I don't think our politicians have quite got the knack of coalitions. It's supposed to involve people working together. Like Gary Moore and B. B. King on Since I Met You Baby. (Give it a minute. It picks up.)
There's a big fat bonus track on the flip.
Except apparently Iggie missed this part:
The only agency that regularly finances large-scale science in Canada was shut out of Tuesday's federal budget, putting at risk thousands of jobs and some of the most promising medical research, and forcing the country to pull out of key international projects.For the first time in nine years, Genome Canada, a non-profit non-governmental funding organization, was not mentioned in the federal budget and saw its annual cash injection from Ottawa - $140-million last year - disappear.
H/t to Hell, Upside Down.
The Left: The way weather patterns have been shifting, it’s likely there’ll be some heavy rains upstream in coming seasons. We should work on emergency preparedness.
The Mainstream: Huh?
The Conservatives: All’s for the best in this best of all possible worlds.
Declan gives us lots to chew on in his review of the budget that Flaherty presented yesterday and I would recommend the entire post. But I wanted to send this in particular out to all those who are lamenting the way Stephen Harper has supposedly betrayed his conservative principles.
People who refuse to adjust their preconceived notions that people on the right are responsible stewards with firm hands on the tiller while people on the left are starry eyed hippies who are still trying to get their head around the concept of a 'budget' are clearly slow learners, so let me help:Right wing governments are not fiscally conservative
Right wing governments are not fiscally conservative
Right wing governments are not fiscally conservative
Right wing governments are not fiscally conservative
Right wing governments are not fiscally conservative
Right wing governments are not fiscally conservative
Right wing governments are not fiscally conservativeGot it?
I've seen a fair amount of comment about the different face that Stephen Harper is presenting to Canadians at the moment. His fans are expressing disappointment at his supposed betrayal of conservative principles while his critics are suggesting that he's beginning to look positively Liberal. But even if the Harper government presents a budget that Liberals can live with, what's to prevent them from dusting off all those poison pills they jammed into November's economic statement and bringing them back as separate pieces of legislation? Not much, apparently.
The Harper government appears to be charging ahead with plans to legislate wage controls and rollbacks on public servants, forcing federal unions into a united front for a possible showdown.Union leaders say Treasury Board officials have told them to expect the government to resurrect controversial plans that would freeze all federal salary increases at 2.3 per cent for 2007 and 1.5 per cent for each of the next three years.
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Last week, the RCMP, through their staff representatives, went to Federal Court to stop Treasury Board from rolling back its three-year wage agreement, which was settled last June.
'Cos we all know that crap is king, this is the Eagles with Dirty Laundry.
And people will now ignore the main event. We’ve all watched in horror as Israel attacked Gaza, killing lots of people and maiming lots more. Dead civilians, dead children, misery, fear and pain. Very horrible, and very dramatic. And I’m sure it did a lot for some Israeli political hacks’ election chances. But the strategists, while doubtless quite willing to accommodate short-term political demands in terms of timing, had other issues in mind. It’s not about the immediate death. It’s about the destruction and its results.
All told, the immediate death toll was a ways over a thousand. That’s horrible, but there are one and a half million people in Gaza; clearly if you want to get rid of the Gazans as a problem, killing a thousand of them over three weeks isn’t going to get the job done. That would be just 20,000 a year, 100,000 in five years—why, to commit genocide in Gaza at that rate would take 75 years of bombing without a break. And there’s always the possibility, however faint, that the international community might do something.
The important result here for the Israelis isn’t the direct slaughter of Gazans, politically popular though that might be. The important part is the destruction which will lead to many, many more indirect deaths and generally make Gaza even more dependent on readily choked off outside supply.
I've been fighting with a virus all week and feeling pretty crappy but I've paid enough attention to know that the atrocity in Gaza continues as does the inexcusable lack of leadership from our local political powers that be.
This is for the Israelis who have refused to serve in Gaza and the Americans who have refused to serve in Iraq: Phil Ochs with I Ain't Marching Anymore.
The right always has this thing going where “they” (as in, basically, muslims, or maybe Arabs, or something—they don't actually know exactly who, but they know one when they bomb one) hate “us” (as in “the West”, basically Europe and America, mainly because we're Christian or maybe because we have democracies or something). Me, I'm not a Christian so I wouldn't really know, but whatever. In this construct, any animosity has nothing to do with US, British etc. foreign policy: It's just supposed to be this immutable existential thing where they're fanatics for their religion and they hate us for doing things differently. It wouldn't matter what “we” did for them, they'd just be hostile, sullen and ungrateful.
Apparently completely off topic, let me talk about Hugo Chavez. Hugo Chavez is a Christian, quite vocally so—he doesn't get along great with the Catholic hierarchs, but big deal. He is the leader of a Western-style democracy of European descent, which incidentally is just dripping with the kind of freedom “they” are reputed to hate. He is a strong supporter of feminism and gay rights. He comes from a country one of whose claims to fame is beauty queens in skimpy clothes; Chavez seems to have no issue with this (OK, perhaps contradictions with the feminism here but it doesn't matter for my point). So really, “they” ought to hate his guts, right? Everything “they” are supposed to hate about “us”, you name it, he has it in spades. Say he was tactically an ally of “theirs”, the clash o' civ thesis should mean their reaction ought to be something like “We'll string the infidel dog along until he is no longer useful; how shameful that we must co-operate with him and his accursed freedoms and his country of loose women!”
So how can we explain this?
Mohammed al-Lahham, an MP for the Fatah party of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, said Chavez was "a symbol of the struggle for liberty, like Che Guevara. This distinguishes him from the world's other presidents." . . .Venezuelan flags and portraits of Chavez could be seen lofted by demonstrators in the West Bank towns of Bethlehem, Ramallah and Hebron during rallies last week.
. . ."I would like to be able to give Chavez a Palestinian passport so he could become a Palestinian citizen. Then we would elect him and he would become our president," said Mahmud Zwahreh, mayor of Al-Masar, a community near Bethlehem where 8,000 people live in poverty.
. . ."He is better than Arab leaders. Jordan and Egypt should have also expelled their ambassadors (from Israel). It is a real shame that we have no leaders like him," said Assem, another shopkeeper.
Could it . . . could it be that foreign policy does have some impact on how “they” look at people? Could it be that if you treat them with respect, like human beings, “they” react positively? Say it ain't so, “Clash of Civilizations” peddlers!
Pete Seeger, "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy," performed September 1967, finally broadcast January 1968
Now, I'm not going to plant any morals; as Pete sings, I'll leave that for yourself. Maybe you're still walkin', you're still talkin', you'd like to keep your health. It's getting harder, though, isn't it? All that head banging? Gnashing of teeth? Shouting at monitor?
There are lots of big fools to go around these days, and you're probably thinking of your own candidates. Here's some gender-neutral big foolishness, for example:
"We want to end the operation when the two conditions we have demanded are met: ending the rocket fire and stopping Hamas's rearmament. If these two conditions are met, we will end our operation in Gaza," Mr. Olmert said in a speech in the port city of Ashkelon, well within range of Mr. Haniyeh's rockets. "Anything else will meet the iron fist of the Israeli people, who are no longer ready to tolerate the Qassams."...
"I am not going to negotiate with Hamas and don't need them to sign anything for me. What they said is meaningless," Ms. Livni said, adding that Israel's actions speak louder than words. "This is what is called deterrence: They know that the next time they attack us, they will be harmed," the foreign minister said.Political analysts here say the Israeli government's three senior ministers disagree on how to end the fighting in Gaza. Ms. Livni and Defence Minister Ehud Barak want to end the operation as soon as possible. Mr. Olmert, apparently backed by several other members of the cabinet, wants to continue and finish off Hamas. The Prime Minister is reported to have told the full cabinet on Sunday it would be a missed opportunity if they didn't try to do this.
Or there's Stephen Harper, who apparently believes that the only problem with the military commissions at Guantanamo is that many detainees have not been charged, but since Omar Khadr has, Stephen Harper says to press on. Seriously. How bad are the man's advisers that he can still say something that ignorant in the face of decisions from an impressively long line of pretty conservative American judges and not a few pretty conservative American military prosecutors who have resigned rather than proceed with the criminally compromised commissions at GTMO?
On the turn, a couple of the best examples I've seen in the last few days of foolishness both big and murderously petty.
Israel Bans Arab Parties From Election
By a margin of 26-3, the Israeli Central Elections Committee decided to ban the Balad Party from running in next month’s election. By a margin of 21-8, they also banned the United Arab List-Ta’al (UAL-T). The two bans will prevent more than half of the current Arab members of Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset, from running for reelection.The Arab parties earned the ire of the most hawkish elements in the Israeli government by publicly opposing the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip. Balad likewise made enemies by explicitly calling for equal rights for all citizens of Israel, regardless of national or ethnic identity, which the ruling Kadima Party said would “undermine Israel’s identity as a Jewish state.”
Even putting aside the atrocity in Gaza, something has gone horribly wrong in Israel. Maybe it's some kind of collective battle fatigue but whatever it is, Israel's so-called allies aren't helping it any.
It seems weird to talk about anything except Gaza right now. But anyhow, I recently ran across a sample of how Microsoft arranges good press. Linux fans seeing this sort of thing are, predictably, up in arms about the villainous perfidy of Microsoft. But what few of them internalize is that it's not about Microsoft. This is how the system works, whether it's computers or agribusiness, the police or Nestlé, business news or party politics.
Without further musings, here are some quotations from an influential Microsoft “Technical Evangelist”, one James Plamondon:
Analysts are people who are paid to take a stand, while always trying to appear to be disinterested observers (since the appearance of independence maximizes the price they can charge for selling out). [...]BribeHire them to produce “studies” that “prove” your technology is superior to the enemy’s, and that it is gaining momentum faster. [Strikethrough in original]. . .A stacked panel, one the other hand, is like a stacked deck: it is packed with people who, on the face of things, should be neutral, but who are in fact strong supporters of our technology. The key to stacking a panel is being able to choose the moderator. Most conferences allow the moderator to select the panel, so if you can pick the moderator, you win. Since you can’t expect representatives of our competitors to speak on your behalf, you have to get the moderator to agree to having only “independent ISVs” on the panel. No one from Microsoft or any other formal backer of the competing technologies would be allowed - just ISVs who have to use this stuff in the “real world.” Sound marvelously independent doesn’t it? In fact, it allows us to stack the panel with ISVs that back our cause. Thus, the “independent” panel ends up telling the audience that our technology beats the others hands down. Get the press to cover this panel, and you’ve got a major win on your hands.
Finding a moderator is key to setting up a stacked panel. The best sources of pliable moderators are:
Analysts: Analysts sell out - that’s their business model. But they are very concerned that they never look like they are selling out, so that makes them very prickly to work with.
Consultants: These guys are your best bets as moderators. Get a well-known consultant on your side early, but don’t let him publish anything blatantly pro-Microsoft. Then, get him to propose himself to the conference organizer as a moderator, whenever a panel opportunity comes up. Since he’s well-known, but apparently independent, he’ll be accepted - one less thing for the constantly-overworked conference organizer to worry about, right?
While the events of the week have left me feeling pretty pessimistic, the earworm of the week, which has nothing to do with anything in the news, is an upbeat, optimistic little number called Solsbury Hill that's been rattling around in my head for days. It's Friday night so let's go with upbeat and optimistic. This song was Peter Gabriel's first solo release after he left Genesis in 1976. This performance is from the Secret World Live tour in 1994.
Excuse me while I write a bunch of bafflegab designed to serve as cover for claiming that the Liberal-NDP coalition involves a secret agreement with those nefarious separatists.
See here:
The Liberals and NDP have published the text of their accord but not of their agreement with the Bloc.
... those who voted for the Liberals, NDP or Bloc in the last election could not possibly have known they were choosing a Liberal-NDP government supported by a secret protocol with the Bloc.
It's a rhetorical question. He pulled it out of his ass.
H/t to Impolitical
Ignatieff says Israel must be allowed to defend itself
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff says Israel is justified in taking military action to defend itself against attacks by Hamas from the Gaza Strip."Canada has to support the right of a democratic country to defend itself," he told reporters in Halifax today after speaking to a forum of business leaders on the economy.
"Israel has been attacked from Gaza, not just last year, but for almost 10 years. They evacuated from Gaza so there is no occupation in Gaza."
Since this is the newly minted Liberal leader and not the prime minister who's already demonstrated that whatever the U.S.says goes in the region, let me try to lose my weary cynicism and become freshly enthusiastic for just a moment: what a steaming load of fucking bullshit!
By leaving out the occupation which has been ongoing in one form or another for 41 years, you can conveniently ignore the possibility that the violence directed towards Israel is actually resistance to that occupation. You can ignore the possibility that if Palestinians have embraced a party such as Hamas it's because the daily violence and humiliation they've suffered at the hands of the occupiers has left them desperate for anyone who will stand up for them. You can pretend that Israel is defending itself instead of defending an illegal occupation that should have ended decades ago. And it probably would have ended decades ago except that the United States runs interference for Israel on the UN Security Council and has spent billions arming the IDF and the IAF so that Israel can slowly but surely lay claim to all the fresh water and arable land in the occupied territories. If they were prepared to sacrifice a little of that in Gaza to create an open air prison, maybe it's because the West Bank is the greater prize.
I guess we can forget ever having a foreign policy that involves disagreeing with the United States. Let's recall that Ignatieff didn't issue his mea culpa on Iraq until it became clear that it was safe to do so. American progressives don't call him a member of the Wanker Caucus for nothing.
According to this Globe and Mail article, Stephen Harper is changing his ways.
Facing an emboldened opposition and the possibility of defeat, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is making a significant switch in tactics, dropping his reliance on confidence votes and moving even further toward stacking the Senate with Tories.A top aide said yesterday that Mr. Harper will no longer threaten elections to force opposition compliance on secondary policy matters.
If I were Stephen Harper and I wanted my government to survive long enough to be reasonably sure the Governor General wouldn't seek any alternative to dropping the writ upon its defeat, this is exactly what I would want the opposition and the voters to believe: that I've decided to try and play well with others. Then I could wait and see if a time came when conditions were right for a Conservative victory. Should that time come, I could then introduce legislation the opposition simply couldn't support, call it a confidence vote and have an election at a time of my choosing. Again.
It's quite possible that knowing the identity of that source wouldn't change my opinion about whether or not to take this with a grain of salt. But it would be awfully nice to have that additional information. There is no reason I can think of why that source deserves to have his or her identity protected on a story like this. This isn't journalism, it's gossip. Or it's the Conservatives getting their spin into the press for free with no accountability for it.
H/t to Greg.
I've seen this one repeated several times just today. I'm referring to the claim that Israel "withdrew completely" from the Gaza strip in 2005. In a message posted by Jason Cherniak that I don't think I can link to directly at the main Liblogs site, Cherniak wrote:
It was everything the world had ever asked from Israel as far as the Gaza strip was concerned.
In fact, Israel withdrew Israeli citizens from Gaza and dismantled settlements but maintained complete control over all borders, including the border with Egypt, the coast line and the air space. Israel also reserved the right to send its armed forces into Gaza at will. The use of control of the border to create an effective blockade, limiting supplies of food, medical supplies and fuel oil for generators among other things is at the heart of the recent conflict between Israel and the Hamas government.
Anyone who claims that Israel "withdrew completely" from Gaza is either woefully misinformed or lying.
Fate of Canadians in Gaza in hands of Hamas: Kent
Hamas terrorists ultimately control the fate of several dozen Canadians and other civilians trapped in Gaza, the Harper government made clear Tuesday, as the civilian death toll rose when Israeli missiles struck a United Nations school.
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The Liberals criticized the Conservatives for being too slow to react to the plight of 39 Canadians now trapped in Gaza and who want help to leave.
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[Peter] Kent said the Canadians in Gaza would only be moved to safety if the rocket attacks "stop permanently." Asked whether that could trap them for days or months, Kent replied: "It is a war. It is a very fluid combat situation and these folks are caught in the middle of it. We've been given assurance that they will be moved only when it is safe for them to move."
Canada's Absentee Government™, ladies and gentlemen: passing the buck with the best of them.
Update:
With a h/t to Politics - for the people, the Toronto Star has more on those Canadians trapped in Gaza. This confirms that they could have gotten out on Friday along with citizens of other nations but:
But it was only on Friday that Canadian diplomats first provided the Israelis with a list of names of Canadians who wanted to leave the territory, and no attempt was made to contact them that day, to tell them to get to the border right away, because it was open.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is in the news again trying to build up support for using more tax cuts as a way to stimulate the economy. My purpose for the moment isn't to address Flaherty directly, but to draw attention to this:
The pressure to introduce tax cuts could be high if U.S. president-elect Barack Obama proceeds with a proposed $775-billion economic stimulus package that includes about $300 billion in tax cuts or credits after he's sworn in on Jan. 20.
So does appeasing the party that just suffered a decisive loss in American elections really create pressure on the Canadian government to mirror that part of Obama's stimulus package? Or is the pressure created by reporting on Obama's intentions while leaving out the context, namely that some of this is for political and not economic reasons?
This post by Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake includes a graph that shows the return on investment from various types of stimulus measures. You'll note that some kinds of tax reductions don't rate very high. Certainly elements on the graph don't translate directly to a Canadian context and what's left shouldn't be accepted as gospel. But certainly it suggests that a discussion on the appropriate ways to stimulate the economy ought to include options beyond the tax cuts that Jim Flaherty was already a cheerleader for.
40 Palestinians killed in IDF strike on UN school
Israel Defense Forces tank fire killed up to 40 Palestinians at a United Nations school in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, medical sources at two hospitals said.
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Two tank shells exploded outside the Gaza school, spraying shrapnel on people inside and outside the building, where hundreds of Palestinians had sought refuge from fighting between Israeli soldiers and Hamas militants. In addition to the dead, several dozen people were wounded, the officials said.Medical officials said all the dead were either people sheltering in the school or local residents.
Edited to add a link to a statement from Canada's Absentee Government™ (in more ways than one on this file). A "sustainable ceasefire" would be a negotiated settlement of some kind. An actual ceasefire is generally what you ask for immediately to get both sides to, you know, cease firing so that negotiations can begin. Add to that the fact that Cannon very carefully puts all the blame on one side and it amounts to instructions to the Palestinians to stop fighting and let Israel pound on them for a day or two unopposed.
Eva is reporting daily from Gaza on her blog In Gaza. She is travelling with the medics and describing what she sees. You don't need my words; you need Eva's.
3 January:I start in Jabaliya, in northern Gaza at the eastern border, where I meet an amiable team of professionals. After delivering a pregnant woman to hospital, our first serious call is to retrieve the bodies of two killed resistance fighters, hit by shells. The sight of the one in our ambulance is ugly, his face has exploded. The knowledge of his life and death is uglier: he was born into a life of occupation, and he has chosen to resist, as one would when being invaded. The ugliest aspect lies in the knowledge that he was undoubtedly a father, a husband, a man who probably has a mixture of photos on his phone: beautiful women, cute children, cats, a fighter with a gun, pictures of his family, random lovely scenes of nature, and the slapstick video clips that seem to be common among those with high tech-cell phones. He was a regular guy, of this I’m sure, thrust into an unbearable, deadly role. His silver lining is that at least he doesn’t have to live in hell on earth any longer.
Today:The numbers slaughtered and injured are so high now –521 and 3,000 as of this morning, Gaza time — that sitting next to a dead or dying person is becoming normal. The stain of blood on the ambulance stretcher pools next to my coat, the medic warning me my coat may be dirtied. What does it matter? The stain doesn’t revolt me as it would have, did, one week ago. Death fills the air, the streets in Gaza, and I cannot stress that this is no exaggeration.
When I'm reading Eva, I feel there is no place else to be reading right now. Perhaps she is feeling that there is no place else to be.
We're opening with an instrumental this evening. This is Sue Foley with Mediterranean Breakfast.
John Hiatt and the Goners are on the flip.
