The war in Afghanistan is a growth industry for America's military industrial complex. In fact, you could call it one big make-work project.

The U.S. is paying for both sides of the war in Afghanistan. As is becoming increasingly clear, for at least two and a half years, and perhaps far longer, the Pakistani government has been receiving massive U.S. aid while its intelligence agency and elements of its military have been pursuing their own anti-American agenda within Afghanistan. The U.S. has given the Musharraf regime $10 billion since Sept. 11, 2001, but Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and factions within the Pakistan army, while helping the U.S. track al-Qaida with one hand, have been aiding the Taliban with the other, both inside Afghanistan and across the Pakistani border in Tribal Areas like North Waziristan. In part because of Pakistani help, the Taliban have made a steady comeback and American and Afghan casualties are at their highest annual levels since the war began.

Islamabad has denied complicity and Washington has maintained official silence, but the double-dealing is not surprising. It's just the continuation of the Pakistani government's former alliance with the Taliban, which was itself an outgrowth of a decades-old Pakistani policy of trying to exert control over the internal affairs of its chaotic neighbor. It was the recognition of Pakistan's motives that drove Muhammed to defect. "I left the Taliban because I could no longer stand Pakistan's hand in Afghanistan," Muhammed told me through a translator. "For years we were trained and helped, and fought alongside ISI and [Pakistan] army officers. But they are not mujahedin, they want to keep Afghanistan weak."

Muhammed said the ISI had helped train and arm him to fight inside Afghanistan against U.S. and international coalition forces since 2002. "If the world can know what happens inside the Tribal Areas, maybe Afghanistan has a chance to survive," he said. "Like this the war will not end."

This is what we are sending our soldiers into: a self-perpetuating abattoir that runs on American money and propaganda. Meanwhile, the Conservatives and the Liberals have come to an agreement. Canadians, they believe, would rather see our troops continue to die in an endless war rather than be inconvenienced by an election. That's the state of leadership in this country.

In the process of announcing his bid for a fourth term in the American House of Representatives, Republican Steve King of Iowa had quite a bit to say about a potential victory for Barack Obama in November's race for the presidency. King seems unhappy at the idea but I'm not sure why given this:

"I will tell you that, if he is elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al-Qaida, the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11 because they will declare victory in this War on Terror."

Hat-tip to The Rev at The Galloping Beaver.

I've noticed that Atrios has a new gimmick. Any time he's at a loss for something to write about he checks to see if Joe Klein has done something stupid that day. He's seldom disappointed. We Canadian bloggers may be luckier than Atrios. It seems we have an entire political party we can count on to provide us with material.

Yesterday I suggested that perhaps a few Liberals ought to get together and stuff a sock in the mouth of their party's environment critic since he seemed intent on making them look even sillier than they were already looking. Didn't happen. The Jurist has Hansard excerpts of the debate surrounding the NDP's non-confidence motion and I would submit there is further evidence here that Liberals are intent on doing nothing other than continuing to supply bloggers like me with low hanging fruit.

Sorry, but I just had to get that off my chest. I reserve the right to reuse the title of this post at any time in the future. I am in my prime, after all, and I do not intend to devote my prime to petrification.

Maggie Smith, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Enjoy.

Here's a little upbeat number for a snowy morning. (It's certainly snowy in southern Ontario.) I'm thinkin' the tune is called Start It Up though it's not revealed anywhere. This is the Dawn Tyler Blues Project with Paul Deslauriers on lead guitar.

Given the passing of Jeff Healey earlier this week, I doubt this evening's program will suprise many. We'll start with a performance of See The Light from an episode of Night Music that includes an appearance by Dr. John. I think this piece has been pointed to by a couple of other bloggers this week but who cares?

Here's a slow blues called As The Years Go Passing By.

And as a bonus track, here's a cover of Roadhouse Blues.

This comes from a post by a blogger named IOZ by way of Glenn Greenwald.

I fear a surveillance society not because I think that the government will actually catch me in my subversion, but because I fear that it will think that it's caught me in my subversion. The pressure to "produce results" leads to the issuance of too many traffic tickets. Imagine what it will do when someone has to justify spending a bajillion dollars on some kind of algorithmic AI that's supposed to psychohistorically predict when a new 9/11 will change everything all over again forever.

NDP to try to topple government over climate change policies

The New Democrats will try to bring down the federal government on Friday by introducing a confidence motion criticizing the Conservatives' record on climate change.

But the Liberals have already indicated they will not vote for the motion, meaning the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper will not fall.

The NDP will use their opposition day to say the House of Commons has lost confidence in the government for failing to live up to its international climate change agreements and refusing to adopt opposition-approved legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Liberal environment critic David McGuinty said the NDP are just playing political games.

"In order to try to score cheap political points, the NDP are playing cheap mischievous games in the house with motions they know are not going to succeed."

At this point I really think a few Liberal backbenchers ought to hold McGuinty down and stuff a sock in his mouth.

Hat-tip to mahigan by email.

Josée Verner, CPC, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Status of Women and Official Languages
Gordon O'Connor, CPC, Minister of National Revenue
Lawrence Cannon, CPC, Minister of Transport, Infrastructure, and Communities
Sylvie Boucher, CPC, MP

I watched those four Conservatives rise to vote Nay yesterday evening on the second reading of Bill C-484. They had to stand alone in the midst of their seated colleagues, who had otherwise risen en masse minutes earlier to support a clearly unconstitutional private member's bill whose only conceivable purpose was and remains to deny the autonomy of adult women. (Anyone else have some funny thoughts about some of those men voting on the fate of women? Oh, never mind. I wouldn't want to say anything ungenerous about *redacted*.)

Many of us have raged today against the hypocrites who betrayed women in the Commons last night and then, the very next day, used women's vulnerability as pious cover for a face-saving stunt. When it counted, as kuri of Thought Interrupted said last night,

The Liberals failed to stand up against the Conservative agenda they warned us against.

C-484 is as serious a threat to the defence of civil liberties in Canada as anyone should need, but that single line of kuri's goes further; it is the truest, most eloquent warning of worse to come. Some of us know that we are watching Washington redux in Ottawa right now, an absurdity when the Conservatives have only a bizarrely incompetent minority government, and yet it is happening.

The NDP, for whom women's equality is supposed to be a firm policy, declined to whip their vote. Twenty-seven Liberals supported Ken Epp's bill, which includes a definition of the person that directly contradicts a ruling of the Supreme Court. Stéphane Dion, their fearless leader, was too busy eating pink hamburgers at a party at Stornoway even to bother showing up to vote at all. The occasion of the party? A celebration of International Women's Week.

(Memo to Susan Delacourt of the Toronto Star: Honey, you've been in Ottawa too long. "Dion's very interesting spouse" is the kind of thing that interior decorators say, not what any of us expects from a political reporter.)

Others have put up the walls of shame on the blogs today. I thought that we should pay tribute as well tonight to the four Conservatives who stood up for women and the Charter and the Enlightenment ideals enshrined in it, to which women are heirs, to which all the broken-hearted peoples of the world must be heirs, maybe not yet, but there is no other ideal more worth fighting for every chance we get.

I've never applauded Gordon O'Connor before, and I've had to screw up some serious tolerance to do it now, but when he and his three colleagues rose on their lonesomes last night in defence of human liberty, Alexa rose with them and applauded, so I figure I can too. So can you. So can we all.

Liberals plan motion slamming . . . NDP and Bloc

Liberals will attempt to turn the tables Thursday on rival parties who've ridiculed them for being afraid of toppling the minority Conservative government.

They'll introduce a motion condemning the NDP and Bloc Quebecois for defeating the previous Grit government in November 2005, thereby enabling Stephen Harper's Tories to win power.

Of course given recent Liberal performance, they'll be absent for the vote.

Assclowns.