January 2010 Archives

This first clip is a duet with Oscar Peterson.

After finding that Omar Khadr's Charter rights have been violated by Canadian officials, the Supreme Court of Canada has decided to overturn the lower court's order to repatriate him and leave it up to that same Canadian government to decide what to do about it. In other words, King Stephen the Petulant can decide all on his own to leave Khadr in GTMO, wherever GTMO itself may end up (currently planned to be Illinois). That's the same King Stephen the Petulant who can phone the Governor General and tell her to suspend parliament just because he feels like it.

We really need to rethink this system.

Note: courtesy of Aaron Wherry, the full Supreme Court decision is here.

Don't look at me that way. You've paid all your bills? Och, but the numbers hurt my head.

Bessie Smith still owns this song, 1923 and never done better. Others have done it well since, though, especially Bessie's wonderful reincarnation Janis. You can tell when a blues singer truly aspires, because he will figure out his own way to do this song.

Eric Clapton, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" (Jimmy Cox, 1923; 1997)

The cheque is in the mail, eh?

President Obama to Push 3-Year Spending Freeze on Non-Security Discretionary Spending

In his budget for Fiscal Year 2011, to be presented on Monday, February 1, President Obama will propose a three-year hard freeze on non-security discretionary spending, to last from 2011 through 2013.

This is nuts. If he follows through with this, the only way he'll be able to stimulate the economy and create more jobs is through military spending — more high-end weapons systems, more arms sales and more troop deployments. Awesome. And to be entirely selfish about it, if the American economy stalls again what happens to ours? Harper is talking as if he intends to do pretty much the same thing here so growth in our economy would have to come from exports. No?

For a' that, and a' that
It's comin' yet, for a' that
That man to man the world o'er
Shall brothers be, for a' that.

-- Robert Burns, 1795

May the bursting hurdies of your haggis have gushed warm-reekin' rich when you stabbed into them tonight, and may your single malt be at least thirty years old and still non-corporate.

Here is a kind of raw but interesting live performance of one of Burns's last songs.

Paolo Nutini, "A Man's a Man, for a' that"

For the classic audio from the Corries, who first revived so many auld Scottish folk songs and saved us from a long tradition of stage Scots, here is a lovely performance. I wish I could have found you a live performance by Ronnie (who you hear as lead singer here) and Roy, but there seems not to be one just now.

Tae th' immortal mem'ry!

Paul Quarrington, novelist, musician, and screenwriter, died at his home in Toronto on Thursday morning, aged fifty-six. Michael Posner's obituary is a fine and living thing, spoken from the heart and pulse by friends who were with Quarrington through his last days, and I encourage everyone to read it.

When we lose people like Paul or Kate, I try to resist the impulse to think that they died too soon. People live as long as they do, and this week we have two models of creative genius to remember who packed worlds into the time they had.

Quarrington was best known as the GG-winning author of Whale Music (1989), a meditation on the life of a reclusive rock musician, and as the screenwriter of the film that followed, regularly honoured as well for all the novels that followed. But he knew the musician's life early, and from the inside:

Whale Music, he confessed, was written "to prevent myself from becoming a recluse like [the central character] Desmond. It's an appealing lifestyle. Like Howard Hughes in hotel rooms, watching movies all day? Sounds good to me."

Inspired himself by the indie rock group Rheostatics, whose album Whale Music was inspired by his novel, Quarrington asked them to do the soundtrack for the film. I'm new to their music, but they remind me fine of The Doors, and I think I see why they would have spoken to Quarrington.

Here is "Shaved Head" (1992) from the Rheostatics' original album (not the soundtrack), in live performance in 1994.

We learned this week that Kate McGarrigle passed away on Monday. I wanted to mark her passing and I'll start with a clip from the Winnipeg Folk Festival in 1992.

The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt (via massacio at FDL)

Scott Horton, "The 'Guantánamo Suicides': A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle," Harper's, 18 January 2010.

There is no substitute for reading the whole of Scott Horton's investigation into the deaths of three prisoners at GTMO in June 2006, so you know the drill: go read.

We already knew, from the work of Professor Mark Denbeaux and his research fellows at Seton Hall law school, that the U.S. government's official claims about the prisoners' deaths -- which the Obama administration is maintaining in ongoing court cases -- were implausible. As Marcy Wheeler wrote in December, the dead men were said at the time to have committed not just suicide but "asymmetrical warfare self-gagging." And until Horton's article appeared this week, Obama and Eric Holder and Secretary of Defense Gates appeared willing to live with the Orwellian obscenities of their eternally self-justifying bully-boy predecessors in this case as in so many others.

Horton and the four GTMO camp guards he interviewed have just made it a lot harder for Obama and Holder and Gates to hide behind the skirts of patriotic bluster. The three men who died were innocent, two of them scheduled for release within weeks. A fourth man, Shaker Aamer, subjected to torture the same night at the same black site at GTMO, is also the last British resident at the camp; the UK government have already been persistent in their efforts to repatriate him (so unlike our own dear leaders in Ottawa), but they'll be speeded up now by the British media, who've picked up on Horton's story and are likely to keep it alive, given the education they've had through the case of Binyam Mohamed.

Implausible. Remind you of any recent Canadian sound-bites? Or how about this passage of contemporary irrational invective against the dead men from a series of senior U.S. military spokespersons:

When he finished praising the guards and the medics, Harris--in a notable departure from traditional military decorum--launched his attack on the men who had died on his watch. "They have no regard for human life," Harris said, "neither ours nor their own." A Pentagon press release issued soon after described the dead men, who had been accused of no crime, as Al Qaeda or Taliban operatives. Lieutenant Commander Jeffrey Gordon, the Pentagon's chief press officer, went still further, telling the Guardian's David Rose, "These guys were fanatics like the Nazis, Hitlerites, or the Ku Klux Klan, the people they tried at Nuremberg." The Pentagon was not the only U.S. government agency to participate in the assault. Colleen Graffy, a deputy assistant secretary of state, told the BBC that "taking their own lives was not necessary, but it certainly is a good P.R. move."

The only word missing there is "scumbags," eh?

All praises to Scott Horton for this fine piece of investigation and narrative. He could be our next Le Carré. We must encourage him:

The paddy wagon was used to transport prisoners to medical facilities and to meetings with their lawyers. But as Hickman monitored the paddy wagon's movements from the guard tower at Camp Delta, he frequently saw it follow an unexpected route. When the van reached the first intersection to the east, instead of heading right--toward the other camps or toward one of the buildings where prisoners could meet with their lawyers--it made a left. In that direction, past the perimeter checkpoint known as ACP Roosevelt, there were only two destinations. One was a beach where soldiers went to swim. The other was Camp No.

When EW linked to Horton's article on Monday, she put a fastidious question mark after the word "murders" in her title. I thought about that question mark for a long time, and then I decided that we just don't have room for it any more.

In the wake of this Supreme Court decision, unless the Democrats get busy and pass campaign finance reform that will survive a legal challenge, I would expect the United States to end up with something resembling the 21st century version of fascism within the foreseeable future. They may keep the two party system for the sake of appearances but any differences between the two would be merely cosmetic. (Yes, some would argue that's already the case but I don't think they're quite there. Yet.)

American politics is already thoroughly corrupt — polluted with money — but with completely unlimited corporate donations in today's environment, legislators will be bought and sold like commodities. Everyone else's voice will be drowned out. And I would imagine Canada won't be far behind.

By now we all know that Maher Arar's life was irrevocably changed when he was kidnapped by American authorities from an airport in New York and shipped off to Syria to be tortured. He was a computer engineer by trade but hasn't worked in that capacity since 2002. But his more recent experiences have led to a new venture.

Falsely accused of terrorist ties, Maher Arar has transformed his rendition ordeal into an online magazine promoting critical analysis of national security and related issues.

PRISM Magazine, a self-described "security practices monitor," debuted Wednesday. The inaugural edition includes a feature article on security and human rights by Alex Neve, head of Amnesty International Canada's English branch, and a commentary by veteran Ottawa journalist Jeff Sallot on the failure of U.S. intelligence officials to detect the Christmas Day airline bomb plot.

There's more at the link but one thing it doesn't tell you is how to find this new online publication. Apparently the folks at Canwest still haven't quite figured out the internet. The domain is: prism-magazine.com. It's here.

You might think that by now Barack Obama would realize he's not going to get anything done that requires cooperation and support from Republicans. And having experienced how badly policy and legislation can get bent out of shape by insisting on appeasing that sixtieth vote in the Senate, you might think that he would be seriously trying to figure out how to make better use of the majorities he still has in both houses of congress. But you would be wrong.

President Barack Obama is poised to name a special commission to come up with a plan to curb the spiraling budget deficit, top Democrats said Tuesday evening.

The bipartisan 18-member panel would be asked to report a deficit reduction blueprint after the November elections that would be voted on before the new Congress convenes next year.

...

Key details remain to be worked out and the agreement is tentative, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said. The deficit panel, patterned after a 1982 group that came up with a successful plan to strengthen Social Security, would be comprised of 10 Democrats and eight Republicans. It would take 14 members to report a plan - requiring bipartisanship - which would guarantee a vote in both House and Senate. It's unclear who would choose the GOP members, but to have credibility with Republicans, GOP leaders would likely have input.

Emphasis added. So after the experience of the past year and with an economy that's struggling to come out of recession, unemployment at 10% and underemployment at 17% Obama is going to rely for critical policy on a panel that requires a supermajority of 14 out of 18 just to "report a plan." Instead of attempting to minimize gridlock, he's going to create more. But never mind. I'm sure that when this ends badly, they'll find a way to blame it on progressives.

H/t to Ian Welsh who, I believe, is quite right when he suggests we're looking at a one term president.

Democrats. (The big 'D' American kind.)

For Rik, now a young man forever in memory. Thou art that.

Liam Clancy, "The Dutchman" (1968, 1992)

Ain't nobody in the whole wide world is gonna help you carry your load

I guess I missed this when the story originally broke but Martha Hall Findlay's ethics complaint concerning government advertising has been dismissed on a technicality. Impolitical reviews the matter and helpfully provides a link to the Ethics Commissioner's Discontinuance Report (.pdf) in which the key sentence is this:

A threshold issue is whether the Conservative Party of Canada is a "person" for the purposes of these provisions.

Well, no, the CPC isn't a person. It's a collection of people. A group. More than a single person. Several. A bunch. You get the idea, I'm sure.

If the Commissioner really feels that there's a legitimate problem with the complaint as it stands, may I suggest rewriting it to include Conservative Members of Parliament listed by name as the "persons" who stand to benefit by the government's use of taxpayer dollars to chant Conservative talking points at us at every turn? Or perhaps, if you're feeling mischievous, prepare 143 complaints with an individual Conservative MP named in each. That oughtta do it.

Just trying to help.

And I've never seen him on Parliament Hill. Also.

I do, however, for my sins, know who he is, and I'm not even a member of the Conservative caucus. Even if I were, I think I would have picked up on Evan Solomon's prompts after his first two or three tries.

Aside: Why does this story keep making me think of Where's Waldo?

Of all the good chuckles I've had over this story today, the best was the first I read, from Dylan at Right of Centre Ice, which is a treat, very neat little piece of writing: "Shelly, Shelly, Shelly":

... Goodale can hardly keep himself from laughing and then he goes on to chiffonade everything Sheila... err.... Shelly, said.

Did you watch this Tom? How does it feel to be snubbed on national television -- nay, thrown under the bus, by a rookie Conservative backbencher? This would make my blood boil.

Bit of a shame that Dylan didn't mention Mulcair too, since he and Goodale together both did very well -- so well, in fact, that they might have reminded everyone watching that there are some grown-ups still hanging on by their fingernails in Parliament, and those were two pretty good specimens. Goodale. Mulcair. Hmmn.

Glover's glassy-eyed responses to Solomon have reminded a lot of people of dear Sarah, of course. When she simply ignored everyone else's rational readings of Harper's obvious motives for proroguing and segued to a McCarthyite attack on John McCallum (a talking-point that BigCityLib has already debunked from the transcript), though, she reminded me more of Liz Cheney, who did exactly the same thing this past weekend when confronted with facts about how long it took Dubya to speak to the problem of Richard Reid, the 2001 shoe-bomber. Liz just drove straight over the question and the facts as if they weren't there, hammered home her charge that Obama is soft on security and probably less than a patriot, and all the Villagers present let her get away with it.

No, I don't think that Shelly Glover is ever going to rise to the heights of empowered malice that Baby Dick commands. I don't think she's even as smart as dear Sarah. I'm very tempted to turn her around and check for a key in her back.

But she is evidence of what Stephen Harper wants -- from his cabinet, his caucus, from Parliament, from citizens generally. He wants robots who will persist in reciting nonsense, whatever nonsense he dictates, in the face of all rational argument and in spite of the facts, in defiance of reality.

Curiously enough, that's something Tom Flanagan, good Rovian vulgarian that he is, believes in too. "It doesn't have to be true. It just has to be plausible." Maybe that's all Flanagan was saying this week, even before Shelly's disastrous attempt to disown him. Steve, kiddo: this is just not plausible.

That's the sound of long term damage from Harper's governance accumulating: No new cash causes foundation that funds climate research to fear brain drain

Scientists and top students are already drifting away from Canada because of a lack of stable, long-term government funding for climate research, says the executive director of a foundation dedicated to bankrolling and co-ordinating such studies.

Dawn Conway, who heads the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, says the 10-year-old foundation has had its mandate extended by a year to March 2012, but has received no new funding since the Conservatives came to power four years ago.

"I am concerned about the lack of information on sustained funding, on the impact it's having on the scientific community," Conway told The Canadian Press in an interview Monday.

"Research teams are being dismantled. Equipment is being taken out of the field and stored because there's no money to run it. Students are looking for opportunities elsewhere ... in some cases leaving the country. There is work that's not being started."

On one of the most important issues we face, the Harper Government™ is ensuring that Canada will lag behind everyone else and that Canadians who want to be involved in the research will have to leave Canada to do it. Heckuva job, Harpie.

H/t to transplant at Bread and Roses.

Miep Gies was the last surviving helper of the eight people who hid for over two years, July 1942--August 1944, in the Achterhuis ("house behind," or the "secret annex") at Prinsengracht 263 in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation.

Miep has been a heroine for millions who met her first in Anne Frank's diary of those years in hiding, an account that is often unsparingly, painfully honest about Anne's family, their companions in hiding, and herself, a teenager just coming to adult awareness in extreme circumstances. Everyone who has read that amazing book knows Miep as a young woman of exceptional courage and common sense who took danger in her stride and did the right thing because it was there to be done -- and then also because she clearly cared for the people she was trying to save. Like the other helpers (Bep and Jan and Mr Kugler and Mr Kleiman), Miep brought life and spirit and hope as well as provisions to the eight trapped in the secret annex. Anne loved her -- like all the residents of the Achterhuis and their helpers, Miep lives on in Anne's words and in her own life after the war, when Miep and Jan took Otto Frank, the only one of the eight to survive the camps, in to live with them, and like Otto became campaigners for Holocaust education.

On the day that Nazi and Dutch police raided the Achterhuis and arrested those in hiding, as well as Mr Kugler and Mr Kleiman, Miep slipped upstairs after they had gone and found Anne's diaries and loose pages flung on to the floor by the German officer who'd used the case she kept them in for looted valuables. Miep gathered them up, took them back to her office, and kept them there unread for a year. Only after Otto Frank received confirmation that Margot and Anne had died at Bergen-Belsen did Miep open the drawer and hand Anne's papers over to her father.

Here is Miep, in the late 1990s, describing that moment:

A year ago, when BlastFurnace reminded us of Miep's hundredth birthday (15 February), I started to write a post about Anne and Margot and their world. It's still not finished; I was saving it for Miep's birthday this year, but I suppose now I can speed it up.

But this is Miep's moment. Goodbye, Miep. We loved you, and you earned that.

When Craig Ferguson stops talking (about 0:45), crank your volume.

H/t to Eureka Springs who got me poking around in there.

I thought these three acts might make an interesting combination and I don't believe I've posted anything from any of them in the past. This first fellow, in particular, achieved some celebrity while he was alive. See if he isn't vaguely familiar.

Aw get dirty, baby.

Hi, Dan. I'm sure you'll want to know about a new website called No Prorogue! and I wanted to be the first to tell you. By all means be sure to make fun of No Prorogue! at every opportunity. You've done such a good job of publicizing opposition to Harper's contempt for democracy so far and I'm sure you'll want to continue. Remember, that's No Prorogue!.

(Just doing my bit for the search engine rankings. H/t to Section 15.)

PS: 106,658 members and counting. That's 0.32% of Canadians. But if it's easier for you, Dan, you can just say "Holy crap! It's hit six figures!".

This is from a CBC News story about an Israeli airstrike in Gaza.

Israel and Egypt imposed the blockade to weaken Gaza's rulers, the Islamic militants of Hamas, who violently seized power in 2007.

Garbage. Hamas gained power through a legitimate electoral process in 2006 at which point Israel and other countries, including Canada, immediately implemented collective punishment against the residents of Gaza who had the gall to think that having elections meant they were actually free to vote the way they wanted to instead of the way the government of Israel wanted them to. There was subsequently violence when Fatah, armed and encouraged by the United States, attempted to violently seize power and were defeated by Hamas.

That isn't to say that Hamas isn't capable of violence and hasn't committed any. But to say that Hamas violently seized power and to imply that the blockade resulted from that is just wrong.

I suppose you could defend the CBC by pointing out that they've just picked up an Associated Press story and reproduced it. But that doesn't change the fact that our national broadcaster is misrepresenting the situation.

Courtesy of Aaron Wherry, here's the transcript of an interview of Stephen Harper by John Ivison and David Akin that was conducted yesterday. What you won't find is any mention of a certain parliamentary motion concerning the release of unredacted documents — the motion Harper is trying hard to ignore. It seems that many media figures are quite happy to help him ignore it. In fact, you won't find the words "detainee", "torture" or "prorogue" in this interview either. So why not just have someone call the PM on the phone and take dictation?

Note: edited slightly for clarity.

That's 0.24% of the population. I wouldn't want him to hurt himself trying to do the math.

I wonder if it has ever occurred to the bright lights at the National Post that there might be some connection between the way they openly sneer at everyone who isn't in lockstep with them and the fact that their newspaper has never made a profit.

People don't care about Afghan detainee issue: Harper

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says Canadians don't really care about the Afghan detainee issue, according to CBC-TV correspondent Peter Mansbridge, whose feature interview with the Prime Minister airs tonight.

Completely irrelevant. And at this point the Afghan detainee question, as important as it is, isn't even the primary issue. A majority of members of parliament voted in favour of a motion to release unredacted documents to a parliamentary committee and Harper's government has ignored the motion and apparently shut down parliament rather than comply. It doesn't matter one bit whether the average person on the street is interested in the details of the issue. It matters that Harper and his government are in contempt of parliament.

The interview hasn't aired yet but if Mansbridge settled for Harper's distraction and didn't put the focus right back on the government's refusal to answer to parliament then Mansbridge didn't do his job.

H/t to Scott Tribe.

Scott Tribe has already done the math and pointed out the error. But if the only comment on this situation we're going to get from a blog that's ostensibly about politics is a post that sneers at another media outlet for actually taking voters seriously, then I figure Dan Cook deserves a little more snark for not being able to correctly figure out that 20,000 is actually .06% of 33,000,000.

Self-correcting-blogospheric-type update:

Thanks to Scott in comments for letting me know that the title of Dan Cook's post has been corrected without any indication that a change has been made. Apparently those internet traditions of which we're all aware only apply to us common folk and not our betters who are actually paid by the corporate media to do this blogging thing. For those who are just arriving, the original title of Cook's post was: 0.0006% of Canadians are mad. And as Scott also points out, the current membership of that Facebook group is now over 33,000 making the appropriate figure 0.1%. But that's a correction the Globe didn't bother making.

You'd-almost-think-someone-was-paying-attention update:

There is now an update to Dan Cook's post acknowledging the increased size of the Facebook group. But there's still no indication that the original post had the arithmetic wrong. Baby steps, I guess.

Tories have ignored environmental assessment panel, member says

A federal panel that advises the government on the environmental impact of new economic development has been left on the sidelines for nearly two years, Canwest News Service has learned. Throughout this time, sweeping changes to regulations have been passed, effectively exempting thousands of projects from mandatory evaluations.

"We haven't had any notice that the minister has dissolved the committee, but it's kind of awkward to have a committee that doesn't meet,'' said Gary Schneider, who sits on the panel.

Mr. Schneider is quoted extensively in the story and is responsible for my favourite part:

He said he was confused about why Environment Minister Jim Prentice has not asked them for advice.

"If you think that you know everything, and you don't need to take advice from the public, just because you got elected . . . I don't think it paints a very good picture of the minister,'' he said.

No it doesn't paint a very good picture of the minister but I don't share Schneider's confusion. If Prentice were to receive advice and recommendations from the panel, he might actually be expected to create real policy. And that's the last thing Harper has wanted from any of his environment ministers.

Now that everyone's talking about Yemen, Eric Margolis gives us the benefit of his own knowledge of that country. I knew that the U.S. was involved in recent military operations inside Yemen but hadn't realized the extent of American involvement there. Here's the critical sentence:

U.S. special forces, warplanes and killer drones have been active since 2001, assassinating Yemeni militants and anti-government tribal leaders.

Do recent events make a bit more sense now?

CTV News has a story reviewing the ongoing effects of the medical isotope shortage that has resulted from the shutdown of the Chalk River reactor last May. You may recall that Minister of Natural Resources Lisa Raitt referred to the problem as "sexy" and thought it offered all kinds of opportunity for her to shine but she appears to be taking her sweet time getting around to it. Consequently we have medical tests delayed and deferred, people going outside the country for treatments at double and triple the cost, health professionals reverting to diagnostic methods they haven't used in a generation and — just what we need in a struggling economy — layoffs due to the shortage.

In an appearance before a Commons committee last month, the president of the Canadian Medical Association said:

... the current situation is neither optimal nor sustainable, and there appears to be no long-term plan

But I'm sure the government will get right on that. As soon as they finally get back to work in March, deliver a new throne speech and then re-introduce the thirty-plus pieces of legislation that died on the order paper the moment the Governor General prorogued parliament. Governing is hard work, you know. Especially when you have a government that doesn't want to do it.

If I was going to go to a church, I'd want it to be one with music like this.