Being American in T.O.

Terror Watch

June 23 - CTV reports that Saudi Arabia shootout kills 6 'militants' (another was arrested) after security forces "stormed a suspected al Qaeda hide-out":

One policeman was also killed in the clashes, it said.

The statement, carried by the official Saudi news agency, said security forces chased seven members with "deviant thoughts" who "belong to the astray bunch" to a house in Riyadh's al-Nakheel district. The Saudi government often refers to al Qaeda members as individuals with "deviant thoughts."

The house was "a hideout for crime, corruption, and a base for the plots of aggression and outrage," the statement said.

Why do the pronouncements from these guys always make me groan as much as did those incessant quotes from Chairman Mao's Red Book back in the day?

June 24 - 19:01 CTV reports that 17 were wounded in the attack and over 40 suspects have been arrested in sweeps after the raid.

Maybe the Saudis were feeling a bit left out what with all the arrests in Toronto, Britain, heavy action in Afghanistan and the recent U.S. arrests of 7 plotters:

Five of the suspects were arrested Thursday in Miami, after authorities swarmed a warehouse in Miami's poor Liberty City area, a federal law enforcement official said.

One person was arrested in Atlanta on Thursday, and another person was arrested before yesterday, according to CNN. (Bolding added)

(That last sentence made me giggle because I was expected a place, not a date, but it can't be that funny if I have to explain it.)

Most of the chatter on Fox is actually worth listening to because they are doing a great job of speculating about things that can only make wanna-be terrorists nervous -- like the rumour that the head of the terror cell was an FBI agent.

Our guys in Iraq continue to rack 'em up: on Monday a senior Al Qaeda operative and 3 others were detained (no names released.)

Sorry, I shouldn't be happy. I should be sombre, and Weighted With The Enormity Of It All, but I'm not. Maybe it's because it's Friday, maybe it's because we ducked another bullet, but more likely it's because Ace is hot on the story:

You will not be surprised that the "timing" of these "arrests" of "terrorists" is being "questioned."

His link to Allah is, as always, beyond funny.

Here's your CanCon and a return to seriousness: when I read the CNN headline (on the World page) "Rights boss: Stop terror abuse" I actually thought ... but no, alas, it was just

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, taking aim at the war on terrorism, reminded all states on Friday of their duty to ban torture and give all security detainees a fair trial.

In a speech to the United Nations Human Rights Council, Arbour also voiced concern at the alleged existence of secret detention centres, saying they facilitate abusive treatment.

Although she mentioned no names, her remarks were clearly aimed at the United States and its allies in their "war on terror" launched after the September 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in 2001.

"It is vital that at all times governments anchor in law their response to terrorism," Arbour told the 47-member state body ahead of the U.N.'s International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, being observed next Monday. (bolding added)

Your timing sucks, bitch. Consider

The torture and murders of two soldiers who, by all legal definitions, qualified for protection under the Geneva Convention: Private Thomas Tucker and Private Kristian Menchaca.

A government worthy of condemnation: Sudanese militias kill hundreds in Chad
Car bomb in Philippine market place kill 5, wounds 10 in a probable attempt to kill the governor of the southern province;
Tamil Tigers Caught Laying Sea Mines:

A POWERFUL explosion occurred off the coast north of the Sri Lankan capital Colombo today, with police saying it was probably a sea mine planted last week by Tamil Tiger rebels.

The explosion was heard about 15km from Colombo, near the site where police on Saturday arrested five Tigers in diving gear who were laying sea mines, Sri Lanka's police chief Chandra Fernando said.

"There are no reports of casualties. We are investigating," Fernando said.

"Last week we had information that there were eight sea mines. Seven were accounted for but we had not found one. The blast today is probably that mine."

Officials said sea mines were similar to limpet mines but magnetically attached to a ship's hull and could be triggered to explode by a time-delay fuse or by remote control.

One of the five arrested divers had swallowed cyanide and committed suicide to prevent being questioned, and another two who took cyanide were taken to hospital.

The terror attack links are in fact relevant to Arbour's admonition to "governments" as these terror attacks were undertaken by groups that intend to take state power. This one, howerver isn't because it relates to a man who, pre-Spider Hole, actually held state power and lied to the U.N.: Hundreds of WMDs found in Iraq.

And the NY Times continues their normal job of assisting the terrorists by revealing a clandestine program intended to follow the money:

WASHINGTON, June 22 — Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.

Data provided by the program helped identify Uzair Paracha, a Brooklyn man who was convicted on terrorism-related charges in 2005, officials said.
The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions. The records mostly involve wire transfers and other methods of moving money overseas and into and out of the United States. Most routine financial transactions confined to this country are not in the database.

Viewed by the Bush administration as a vital tool, the program has played a hidden role in domestic and foreign terrorism investigations since 2001 and helped in the capture of the most wanted Qaeda figure in Southeast Asia, the officials said.

I wonder if they are referring to Hambali. who provided the money, or to Canadian Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, who paid the bombers directly for the Bali bombing. *

The program, run out of the Central Intelligence Agency and overseen by the Treasury Department, "has provided us with a unique and powerful window into the operations of terrorist networks and is, without doubt, a legal and proper use of our authorities," Stuart Levey, an under secretary at the Treasury Department, said in an interview on Thursday.

Maybe liberals are so shrill about the rights of terrorist because they also enable terrorists.

(Louise Arbour is a Canadian, if that needed clarification.)

*09:46 - FoxNews TV says it was probably Hambali.

12:23 - Newsbeat1 has a nice list of terrorists killed or captured since Zarqawi's death.

"Fearless" James Loney

June 21 - Some proclaimed former hostage James Loney a hero. What. Fraking. Ever. I'm more inclined to scoff at those who are so desperate to produce a hero that they'd select someone who did nothing heroic (other than survive) rather than look to the fine men and women who voluntarily risk their lives for us every day in places like Afghanistan, but that's just me.

But giving him a "Fearless" award when his heroic feat was to conceal his homosexuality because his captors would likely kill him if they learned he was gay?

I was thinking on my way over here how surreal this is," the soft-spoken Loney told reporters.

Surreal doesn't even begin to describe this.

"Religion and politics are an explosive mixture" but ...

June 20 - I'm sick of double-talk. In the wake of the arrests of southern Ontario men alleged to be planning terror attacks here, Muslims condemn extremism:

The Muslim Canadian Congress gathered with the Bangladesh Association of Toronto to urge Muslims to be vigilant against the spread of extremist interpretations of Islam, which they said are spread by "misguided fanatic youth and their mentors."

"Imams and other clerics who peddle politics need to be told to take their politics to the electorate and not to the pulpit," said Tarek Fatah of the MCC.

"Religion and politics are an explosive mixture and invoking God on one's side in a political dispute is dishonest, callous and dangerous."

Fatah said Muslims shouldn't have to pay for the alleged crimes of the 17 terror suspects arrested this month.

"We want Muslims to know there is nothing to apologize for," Fatah said. "We can't run from this."

That last paragraph is a head-scratcher. I get the first sentence and I get the second sentence, but I have no idea what the two sentences taken together are supposed to mean.

[...]

The MCC urged the government to work toward finding a solution that will keep Muslim youth away from terrorist activity.

I'm not sure what they want the Canadian government to do, but somehow I suspect the Canadian taxpayer will be expected to foot the bill. Can't blame them for that - it's as Canadian as royal commissions. Or maybe it's supposed to be in exchange for no longer accepting foreign donations? (see next section)

They also called for an end of the occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and for a ban on foreign donations to places of worship.

Is it just me, or did the Muslim Canadian Congress, a religious organization, go on to make a political statement about Iraq and Afghanistan after saying that religion and politics should be separate?

It's far too easy to infer that they are connecting the Canadian presence in Afganistan (and the American presence in Iraq) to growing Islamic radicalism here, and there are bound to be some who will believe that it was an implicit threat that things could get worse if Canada does not withdraw from Afghanistan (although I think it more likely they were just doing a variation of "it was wrong but ...)

Same old, same old.

Universal smugness

June 20 - Ouch. Hartley Steward doesn't pull his punches in 'Nice' people finish last:

So, have you dropped the idea of sewing a cute little Canadian flag onto your backpack to endear yourself to strangers when you holiday this year? There goes another precious Canadian conceit.

It seems that even the unbearable niceness of being Canadian won't keep you safe in this dreadful new world of ours. The smug Canuck smile has surely been wiped off your face by the gory details of the alleged Muslim terrorists' plans uncovered in Toronto.

But there's no reason for Americans - or Europeans, Australians, Indonesians, or anybody - to grin at Canadian discomfort because we've all been guilty of thinking our essential niceness and decency immunized us from hatred. Americans failed to learn after the first attack on the World Trade Center to take bin Laden's declaration of war seriously and we paid a terrible price for our stupidity in 2001.

Canadians, or more specifically Torontonians, ducked the bullet this time and only time will tell if enough took the lesson to heart, but people up here do have the regrettable advantage of having witnessed terror attacks where other "nice" people live such as New York, Bali, Madrid, and London.

Our paradox

We've all been raised to believed that people will respond to kindness with kindness and, by application, to tolerance with tolerance. Those notions remain valid and not ones we should discard, yet it's the exceptions to those rules that will kill us.

Canadians, as do most Westerners, need to figure out how to be both tolerant and vigilant. It is extremely difficult because it is a paradox, requiring simultaneous trust and distrust, and all the harder because experiences in both London and southern Ontario indicate that new converts were used, indicating (again) that those wishing us harm are not easily identified.

All in all, it’s kind of depressing that we’ve gotten to this point. Like everybody, I made some vows to myself in those early days after September 11. Most of them were echoed by millions of Americans, but there was one in particular that I knew might be the hardest to keep: to keep my anger focused on the actual evil-doers, not to lump all the members of that culture with said evil-doers, and to persevere in winning Muslim support against evildoers.

We all know that Japanese-Americans were placed in detention camps during World War II. We know that it was rationalized as being to protect Japanese-Americans when Japan invaded as U.S. soldiers would fire upon anyone who looked Japanese while repelling the expected invasion.

So, did anyone else fear that Muslim-Americans with roots in the Mid-east might be rounded up? C’mon, you know you did. Anyone who knows American history would have had the thought flash across his or her mind even if it were immediately rejected.

But, and it’s a big but, I think most of us would have hit the streets and protested against such a draconic move. That’s something the left doesn’t seem to understand about those of us who are determined to protect and defend our country, and that’s why so many of us were won over when President Bush early on made it clear that he regarded Muslims as allies, not enemies, and declared this war as one against the evil practice of terrorism.

We know that we committed a sin during World War II. And I know that, although my rage some days challenges my early vow, that same vow has provided ballast and returned me to my earlier conviction: that we — Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian – are in this together.

You're either with us or against us

Stewart lays it out:

The time has come for the international Muslim community to take some responsibility. It's time to squeal their heads off to security forces everywhere when they know something. Time to drop the dime on friends, neighbours, associates -- to show some courage and old-fashioned fortitude. Time to stop whining about a possible backlash against ordinary, law-abiding Muslims and begin to participate in the solution.

We don't need another lecture on our insensitivity to the Muslim world. We need help.

Note that he addresses this to the international Muslim community.

A more than substantial number of terror attacks have been carried out by Muslims, and those in Western cities were carried out by Muslims who had been living in or raised in Western countries. Those attacks were proclaimed to be in the name of Islam. Like it no, Muslims have been put on the proverbial spot and each thwarted and successful attack lessens the patience Westerners have for the counter-accusations of racism, victimhood and the outright denial uttered by far too many international Muslim leaders.

It really is a pity more liberals seemed incapable of of respecting the sincerity of Bush's call for tolerance after Sept. 11, but it would have been a far bigger pity if many Muslims hadn’t paid attention and, by choosing their allegiance and trusting their governments, helped expose cells like the one in Lackawanna and perhaps even this most recent Toronto cell.

The extent to which tips led to the takedown of international terror cells is impossible to ascertain and it might even be reckless to overly speculate on the subject, but logic tells us that some degree of inside information had to come into play.

That realization should counter outrage or any kind of opportunist backlash because, just as we do not always recognize the foe, we also do not always recognize the ally.

We were all forcibly enrolled in an intense training course on Sept. 11 and it is right that we hated being forced to take it, but don't forget that Muslims were also enrolled in that course and that Muslims were not only among the victims of Sept. 11 but have comprised the majority of casualties since.

In the end, Muslims have as large a stake in this war as do we, and we should never stop reaching out to those communities.

14:43 - I can't believe I failed to include the fact that success in fighting the terrorists in Iraq and Afganistan is largely due to the massive number of tips received by the police and armies as well as coalition forces in those countries. The grim degree to which Iraqis and Afghans have a stake in destroying terror networks there is beyond any dangers we've yet faced in North America.

[This was written Sunday but I've only now been able to publish. Sorry it's so stale.]

Letting people choose

June 17 - Posting continues to be difficult: the denial of service attacks targeting My Pet Jawa have affected alll Munu sites (despite the inconvenience, there's also some satisfaction that a fellow Munuvian is pissing off the right people but that is offset by the infuriating fact that the Jawa Report is still off-line) plus my ISP seems to have intermittent problems finding the the Munu server. At least I have options if my ISP can't resolve the second problem.

Indeed, one of the fundamental values of Western civilization (and capitalism) is that there are a variety of options for most situations, yet when we women make choices that don't fit with what other women believe we should do there is an incredible amount of spin to make it appear that what we have freely chosen is evidence of victimhood.

For example, child-care advocates continue to be baffled by a strange phenomenom in Alberta and British Columbia. Despite the West being one of the "hottest job markets" in the country, more women in theose provinces are leaving the workforce and the numbers are especially high for women with children under the age of six. Now I'm no expert, but it seems to me that they are opting to stay home with the kids until they enter school.

Shocking, huh? They could have jobs, you know, yet they choose to stay home and focus on raising their young children during "the formative years."

But the author of the study concludes that this is due, among other factors, to the lack of child care::

The author of the study, Francine Roy, says women are entering and exiting the job market for reasons that have little to do with financial need.

Instead, Roy argues that factors such as the availability of day care, educational levels, number of children and the type of employment drive women's participation in the workforce.

"The rising participation rate of women in eastern Canada appears associated with greater use of daycare and higher education levels in Quebec, lower birthrates in the Atlantic provinces, and a lower proportion of immigrants than in the West," Roy writes in the study.

One of the implication seems to be that lack of education causes a woman to make poor choices - like stay at home and raise her own kids. The CTV item doesn't include any data from the study supporting any of Roy's conclusion (which doesn't necessarily mean there was none) but it is fairly apparent that her bias has led to her to a complete failure to consider the one factor that many parents with pre-school children would immediately recognize: the desire to nurture one's children. (Sometimes Dads are the ones with the nurturing trait, and it's thrilling to see more and more of them opting to be the at-home parent.)

Having constant, one-one-one interaction with young children in those early years is not only incredibly satisfying for both parent and child but has the additional benefit of establishing a solid bedrock for the child which can stabilize him or her after they enter the "real" world of elementary school as well as later on when they become teens and the inevitable struggle ensues to redefine limits and capabilities as well as themselves as independent from the parents (except for money, shelter, food, and the family car!)

One of my aunts told me long ago that the primary duty of parents is to raise responsible adults. You can't sub-contract that job out, yet universal childcare with the attendant heavier tax load will force women out of the homes and into the job market.

The sad part is that having government agencies raise children is being presented as an ideal scenario by daycare advocates. There are two glaring problems with that position: the ridiculous notion that we can raise children on an assembly line, and the inability to have quality control. (Actually there are three: the absurdity of thinking the government actually performs routine tasks better than the average person.)

Whatever happened to the tiresome assertion that each of us is unique? Uniqueness doesn't roll off assembly lines (reminds me of the old joke that you can buy a Ford in any colour you want so long as you choose black.) Uniqueness, also known as individuality by us older types, is nurtured by consistent, one-on-one interaction that parents are best fitted to provide. The family remains the best setting where good qualities can be encouraged and bad qualities can be dealt with, and it should go without saying that dealing with behaviour problems when they first appear is far better than trying to deal with them after they become entrenched characteristics.

I make this claim about the family for one simple reason: parents love their children. Parents have an ongoing interest in their children's future. Parents are emotionally invested in their children in ways that reach far above and beyond someone who is paid to look after their children. Parents don't go on strike.

I keep thinking that the real impetus for government day care is that the social engineers are frustrated that, try as they might, this country continues to produce square peg children who defy efforts to pound them into round holes and they figure that if they can get the children at any earilier age it will better their chances of making children more pliable, i.e., into uniform, cookie-cutter kids.

Issues over quality control are fairly self-evident when you are dealing with a monopoly and more so when the government is the sole provider. Both health care and education issues continue to plague us, and tangential to the problems in the education sector, it is worth noting that children who learned to read at home before they entered school do better scholastically than those whose parents rely exclusively on the schools to teach that basic skill.

People conveniently forget that even that bastion of early childhood education, Sesame Street, was specifically designed to be viewed by both parent and child, which tends to reinforce the necessary role of the parent as a child learns how to learn.

Am I saying that families where both parents work cannot raise children well? No, but I do think it is a lot harder and a lot more frustrating because we've already devoted our best and most productive hours of the day at work. And then there's the need to discipline children, which require two vital tools: patience and maintaining a calm atmosphere. That's damned hard to achieve when your day is one long rush: rushing to get them and you ready to leave in the morning, rushing to pick them up after work, rushing to prepare dinner, rushing to bathe them, rushing to read the bedtime story ... all this yet rushing to get them to bed at a decent hour. Even with both parents performing those tasks, where's the time to teach them why it's wrong to bop another child on the head with a Tonka truck? or find a suitable answer to "why is the sky blue?" or "why do I have to kiss Aunt Martha even though she smells funny?"

Interestingly, David Warren comments on the steady encroachments on personal freedoms, including the destruction of the family unit, with the goal being that "the citizen becomes a kind of jelly to be fit into any desired new mould."

So, rather than deplore the choice to stay home and raise their kids, we ought to applaud their good sense and committment to parenting.

So if you opt to say at home with kids and someone says "what do you do," i.e., where do you work and what job do you perform that enables you to pay more taxes, just look them straight in the eye and say "I'm an early childhood specialist." And you will be telling the truth.

(David Warren link via Newsbeat1.)

Harper meets with Muslim leaders II

July 11 - This updates an earlier report on a meeting between PM Stephen Harper and Muslim leaders: according to Parliamentary Secretary Jason Kenney, the PM's meeting with Muslims may lead to study

"It was a very useful exchange of ideas. We heard concerns, obviously, about some of the extremist elements and how they're trying to mislead youth," Kenney said.

"We heard concerns that the government stand in solidarity with the community against any kind of backlash, and we heard suggestions about how we could go forward, perhaps with some kind of study or review of the issues that came out last month."

Bloody. Hell.

Those issues, Kenney said, included challenges faced by Muslim youth in Canada -- particularly young men -- the influence of extremist elements within the Islamic community, and methods of combating that influence.

I get where they're going, but another fraking study? Why not a Royal Commission? I can see it now: a Royal Commission to investigate why young Muslim men think they're entitled to murder innocent people.

Try this as a Subject for Study: Once it was decreed that Israeli civilians were a legitimate target, it was open season on all of us.

A possible result of the Harper meeting with Muslim leaders?

June 11 - John B. had a great, common sense idea: set up a BadJihadWatch to root out terror elements, and I guess someone listened because CTV reports that

Muslim religious leaders promise to report any suspicious behaviour from their followers to authorities and abide by a zero-tolerance policy against preaching hatred in the wake of last week's terror arrests.

Leaders representing more than 30 mosques and Muslim organizations throughout Canada gathered in Toronto on Saturday to deliver the message -- and remind Canadians not to discriminate against Muslims.

The leaders admitted there are pockets of radical fundamentalists within their community who believe in violence, but said co-operation by the Muslim community led to the arrests of 17 terror suspects.

[...]

"Canadian youth of Muslim faith have been unduly influenced by radical thought," said Yasmin Ratansi, a Liberal MP.

That last admission, of course, is not limited to the youth of Muslim faith.

What on earth should we expect when our media and schools deliberately promote the notion that Western civilization is degenerate and evil? The "home grown" nature of the alleged terrorists refers to more than place of birth or upbringing: it is about institutionally planting and nourishing the seeds of contempt for this country because it is a Western one.

But, as I've stated repeatedly, most people who feel alienated do not to strive to become psychopaths. We've seen that kind of radical thought before, with the FLQ, the Air India bombers, the Weathermen and the Symbionese Liberation Army, so even if we don't understand it we must recognize that is dangerous for us all.

Why the CBC?

June 11 - The inclusion of the CBC as a terror target was the most surprising of the revelations that came out of the Toronto terror sweep. The big question was Why? The only news entity up here that is more terror-friendly is the Toronto Star, and they were not on that list.

I trust the CBC is having in-depth meetings to address the "root causes" of Muslim "anger" and "perceived alienation" that has caused so much "resentment" and "humilation."

Those meeting will undoubtably be productive although they won't address the "root causes" of steadily declining CBC viewership (except, of course, for hockey.)

Going a step further, inasmuch as seizing communications and media are top priorities for insurrectionists, Lorrie Goldstein goes there and reaches a surprising answer to why terrorists might be discontented with the CBC: What would happen if our national broadcaster was ever taken over by ... er ... 'militants'?"

"Hello, I'm Lorrie Goldstein of the Toronto Sun, reporting live for Sun TV, Torontosun.com and Canoe.ca, outside Toronto CBC headquarters at 250 Front St. W., where terrorists have just taken over the building, demanding that the CBC refer to them as ... uh ... terrorists.

When you come right down to it, that really is the only possible grievance they can have against the CBC.

In a hypothetical interview with OBL, the question is asked if there are women in the group:

"I see, evil spawn of Satan. So, let me get this straight. We storm the CBC's headquarters, overpower their security staff and are now holding hundreds of their employees hostage and threatening to blow up their building and all these infidels care about is whether there are any women in our group, so they will not be politically incorrect if they refer to us as 'gunmen'?"

The beauty of satire lies in how closely it resembles reality, and Goldstein scores a grand-slam on this one.

Where do they find such wankers?

June 11 - It's hard to be patient in the face of incredible stupidity. Of course it is vital to maintain a presumption of innocence in any arrest (that's why the word "alleged" was invented) but when some fool announces, on behalf on Muslim youth, that 'This is our 9/11' my calm side notes that they missed a vital difference, unless over 3,000 Muslims were massacred in Toronto last week, and my rational side is overcome with disgust that a horrific event would be hijacked by some of the stupidest apologists this side of the Toronto Star.

Of course, maybe I missed coverage of the over 200 Canadian Muslims who leapt to their deaths from a blazing inferno atop the CN Tower. Maybe I failed to read about the dust cloud that swept down Bay Street - a dust cloud that was composed of incinerated building materials and human bodies.

Maybe I was sufficiently insensitive to the reports of the horror in forensic labs as DNA was extracted from intenstines and bone fragments in order to try and identify victims and match them to the heartbreaking posters of the missing that lined Toronto streets.

And that story about a pair of bound hands found atop a nearby building? I totally missed that.

I did note, although not previously report, that some 28 windows at a GTA mosque were broken. (Sorry, my attention has been somewhat distracted by the bombing of Shiite mosques and funerals in Iraq. Maybe the death toll accounts for my inattention.)

It was wrong, but it was also mild; in fact, it seemed downright tame compared to the firebombing of a Jewish synagogue and the destruction of the library in a Montreal Jewish elementary school a few years back events which - Gee! did not compel Muslims to hold press conferences denouncing acts against Jewish and Shiite religious institutions.

Just how stupid do they think we are? Have Muslims been dragged out of their homes and beaten to death? Have they been forced to wear crescent badges so we can readily identify them? Have there, in fact, been widescale reprisals against Muslims?

Of course not. It's not as those cartoons depicting the Prophet were published in Canadian newspapers and set off a rampage in which the Danish Embassy was burned ... besides, this is a free country, and those who want pandering and abasement can get that and more from the Toronto Star which is attempting to put a human face on those arrested which inevitably lead to promoting the alientation and misunderstood theme - a notion that is insufficent given that they allegedly sought to express their feelings with mass murder.

If "teen angst" and "lack of identity" justifies psychopaths, then wouldn't we expect that Christian teens - surely the most marginalized group in both Canada and the U.S. - would be primary candidates for terrorists? (Read Michael Coren's column along that line of thought here.)

But, fortunately, timing is everything. Any theme of finding terrorism as an outlet while searching for an identity is downright awkward given that one primary inspiration for terrorists is DEAD. (Those who are offended that Zarqawi's puffy dead body was put up for display can also be soothed by the Star which, at least in this instance, did give fair time to both sides of the controversy.)

And I can't deny that I was downright inspired upon learning that Zarqawi's last look at life on this side of Hell was at the faces of U.S. servicemen and Iraqi policemen - people he had spent considerable time and resources to kill but who had a most satisfying last word.

Ah, maybe I'm being too hard on these kids. What with the failure to teach criticial thinking at Canadian schools and the Cult of the Don't Pass Judgement Unless it's Against Americans, why wouldn't they imagine that the arrest of 17 alleged terrorists is the same as the murder of over 3,000 innocent people?

Or maybe the media mis-reported the press conference. Maybe the "Muslim youth" were thanking Allah that a real Canadian 9/11 was averted. Ya think?

Harper meets with Muslim leaders

June 10 - Unsurprisingly, PM Harper held a closed-door meeting with Muslim community leaders in the aftermath of the arrest of 17 terrorists in Southern Ontario and, although the details of the meeting were not released, the response by one of the participants hints that in addition to the soothing of ruffled feathers, issues of accountability may have been broached:

[Farzana] Hassan-Shahid [of the Canadian Muslim Congress] told The Canadian Press that those in attendance had different viewpoints about what may have led a group of young Muslims to consider violent attacks on their own country.

"It's about time Muslims owned up to the fact it's a Muslim problem," she said, adding that she thinks the community must forcefully denounce extremism.

"We need to be more proactive, rather than issue statements of condemnation," she said.

And then there was some unintentional humour:

[Tarek] Fatah [spokesperson for the Canadian Muslim Congress] said the issue of American-based Islamic organizations spreading fundamentalism and extremism in Toronto was also brought up.

He said two - the Islamic Society of North America and the Islamic Circle of North America - were singled out.

"This is America pushing its fundamentalist Islamist thinking into Canada, not vice versa," he said.

That's a switch. Instead of bashing the U.S.A., President Bush and evangelical Christians, he bashes the U.S.A. for importing Muslim fundamentalism. That man is like totally Canadianized -- he just can't address home-grown Canadian issues without invoking the anti-American card.

By the way, don't blame me for designating Fatah as "spokesman" for the CMC and Hassan-Shahid as being "of" the CMC - that's how the article is written. Another well-known dirty little secret is that the Canadian value of equal rights for women is applied somewhat selectively - although I blame the usually vocally outraged Canadian feminists for that unprincipled failure.

As I wrote yesterday, there does indeed seem to be a concerted attempt to push fundamentalist thinking onto Canada but the source is Saudi Arabia, not the U.S.A.

The Saudi royal family has issued over $70 billion in grants to leading U.S. universities - including Harvard, Cornell, Texas A&M, MIT, UC-Berkeley, Columbia, UC-Santa Barbara, Johns Hopkins, Rice University, American University, University of Chicago, Syracuse University, USC, UCLA, Duke University and Howard University and the purpose of the grants was to establish departments and chairs that promoted the Wahhabist version of Islam.

There is a fairly well-defined line between propaganda and education and it's no secret that many U.S. and Canadian universities crossed that line long ago, but what many don't realize is that Saudi money helps fund that propaganda.

Question of the Day: How much money do the Saudis contribute to Canadian mosques and universities?

Wahhabism in Canada

June 9 - Schools funded and staffed by Saudi Wahhabists have been blamed for teaching the ideology that justifies terror attacks in Pakistan and Indonesia, and it seems that they have kindly included Canada as a recipient of their benevolence.

Newsbeat1 links to a video of an interview with a Sufi Muslim recently aired on CBC's The National in which serious allegations are made that the Saudis have sent Korans to Canada which include tracts inciting jihad (go to Newsbeat 1: If you click on the video clip at 7:55 mark -. there is a story about those arrested. It requires RealPlayer to view.)

Kamal Nawash of the Free Muslims Coalition has a blog entry on the Saudi Royal Family and the Wahhabists which is extremely thorough and puts some key points in perspective:

For most of the 20th century, the Saudi royal family was substantially stronger than the Wahabi religious establishment. However, due to shortsighted policies and a lack of leadership from the Saudi government, the Wahabi religious establishment has gained substantial influence in Saudi Arabia. Over the last 30 years, radical Wahabis have become restless and unsatisfied with Saudi Arabia’s historical division of power. In response to the Wahabi’s increasingly assertive demands, the Saudi government adopted a policy of appeasement. The decision to appease the Wahabis has resulted in the legislation of internal social policy that is based on the most extreme common denominator. As is clear, Saudi Arabia’s policy of appeasement has backfired and has resulted in the propagation of a wicked, backward, violent and intolerant interpretation of Islam the likes of which the Muslim world has not experienced in 1400 years of history.

In recent years, Saudi Arabia has become a victim of terrorism with several bombings that killed hundreds of people. In response to terrorism on its own soil, the Saudi government has finally declared war on terrorism. It now appears that the Saudi government realizes that the status quo cannot continue and are taking baby steps to reform their policies by organizing tough police actions and ideologically challenging the terrorists’ theological justification for violence. The Free Muslims Coalition regularly monitors Saudi TV and while we have witnessed intolerant rhetoric by radical Wahabi religious figures, we have also witnessed a sharp increase in the number of religious and government figures who aggressively advocate tolerance, respect for other religions and attempt to discredit the ideology that leads to extremism and terrorism.

Nevertheless, while we recognize that the Saudi Arabian government has taken steps to fight extremism and terrorism, it is not yet doing enough. ..

Nawash calls upon the Saudi government to take steps to end the export of intolerance, but I think it is equally the responsibility of the U.S. and Canadian governments to not allow what is arguably hate literature into our countries.

We really need a chapter of the Free Muslims Coalition up here. John Lawrence's latest article in Canada Free Press, Toronto area Muslims feel singled out, expresses the frustrations many feel when Muslim leaders adopt a stance of victimhood in the wake of terror arrests rather than express determination to weed out those in their community who threaten us all:

As for those in the muslim community who don't like the tactics of Canada's various security agencies and police forces, I issue this challenge to you. Flush these cowards out of your mosques. Condemn all radical speech as unacceptable and turn over any and all information regarding subversive activities involving any member of the muslim community immediately. ..

[...]

You, Mr. Hindy, are no better than any other Canadian, and as a Canadian, it is time for you to put Canada first and to stop this rhetoric about how you are being persecuted. There is a groundswell of emotion rushing against your religion not because of remarks by our Prime Minister as some have suggested, and certainly not because of the allegations put forth in the form of criminal charges.

The fault, my fellow Canadian, lies at the doorstep of your mosque and others like it. Deal with it like a man and stop blaming every one else. It will not be until the majority of muslims speak out and turn out these sadistic hate mongers that muslims will be looked upon in the same light as every other group in this great land.

Just a caution: there are still many things we don't know about the terror sweep in Toronto last week, including whether tips came from Muslims who noticed there was something decidedly "off" with these men and contacted the security agencies.

Nevertheless, the quick assertions of victimhood are counter-productive as well as wearisome, and they do a deep a disservice to Muslims everywhere.

While it is true that the vast majority of terror attacks are carried out by Muslims, it is equally true that the vast majority of terror attacks target and kill Muslims.

Far too often we only pay attention when it affects Western countries, and that is a dangerous miscalculation. Al Qaeda and its affiliates seek to gather all Muslims under their murderous banner and, as we have seen in Iraq, they murder shoppers at markets and children playing in the streets ...

Michael Yon

and they do so with the same indifference with which they murder Iraq police and army personnel - and us.

Victory can only be achieved when people who cherish freedom are willing to stand up and fight for it, and that means all of us - Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jainist, animist, wiccan, agnostic, and atheist.

The war on terror is decidedly non-denominational, and the Muslim community in Canada desperately needs leadership that is willing to stand up and protect the rights of all Muslims from Islamic fundamentalists -- not only in Canada but in the rest of the world as well -- and affirm that tolerance is something to which we are all entitled.

June - 10 08:30 Salim Mansur passionately writes about the economic, social and political morass in many Muslim countries and declares that We Muslims have work to do.

Canada and the War on Terror

June 7 - I've been off-line as the phone company didn't come through and then Munuvia was hit with yet another DNS attack. We must have pissed someone off, which I'll take as a compliment.

The international attention to the terror arrests up here has been astonishing, and all the more so in that the Canadian security agencies involved in the arrests have been more forthcoming than usual about those accused and their alleged specific targets. And too, the accusation that one of them wanted to behead the prime minister adds to the sensationalism in the case.

The Toronto Sun has archived the reports coming out in the aftermath of the arrest of 17 alleged terrorists here.

Judging from my own observations, I would say that awareness by both private citizens as well as by institutions has been increased -- but I'm sticking with generalities for the same reason as I cited in the previous post: give nothing away and make the bastards do their own legwork.

I will only report on the responses of those I know (and those who know me, and my American flag lapel pin intentionally acts to forewarn folks) yet I think it's fair to say that the astonishment here in Toronto is mixed with gratification. After the dismal failure to convict the defendents in the Air India trial which was, in part, attributed to turf wars between CSIS and the RCMP coupled with the revelation that the RCMP was involved in some questionable Adscam doings and had become highly politicized was disenheartening, but the arrests seemingly signaled that those responsible for public safety were in fact making us safer:

The RCMP led the investigation, but the probe included significant co-operation with partners through an Integrated National Security Enforcement Team, or INSET, made up of RCMP, the CSIS spy organization, federal agencies and provincial and municipal police.

INSET teams were created in April 2002 under a five-year, $64-million investment by the federal government.

That means the teams were created when Chretien was prime minister, which is significant and asks a question of those who parrot the sorry "it sends a message" line: Why do you vote for people who say one thing and then do another rather than voting (or at least respecting) those do what they say they will do?

Chretien and his ministers continually pooh-poohed the terror threat in Canada, yet established a high-profile committee to counter terror threats and it was highly successful. The arrests and detainment in Canada under this country's Anti-Terrorism Act (and which was opposed in an open letter from Muslim and civil rights organizations in part due to provisions permitting secrecy and long-term detentions without the formal filing of charges) should have been enough to persuade Canadians that (a) there was a security threat and (b) some strong measures had been taken to contain that threat.

The most striking feature of the case is that the targets were total Cancon -- nary an American business concern or MacDonald's were on that list. Even the dumbest dunderhead should have to concede that their hated for Canada and her institutions went beyond any imagined connection with the USA and spoke to their hatred of the West in general, but I'm not counting on it. The readiness with which many up here blame the USA for everything and anything is so deeply embedded that I doubt anything could excise it, but it is those others who are thinking about this and doing their own math and, if they think about it from this perspective, the aborted attacks say so much about Canada's worth that it may help counter the sense of inferiority that marks much of what is called Canadian self-deprecation.

In short, Canada is a force of good in the world and that makes her a target -- just not in the way that those at the CBC and Toronto Star would project. It is more evident in the West, but folks in the Maritimes, Quebec and Ontario too have it as part of their heritage: the courage to pick up roots and settle in a foreign country (including the Tories Loyalists* that fled from the American War of Independence;) the willing self-reliance and confidence such a decision requires; the optimism and hope that life here will be better than it was "back home."

Okay, I'm going all Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle on you, but there is a lot of wisdom in that movie (and some grrr-eat humour) but I do have a point: people don't come here (especially given the damned winters) unless they have confidence and yearn to build a better life for themselves and their children. I actually believe that at least some of the familes of the accused had no idea what their kids were up to because that spark and optimism drove them to take a chance and move here and I feel as badly for them as for any family that sees - and disbelieves - that their kids are trashing every gift their parents gave them.

Those who want to invoke the 60s might want to look a little deeper: one of the accusations of my generation was that our parents were too materialistic and insufficiently spiritual and "close to nature." That this accusation was directed at people who had grown up with war-time scarcities was not even a consideration, yet how different is that blindness from the young fundamentalists who have disavowed every reason for which their parents migrated here?

It should be said that recognition of and gratitude for that gift can be perverted if the schools and communities don't celebrate the very heritage that enabled people of all colours, religions and ethnicities to come here and succeed, and by that I am referring specifically to the shared English heritage of both the USA and Canada which molded our institutions and gave legal recognition to individual merit and free will, despite its inconveniences, and just maybe what Canada and Canadians need is to accept that the two countries have that in common as well as a geographical boundary.

Instead of Canadians prefacing sentences with "unlike Americans," maybe we can all say that we -- Canadian, American, Australian, New Zealander, and British -- are all engaged in promoting the genuine values of an Anglosphere which decrees that all are equal and can rise on the basis of individual merit and worth.

On Canadian Appeasement

All the protests, anti-Americanism, Bush-bashing (including that by elected officials) and a refusal to support the Iraq War only fooled the fools -- it did not fool those who allegedly plotted attacks on institutions and landmarks and, had the plot actually gone forward, the death toll as well as the impact on the Canadian economy would have been substantial.

They are even accused of plotting an attack on the Toronto CBC studio, one of the most liberal if not leftist institutions in Canada. The CBC has been lukewarm on Canadian involvement in Afghanistan and their hostility to the USA as well as US efforts in Iraq is unmistakeable, yet they were a target.

Again, only the fools were fooled.

As I noted in an earlier post about some pre-Sept. 11 difficulties between the French and British in their respective perceptions of the international scope of conspiracies to commit terror acts, the French may talk a lot about discourse and negotiations but their security services tell a different story: they are focused, hard-nosed, and sometimes ruthless in their determination to eliminate threats. The problem with the French governments is their hypocrisy, or perhaps it would be better to say that the security agencies operate in such deep shadows that the French people can pretend that they are far too sophisticated to indulge in cowboyish maneuvers or do things like blow up the Rainbow Warrior just because it was attempting to expose the environmental impact of continued nuclear testing in Polynesia. After all, their government was "sending the right message."

There are indeed two Canadas, but it is not divided so much between French and English as between those who recognize that terrorism is an international threat and Canada is vulnerable, and those who will not concede the fearsome reality. Given the need for public vigilance in noticing stray bags, gunfire in the night, or an imam who preaches beyong the fiery, the extent to which these arrests are a wake-up call are yet to be determined.

As it has in the USA, though, I fear the retreat to partisan trench warfare between right and left will be rapid and unashamed, and far too many will not be able to find it within themselves to take the necessary steps to admit that we need to pull together now if only for self-preservation. But I really hope to be proven wrong.

* I should have said Loyalists, not Tories. Thanks to Keith for the correction.

The Insidiousness of Scent

June 1 - Now that public smoking has been banned, it's time for True Believers to organize for their next assault. In Ottawa, Councillors vote to educate public on perils of perfume:

A citizens' committee on the environment submitted a proposal that the city phase in a bylaw banning people from wearing perfumes and scented products such as deodorants and soaps.

Get in the game, Toronto! The Ottawa City Council is threatening to capture the coveted title for Can't Run the City But Can Run Your Life. But first they have to spend millions to explain to people why perfumed products are wrong:

The proposal suggested starting with a public education campaign,

handled, no doubt, by advertising companies,

then following with a scents ban in city buildings and later a citywide ban.

Sheesh, I could sympathize with (althought not support) any measures taken to deal with those who do not wear deoderants (particularly after this recent heat wave) but take away my Eternity? To the barricades!

Councillors agreed Thursday to a public awareness campaign in city-owned buildings to encourage people to stop wearing scents.

They plan to review the effectiveness of the campaign in 2010 before looking at the committee's recommendations for a scents ban.

Woo hoo! Four whole years for avid anti-aromaists to agitate and organize and get public funding and be a Major Factor in the next city elections which, I've no doubt, it will be a dirty but scent-free campaign. Candidates will resemble the newscasters in the Batman movie.

I tremble to think of what these zealots will do. Throw water on those who wear perfume and after-shave? Distribute circulars on how Musk Is Bad and Roses Ruins Lives? Pontificate on the allure of natural bodily odours?

How about starting with the youngsters? Millions can be spent urging teens to "Just Say No to Scent." City ordinances could be passed requiring that all perfumed products are to be removed from shelves and cannot be sold to anyone under the age of 18.

What about potpourri? and incense? Pot Smokers and Orthodox Churches Unite?

It never fraking fails. The zealots came after the smokers and now smokers have been literally ostracized. Now the same argument is being advanced to go after people who thoughtlessly pollute the air with (shudder) artificial smells.

In the proposal, the environment committee argued that people have the right to breathe clean, fragrance-free air in the workplace.

Today the workplace, tomorrow the buses and subways, restaurants, canopied outdoor patios, and child care facilities along with stiff fines for those who violate the law. Beware: the Perfume Police are on your trail.

Several places across Canada have implemented public awareness campaigns urging people to not wear fragrances to help reduce illness and discomfort by those with scent allergies or asthma.

They are coming for You!

Passports and whining and insults, oh my!

June 1 - Newsbeat1 often posts excerpts from Question Period in the Commons (which is another good reason to visit a couple of times each day) and today's post concerns questions from yesterday as to what the Conservative Government is doing to stop the pending requirement to present passports when entering the U.S. at the northern border.

First I should mention that U.S. tourism has decreased to Canada in the past few years, and provincial and national Liberal politicians and pundits have come up with a variety of explanations: Sept. 11, SARS, the dollar, in short, everything and nothing.

Some, though, have voiced the obvious reasons: Canada was a member of the Axis of Weasels; Chretien flew to Mexico (then a member of the UNSC) to encourage Pres. Fox to vote against U.N. action in Iraq; Canadians seem to love Michael Moore; there's a rather long lists of terrorists are out there with Canadian backgrounds (although some are dead or in Gitmo) yet the prime minister said "there are no terrorists in Canada"; and members of the Liberal Party and the news media persist in insulting us.

Now it escapes me at the moment why Americans might not choose to visit a country that has so much contempt for Americans and furthermore actively campaigned to derail American efforts to deal with a known threat and financial supporter of terrorsts, but the Minister for Public Safety, Stockwell Day, demonstrates considerably more sense on this issue than his predecessors.

Newsbeat 1: Hansard excerpts- Question Period- May 31 ,20060:

Hon. Robert Thibault (West Nova, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, on the issue of the border with the United States, this government has abandoned Canadians. The Maritimes depend on American and Acadian tourism. American families have to spend more than $500—the price of passports—to enter Canada. Americans will avoid the Maritimes, and our tourism industry will suffer further. Canadian exporters who must travel to the United States have the same problem. [Americans will need a passport to enter the U.S., not Canada, although the previous government had threatened to enact such a policy as an act of retribution.]

Why is this government abandoning Canadian communities on the passport issue?

[...]

Will our government not represent us on this vital question or do we have to depend on U.S. governors to defend our interests? This is bush league leadership. Once again, the Prime Minister shows himself to be a shrub, a little bush. (Emphasis added)

Hon. Stockwell Day (Minister of Public Safety, CPC): Mr. Speaker, insults like that created a lot of problems for the Liberal regime.

A number of speakers take to the floor to whine about how passport requirements will hurt tourism and they all take their shots at the U.S. -- although I should note that they do not for its value in the debate but because they think they're ingratiating themselves with Canadians who they fondly imagine like to hear that stuff.

Somehow I doubt passport requirements will radically affect American tourism up here any more such would affect tourism to other countries. A large number of Americans, as do Canadians, hold passports already, but what may be happening is that the Liberals are establishing the grounds for blaming the Tories for reduced American tourism, as though their own big mouths weren't a major factor.

There's a saying about being careful what you wish for. A common Canadian complaint is that Americans don't know anything about them, but Americans have become more acutely aware of the world since Sept. 11 and, I fear, of Canada -- or maybe I should say the version of Canada the news media up here likes to project.

Too harsh? Hardly

June 1 - This story sickens me. A man raped his 2-year old daughter and posted pictures of the act on the internet.

The assaults continued for two years, and after his 2005 conviction, the man received a 15-year sentence -- but the sentence was reduced to 9 years by the Quebec Court of Appeals:

In a 2-1 ruling on Tuesday, the court ruled the man's crimes were not among the worst sexual assaults ever committed, and agreed to reduce his sentence from 15 years to nine.

"There was no violence, such as gagging, threatening or hitting the child," Judge Lise Côté wrote.

Because gagging, threatening or hitting the child would have been wrong.

[...]

When the court reduced that sentence on Tuesday, Côté cited the man's young age [32 years old] and the fact that he has only one other criminal conviction (for sexually assaulting another child when he was 17).

Only two children (that we know of) have been damaged so we wouldn't want to ruin his life because of this.

The prosecution's case was based on roughly 5,000 pictures and 5,000 videos found on the man's computer, some featuring very young children.

The man has three other children.

(Via Neale News.)

Ont. Civil service union to boycott Israel

May 29 - I should be outraged but such would be entirely too subdued: civil service workers in Ontario, whose generous wages and salaries are paid for by taxpayers, have endorsed the boycott of Israel:

The Ontario wing of Canada's largest union has voted to join an international boycott campaign against Israel "until that state recognizes the Palestinian right to self-determination."

You got that backwards, idiot. Israel has recognized that right and is instituting that right, but the Hamas party, which now holds majority rule, has not reciprocated and still holds to its position to eliminate Israel.

Sid Ryan, the Canadian Union of Public Employees Ontario president, said 896 members voted unanimously at its convention in Ottawa on Saturday to support the campaign.

"This is not an attack on Jewish people. It's [an objection to] the state of Israel's policies on Palestinians," Mr. Ryan said yesterday. "They say they are creating an independent state but they're not giving them the tools to do that."

"Tools" like mortar, explosives, schoolbooks that teach that Jews are monkeys and pigs, and ambulances to transport weapons? They have them.

Or "tools" as in "useful fools tools?" 'Cause I can assure you they got those too aplenty -- including your delegates.

Under the resolution approved by delegates, the union -- which represents more than 200,000 workers -- will also develop an education campaign about the issue, according to a press release. The statement condemned the West Bank barrier erected by Israel.

"The Israeli 'apartheid wall' has been condemned and determined illegal under international law," the release reads.

That stupid myth of international law is again raised as though it has legitimacy (in the proper sense of the word) and breezes past the murderous attacks that prompted the erection of the wall.

In a reference to boycotts, it also notes, "Canada has a free trade agreement with Israel, the only such agreement this country has outside of the Western hemisphere."

"In Ontario, the Liquor Control Board carried more than 30 Israeli wines, many produced in the occupied Golan Heights."

I never noticed that before, being a California wine lover, but I will definitely buy a couple of bottles now.

Mr. Ryan said the global campaign started last July and has been supported by 170 organizations around the world. "It's a human rights issue," he said.

He said the union has also come out in the past against attacks by Palestinian extremists and suicide bombers.

Insert the pro-forma "It was wrong but .." b.s., and, having been fair and even-handed, jump back to showing how enlightened you are.

CUPE Ontario's next step, he said, is to try to get other unions such as the Ontario Federation of Labour and the Canadian Labour Congress to join the campaign of "boycott, divestment and sanctions."

In recent years, CUPE Ontario has called for the end of Israeli military action and a withdrawal from the occupied territories. The executive of the Canadian Labour Congress crafted a resolution in 2002 comparing Palestinians in the occupied territories to blacks living under apartheid in South Africa.

Note the discrepancies: blacks in South Africa lived in South Africa; the Palestinians are living in what is not part of Israel. Israel is in fact withdrawing from the territories, but the issue for most of the Palestinian leadership is that Israel is not withdrawing from Israel. Not that details matter when you're enlightened.

In other news, Israeli soldiers thwarted a homicide bomb attack and here's the part that really sticks out:

Senior IDF officials told Ynet that the intelligence alert that led to the arrest is one of the most severe they have received so far. “This was a joint plan of the Islamic Jihad, Fatah and the Popular Front to carry out a large scale terror attack in Israel,” an army source explained.

Get that? Fatah. Now that they no longer control the PA, they have no need for the pretense of wanting peace, instead choosing to restore their reputation as butchers.

Reader Timbre sent me an email about Toronto Star editor and columnist Haroon Siddiqui's thrat to sue a commenter over at little green footballs. Anyone know how that is developing?

(CUPE link via Neale News)

[The transit workers' work stoppage has ended, so I'm heading to work. More tomorrow.]

Oh, that Canadian MSM (Updated)

May 28 - Interesting debate going on up here which, although seemingly stemming from alterations in how PM Harper handles (or fields depending on your POV) questions from the press, reflects deeper problems with which most Americans are wearily all too familiar: rank partisanship by reporters, a news and commentary elite that cannot distinguish between fact and opinion, editorial statements disguised as questions, different reporters repeatedly asking the same questions already asked and answered (Sec. Rumsfeld deals decisively with them,) deliberate or lazy (again, depending on your POV) misrepresentation of what was actually said (remember the infamous Dowd ellipses?) and above all, in what amounts of a near-derelicition of duty, a failure to perform the kind of investigative reporting that might have brought attention to scandals like Adscam and over-spending for the Gun Registry much earlier.

JM at Newsbeat1 makes an extremely pertinent point on exactly that failure here in his link to the following item.

Stephen Taylor has an excellent post on the controversy giving Fair time to both sides of the debate and the comments are both stimulating and informative. Be sure and follow the links in both the post and comments; this is not an idle debate but one that exposes the degree of disenchantment that has led to the rise of blogs and questions as to the amount of unfettered access the media should have to the Prime Minister.

This comment by Maria cuts to the heart of what many of us see as a direct challenge to the assumumption of an "independent press":

I don't have exact source but here is another fact that makes Canadians suspicious of the motives of some members of the press:

56 appointed for life Senators were journalists (don't know how many of those were from the Ottawa press corps)

Of these 48 were appointed by Liberals.

Another extremely large number of journalists have been made Ambassadors.

The past two Governor Generals appointed by Liberals were from CBC.

There is a perception that these appointments are for "favours rendered".

No kidding. Certainly the prospect of getting a plum patronage appointment would indicate a potential conflict of interest if not a direct conflict of interest but (surprise!) the Canadian media hasn't exhibited much interest in pursuing that story.

Furthermore, the CBC is not the only news outlet that receives funding from the Canadian taxpayer so maybe it isn't so strange that much of the news media actively fanned a scare campaign in an effort to secure a Liberal win during the last two national elections.

(Please note that I am not singling out the Canadian news media for scorn -- laziness and the wholesale failure to check their facts is endemic among news organizations around the world and I cordially despise most of them all of the time and all of them some of the time.

I must admit, though, that U.S. press briefings would be far less entertaining without Dowager Helen Thomas.)

May 30 21:10 - Lorrie Goldstein points out in his column that the practice which is so outraging the PPG (Parliamentary Press Gallery) today was, in truth, instituted back in 2004 in honour of the the last two election campaigns. At those times, though, a Liberal, Paul Martin, was Prime Minister.

So the same press gallery that quietly accepted restrictions under a Liberal PM -- and, it must be stressed, during two national election campaigns -- has suddenly re-discovered the concept of a vigorous and investigative press? If we are to believe they are indeed neutral, then why didn't they stage walk-outs under the Martin government? Were they somehow afraid of the Liberals?

It is simplistic to always assume liberal (and Liberal) bias in the media, but their own inconsistencies are increasingly hard to fathom and they aren't offering any coherent explanations.

Rally in Toronto for illegal immigrants rights

May 28 - It was inevitable, I suppose, that rallies in the U.S. demanding rights for illegal immigrants would trigger similar ones up here. 500 attended a rally for immigrants' rights in Toronto yesterday:

The protesters, who gathered outside the OISE building on Bloor St., chanted "No one is illegal," and "Status for all." The rally and march was one of several across Canada yesterday.

"We want an end to the detentions, deportations and use of security certificates," said Zima Zerehi, a spokesman for No One is Illegal Toronto.

Zerehi said studies show about 500,000 illegal immigrants live in Canada with 80,000 in Toronto.

If we apply the 10:1 ratio when comparing Canadian figures to those for the U.S., that would approximate 5 million illegal immigrants in Canada and 800,000 in Toronto.

Our Ambassador to Canada

May 28 - Nice little story about US Ambassador David Wilkins: In one short year, the new U.S. ambassador to Canada has become a poutine-loving, Moosehead-swilling Canuck-at-heart.

I think most Americans will readily admit that Canadian beer is better than ours (it has a higher alcoholic content) and to my taste, Moosehead is indeed The Best (with thanks to Sammy and Amelia for introducing me to it) and well worth the higher price.

As for the poutine, to each their own, eh?

The Battle of Panjwai

May 27 - I am impressed: this item, Canadian troops capture militants, which was written by Bob Weber and appeared in the Toronto Sun, has some solid reporting and indicates some understanding of the military and how they fight. I'm going to quote more than usual due to the uncertain lifespan of the link:

For nearly two weeks, hundreds of Canadians have been fighting in the mud-walled villages of the Panjwai district west of Kandahar, facing large concentrations of Taliban militants who - unusually - have chosen to fight rather than fade away.

The battle, a hide-seek affair of house-to-house searches and sudden, ferocious ambushes, has cost lives both Afghan and Canadian. Forty Taliban fighters were reported killed and 40 others captured in Panjwai last week in a battle that also took the life of Capt. Nichola Goddard, whose funeral was held in Calgary on Friday.

And still the fighting continues.

"We're not 100 per cent sure why (the Taliban) are fighting so hard for this area," said Capt. Dave Johnston of Second Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry.

"But this is definitely the main event now."

I suspect the Taliban are not fighting so hard for the area so much as fighting Canadians and hoping their ferocity will compell the withdrawal of Canadian troops from the region. They probably rely on the Star for their intel and have misunderestimated the character of Canada outside of Toronto.

On Wednesday and Thursday, the big action came to Banzya ...

A long convoy of light armoured vehicles - or LAV IIIs - and G-Wagon patrol vehicles had pulled into an adjacent field the previous night, its soldiers bedding down on the flat plain of dust and goat droppings.

By 8 a.m., about a dozen soldiers had filed through Banzya's main gate to begin the operation.

The Canadians set up a blocking cordon along one side of the town. Then, working with the Afghan police and army, they formed a line at right angles to the cordon. They started from one end of the cordon, searching homes, poking down alleyways and questioning villagers, moving along methodically like a squeegee cleaning a window.

The Afghans took the lead. They understood the tribal differences that allowed them to recognize someone out of place. They could spot the signs that suggest a man habitually carries an AK-47.

"We've got a lot of technology that they don't," said Johnston. "We've got more firepower, we can see better and we can call in artillery."

"But they've got a spidey sense."

The anti-war folk (and much of the MSM) are generally dismissive of the growing involvement of Afghan (and Iraqi) army units in operations because it defies their multi-cult worldview which respects the inherent dignity of people from places like Afghanistan and Iraq. No, wait, that's a contradiction. Let's try again: the anti-war folk (and much of the MSM) are generally dismissive of the growing involvement of Afghan (and Iraqi) army units in operations because it undercuts their premise that the Afghans and Iraqis liked living under the monstrous Taliban and Saddam regime.

For hours, the work went smoothly. Mid-afternoon, the Canadians and the Afghans broke from the mid-40s C heat under a shady tree. After days of fighting in the area, the place seemed deserted.

But about 3:20, as the Canadians were working through a narrow choke point of road near the vineyards, the Taliban sprung an ambush.

"There was a lot of rounds, a lot of (rocket-propelled grenades)," said Pte. Paul Carey - at least 15 of them. Carey watched one of the rockets bounce across a road like a stone over a pond, hopping over a soldier who had dived into a ditch.

The Canadians returned fire with rifles and their own grenade launchers.

Usually, such attacks last for 15 minutes or so then fade before the Canadians can call in air or artillery support. But this time, using the vineyard as a network of trenches and a nearby building for cover, the Taliban kept up fire for an hour.

One Taliban round rammed through a mud wall and the armour of a G-Wagon, setting its interior alight and badly wounding the platoon's interpreter.

The Canadians often escape an ambush by going around it. Suspecting that's what the Taliban anticipated, they changed tactics.

I'm just pausing here because it's hard to write with a big grin on one's face.

"We decided to power through the attack," said Master Cpl. Chris Alden.

Under cover of the big Canadian howitzers, landing punches from kilometres away as the soldiers cheered, the platoon gradually worked out of the trap the Taliban had tried to close on them.

But as they edged forward, they discovered their enemy had one more surprise in store. The road out was now blocked by an IED - or improvised explosive device, the sort of roadside bomb the Taliban regularly use on Canadian convoys.

"They had stuff set up for us," said Alden.

This time, the soldiers zigged, blowing a hole through a wall to open an egress.

Ka-boom! I love this stuff. It's almost Patton-esque. And, not to dwell, it's a testimony to the Canadian soldier that, despite years of neglect, they can still kick ass -- not because of what they carry in arms or equipment but because of what's inside them: guts and determination.

Meanwhile, air support arrived. A U.S. B1 bomber unloaded a 900-kilogram bomb, flattening a Taliban position with a concussion that could be felt inside LAVs two kilometres away. A U.S. air strike earlier this week in fighting elsewhere, in Azizi, killed at least 16 civilians along with dozens of Taliban fighters. Canadians were not involved in that battle.

Let it go. There are political reasons why Canadian non-involvement in that action needs to be emphasized. But, and this is directed to the American MSM, there seem to also be political reasons why the Geneva Convention is often mentioned when they report on the controversy over the Guantanamo holding facility but they don't condemn the Taliban for using human shields -- a definite violation of that same convention.

The platoon finally arrived back inside the defensive perimeter late that night, their interpreter the only casualty. During the skirmish, they had fired at least 7,000 rounds.

The work resumed the next morning at first light, with another platoon of soldiers filing into Banzya. A smattering of gunfire shortly after 10 a.m. was answered almost immediately with about 20 artillery rounds.

As I prefaced, one rarely read this kind of field reporting up here and I look forward to reading more by Mr. Weber.

One more nod to the Afghan soldiers:

Banzya is only one of a dozen tiny communities in Panjwai and operations in the area are ongoing. Each one will be different, and each will be the same.

"With the Afghan National Army taking the lead," said [Capt. Dave] Johnston [of Second Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry], "Canadians are going into compounds and making sure there are no bad guys around."

I ran a google on Bob Weber; a photo is credited to him in a Washington Post story about the battle last week in Musa Qala, a canada.com report about the death of Capt. Nicola Goddard, and there's an item by him cited in The Agonist about the Nov. 2004 Alberta elections. It seems he's a photojournalist who works for CP and AP.

I don't often note by-lines, but I'm going to be looking for his.

The season finale of Battlestar Galactica is about to begin (we're only concluding Season 2 up here) and I am so hyped. And the view on my monitor still looks brilliant.

May 28 20:35 - I wonder if information gathered from those detained is in any way connected to the successful U.S. air attack on an insurgent training facility near the Pakistan-Afghan border.

Howard in Canada

May 18 - Australian prime minister John Howard addressed a packed Commons and spoke directly but eloquently about the dangers we face in this war on terror:

"Terrorism will not be defeated by nuancing our foreign policy," he said.

"Terrorism will not be defeated by rolling ourselves into a small ball and going into a corner and imagining that somehow or other we will escape notice."

America's '100% ally' also directed some blunt words to anti-Americans:

"Australia, as you know, is an unapologetic friend and ally of the United States," Howard told a Commons chamber that has heard frequent criticism of Washington in recent years.

"The United States has been a remarkable power for good in the world. And the decency and hope that the power and purpose that the United States represent in the world is something we should deeply appreciate," he told a packed Commons to sustained applause.

[...]

"For those around the world who would want to see a reduced American role in the affairs of our globe, I have some quiet advice. That is, be careful of what you wish for. Because a retreating America will leave a more vulnerable world."

I've previously expressed my gratitude (and relief) that Australia steadily and forthrightly provides leadership in the war on terror for southeast Asia - the western flank in this conflict - and I'll gladly say it again: thank you, Australia. Your deeds are noticed and appreciated. Also, it won't hurt for us to remember that when the tsunamai devastated that region in 2004 that Australia was the first on the scene providing rescue and relief operations.

Australia is a member of the Commonwealth and one would think that country would get more recognition here. Australia saw to the evacuation of and medical treatment for Canadian citizens after the 2002 bombing in Bali but that received scant attention here much less any outpouring of grief from Candian citizens for the deaths of Australian citizens.

There's no way around it: the rugged capability of the Australian military and navy do not reflect well on the Canada of recent years. If, as the news report snidley suggests, Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper considers John Howard to be a role model then that is not a bad thing at all.

Afghan mission extended

May 18 - Parliament voted yesterday to extend the mission in Afghanistan for two years. It was a very close vote at 149-145 with the Bloc Quebecois and the NDP voting against the motion but, although the Liberals were split, enough voted for the extention to carry the motion.

17:22 - Andrew Coyne titles his post on this succinctly: We're staying and looks at the divisions within the Liberal Party over a mission they initiated when they ran the government.

I was too tired this morning to do more than note this extremely important committment, but it should go without saying that it is indeed welcome news. The media here (as indeed it does everywhere) takes note of the firefights and deaths but the gains don't make the headlines: building schools (and a school system that educates girls as well as boys,) medical clinics and supplying much needed equipment and medicine.

Coalition forces are also helping to train Afghan police and army units. This too doesn't make the news nor does its significance: that we are helping to build the very institutions that will eventually lead to our withdrawal.

Did I mention that girls are now allowed to attend schools? Or that women are allowed to vote? I just don't understand how any woman who calls herself a feminist could not rejoice at this news.

Another gain has been downplayed: The Torch has a post noting, among other things, the emergence of a healthy press in Afghanistan.

The Taliban and al Qaeda are caught between coalition forces, the Afghan army, and Pakistan, a country that is somewhat reluctant to engage an enemy that threatens its government (as well as the tenuous peace between it and India) but cannot help but note the extension of the Canadian mission and all it conveys.

This period in history has increasingly become one in which actions speak louder than words, and the vote in Parliament confirms that Canada is indeed committed to advancing the march of freedom. Well done.

Female soldier killed in Afghanistan (updated)

(Photo from CTV web site)

May 17 - Bumped and Updated 16:43: CTV has updated the information on the link noted below and the fallen soldier has been identified as Capt. Nichola Goddard, of 1st Royal Canadian Horse Artillery based in Shiloh, Man.

Goddard was serving with Task Force Afghanistan as part of the 1st Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry (1 PPCLI) Battle Group. Her age and hometown were not immediately available.

A military spokesman said the captain was killed in action at 6:55 p.m. local time (10:25 a.m. ET) about 24 kilometres west of Kandahar city in the Panjwai region.

Members of the Canadian Forces were backing up combined operations of the Afghan National Army and police, who were involved in a firefight against a group of Taliban fighters.

It's worth noting that the mission was a success.

I wish to extend condolences to her family for their loss as well as the gratitude of us all.

Remember those who serve.

15:27 - Very few details have been made public yet, but it has been confirmed that a female Cdn. Forces soldier has died in Afghanistan. PM Harper confirmed it was a combat death during Question Period today.

This too is something about which it is difficult for me to comment. Americans have had to try and steel ourselves to a rising death toll that does include female military personnel -- nevertheless it always hurts a bit more when it's a woman.

But far worse would be to deny those women the recognition and honour due them because they chose to accept, along with equal rights, equal responsibility for the protection and defense of their country.

Anyway, that's how I see it.

(Via Neale News.)

Scrap the gun registry (updated)

May 17 - The Auditor-General's report hopefully dealt the gun registry its final blow when she informed Canadians that not only had the cost of the program far exceeded the initial projections but that the true costs of the registry were concealed by the previous Liberal governments. The figures given for a computer system are hard to believe:

Her audit found the price tag for a computerized information system ballooned from an initial $32 million to more than $90 million -- and it still isn't in operation.

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said today that Canadians will no longer be required to register long guns and shotguns and those who failed to register them will not be penalized. (See below for correction)

The desire to be seen as "doing something" has led governments to do initiate all sorts programs that too often don't even address the problem which they are meant to solve. Rex Murphy speaks to that urge and how it produces zero results, twinning the gun registry and Kyoto and labeling them to be little more than Yoking wishfulness to vast expenditure He gets in some splendid shots; regarding the gun registry, for example, he says

In the early days of this program, it was all so simple. We had then Justice Minister Allan Rock standing to tell the country, "All that we're asking of firearms owners is to fill out two cards and mail them in."

A few postcards and a postage stamp. And we get a billion dollars?

Who was the mailman? Wile E. Coyote?

Murphy link via Newsbeat1, who has has a post in which the editor of the site pointedly takes us on a little trip down memory lane and compares Adscam and issues raised by the Gomery Commission to the unresolved questions about the gun registry ("Some politicians should be walking around with a bag over their head." Heh.)

19:10 - Rats. I need to correct what I said above about the requirement to register long guns and shotguns: the announcement on the Canadian government website:

The Government is moving ahead today with the implementation of the following measures:

* transferring responsibility for the Firearms Act and regulations to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), taking over from the former Canada Firearms Centre;

* reducing the annual operating budget for the program by $10 million;

* implementing licence renewal fee waivers and refunds;

* eliminating physical verification of non-restricted firearms; and

* introducing a one-year amnesty to protect previously-licensed owners of non-restricted firearms from prosecution and to encourage them to comply with the law as it currently stands.

As well, the government will table legislation to repeal the requirement to register non-restricted firearms.

Any legislative and regulatory changes will continue to require the safe storage of firearms, safety training, a licensing program including police background checks, a handgun registry (as has been the case since 1934) and a ban on those classes of firearms currently identified as prohibited.

(Via Newsbeat1.)

Andrew Coyne

May 14 - Andrew has posted several links to columns from April 8 - May 14. There's lots to read there so I'm gonna start reading.

Looks at though comments are re-enabled too.

Darfur and Ottawa

May 13 - Another great read I came across at Newsbeat1: Stephen Taylor has a fascinating look at "Google Trends" and has an interesting tidbit for those of us for whom Darfur was of deep concern long before it became a popular issue:

On first glance, it appears that the Sudanese region of Darfur is within the mindset of a greater number of Canadians than Afghanistan. [Stephen has a really cool chart here.]

However, on closer inspection, it appears that Darfur is really only being researched in Ottawa rather than by the rest of the country. Certainly others in Canada are interested in Darfur, however, in reference to Canadians that search for information on Afghanistan; those that search for Darfur are in Ottawa.

I'm a normal person so I just naturally seize upon something that piques my interest! Evidently, Darfur, which wasn't very important when the Liberals were in power, is suddenly a Subject of Great Interest in this nation's capital. True, the Liberals did approach the Sudan government about sending a modest force to stave off a confidence motion in the Canadian Parliament but the Sudanese said No without the thanks and it all kind of fizzled. But now, after years of killing off the Canadian Forces by monetary starvation, the Liberals and the NDP are calling upon the current government to send troops to Darfur.

It's kind of funny in a sick, twisted way: they are inadvertantly heeding Usama bin Laden's call for the muhajadeen to go to Sudan but in order to do that they have to abandon their committment to stabilize Afghanistan, a country that once sheltered bin Laden and advanced his aspiration to restore the caliphate until al Qaeda dared attacked the USA on our own home soil and he fled because we smote them. Now they want to send troops to Sudan, another country that once sheltered bin Laden and advanced his aspiration to restore the caliphate until al Qaeda dared attack the USA on home soil (also known as embassies) and we smote them so they ejected bin Laden and he went to Afghanistan.

I need to find those who declared that irony was dead and beat the crap out of 'em.

I wrote the above before I noted a link to a column (again from Newsbeat1) by Jim Travers in today's Toronto Star that stops just short by a millimeter of urging that the Canadian military leave Afghanistan and go to Darfur but reminds us that Canada is only in Afghanistan as a concession to the USA - evidently the vicious reign of the Taliban didn't offend Canadian values - and even though he acknowledges that the state of the military is one Harper inherited, not created, he fails to be consistent and give proper consideration to the fact that the committment to Afghanistan in general and the Kandahar mission in particular were also inherited and should be honoured.

The best part lies in his desperate need to find some way to conclude the column. I do sympathize; its often easier to begin a piece than to end it, but I mean really, was this the best he could come up with?

Still, the continuum between past, present and future is serendipitous. In the first decade of a new century, peacekeeping is subordinate to peacemaking, failing states compete with newsreel victims for scarce resources and even the most dubious policies are justified by the search for the holy grail of security.

In trying to balance those forces, Harper is gambling that Afghanistan won't come to haunt his government and that Darfur won't redefine this nation as one that no longer cares.

"The holy grail of security." Isn't he clever? He's oviously channeling the Da Vinci Code, but I wonder if he's familiar with another Holy Grail tradition and, no, I'm not referring to Monty Python but to something slightly more appropriate to military matters: Wagner's Parsifal and the Holy Spear which some scholars believe to be the relic which is referred to as the Holy Grail (and which, interestingly, may actually have belonged to Charlemagne rather than a Roman soldier, and the former attribution has a definitive context which I find quite appealing.)

Serendipity is a great word. It's all about accidental but pleasant discoveries and has nothing to do with inattention to historical events. The "continuum" - a great, Star Trek: the Next Generation word - is far from serendipitous when rooted in blood and death, or maybe Travers forgot the famine in Ethiopia which was neither the first or the last of "newsreel victims for scarce resources" and for whom the world - well, actually, those with European traditions - rallied to save. It appears he also missed that little incident in 1993 when some say peacekeeping without peacemaking died along with 18 U.S. Marines although others say it died in 1983 and no matter how you look at it, all the noted events, according to my calandar, were in the last century. (This century, as most of us realize, also opened with a bang and it too was unpleasant.)

As do all good liberals, as Ann Coulter has said, he only wants the military to engage in wars which it cannot win. I'm not sure it's intentionally defeatist, but there it is. There will be no adjacent land base from which to deploy or supply troops so any intervention there will need air power, and, for those who have a memory, being denied a northern base from from which to launch an assault hurt us when we invaded Iraq so imagine the difficulty of having no land base.

Don't look at us. I think we may be busier than many realize, and I've got my wonders about the real circumstances behind recent events in Somalia (mums the word) and besides, I think our guys should be allowed to finish their jobs in Iraq and Afghanistan and, you know, go home to their families and loved ones and that's not even taking into account possible action in Iran. Certainly an intervention in Darfur is in keeping with everyone's values but the U.N., which until quite recently was pronounced to be the only legitimate authority under "international law" to wage war, seems disinclined to sanction military force to end the not-genocide so I fear that Darfur will be like the weather: everyone will talk about it, but no one will do anything about it.

And who's fault will that be? I know, it will be all our fault. Everything is our fault. Certainly we can't blame Canada and other value-laden countries who were busily dismantling their militaries to meet the entitlement demands of their populations and felt secure in doing so because ... well, because the U.S. had always been willing to pick up the slack. Until Sept 11, 2001, when we were attacked and we learned where we really stood in the world.

John Robson makes this point and others in Plenty of mercy, but no muscle for Darfur (via Daimnation!) and he makes the one vital point about a reality that is neither unexpected nor pleasant:

Liberals talked about the duty to protect. But they ignored the capacity. So now the pitch to those-awful-macho-Americans in sunglasses and body armour is, we didn’t join you in Iraq but you should join us in Sudan. Well not exactly join. More let’s you and him fight.

Ahem. Dear President Bush, remember all that joshing about how you lied and were a war criminal and the worst president in a century and an imbecile and stuff? Ha ha. Just kidding. Actually we share your idealism but um forgot to have an army, navy or air force so could you maybe just totally invade and occupy an oil-rich Muslim country for us a bit? If trouble erupts elsewhere, like Korea or Taiwan, and you’re overextended because you took on Darfur, well, you can count on us to rely on you. But we’ll cheer … until something goes wrong. Then we’ll denounce you as an insensitive imperialist and start muttering about Halliburton.

There are Americans who are desperate for world approval and then there are the rest of us, and if outsiders understood American politics they would see how far to the right John Kerry swung in '04 yet still lost and how much farther to the right Hillary is swinging now yet her poll numbers are poor. Maybe then they would begin to realize how angry we are and, if they think it through, they'd suddenly realize that we're taking Mom's advice and ignoring the people who bug us. That's why we can have our silliness with American Idol, attend NASCAR races, keep our guns clean and our ammo close by, and produce wonderful moves like Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle and do all the stuff that so offend the elites because the only thing that really matters is how we feel about ourselves, and we kind of like us.

So the situation in Darfur is undeniably desperate - albeit only one in a frighteningly long list (be sure and look at the entries for May 5) but we're kind of busy right what with Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, North Korea and probable players to be named later.

But it's not hopeless: the world could still face this challenge without U.S. leadership.

I propose that France assume leadership in a Coalition of the Used-To-Be-Unwilling. They possess aircraft carriers and might even be able to use their presence in Congo and Ivory Coast from which to launch a land assault and besides, it will demonstrate French superiority. The Spanish could redeem their honour by participating and Belguim too could demonstrate that their horror for crimes against humanity is not just rhetoric.

I devoutly hope, however, that Canada doesn't trade its valued presence in Afghanistan for an adventure in Sudan for many reasons not the least of which is because, like it or not, any intervention there will be one without an exit plan

I would be heartened should there be a genuine humanitarian intervention in Darfur. It's lonely being the only guys on the block willing to take on the bullies. But I have my doubts, though, because doing such would also require taking on the Russians and Chinese and I'm not sure the French in particular are willing to abandon their playing-off-the-USA-against-Russia-and-China strategy.

But shh! don't tell anyone that Sudan has oil. I'm sick of those posters.

Great reads

May 13 - I meant to go to sleep but I foolishly visited Newsbeat1 and I've spent the better part of the night (morning? whatever) reading some great stuff.

Top of the list is Michael Yon currently writing from Afghanistan. I need to put a post-it on my monitor to remind myself to complain about the "mainstream media" rather than the shortened "media" because assuredly Michael Yon is a member of that profession -- or maybe he is what they wish they were: someone that writes from heart and mind rather than studied artifice.

Just as he does always, this latest post, The Long Road Ahead, has filled me with a sense of joy, sorrow, laughter, fierce pride and all-round general choked-up-ness.

After reading it I realized I need to return to Right Wing News to re-read John's Favourite Hindu Story.

The thematic connection between the two is not restricted to dogs, though, but to the kind of steadfastness and loyalty we so often see in honourable warriors.

Now here's a thought: we should encourage the Lefties to send a peace delegation to a Hindu village in Afghanistan to explain to them why removing the Taliban was wrong.

If you followed the last link, by the way, you'll note a name that recently popped up yet again: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. I swear this guy is like an Afghan Keyser Soze.

Cindy Sheehan on Canada

May 12 - Michael Moore came up here and Al Gore came up here so I guess it was inevitable that Cindy Sheehan make the trip. Oh. Joy.

There is (surprise) one point with which I commiserate with Cindy. I too have adult sons who sometimes make questionable decisions or have opinions with which I might disagree. It's a part of growing up (I mean us parents growing up.) That doesn't mean that I'm giving her a pass for being such a jackass, only that I do understand why she feels so guilty (indeed, what parent doesn't feel guilt when one's child dies?) I suspect that she hasn't found a way to mourn for the man her son became but only for the son that she lost.

Anyway Cindy came, encouraged Canada to accept the hundreds of U.S. military deserters (?) she claimed want refuge here and is enlightening Americans on Canada in Cindy Sheehan Reports from Canada:

Canadians are distressed that defense spending rose by 5.3 billions of dollars (roughly what the US spends for 2 weeks in Iraq) while the preschool budget is being cut and college tuition is rising. This increase in military spending coincidentally correlates with a push to recruit thousands of more soldiers who are still be told by the Canadian recruiters that their country only does peace keeping missions. This manipulation of facts and the exploitation of fear and false patriotism is being fueled by the Canadian media who seem to be turning, for the most part, into propaganda tools of their government a la our rightwing 4th estate. (Bolding added)

Cindy didn't check her facts. She may have just accepted what she was told uncritically -- yet she flings accusations about others lying and being manipulative! For one thing, the promise to rebuild the military was a key election promise. The recruitment centers are busy up here because young Canadian men and women read the papers and listen to the news (unlike Cindy) and they know full well that there is a firefight in Afghanistan and they want to do their part to defend this country now that they have a government that will support them and rebuild the military thus restoring an institution that was once a source of tremendous Canadian pride.

The accusation in the bolded part of her report is just as funny up here as it is down there and for much the same reason - in fact, it might even be funnier as there's no Canadian equivalent to FoxNews or even CNN.

The recent polls in Canada show that the people there are starting to wake up by the truckloads with support for their administration's support of BushCo's war slipping 14 percentage points in two months! Canadians are seeing that the war in Afghanistan is not righteous and that when Canada sends troops there, it frees American troops to be illegally and immorally deployed to Iraq. Canada needs a Cindy Sheehan to go to the PM's residence and demand to know what noble cause her child died for, or is still fighting for.

See how she did that? Once again it became All. About. Her.

Neale News mischieviously links to her report with the caption "Cindy Sheehan: "Harper is Wildly Unpopular"" next to these three:
Tories Riding a Wave of Support, Polls Show,
Canadian military asks photographer to suppress photos of Taliban raid, capture, and
Majority support Afghan mission: Poll which indicates that Cindy has poor math skills:

The Ekos survey -- provided to Reuters -- shows 62 percent of Canadians support the mission in Afghanistan, down from 70 percent in early February. The number opposed grew to 37 percent from 28 percent.

The article doesn't break down the numbers by region or province, which is Canadian for "support would be higher if you factor out the numbers from Quebec."

Canadian troops capture 10 Taliban

May 12 - Canadian troops capture Taliban suspects without firing a shot and turned them over to Afghan police. Much of the article content, though, focuses on whether photos taken by an embed from Agence France-Presse may have violated Geneva Convention articles on the rights of prisoners.

The Toronto Sun article also focuses on the photo issue, but provides much more information about the suspects and what they were carrying:

Ten prisoners were taken in the raid, including three known to authorities. [Maj. Marc] Theriault said the men were found with large sums of money and bomb-making materials.

That information is conspiciously absent from the Yahoo account as well as the the CBC story. which is exactly the same as the one at Yahoo but does include a link to a photo gallery (requires Macromedia Flash Player.)

Ardent Sentry

May 10 - 'Ardent Sentry' Testing U.S., Canadian Crisis Response:

WASHINGTON, May 10, 2006 – More than 5,000 U.S. and Canadian servicemembers are working with authorities in five U.S. states and two Canadian provinces [Ontario and New Brunswick] to test their response capabilities to crises ranging from a major hurricane to a terrorist attack to a pandemic flu outbreak.

Ardent Sentry 2006, a two-week U.S. Northern Command exercise, kicked off May 8 to test military support to federal, provincial, state and local authorities while continuing to support the Defense Department's homeland defense mission, according to Air Force Lt. Col. Eric Butterbaugh, a NORTHCOM and North American Aerospace Defense Command spokesman. The Canadian part of the exercise began May 1 and continues through May 12.

[...]

While testing the military's interagency coordination, the exercise also focuses on its ability to operate with the Canadian government and the newly established Canada Command, NORTHCOM's Canadian counterpart, Kucharek said.

"This is the first major exercise which will allow Canada Command to train with federal and provincial departments and agencies," said Gordon O'Connor, Canada's national defense minister. "Exercises such as Ardent Sentry 2006 help ensure we respond to domestic threats and natural disasters in a coordinated manner." It also will promote "cross-border information sharing" between Canada Command and NORTHCOM, he said.

That unelected Sentate

May 9 - Can you imagine this coming from a body whose membership has to face an electorate? Canada's Senate committee recommends nickel-a-drink tax hike for mentally ill.

Leadership: Canadian Style

May 9 - The Conservatives continue to impress me with their handling of the big stuff. Recent polls have indicated support for the Afghan mission is slipping, so Peter MacKay, the foreign affairs minister. pays surprise visit to Canadian troops in Kandahar and pledges that Canada will "finish the job."

"just another way to get to work"

May 1 - Interesting information about a new paratrooper unit formed up here (you have to read that post to get the title -- it's a doozy of a quote!)

I've always felt awkward about commenting overly on Canadian military issues. After all, I could hardly be called neutral much less even-handed but I do feel it's important for Americans to recognize that, despite the sniping and barbs hurled at us by the previous government, Canada was contributing a great deal in Afghanistan and the Persian gulf and it was certainly no reflection on those who serve in the Canadian Forces that the government and news media largely ignored them (unless there was a death, at which time they all hyped it up to a suspicious degree -- and I'm not alone in my cynicism.)

So I guess there are two points to this post: that there is a determined if clumsy effort by the minority Conservative government to get across the fact that the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan is a war, and that you will want to read The Torch on a regular basis to learn just how engaged Canadians are in Afghanistan. (True, its not yet on my blog roll but I've only just managed to restore my permalinks and haven't the faintest idea yet how I fixed 'em much less lost 'em so venturing into a template might be a Bad Idea.)

Happy 80th to the Queen

Apr. 21 - Cheering crowds greet Queen on birthday walkabout but the real tribute is from Beaverbrook.

Off to work.

Better get those passports

Apr 21 - Fox reports some interesting news - FBI: Two U.S. Citizens Met With Islamic Extremists in Canada to Plan Terror Strikes - with one glaring omission: Canada is a big country and the "where" might be of interest to folks up here and, I suspect, to folks down there.

Get with it, FoxNews.

(The alleged meeting was in Toronto.)

[Just to clarify that post title, it is in reference to people up here who oppose the new regulations requiring people from Canada to present passports when they try to enter the U.S.A. There seems to be some weird attitude by Canadians that they have a God-given right to enter the US at will, which is kind of funny coming as it does from a country in which the English population doubled by the many Loyalists who left the USA after the Revolutionary War.]

Kindly define "friend"

Apr. 5 - The Globe and Mail headline shouts Brief Throne Speech hails U.S. as 'best friend' - death quotes theirs, as though that statement is a bad thing - which is why it continues to bewilder me that so many in the MSM express opposition to new regulations which require Canadians crossing the border to carry passports. Are we to suppose that the Globe and Mail thinks Canadians should have the kinds of consideration merited by long-standing ties of friendship between the two countries without the friendship part? (Actually, yes, but don't ask me to explain it.)

It seems below much of the media's radar up here that some decidedly unfriendly words and actions by columnists, activists and even members of the previous government have led many Americans to not count Canada as a friend and, too well aware that Canada was a member in good standing of the Axis of Weasels, regard this country as little better than France and deserving of the same disdain and treatment.

The formation of the Congressional Friends of Canada was widely hailed up here but should have been a huge warning flag. It was reactive, not pro-active: a reparative act in response to a woeful admission that relations between the two countries have deteriorated to the point that such an organization is needed, for why bother if there was no need to counteract the altered perception of Canadians by Americans?

Things have changed since Sept. 11. Before that day we tended to brush aside the slings and arrows thinking that we were "big enough to take it" but once we were attacked we took careful note of who were friends and who were foes and Canada came up sadly short. Blame Chretien, Parrish and Martin or applaud them, just don't overestimate our willingness to overlook or forgive because it's no longer about hurt feelings but about our very survival.

Also, for all the anti-Bush sentiment and professed preference for Democrats up here, please don't fail to note which party is increasingly becoming the party of protectionism and isolationism. Those who don't believe such sentiments will hurt trade are sadly mistaken.

The funny part is that the Globe and Mail is supposed to be business-oriented, yet the attitudes and policies they promulgate would have a devastating effect on the Canadian economy. Go figure.

A New Leaf - Speech from the Throne

Apr. 5 - The Speech from the Throne was delivered to Parliament yesterday and the 2006 session opens today under something of a cloud due to the pay increase that puts MPs in the top 2% of income earners.

The themes of the speech echo much of the philosophy and promises made during the election campaign but, as always, the test will be in the ability of the minority government to get legislation passed by the House. Nevertheless, the opposition would be foolish to block the passage of a bill to strengthen accountabiliy and protect whistle-blowers (although they may try to water it down.)

The issue of child care will continue to be a major bone of contention. Those who claim that lack of child care forces many women to stay at home overlook an uglier reality: high taxes and prices force many women to work outside the home even when they'd much prefer to raise their children themselves. The Throne speech affirmed that parents should be able to choose the form of child care that works best for them.

The extent to which the federal government plans to return power to provinces in unclear. The speech spoke of facilitating "provincial participation in the development of Canadian positions that affect areas of provincial responsibility" which is not the same thing as returning power formerly held by the provinces.

We'll see how it goes.

Lorrie Goldstein looks at the double-standard and hypocrisy by Liberals criticizing yesterday's speech.

PM speaks on crime

Apr. 3 - Good news and good news: Police cheer PM's tough talk on crime and I cheer his resolve to abolish the long gun registry ... but leave it to the Star to search out and quote someone who supports keeping the gun registry. Is there a policeman in Canada who assumes that someone doesn't possess a gun just because they aren't a registered owner? The illegal, unregistered hand-guns used in the incessant gang warfare here in Toronto answers that question pretty decisively.

PM Harper's speech today on crime is here and the speech of Vic Toews, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, before the Canadian Professional Police Association is here (via Newsbeat1.)

Parliament opened today. It will be interesting to see how much this minority government will be allowed to accomplish inasmuch as the leadersless Liberals are not likely to want an election any time in the near future.

"It's time to do something about the CBC"

Apr. 3 - Richard has written a persuasive, low-key open letter to PM Harper about continued federal funding for the CBC over at Cannuckistan Chronicles.

It's a nicely restrained letter with lethal pin-point accuracy. After citing some examples from Tony Burman, Editor in Chief of CBC News, of his self-aware political bias the letter concludes:

Freedom is an interesting word Mr. Harper. As Canadians we have the freedom to provide funding and support to any number of activist groups should we choose to do so. We have the freedom to make that choice. Except when it comes to the "activist" CBC, as it's funded by our tax dollars.

As such Mr. Harper, I respectfully request that you level the playing field. ..

Well done.

Oh, that liberal media

Apr. 3 - M.K. Braaten proves that pictures are better than words and in doing so utterly discredits the Wardrobe Controversy the media has tried to create over PM Harper's choice of apparel during the Cancun summit.

(Note to Americans: the first photo is of former PM Paul Martin and the second is of current PM Stephen Harper. If you thought much of the American media gave Clinton a free pass ...)

(Via Newsbeat1)

Abderraouf Jdey (and Harper's wardrobe)

Apr. 1 - Some Canadian exposure of revelations about Abderraouf Jdey that emerged from the Moussaoui trial: Al-Qaeda plotters sought Canadian as pilot, court told because al Qaeda believed that those who held Western passports would more easily pass through security checks. One correction though: the Sept. 11 commission was in fact told specifically that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed claimed that Jdey and Moussaoui were both to have hijacked planes out of Indonesia to attack the U.S. west coast (more on that here and google search results here.

Note to Globe and Mail: Kindly check your ... Oh forget it. I realize your people have far more important things to do, like complain about Harper's wardrobe.

18:07 This goes beyond the ridiculous: today's CTV poll question (on their main page) is if I think it matters what Stephen Harper wears when he attends high profile meetings with foreign leaders. What are they trying to do, turn him into a metrosexual?

It's nice to note that there are so few issues of substance these days that the Canadian news media can address this sort of urgent issue. And they wonder why Canadians watch US news channels.

Rally to defend freedom of the press!

Apr. 1 - It appears that there is more than one way to supress press freedoms, and I'm finding it hard to restrain the contempt I feel as I report that a Canadian human rights commission in Alberta is complicit in an attempt to do just that.

The Western Standard magazine published those Danish cartoons last February. Attempts to get the police to stop publication were denied but now a complaint has been filed - and accepted - by the Alberta Human Rights Commission that claims that reglious rights were violated by the publication of the cartoons and charges Ezra Levant with hate mongering.

Few things anger me more than the frivolous manipulation of those agencies which are intended to protect citizens' rights, and when the agencies themselves are complicit in the frivolity they destroy their own credibility. But it's not just stupidity propelling this but action by the usual, politcally correct suspects to limit freedom of expression.

But herein lies the rub. Although there is little if any chance that the Western Standard will be found guilty they will have to pay for their legal defense (whereas of course the complaintant's bills will be covered by the taxpayer) and, being a small newspaper, it is going to hurt because those costs are not reimbursible.

So I'm asking you to help not only this Canadian magazine but also yourselves, because unless suits of this nature are immediately met with outrage and direct, tangible support to fight them they flourish, and that's bad news for all of us.

There is more information on the suit here and a link to a .pdf file of the complaint. I doubt I need to remind anyone reading this that defending press freedoms is part and parcel of the war on terror or how imperative it is that we rise up as one when our freedoms are attacked.

So I'm asking you, no, begging you to click on the image above or go here to donate to this fight. (In truth, American readers, if only because a small Canadian newspaper shamed a lot of big American ones, I'd say that donating to this cause is even more incumbent upon Americans!)

Canadian and American soldiers are protecting our freedoms overseas and we owe it to them to do our part to protect those freedoms when they're attacked here. It really is that simple.

The Maple Leaf Forever!

March 31 - Prime Minister Stephen Harper's visit to Afghanistan could not have been timed better coming as it did right before the annual spring Taliban offensive. In contrast, the calls by the Opposition parties to debate the Afghan mission in Parliament could not have been timed worse. It effectively gave the Taliban reason to hope that Canadians would cut and run once blood had been drawn and why the assault on the base was stronger than expected; they well understand the nature and tactics of opposition parties which hope to bring down a minority government by any and all means. It was essential that Harper renew Canada's committment then and there, with his boots on the ground, and assure the troops (and Afghans) that the Canadian government and people supported them.

Not bad for a rookie prime minister, eh? And the response here has been overwhelmingly positive and makes one wonder what the heck is going on with Canadian sensibilities. Media pundits, meanwhile, gripe that Harper, who never received any respect from them, doesn't respect them. There have been major firefights in Afghanistan and the media is focused on themselves. Right.

Harper's visit and brief speech also marked a welcome shift in policy as he asserted his confidence in Canada - not as a heckler but as an active player on the world stage by recognizing that you can't "lead from the bleachers." Andrew Coyne's analysis on this is well worth reading and I won't go over the same ground but want to speculate about some possible implications on how that speech might affect the role of the Canadian military in foreign affairs and how it might affect Canadians as they perceive themselves.

Significantly, Harper asserted that the troops were in Afghanistan to "defend our national interests." Now I don't know how often the Liberals openly justified foreign policy on the basis of national interests but I'd hazard it would be somewhere between "not often" to "rarely if ever." Canadian participation in the NATO mission in Afghanistan, for example, was portrayed as one of altruistic peacekeeping -- as though Canada did not have a stake in the establishment of a democratic, peaceful Afghanistan. (Harper did elide over the fact that it is a NATO mission by referring to it as a U.N. mandated mission. The political reality is that Canada tends to regard the U.N. as a Canadian accomplishment so invoking the U.N. confers better legitimacy. Sigh.)

He also stated that Canada has a stake in the role on terror, and by affirming that Harper broke new ground - not so much because of what he said but because he was completely and utterly sincere. If Americans regarded former prime minsters Chretien and Martin as indistinguishable from France's Chirac maybe it's because that perception was accurate: the previous governments were perceived to be paying token lip service to the war on terror and justified Canadian participation by playing the trade card, as though Canadian security and national interests were not at stake and as though terror attacks on innocent civilians were not an affront to Canadian values. Yet, like France, Canadian security forces have been more active than is publicly recognized here. It's as though they are contributing but don't want anyone to know about it - something that is insulting to Canadian citizens who are entitled to know what their government is doing.

Harper also reminded the Canadian troops of the two dozen Canadians that died on Sept. 11, something the Liberal government had been quick to shrug aside just as they underplayed the deaths of Canadians who have lost their lives in other terror attacks. The previous government followed much of the world by pretending that the U.S. alone was the target -- as though the name World Trade Center was as devoid of symbolism as was the death roll of citizens from around the world.

Right about this time three years ago the booing of the U.S. national anthem at a Montreal Canadiennes game was noted by the American news media (although not so much the determined cheering of the anthem at a Blue Jays game in Toronto.) There were a lot of people up here who recognized that, despite one's attitude about the war in Iraq, the ties of friendship and shared values were worth defending, and it was in that spirit that the Friends of America organized rallies across Canada in early April of 2003.

The Toronto rally was on a Friday afternoon and, despite the freezing rain, some 2,000 people attended. One of the most spirited speakers at that rally was Stephen Harper, then leader of the Alliance Party, who ended his speech with the cries "God Bless America" and, very significantly, "The Maple Leaf Forever!"

The response was electrifying. By invoking that cry he hearkened back to an earlier, pre-Trudeauian era when Canadians were internationally regarded as tough and gritty - bold men and women who strode down from the North with determination and got the job done. (The song Maple Leaf Forever is quickly recognizable because it was often background music in war films where Canadian troops were featured, and was the unofficial song of Canada before Oh Canada was institutionalized.)

The capabilities of the Canadian military have been so diminished that that when Canadian soldiers first arrived in Afghanistan they were wearing forest green uniforms. It is to their credit that they scrounged for paint in order to create desert-camo fatigues and blankets but they shouldn't have had to go to such lengths, nor should Canadian troops have had to hitch a ride for the deployment. Sea Kings should not fall out of the air nor should a sailor die on a second-hand submarine and it is hard to swallow the pious sentiments expressed at cenotaphs on Remembrance Day when it is government indifference that most puts military lives at risk.

Polls indicate that Stephen Harper's approval ratings shot up after his trip to Afghanistan and it has been reported that enlistment numbers for the Canadian military are steadily increasing. Is it possible that a long-stifled urge is at work here, an urge for Canada to count as a player on the world stage and be recognized by her deeds rather than by the empty words of past governments? Is it possible that the energy checked by too much political correctness is about to spring free?

I still can't gauge how Canadians are reacting to the reality that her soldiers in Afghanistan are engaged in active warfare as well as reconstruction efforts but the lack of demonstrations argues that Canadians are fine with it. American forces in Afghanistan as well as Iraq have been doing both for a long time and I suspect that Canadians are sensible enough to recognize that there is no reason why, with proper support, Canadian troops can't do so as well, but there is also a deeper recognition that springs not so much from American sentiments but from Western sentiments: we are not only willing to die for our values but also willing to kill to defend those values.

There is a part in most of us that is dismayed when we ask our sons and daughters to kill. That is it should be in a moral society and is a key value that separates us from those who enthusiastically rejoice when their children commit murderous terror acts which kill inocent civilians. Yet the fact is that killing and detaining terrorists are the best if not only ways to protect civilians - including Muslims, Christians, Jews and Hindus - from terror attacks, and those who will not defend the innocent are selfishly immoral.

As I prefaced earlier I'm just speculating, but there's a reason why Don Cherry was voted to the Top Ten List of Canadians and why hockey thrives up here. If the Canadian youth are totally anti-war then why are they wearing desert camo clothing? There's something askew, and as neither Don, hockey nor military wear are for sissies, maybe there's something going on that neither the media nor the polls have addressed but which Stephen Harper has.

Confidence is a concept that has been eroded by fretting over self-esteem. It takes confidence "to do" but one needs neurosis to obsess over self-esteem, and a less neurotic and more confident Canada can be a strong and valuable participant on the world stage. I sincerely hope that Harper can tap the wellspring of Canadian confidence sufficiently to render ludicrous accusations that such is an American-style approach to life and the world because the detractors are dead wrong: confidence is not the sole province of Americans but is God's gift to the world as surely as is liberty, and there are no more confident people on the planet than free people.

To repeat Harper's exhortation of three years ago, The Maple Leaf Forever! Stride onto the world stage with the same gritty confidence that once marked Canada as a force to be reckoned with and show 'em what Canadians are made of and yes, do it for the children - including mine.

[It only took me three days to write, edit, and re-write this. Heh, maybe that's why I don't post as often as I used to. Oh well, Stephen den Beste and Bill Whittle I ain't.]

And yet another attack

Mar. 30 - A joint Romanian-Canadian convey was attacked this morning and a Canadian soldier wounded in suicide attack in Kandahar as were six Afghan civilians.

Pte. Robert Costall, KIA

Mar. 30 - The opening sentence says it all:

[Pte. Robert Costall, 22, of Thunder Bay is] Canada's first soldier to die in combat in Afghanistan ...

One American soldier and eight Afghan soldiers were also killed. And some 32 of the enemy were killed.

Although there has been a Canadian presence in Afghanistan since 2002, the mission has been grossly underplayed by the government and the news media. It's been all "wave and smile" and tea-time, and there has been this general illusion that Canadian soldiers are peacekeepers who don't kill even when though they are killed. Sure, they return fire and try to find whoever is lobbing mortars at them, but they don't catch them so it's okay. That's the myth, anyway, and it is one that has been earnestly portrayed by far too many journalists who are also so naive as to reveal in which section of the camp the mortars landed. But it's all out in the open now: the Canadian Forces are truly an army, capable of taking and inflicting losses.

When we engage the enemy we take casualties. Every thinking person (who is not a member of the news media) knows that basic truth, and those of us who are honest want our soldiers to prevail. A soldier's death must be a meaningful one because he has made the ultimate sacrifice in our names.

March 29, 2006 – Coalition forces killed 32 insurgents and destroyed two Taliban headquarters buildings in Afghanistan's Helmand province today, officials at Bagram Air Base said. The early-morning engagement continued into daylight hours as coalition forces defeated a large enemy element that was attempting to retreat into sanctuaries.

Coalition forces also discovered large caches of munitions as they overran the Taliban compound and the enemy fled. Coalition forces destroyed the munitions, which included weapons and bomb-making materials, causing multiple secondary explosions and destroying the compound and all enemy military equipment inside.

There has been an escalation in attacks on Canadian soldiers and on the base since they moved to Khandahar. Although the previous government had warned that it would be more dangerous they really didn't make it clear that there would be fighting, i.e., that Canadians would fight back.

I don't know how the Canadian public will react to all this but I suspect most soldiers would, given the chance, prefer to die fighting than from being sucker punched by IEDs or homicide bombers. Soldiers are not victims but fighters, and their willingness to fight is what allows us to natter and nit-pick and whine and opine without worrying about who might be taking names or a knock on the door in the middle of the night. (Joe Warmington has a good column on this and contrasts the homecomings of Pvt. Costall and James Loney.)

I don't know how the Canadian public will react to the fact that Canadian soldiers fought valiantly and inflicted casualties but I suspect that many -- if not most -- will be heartened if not downright joyful.

I shudder to think of how the political opportunists and media will manipulate this in days to come but this day Canadians can feel proud and grateful that this country still produces men and women made of that stern stuff from which heroes spring.

There can be no finer tribute:

More than 2,500 troops -- Canadian, American, British, Australian, Dutch and Romanian -- lined the tarmac for the solemn ramp ceremony. Eight soldiers carried the casket to the aircraft. The lament of a lone piper drifted across the desert.

Rest in peace, Private Costall. Your country -- and ours -- salute you.

Canadian takes command of forces in South Afghanistan

Feb. 28 - Brig. Gen. David Fraser, Canadian, takes over in southern Afghanistan, but it's a bit more complicated than that.

Read this post at The Torch for good, well-linked information on the structure and nature of the command.

Canadians in Afghanistan

Feb. 26 - A Canadian soldier was slightly wounded after two grenades exploded near a Canadian patrol on the Kandahar road between two Canadian camps. The attack was made at approximately 10:30 p.m. and and, as too often happens, it was a hit-and-run attack and thus no chance to return fire (Canadian patrol under rocket-propelled grenade attack in Afghanistan):

The first round exploded on the road between vehicles. The second projectile struck a rear door.

"It was bang, bang," said Grimshaw. [Maj. Nick Grimshaw, the senior officer on the patrol.]

Capt. Jay Adair was standing through the hatch in the rear the lead LAV-3 and saw the RPG attack firsthand.

"I heard the bangs and I also saw the explosions," Adair said.

"I'm not sure whether I saw the explosions from the weapons being fired or the weapons striking the ground and the vehicle. But certainly a bright flash and two loud bangs."

[...]

The attack was on the main road from the city to Kandahar Airfield, the same road where Canadian diplomat Glyn Berry died in a bomb attack.

As the article notes, the soldiers were traveling in G-wagons, which replaced the unarmoured Iltis vehicles after Corporal Jamie Brendan Murphy was killed in January, 2004.

Properly funding and equipping the military is going to be a major challenge for the newly installed minority Conservative government. Canadian chief of the defence staff Gen. Rick Hillier lays it out:

"We remain short about three quarters of a billion dollars just to sustain the present Canadian Forces," he said.

"That's everything from married quarters to spare parts, to ammunition, the running of simulators, to gas and oil, to rations and to everything else necessary to march or fly or sail."

Beyond these day-to-day expenses, there's an enormous backlog of repairs and maintenance that has been deferred for years.

"The bow wave of things that we have not done, that we have put off . . . is enormous," he said. "It is going to take us billions of dollars to get out of that hole and I mean billions with a capital B."

Hillier also said that the military has too many buildings, hangars and other infrastructure on its bases that cost money but add nothing to the Forces.

"My estimate is that we have anywhere up to a quarter of our infrastructure that is not operationally required."

Hillier has welcomed the Conservative government's proposals for new planes, bases and 13,000 new troops.

[...]

Hillier seemed to be taken aback by a new poll published Friday which suggested almost two-thirds of Canadians oppose Canada's involvement in Afghanistan.

[...]

Hillier also said he wants to build a stronger connection between the Forces and the rest of the country after years in which the military and the civilian community have drifted apart.

"Having been disconnected from the population for many years in my view, disowned by Canadians in this past decade and seen their confidence in us plummet, we have an obligation to ensure that we as Canada's armed forces are seen by our population . . . as exactly that; as their armed forces."

Although I can't scientifically prove it, I do believe that the impact of American Milbloggers on communications between the American public and military has been immense. As this chart indicates, though, there is a decided lack of them in Canada.

Bloggers do have a way of filling a vacuum, though, and Damian Brooks and Chris Taylor are part of a new enterprise to fill that need: The Torch, a blog focused on the Canadian military and which already has an impressive series of posts including this one which takes on the notion that Canadians are a nation of "peacekeepers." Be sure to bookmark and visit The Torch.

(Yahoo link Neale News; CTV and Milblogs links via Newsbeat 1.)

Cdn. Journalists say publish cartoons

Feb. 20 - A bit of vindication for Ezra Levant and the Western Standard: according to a recent Compass poll, about 6 in 10 Canadian journalists say Publish cartoons.

Interesting breakdown of options:

According to Monday's report, about 17 per cent of those polled felt all major Canadian media should have reprinted the images. Another 18 per cent said most media should have carried the cartoons and 25 per cent said at least some of Canada's biggest outlets should have used the caricatures.

By contrast, about 31 per cent of respondents said major media were correct in the decision not to use the material.

The great divide:

Of those who supported non-publication, most cited respect as the reason.

The bulk of those who said the cartoons should have been carried said fear was the primary motivator for not publishing.

Encouragingly, the poll also found that the journalists who participated understood the implications of not publishing the cartoons:

Still, the majority of Canadian journalists also said they had at least some concern that not publishing the cartoons increased the power of extremist groups at the expense of Shia Muslims who include portraits in their every day lives and pluralist Muslims who want the Islamic world to accept diversity of opinion.

Journalists were asked to score how strongly they agree with that argument on a scale of one to five, with five being the strongest point of agreement. A total of 62 per cent scored three or more on the scale.

(Via Neale News.)

Canadians in Afghanistan (Updated)

Feb. 19 - It may be underfunded and underequipped, but the Canadian military in Afghanistan does this country proud and doesn't back down when it comes under fire from insurgents:

Military officials told The Canadian Press that attackers fired three rocket-propelled grenades at a platoon from Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry taking shelter in a compound in Gumbad, about 60 kilometres northeast of Kandahar.

No Canadians were reportedly injured in the attack, which occurred at about 7:30 p.m. local time. The rockets fell into fields surrounding the camp, just south of the small village.

Military officials said a patrol was sent out to investigate the enemy firing positions, but found no sign of insurgents.

It's the first minor skirmish reported since a new rotation of Canadian soldiers began arriving in the country for Task Force Afghanistan during the past month. The number of soldiers is expected to reach 2,200 by next month.

There will probably be accusations that this attack was a direct result of the decision to publish the Danish cartoons in the Western Standard (as though there had not been prior attacks on Canadian Forces!) Damian has a thoughtful essay (which predated this recent rocket attack) and questions whether we can keep our soldiers safe without becoming something less than we are now.

(N.B.: The headline reads the troops "exchanged fire" with insurgents although nothing in the story indicates there was actually an exchange of fire. I can't account for the discrepancy. Nevertheless, the fact that a patrol was sent out implies the willingness to shoot back.)

Update: The CTV account has been expanded and it appears there was indeed a firefight:

The soldiers returned fire using rifles and their new 155-millimetre M777 howitzer, a towed artillery piece. Military officials said a patrol was sent out to investigate the enemy firing positions, but found no sign of insurgents.

There's a somewhat detailed account of the procedure the patrol undertook in their effort to locate the enemy:

"There were no locals, there was no enemy traces found," Lt.-Col. Ian Hope, the head of the PPCLI battle group, told CP. "But that's quite normal too because normally they shoot and they run.''

The troops did, however, find a series of trenches and tunnels which were likely used as an escape route.

"According to our American counterparts, it is a well-known area that the Taliban have used for fortifications in the past," said Hope.

"They've conducted several ambushes there. They've actually killed some (Afghan National Army soldiers) from those positions, so it was no surprise ... that that was an area that they were firing from."

I've probably quoted more than I should have, but after calling them on what they left out I wanted to fully acknowledge the additions they've made to the original story.

(Via Neale News.)

Raising the level of the debate

Feb. 18 - The University of Toronto's student newspaper, The Strand, has published a cartoon depicting Mohammed and Jesus kissing.

The cartoon, "Tunnel of Tolerance," and editorial, "To print or not to print," can be viewed here (registration may be required.)

Unsurprisingly it has caused a bit of an uproard , but the U of T student newspaper refuses to apologize for publishing the Muhammad and Jesus cartoon.

I am in the usual evening rush (wake up, gulp down coffee, dash out) and don't have the time at this moment to properly formulate and present my thoughts, but my immediate reaction is that I like this response to the Cartoon Controversy. I'll try to put words to my thoughts tomorrow.

One sees what one wants to see. I don't see this as a gay statement but as a kiss of peace -- a symbol of acceptance and tolerance between two of the world's largest religions.

Bottom line: the war of terror is not a war on Muslims.

[As I noted, I'm in a horrible rush and thus reserve the right to edit this for the sake of clarity.]

And you thought the FCC exceeded its mandate!

Feb. 17 - The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunication Commission (CRTC) has ruled that overcharging customers is a Canadian value. No, that's incorrect. What I meant to write is that the CRTC ruled that customers of Bell Canada and Telus Corp. were overcharged and, rather than ordering the two companies to reimburse those customers, the money be used for 'an important social and economic goal' (CRTC vetoes repayment).

I'm not the only one who is unhappy with this ruling:

Consumer groups and one dissenting commissioner said the money belongs to consumers and should go back to them.

CRTC chair Charles Dalfen told reporters yesterday that expanding broadband services, also known as high-speed Internet, is an important social and economic goal.

It has been a federal government priority for at least five years, although Ottawa has yet to allocate enough money to provide access in most rural and remote communities. "We think this is in the broader interests of the consumers," Mr. Dalfen said.

[...]

The CRTC said in its ruling that the companies will have until June 30 to outline how they will use the money to expand broadband. They are also ordered to use at least 5 per cent of the money to improve broadband access for the disabled.

Parliament failed to allocate money to expand broadband services so the CRTC has decided to appropriate money for the cause - money which rightfully belongs to those who were overcharged.

This sets a very dangerous precedent.

Stifling political commentary, Canadian style

Feb. 17 - What on earth has prompted Warren Kinsella to sue a Canadian blogger, as Bruce reports in Blogging is a dangerous game? The defendent is Mark Bourrie, an Ottawa bogger, and Kinsella is demanding $600,000.

The claims of Kinsella's suit are here. As there is something of a history of bad feelings between Kinsella and Bourrie one has to wonder if this is a "gotcha" suit rooted more over an issue of English grammar than a serious claim of defamation.

Jay Currie has a great deal more here.

Mark is doing the right thing by fighting this suit, but his defense will cost a great deal.

Donations can be made at stopkinsella@hotmail.com on www.paypal.com , and I would encourage everyone to contribute what they can. Defending Mark now will be less costly than the long term harm which will be done to Canadian political bloggers should frivolous suits as this one be permitted to proceed unchallenged.

There was an ugly spate of threatened lawsuits last June which threatened the Canadian news media. Now it's the unofficial news media which is being targeted and, as was done then, it's fighting time.

Canadian connection to thwarted L.A. attack

Feb. 10 - Noteworthy item here, although the interesting part is not even in the story: Malaysian recruited for attack on U.S. pulled out after seeing Sept. 11 on TV. The Malaysian in question is Zaini Zakaria. (I suspect Australians and New Zealanders are familiar with that name, hmm?)

Duly note this:

It quoted Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the reputed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks who was captured in 2003, as saying "three potential pilots were recruited for the alleged second wave."

It identified them as Zacarias Moussaoui, Abderraouf Jdey, and Zaini. (Bolding added.)

I immediately recognized the name of Jdey. In that this is a story on a Canada's supposed primary news site (funded by the taxpayers) and written by writers for the Canadian Press one might think they would blink (if not shoot out of their chairs) at the name "Abderraouf Jdey" but, while providing some information about Moussaoui and Zaini, they passed on Jdey.

So why am I making such a fuss? Because Abderraouf Jdey is a Canadian. He moved here in 1991 and became a Canadian citizen in 1995. His suicide tape was found in Afghanistan and the FBI issued a world-wide warrant for his arrest some years ago. He is considered armed and dangerous. (Heh. Wikipedia has an entry on Jdey including some allegations which are highly, um, speculative.)

It's absolutely incredible that they fumbled on some rather obvious Can-con (that's a phrase we give to the mandatory inclusion of Canadian content imposed on radio and television.) Journalistic malpractice or willful ignorance? I can't read their minds so can't make a determination in this matter but I do think either is pathetic.

Moussaoui, of course, was already in jail on September 11, 2001, so his participation in any plot planned for 2002 was foiled, and Zaini Zakaria is currently being held for his involvement in Jemaah Islamiya, the al Qaeda-linked group which planned and carried out the 2002 Bali terror attack.

I knew Jdey's name already -- it also came up during the Sept. 11 hearings in the U.S. -- but had to google to get information about Zaini. (That's because I'm just an amateur and forgot his mention in the Sept. 11 Commission report.)

The true wonder is how they concluded the item in the best tradition of the Sob Story without blushing.

Dirty deeds done dirt cheap

Nov. 22 - Martin hit target?

An accused drug dealer alleges he was offered a meagre $300,000 in 2003 to assassinate Paul Martin (then Finance Minister.) A bit more to the story, of course, but still, only $300,000 ...

A very Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends!

Everyone seems to be having entirely too much fun around here -- except for me: I'm in the midst of a killer work schedule (for those who don't know, I work in the retail sector.) But keep up that shopping folks! You pay my salary.

I actually got some sleep today, though, so should be more alert tomorrow morning.

The real news is that we expect snow in Toronto overnight. Driving will be such fun.

Reactions to the Mehlis Report

Oct. 24 - I wish I could report on official Canadian reaction to the Mehlis Report but thus far there hasn't been any. The rest of the world isn't waiting for Canada, though, and Detlev Mehlis, who was commissioned by the U.N. to investigate the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, will be addressing the United Nations Security Council tomorrow. It seems likely that the imposition of sanctions on the Assad government will, at the very least, be brought up (U.S., Britain press for action against Syria) :

Diplomats at the United Nations and in Washington said U.S. and French officials have been talking with Russia and other nations about anti-Syria resolutions to put before the Security Council, including the possibility of punitive economic sanctions.

Seems France is still on board, which is good (however deeply I may distrust them.)

It's not really so surprising that Canadian officials haven't commented yet, especially as you'd never know the Mehlis Report was all that damning if you read the CBC webpage today (nor would you find a link to an earlier story on that report.) But you can trust the CBC to emphasize the anti-American element in the following story: pro-government demonstration in Syria today:

In a country where protests are rare, a rally in support of the Syrian government virtually shut down central Damascus Monday.

Among the hundreds of thousands of people at the rally – and a similar event in the northern city of Aleppo – there were government employees let off work for the occasion and students released from classes with the government's blessing.

Imagine: government blessed demonstrations! I haven't seen anything like it in that region since Saddam ruled Iraq. (Do reporters in Syria travel with "minders?" Just asking.)

They chanted anti-American slogans to protest a United Nations report released last week that said Syria and Lebanon played roles in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri on Feb. 14. (Emphasis added)

They dislike the findings of a U.N. report written by a German so they chant anti-American slogans. I could be really, really wrong but I am beginning to wonder if this might have been a "staged" event.

The CBC fills us in on more items from the report:

The same report also scolded Syria for its less-than-full co-operation with the United Nations investigation.

[I deleted intervening paragraphs which are not about the report's contents but the CBC report is copied in full in the extended entry for your reading pleasure.]

Syria vigorously denies the allegations in the U.N. report, dismissing its contents as politicized gossip.

The CBC does not report that Detlev Mehlis concluded that leading members of the Syrian and Lebanese governments were involved in the assassination nor does it note that last-minute alterations suppressed the names of several leading Syria officials (including members of Bashir Assad's immediate family) raising suspicions that Kofi Annan had broke his pledge not to interfere. In fact, the CBC doesn't even mention that a computer "gaffe" enabled recipients of the report to retrieve the deleted names.

Imperative No. 1 at the CBC is to suppress any news that makes the U.N. look bad or, failing that, downplay it. (Imperative No. 2 is to hype news that makes the U.S.A. look bad; note the lead picture on their Indepth Lebanon page!) That's part of the reason why some of us are somewhat cynical when CBC reporters are named to the Senate or appointed Governor-General. When your job as a reporter includes tainting the news or even failing to report the news, The News Canadians Trust isn't very trustworthy and neither are its reporters.

Although the news report says that there have been calls for U.N. sanctions, no specific country was named (the article does quote President Bush's response to the report, though.) I think it odd that the CBC completely ignored the involvement of both the French and the British not only because of the shared British and French heritage of Canada but also because the two countries are permanent members of the UNSC. Some might think that when 3 out of 5 permanent members are attempting to build a U.N.-based response against Syria that such an event would be newsworthy.

Same old, same old. For the CBC, it's always All. About. America. and not about, say, the Lebanese (or the Iraqis, for that matter) unless it's about a Syrian response which is All. About. America.

The CBC was so anxious to be even-handed that it didn't even mention the response in Lebanon to the report, unlike the AP, Michael Totten and Expat Yank Robert (and the latter has posted some very moving photos of the commemorative ceremonies at Hafrik's grave that were held last Friday.)

14:25: This CTV report on the Syrian demonstrations contains considerably more information about the Mehlis report although no names of suspected perpetrators are mentioned nor is the revelation that the report was altered to removed key names.

There's also a sobering analysis over at Canada Free Press by J. Grant Swank, Jr.: Syria: Murder & mayhem, but who cares? in which he expresses why he believes the Syrians will not be rising up to oust Assad. He makes several good points and, when you come right down to it, this isn't really about internal matters in Syria but that country's behaviour in Lebanon over the past few decades as well as their support of terrorist groups that attack Israel and (I suspect) Iraq.

The following is the CBC report about today's demonstration in Syria:

Syrians turn out for pro-government rally
Last Updated Mon, 24 Oct 2005 10:28:18 EDT
CBC News

In a country where protests are rare, a rally in support of the Syrian government virtually shut down central Damascus Monday.

Indepth: Syria

Among the hundreds of thousands of people at the rally – and a similar event in the northern city of Aleppo – there were government employees let off work for the occasion and students released from classes with the government's blessing.

They chanted anti-American slogans to protest a United Nations report released last week that said Syria and Lebanon played roles in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri on Feb. 14.

FROM FEB. 25, 2005: UN investigates Hariri assassination

The same report also scolded Syria for its less-than-full co-operation with the United Nations investigation.

Syria is intent on countering growing criticism over the affair, which includes calls for U.N. sanctions against the administration of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

United States President George W. Bush has labelled the report "deeply disturbing," and called on the U.N. Security Council to act immediately to reprimand Syria.

"Syria Will Never be Another Iraq," read one banner hoisted by protesters at Monday's rally. "Wake up Arabs, Your Turn Will Come Soon," said another.

Syria vigorously denies the allegations in the U.N. report, dismissing its contents as politicized gossip.

Detlev Mehlis, the U.N.'s lead investigator, is scheduled to address the United Nations Security Council Tuesday.

Hariri vigorously opposed Syria's domination of Lebanon. He and 20 others were killed when powerful bombs went off near his car in Beirut in early February.

Another one bites the dust

Oct. 21 - On the one hand researchers claim that working women are too stressed to to add frozen vegetables to boiling water, and on the other hand someone who said that proper child-raising and rising to the top ranks in the advertising industry are incompatible goals has been forced to resign (Top ad guru quits amid sexism furor.)

Mr. [Neil] French confirmed yesterday that he has quit as worldwide creative director of WPP Group PLC, the world's second-largest marketing company where he oversaw famous agency networks including Ogilvy & Mather, JWT, Young & Rubicam and Grey Worldwide.

At least the center of this storm isn't backing down:

But Mr. French -- famous both for his brilliant work as a copy writer and his politically incorrect views -- stands by controversial comments he made in response to a question from the audience at a Toronto event sponsored by ad industry Web site ihaveanidea.org. The comments circled around the world after being reported last week in The Globe and Mail's Nobody's Business column.

"The woman asked why there are so few women creative directors. I said because you can't commit yourself to the job. And everyone who doesn't commit themselves fully to the job is crap at it . . ," Mr. French said yesterday in an interview.

"You can't be a great creative director and have a baby and keep spending time off every time your kids are ill. You can't do the job. Somebody has to do it and the guy has to do it the same way that I've had to spend months and months flying around the world and not seeing my kid. You think that's not a sacrifice? Of course it's a sacrifice. I hate it. But that's the job and that's what I do in order to keep my family fed."

One may not like his message, but that doesn't make him wrong.

Canadians in Iraq

Oct. 21 - I must be getting old because I thought this was already well known but evidently the issue is that the knowledge has received official confirmation! Or maybe the issue is that Canadians participating in the "insurgency" tends to minimize the claim that said "insurgency" is an Iraqi-based resistance.

Seems that according to the director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, James Judd, some Canadians are taking part in Iraqi insurgency. (Gasp!)

According to Keith Boag, the CBC's Ottawa bureau chief, the Prime Minister's Office was "flabbergasted" that such sensitive information could be released by the head of the spy agency. "They didn't know it was being spoken about publicly and for that they [the PMO] are very angry."

"The prime minister never comments on intelligence matters and they were under the impression that CSIS didn't either," said Boag.

Acknowledgment that Canadians are fighting in Iraq raises a number of questions, such as what will their status be if they decide to return to Canada.

You mean when they return here seeking health care after being wounded in action? That issue has already been settled as has their legal status.

"It raises the longer-term question of what do they bode for the future?" Judd said.

I guess it's really nice that they are at least considering the long-term ramifications but expecting action from this government? Uh, no, although there are those who are more than anxious to prosecute U.S. President George Bush under Canada's Criminal Code, and a Vancouver court has lifted a publication ban on attempts to do just that:

The Kitsilano lawyer [Gail Davidson] got the ball rolling against Bush as soon as he set foot on Canadian soil for his November 30, 2004, visit. As a private citizen, she charged him with seven counts of counselling, aiding, and abetting torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay naval base. She had her charges accepted by a justice of the peace in Vancouver Provincial Court.

Bush faces prison time if the case goes to trial and he is found guilty.

On December 6, 2004, Davidson was at Provincial Court to fix a date for the process hearing. However, Provincial Court Judge William Kitchen promptly ordered a Straight reporter and other observers from the courtroom and cancelled the charges, declaring them a “nullity”. The meeting was deemed to be “in-camera” and Kitchen concluded immediately that Bush had diplomatic immunity during his two-day visit to Canada because he was a head of state.

You can read about the legal wranglings at the link. (I included it because I didn't didn't want anyone to think that Canadians are incapable of taking A Stand On Moral Issues.)

(Links via Neale News.)

The real scandal in Dingwall's "approved" expenses

Oct. 21 - David Dingwall explains his expenses and in one respect he is entirely correct: his expenses were approved by the Canadian Mint's Board of Directors.

But that's the point! The fact that those "expenses" were "approved" is a real scandal as much as is the appointment of political hacks who feel it necessary to pad their income by lobbying for contracts for which lobbying is forbidden.

So why is Dingwall getting severance pay instead of jail time? (I know why; just let me emote!)

Patronage appointments lead to corruption. The resistance by the political parties to legislate having such appointments be made strictly on merit and qualifications is why many are indifferent or even hostile to politics, and when the argument devolves to "give the other side an opportunity to appoint their own thieving cronies" then we are well past cynicism and apathy and into a level of contempt that can kill the heart of a country.

Shoot. For. The. Stars. Demand competence, accountability and honesty from all appointed officials. Taxpayers deserve no less.

Operation Rudolph

Oct. 21 - Operation Rudolph - as in guiding Santa's team to deliver packages to Canadian Forces personnel in Afghanistan (link via Newsbeat1.)

There's no nice way to say this: public support for Canadian troops up here is all talk and no show. Yes, everyone shows up at the local Cenotaph once a year on Remembrance Day, stands around solemnly and intones "Never Again!" but when it comes to actually giving something (and we won't even go into federal funding for the troops) there isn't the kind of personal, local support here as there is in the U.S.A.

No one's asking you to "give 'till it hurts" (that right is reserved for the taxman) but maybe you can send a thank-you note. Or a donation (tax-deductible, no less!)

I'm as guilty as anyone up here of doing little to support the Canadians in Afghanistan, but then my energy and money go to supporting my people in my army in the U.S.A. What's your excuse?

By the way, before anyone sneers at the Canadian presence in 'stan, they might want to read Canadian forces offer first peek at JTF2 mission in Afghanistan from Sept. 21. (Run the complete headline through google for article.)

Also, read Postcard from Kandahar over at Small Dead Animals.

A Canadian institution

(Sent via email by a friend out West.)

Sorry about the no blogging - I feel asleep early and woke up late.

Tim Horton's, for any readers who may not know, is a huge chain of donut shops up here and most have drive-through service. Many a person arrives to work with a Tim Horton's cup in hand.

Tim Horton was a legendary hockey player who, for most of his career, played for the Toronto Maple Leafs and he may have been the strongest man to ever play in the NHL. Story has it that he didn't fight - he just bearhugged 'em. He last played for the Buffalo Sabres and was killed in a car crash on the QEW in the 1974.

The rogue lobbyists explanation

Oct. 18 - From rogue civil servants to rogue lobbyists - which in turn poses the question as to who, exactly, was roguely lobbied if not rogue civil servants? After all, if certain kinds of contracts and grants are not supposed to be lobbied for wouldn't the person(s) being lobbied know that?

Four lobbyists investigated for possible ethics breaches:

Mr. Nelson said he cannot comment on the investigations, but confirmed that he started them in the past month, although he said that the activities that are being probed are not necessarily that recent. Officials said the investigations cover the activities of four lobbyists.

[...]

"I have initiated eight investigations into potential breaches of the Lobbyists' Code of Conduct," Mr. Nelson said. "That may not seem like a large number . . . but in contrast, since the code of conduct came into being in the late 1990s, there has not been one investigation."

Mr. Nelson's office, which until last year came under the purview of the prime minister's ethics counsellor, Howard Wilson, has been criticized for what has been perceived as inaction in enforcing the law and code governing lobbyists. The Lobbyists' Act was amended in June to include wording changes proposed four years ago after prosecutors asserted that they could not successfully prosecute René Fugère, an unpaid aide to former prime minister Jean Chrétien, for failing to register to lobby on behalf of companies that paid him a 5- to 10-per-cent commission to obtain government grants.

Stay tuned.

" ... I am really not a scary guy."

Oct. 18 - I am genuinely sorry that Carolyn Parrish is not running for re-election (Parrish not retiring-in any sense) and my reason isn't all that complicated. For all her faults, she had one redeeming virtue: she was honest, even if that included being outspoken as to her attitude toward the U.S.A.

My own experience tells me that she expresses the truth as to how many Canadians (at least here in the Greater Toronto Area) feel about us and our president. I prefer her upfront, in-your-face brazenness to the smile-in-their-faces-and-stab-them-in-the-back type of creature PM Paul Martin epitomizes.

I do realize that many Canadians consider her to be an embarrasssment, but what real value is there in pretending that the U.S.A. and Canada are bestest buddies? It does not serve American interests (we already came to terms with the peridy of the French) and, although it may appear to serve Canadian interests, how does being dishonest really serve Canada? It seems to me that being two-faced can only inspire contempt from Americans and, to this American mind, better straightforward honesty to blowing smoke up our as*es.

I don't have to like what someone is saying but at least say it openly. Yet with such honest dealing a deeper chasm would be revealed because many Canadians do not agree with the the Liberal government's attitude toward the U.S.A. That is the debate the Liberals continue to avoid.

However, despite the revision of recent history, Caorlyn Parrish was actually booted out of the Liberal Party for remarks she made about Paul Martin, not those she made about President Bush, and she used this interview to remind us of that. That Martin - with the complicity of the news media - tried to turn it around later and pretend that she was expelled for for her anti-Bush antics pretty much says everything there is to say about this government and its media apologists.

I wonder, did Martin hire Earnscliffe to conduct a public opinion poll to ascertain if Canadians would stomach him dropping Parrish for stomping a Bush doll on public TV or if charging her with lese majesty would be preferable?

Her comments in the interview about Paul "Dithers" Martin reflect what many have observed:

"One of my major disappointments in my whole life, and it will turn out to be one of the major disappointments of most Canadians, is Mr. Martin's leadership. He has been so fragile and he's been so tentative," Ms. Parrish said in her first interview since it was announced that she would not be running in the next federal election.

Paul Martin is "too keen to sit on the knee of the American President. He's been weak on softwood even though he's running around making noises now. He's been weak on beef. He's been weak on caucus management. He's got a whole bunch of yes men sitting in the front row. He is thoroughly intimidated by someone like me -- and I am really not a scary guy."

[...]

"I expected so much out of him. He's a very charming man but he's almost like a deer in the headlights. He looks old and he looks tired and he looks frightened."

Her loyalty to the Liberal Party seems genuine, despite her disappointment in the leadership of Paul Martin. She explains that she decided not to run because she feared a split vote would give the riding to a Conservative candidate, and it is well known that her vote in the "officially sanctioned" non-confidence motion kept the Liberals in power although a lesser person might have used the circumstance for some payback.

So long, Carolyn. Too bad the Liberal Party doesn't have a big enough tent to allow for a little honesty.

Closing a tax haven

Oct. 16 - I'm super late posting on this, but an important private members bill has been submitted to Parliament calling for the closing of a tax haven for Canadian businesses.

A detailed report can be read at Frost Hits the Rhubarb: Proposed Amendment: Income Tax -- Note, CSL.

It is despicable that tax dollars are spent on contracts with firms that dodge paying business taxes in Canada - or in the U.S.A., for that matter. Let's hope this bill gets some support.

That "rogue civil servant" explanation

Oct. 14 - Testimony previously under publication ban has been released by Judge Gomery which gives a closer look at the financial relationship between Jean Brault and Chuck Guite (Money bound Brault and Guite) all of which seems to be in line with the "rogue civil servant" explanation:

Both men said that after he left the federal civil service in 1999, Guite collected thousands of dollars for advising Brault on how to boost his business, often at the expense of taxpayers.

Guite and Brault are now charged with conspiracy and defrauding the government of nearly $2 million. Their trial is set for May 2006. The testimony made public Friday does not touch on any of the contracts that resulted in criminal charges.

[...]

The testimony illustrates the cosy, back-scratching environment that exploded into the $250-million sponsorship fiasco, which featured ad agencies and other middle-men collecting $100 million, often for little or no work.

[...]

According to Brault's testimony, his involvement began at the Vancouver Molson Indy auto race in 1995 where Guite taught him how federal sponsorships were really run.

"That's where he showed me that there was a sponsorship the government gave to (advertising company) Lafleur, and by spending three days in jeans with a beer in hand it's much easier to establish contacts," Brault said in the testimony.

"It was the first time that I would say I sowed, as we say in the business, a little seed to get one of these non-conventional contracts."

Both Guite and Brault reaped the harvest. While Brault gathered millions in ad contracts through his firm Groupaction, Guite picked smaller fruit at first.

Both men say Brault gave Guite high-performance Pirelli tires in 1997 for his brand new Ford Mustang. Brault's company billed the sponsorship program more than $1,300 for the tires. A few months later, Brault bought the car from Guite for $35,000 after Guite decided he was too old for a sports car.

[...]

Guite testified that Groupaction purchased expensive tickets for him and his family for the Italian Grand Prix in 1998.

Guite said that once he left the public service in 1999 he worked on contracts for Groupaction, receiving $76,000 from the company through August 2000.

Brault said he had put Guite on a $10,000 monthly retainer by 2001 for his "vast knowledge of ... the potential of different organizations working on communications in Canada."

According to Brault, his company gave more than $136,000 to Oro Communications, Guite's firm, from 1999 through 2002.

Guite said he borrowed $25,000 from a Groupaction subsidiary, Alexism Inc., to purchase a boat in 2001.

Guite was to repay the money from a $125,000 commission he was to receive later that year from Brault on a handshake deal. The repayment plan was interrupted when the sponsorship scandal broke and became a criminal case.

Guite said he still intends to repay the money, with interest.

Other testimony released Friday highlighted other aspects of the sponsorship file:

--Paul Coffin, the first man convicted of fraud in the sponsorship program, testified that Guite told him to fabricate invoices to cash in on sponsorships. Coffin pleaded guilty to several counts of fraud earlier this year and received a sentence to be served in the community. The sentence is under appeal.

-- Brault testified that Guite pressed him into making a $50,000 donation to Jean Charest's provincial Liberals through ad agency Groupe Everest in 1998. Brault said Guite named Charest, saying "We must send $50,000 to Charest." Brault later qualified the statement by saying Guite was talking about the Charest campaign, not Charest personally.

Guite denies the accusations.

So much for Guite, Brault and Coffin, but the question lingers: what the hell were those elected to run the country and oversee expenditures doing? Either they were doing their job and Guite, Brault, Coffin and others were doing what they were expected to do, or those elected weren't doing their jobs so what the hell good are they and why would Canadians entrust their future to such fall downs?

(Link via Neale News.)

Loyalty from Diversity

Oct. 13 - Interesting poll results (Canadians value diversity, demand loyalty: poll):

The majority of Canadians believe the country's multicultural society helps guard against extremism, a new survey shows. However, most respondents also believe Canadians should be loyal first and foremost to Canada, not their countries of origin.

The results may indicate where a country that prides itself on multiculturalism is prepared to draw the line on tolerance.

Nice of the Globe to confuse loyalty with tolerance!

To me this poll simply indicates that most Canadians have common sense.

As an aside, I've been doing a marathon thing at work (we call it "gearing up for Christmas") but things are expected to return to normal next week (that's the official story, anyway.)

(Link via Neale News.)

Happy Thanksgiving and Be Careful!

Oct. 7 - I can't be the only person in Toronto who has taken the alert for New York subways as a warning to up my own Awareness Meter when riding the subway here (Official: Threat cites this weekend) so, in the immortal words of Sgt. Phil Esterhaus, Let's be careful out there.

I have to work again tonight but before I head out I want to wish all of you in Canada and the members of the Canadian Forces around the world - including Afghanistan - a blessed Thanksgiving weekend.

We do have a lot to be grateful for. I know I gripe a lot but I also live in a country where I can do so publicly.

Mark, on the other hand is not grateful. The BoSox were eliminated and he's temporarily inconsolable.

(Please let the Angels win. I don't think Mark can handle it if they blow a 5-0 lead over the Yankees.)

Anti-Semitism and the Saudis

Oct. 6 - Pieter reports on a disturbing incident at Vancouver Island's Pearson College at which swastikas were painted on the sidewalk greeted Israeli Consul General Cobie Brosh when he visited that campus.

[Oct. 7 - 07:04: Pieter has some information on the response of the college administration to the incident here and I guess it would be safe to say that they dealt with it much as one would expect a U.N. sponsored school to do but perhaps more than one would expect the U.N. to do.]

Is anti-Semitism in North America on the rise? There is certainly reason to be concerned, and certainly reason to confront that possibility. There is also reason to wonder what role the Saudis might have played if there has been an uprise.

According to this article in the NY Sun, the U.S. State Department has demanded that Saudi Arabia answer for their distribution of hate literature to mosques and schools in the U.S.A. I say "their" because the literature bears the official seal of the government of Saudi Arabia. The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee will hold hearings on the hate literature starting Oct. 25.

The literature appears beyond inflammatory and even incites treasonable actions by recent Muslim immigrants to the U.S. The Sun article deserves to be read in full because, if the allegations are correct, we have a big problem: our views on human rights and liberties are in direct conflict with our need to defend ourselves.

The flurry of activity comes months after a report from the Center for Religious Freedom discovered that dozens of mosques in major cities across the country, including New York, Washington, and Los Angeles, were distributing documents, bearing the seal of the government of Saudi Arabia, that incite Muslims to acts of violence and promote hatred of Jews and Christians.

A Washington-based group that is part of the human rights organization Freedom House, the Center for Religious Freedom also found during its yearlong study that the Saudi-produced materials describe democracy and America as un-Islamic. They instruct recent Muslim immigrants to consider Americans as enemies and the materials urge new arrivals to use their time here as preparation for jihad. The documents also promote the version of Islam officially embraced by Saudi government and several of the September 11, 2001, hijackers, Wahhabism, as the only authentic Islam.

[...]

The Accountability Act, introduced in June, says its purpose is "to halt Saudi support for institutions that fund, train, incite, encourage, or in any other way aid and abet terrorism, and to secure fully Saudi cooperation in the investigation of terrorist incidents." The legislation is highly critical of the House of Saud for its support of terrorist activity and cites the January Freedom House report as evidence of the kingdom's complicity in the spread of radical Islamist ideology. As part of the Accountability Act, Senator Specter has in the past held Judiciary Committee hearings into Saudi financing of terrorism and Saudi Arabia's role in injecting ideology into textbooks for Palestinian Arab schoolchildren. (Bolding added)

There has been much criticism of the Bush Administration for its kid-glove treatment of Saudi Arabia and failure to strongly condemn the role in exporting terror particularly through their schools and mosques. The extent to which the Saudis fund terror organizations is also something that has also not been adequately addressed by the Bush administration and accusations that the administration is covering up for the royal family have some validity.

But one peculiarity of U.S. government structure is the separation of the executive and legislative branches, and sometimes Congress takes the lead (as they did in investigations into the U.N. Oil-for-Food program) and it is possible that the White House has chosen to play a diminished but supporting role to this latest Senate investigation:

Also demanding answers about the hate materials is the State Department's undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, Karen Hughes. During a high-profile trip to the Middle East last week, Ms. Hughes said American representatives had addressed the propagation of Saudi hate material in America during private meetings with government officials.

In response to questions as to why the issue was raised privately rather than publicly, Hughes said that "We had been raising the issue privately," Ms. Hughes said, "and as part of raising difficult issues that we need to discuss, I felt it was appropriate."

I have a sinking feeling that there is truth to the allegations. And I don't know quite how we can deal decisively with the Saudis without performing bin Laden's dirty work for him by destablizing the Saudi ruling family, how we can separate those who immigrate in hopes of better lives and those who come to these shores with murder in their hearts.

I'm willing to let the Senate committee take the lead, but I think the Bush administration is going to have to confront the Saudis sooner rather than later.

(I've only had time to quickly read through President Bush's speech to the National Endowment for Democracy but from what I gleaned he didn't admonish the Saudis. It seems to have been a good speech but I need to read it more attentively after work tomorrow morning.)

(NY Sun link via Newsbeat1)

3 Canadian soldiers injured

Oct. 5 - Three Canadian soldiers received minor injuries today by what initial reports indicate was a homicide bomber about one kilometer outside of Kandahar. Approxomatly 250 Canadian soldiers are stationed in that city at present and the deployment will be increased by 1,250 in February.

Kandahar is considered to be more dangerous than Kabul and thus the risk to the Canadian contingent is higher, but Kabul isn't all that safe either. Two Canadian soldiers sustained injuries Sept. 15 from a roadside bomb there.

(Link via Neale News.)

Pink Floyd rules for the Opposition

Oct. 4 - It's a little hard at times to explain the Commons (that's Parliament, for Americans) and how it can sometimes be less than dignified. Even with some of the rowdiness, though, even on my best day I couldn't have predicted that the Conservatives would sing Pink Floyd songs to make a point (Opposition sings a song of Dingwall):

The Conservatives broke into a rendition of Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall to reveal their disgust at the excessive spending habits of David Dingwall, the former head of the Mint who retired last week amid allegations that he and his staff spent $740,000 last year.

Tory revenue critic Brian Pallister began the rendition with his version of the tune:

"You don't need no information,
We're in charge of thought control,
Fine wines with caviar in the backroom.”

The other Tories finished with the chorus,

"Hey Tories! Leave those Grits alone.” (Spacing added.)

How about working up some new words to AC/DC's Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap for today's songfest? Oh wait, it's hardly cheap, is it? But so long as it's on the taxpayers dime and they don't mind in sufficient numbers to end Liberal rule ...

There's more here on MP Brian Palliser, who is doing more work on uncovering excessive spending than our (un)investigative press up here.

I really need to sleep. So long until tomorrow.

(Via Neale News.)

Don't hold back!

Oct. 4 - Keith really lets loose in fine style in More Islamist murders, Jihadi fashionistas, our cowardly ambassador.

He concludes the fiery post by tearing a strip off Canada's Ambassador to the U.S. over remarks made up here at the Empire Club:

Funny isn't it? Our great leaders take pride in needling the country that spends its own blood and treasure to protect Canada, that buys some 80% of our exports.

But they don't have the guts to do the same with, oh, I dunno, China? You know, China? The country whose government does not hesitate to mow down its own citizens with tanks, to arrest, detain and "disappear" people who speak publicly against it? Dysfunctional? Nooooooo. Hell, the Liberals only wish they could get away with it too.

Or Iran, the country that detains, tortures and kills Canadian citizens.

Sharp, pointed commentary.

Paulus Martinius AdScamus

Oct. 4 - Lorrie Goldstein writes a history of Canada from 2,000 years in the future and the pivotal events under the political leadership of one Paulus Martinius AdScamus.

Funny and sad.

Living in Bizarro World

Oct. 1 - I'm just postive there's a logical explanation as to why the feds would consider giving former Canadian Mint president David Dingwall a severance package (Dingwall payout dinged.)

But I can't think of one.

Then why are my taxes so high?

Sept. 30 - I'm too tired to do a total deconstruct of remarks made by Canada's Ambassador to the U.S. Frank McKenna (McKenna calls United States government dysfunctional) but he does have a few good points:

"In Canada, whether we like it or not -- and often we don't like it -- but essentially we have party discipline, and if you can convince the Prime Minister or a minister that something should be done, invariably it can end up being done," Mr. McKenna said.

True, totalitarian governments do tend to be more efficient, but the question lingers: what if you can't convince the PM to do something?

And then there's this:

At the same time, he said, the United States faces "a very difficult financial situation," with predictions its deficit will hit or exceed US$500-billion this year.

"That's not to speak of the fact that that doesn't include unfunded liabilities for social security, which, some estimate, could run into the twenties and thirties of trillions of dollars."

By comparison, Canada is in its eighth consecutive year of surplus, with a dropping ratio of debt to gross domestic product, he said.

Yeah, we know how you reduced the national debt. The military, health care system and provinces were underfunded, but the economy was so robust that we could afford the corruptions of Adscam and the unfolding questions about Earncliffe contracts.

"Our pension plan, instead of being in deficit, is actuarially balanced for the next 75 years."

He also praised Canada's health care system and the country's abundance of natural resources.

Whatever, dude. Just don't get sick up here.

(Link via Neale News.)

The new G-G

Sept. 29 - Someone in my family asked why I had posted nothing on the Michaelle Jean, Canada's new Governor-General. I replied that she holds French citizenship, she has been appointed to represent the Queen of England, and what's wrong with this picture? (My kids and husband are old enough to handle my sarcasm wit.)

Well, she's announced her intention of giving up her French citizenship. I can't deny that's an improvement.

Dingwall resigns at head of Canadian Mint

Sept. 28 - David Dingwall, whose name came up during the Gomery Inquiry into Adscam and, more recently, due to his extracurricular activies as an unregistered lobbyist for grants with the Technology Partnerships Canada (TPC) on behalf of Bioniche, resigned as head of the Canadian Mint this afternoon:

The former Liberal cabinet minister has become embroiled in controversy after it was recently revealed he failed to register as a lobbyist for a Toronto pharmaceutical company.

In a statement Wednesday he said he believed all of his actvities were above-board.

Mr. Dingwall stepped aside amid controversy about his lobbying activities, before his appointment to the Mint as well as questions about his expenses while heading up the Crown corporation.

His lobbying activities on behalf of Bioniche Life Sciences Inc. are under scrutiny by Industry Canada.

It should be noted that yesterday, Bioniche announced they would repay Ottawa the $463,974 "success" fee.

Dingwall's expense account was reported on only this morning:

Federal documents released under the Access to Information Act show the office expenses and pay packet of David Dingwall, president of the Royal Canadian Mint, cost more than $1 million last year.

Included in Mr. Dingwall's office billings for 2004 were $1,235 for his annual golf membership, $13,228 in one day of foreign travel, and a $5,728 meal at a posh Ottawa restaurant.

And while Mr. Dingwall has a leased car courtesy of the Crown corporation, his office ran up a $2,500 tab for limousines in 2003.

The wining, dining, globe-trotting and other office expenses added up to $846,464 in 2004, mint records show. In addition, Mr. Dingwall's annual salary -- not including up to 12 per cent in performance bonuses -- is as much as $241,000.

[...]

Other billings released to [Tory critic for the mint] Mr. [Brian] Pallister show Mr. Dingwall, a Jean Chretien-era cabinet minister, has been running up a substantial tab, which included the following in 2004:

- $5,297 for various membership fees;

- $11,173 for meals in Canada;

- $3,317 in foreign dining;

- $40,355 for domestic travel;

- $92,682 for foreign travel;

- $12,487 for domestic hospitality;

- $5,998 for lease vehicle operating costs.

Mint spokeswoman Pam Aung Thin defended Mr. Dingwall's spending, saying each claim has been approved and verified by the Crown corporation's chief financial officer.

When I first began to read about the TPC transactions for which Dingwall lobbied I had to double-check to make sure he was still president of the Canadian Mint -- it seemed inconceivable that someone who already had a plush patronage appointment would also be a registered (much less un-registered) lobbyist. It just goes to prove how naive we can be about how this government operates.

Sept. 29 - The Toronto Sun isn't pulling any punches in today's editorial Dinged by David Dingwall:

This editorial is inspired by David Dingwall, a man who made $277,000 a year as president of the Royal Canadian Mint (until yesterday) and still charged Canadian taxpayers $1.79 for a bottle of water.

And, oh, yeah ... $91,437 on international travel in 2004 alone.

Greg Weston says he was Chewing Our Money and looks on the career which Paul Martin praised in the House yesterday:

Back in 1994, Dingwall was Liberal public works minister when he publicly vowed to eradicate patronage and corruption from the awarding of massive federal advertising contracts.

The senior bureaucrat handpicked by Dingwall to clean up the advertising swamp was Chuck Guite, the same official who helped create it under the Tories.

The rest, as they say, is history. AdScam was born in Dingwall's department the next year, $350 million was blown on the scandalous advertising sponsorship program, and Guite is now facing criminal fraud charges.

[...]

Testimony at the Gomery inquiry into AdScam indicated that in 1998, for instance, Dingwall was paid $12,000 a month by a Montreal advertising executive he apparently had never met, supposedly to provide lobbying advice to VIA Rail, a Crown corporation prohibited by law from hiring lobbyists for anything.

The Montreal ad executive, Jean Lafleur, is a key player in the AdScam fiasco, and told the Gomery inquiry he was ordered by VIA to hire Dingwall and send the bills to the public railway.

The ethics of Martin and his Liberals

Sept. 28 - Toronto Tory is busy digging up questionable transactions between Liberal Party leader Paul Martin, the government he leads and corporations which, after receving government money, made sizeable donations to the Liberals and/or Martin's leadership campaign. Keep in mind that Martin was Canada's Minister of Finance for several years before his campaign for party leadership.

The Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) lies at the center of the allegations in Entry #1:

After JD Irving Limited received $700,000 in approved funding from ACOA, they donated $100,000 to Paul Martin's leadership campaign.

Oxford Frozen Foods received $1,600,000 in 2003 from ACOA, and donated at least $50,000 to Martin's leadership campaign.

Keep in mind that the list of donors has vanished from official Canadian government archives (fortunately, Google's snapshot images endure.)

And then there's TESMA, which received received $2,600,000 from ACOA and then donated $15,000 to the leadership campaign.

Is it just me? Either these corporations are so needy that they require taxpayer subsidies or they are so financially secure that they can afford to make political contributions. I don't see a middle ground which is also ethical and, to all appearances, this is a quid pro quo arrangement and the taxpayers are footing the bill.

Entry #2 on Toronto Tory's list concerns something I alluded to earlier: Martin's dilemma in trying to sandwich the date for the next election between reports on audits. I should have included trial dates!

The Earnscliffe Strategy Group has long been associated with Paul Martin, and the article $10M in federal funds go to firm linked to PM in today's Ottawa Citizen brings new figures:

The Earnscliffe Strategy Group, an Ottawa consulting firm with close political ties to Prime Minister Paul Martin, has received more than $10 million in federal government money since the Liberals took power, new documents show.

And another Ottawa polling firm that has sometimes worked with Earnscliffe received more than $61 million in the same period.

Ottawa-based EKOS Research was awarded more than 1,600 contracts over the 111/2-year period, mostly for public opinion research.

The work was done for various departments, agencies and Crown corporations.

Records tabled in the House of Commons on Monday show that Earnscliffe and its affiliates have received 269 contracts, amendments and standing offers since 1993.

During Mr. Martin's years as finance minister, his department repeatedly hired Earnscliffe to do polling and focus groups and provide communications advice, often in advance of federal budgets.

The new records show that Earnscliffe received just under $2 million from the Finance Department alone.

The finance contracts last year became the subject of a political storm as a former public works official alleged that the tendering was specially tailored to ensure the work always went to Earnscliffe. The firm denied the allegation.

Most of the finance work was done by Earnscliffe senior partners David Herle, who ran Mr. Martin's 1990 leadership bid, and Elly Alboim, a former CBC producer.

Additionally, there's been a lot of speculation that Earnscliffe is Martin's Adscam, with contracts going out for little or no work.

The apparent conflict of interest hides another weakness in the Martin government. All governments pay heed to public opinion, but public opinion is usually concerned with short term objectives and governments that lead are presumed to take a longer view.

When public opinion dominates decision-making we end up with a government that hesitates, fumbles and, shall we say, dithers. Harsher types might call it opportunism, something we expect in political parties but reject in governments.

The value of Unasked Questions

Sept. 26 - Two items on the UN, one on oil-for-food and one on the lack of whistleblower protection in Canada have a common denominator: unasked questions.

From Fréchette's U.N. challenge (link via reader JM):

The oil-for-food report, by former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, said the U.N.'s systems for preventing mismanagement, corruption and communications gaps were "insufficient," and that Fréchette "knew but did not act upon" reports of major program violations.

Now I'm not a journalist and I never went to journalism school so I could be wrong but wouldn't a real reporter ask about the "knew but did not act upon" part and perhaps even about the allegations that Fréchette actually blocked reports of corruption in OFF from coming before the Security Council? But no; the very next paragraph reads:

But, Volcker concluded, both Fréchette and Annan should be part of the effort to reform the world body, the task that the Montreal-born diplomat and public servant was appointed to do seven years ago, when faith in the U.N. leadership was high.

M'kay. Faith in the U.N. leaderhsip was high when Fréchette was appointed and now, by implication, it's low. The logic of keeping Frechette on when it seems clear that she has failed to accomplish her appointed task escapes me, but I wonder if Ward is perhaps being deliberately ironic in that paragraph. Oh well, one can only hope.

Salim Mansur, always a favourite around here, doesn't mince words: Paul Martin out of touch in reference to Martin's speech to the U.N. (text of speech here.)

Mansur speculates on the kind of speech Lester Pearson would have made:

The former PM and Nobel-Prize-winning diplomat would surely have told the UN that Canada, as a founding member, found intolerable the stain on the organization's reputation due to the corruption, ineptness, nepotism and mismanagement revealed by Paul Volcker's commission of inquiry into the Iraqi Oil-for-Food scandal.

Pearson would surely have reminded the UN of his role in calling for global "partnership for development," and the necessary provision of assistance by rich countries to the poor. But he would also insist the UN cannot be trusted with increased funds unless full reform of its management practices occurred, and the UN secretariat became accountable and transparent.

His idealism was framed by realism, since he knew full well the perennial nature of evil. He would not have shirked taking responsibility for UN failure in Rwanda and the Balkans, and then in scolding member-states for their appalling disregard for the tragedy unfolding in Darfur.

Pearson would also, in my view, have made sure Canada stood firmly together with Britain and Australia as members of a great Commonwealth affirming U.S. President George Bush's message in New York on this same 60th anniversary occasion: "If member countries want the United Nations to be respected -- respected and effective -- they should begin by making sure it is worthy of respect."

My reaction to Martin's speech superceded my usual reaction to vague platitudes and drivel because I was outraged that Martin of all the leaders gathered there would have the nerve to talk about reforms and financial accountability. I did note, however, that he talked about "three pillars," a rather clear lifting of Bush's Whitehall speech which also employed "three pillars" to explain U.S. foreign policy.

Has anyone asked why Martin felt it necessary to plagiarize the president of the United States?

Claudia Rosett writes The Buck Still Hasn't Stopped (link via Newsbeat1) that the "definitive report" issued by the Volcker Inquiry is "hefty" but not definitive.

You should read the whole thing, but this is a CanCon post so I only excerpted this bit about the man said to be Paul Martin's mentor, Maurice Strong, from page 2 of the article:

Part of the problem is that Volcker has imposed on his inquiry the standards not of a prosecutor, but of an accountant. Faced with a pole too tall to measure by hand, he instead tells us its precise circumference on the ground, and lets it go at that. Much has been aired already of Volcker's account of Annan's strange and abiding ignorance of his own son's lively lobbying for U.N.-related business. So let us focus on another character, Annan's former special adviser Maurice Strong, longtime U.N. guru of good governance. (Strong did depart the United Nations this spring, but with Annan's office expressing fervent hopes he will soon return.)

At some length, Volcker does the genuine service of laying out how Strong, in mid-1997, received a check for $988,885 made out to his name (a copy can be found on page 106, Volume II). The check was drawn on a Jordanian bank, funded by Saddam's regime, and delivered by Korean businessman Tongsun Park, who was a U.N. "back-channel" go-between with Saddam. Strong endorsed the check over to a third party to invest in a Strong family-controlled business, Cordex Petroleum. Interviewed by Volcker's team earlier this year, Strong said he did not recall receiving such a check. When shown a copy, he said he did not know the money came from Iraq. Volcker leaves the matter there, concluding that "the Committee has found no evidence that Mr. Strong was involved in Iraqi affairs, matters relating to the [Oil-for-Food] Programme or took any actions at the request of Iraqi officials."

But how hard did the Volcker committee look? In July 1997, the month before Strong cashed the Saddam-backed check, Annan was issuing his first U.N. reform program, reshaping the secretariat. Strong was the major architect of that reform, and was thanked profusely by Annan at the time for "his important contributions." A significant aspect of that reform was the consolidation of the then-new, ad hoc, and diffuse Iraq Oil-for-Food program into a single, more firmly entrenched office. This move tilted control of the daily administration of Oil-for-Food away from the Security Council and toward the secretariat. When the new, unified office set up shop three months later, in October 1997, Annan appointed Sevan as executive director. That marked the beginning of the stretch in which Sevan began taking bribes from Saddam, and the Oil-for-Food program, urged on by Annan, began to grow astronomically in size and scope. Lacking any disclosure of the secret U.N. paper trail that led to the creation of this office and its expanded mission, it is impossible to know whether Strong took a direct hand in setting up the office from which Sevan then, in effect, collaborated with Saddam. Perhaps Strong had nothing to do with it. But Volcker doesn't even ask the question.

Not asking the right questions could be due to oversight or ineptitude, right? Right.

The last item, Whistleblower fires back at Immigration and Refugee Board (link via Let It Bleed), concerns the dismissal of Selwyn Pieters, a man who had gone public with allegations of wrongdoing at the Immigration and Refugee Board:

In March 2004, Mr. Pieters complained to the Public Service Integrity Office that the politically appointed board members who are supposed to decide the fate of refugee claims were violating the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act by not writing their own decisions.

The refugee protection officer also went to the media with his allegations that civil servants were the ones who were doing the decision-making.

Following a probe by a board-hired investigator, IRB chairman Jean-Guy Fleury conceded “improper conduct occurred” in three cases and “appropriate administrative measures” were taken against four board members.

In firing him last month, executive director Marilyn Stuart-Major credited Mr. Pieters with exposing the wrongdoing in which he participated.

However, she lashed out at him for his “deliberate fabrication” in calling the problems at the board “systemic,” and for alleging a “code of silence” existed around the misconduct.

The case is complicated by claims and counter-claims of racism, harassment and retaliation, but there is another issue posed because Mr. Pieters believes that dismissing his claim that the problems at the board are systemic was done prematurely:

He also maintains it failed to delve thoroughly into his claim that the problems with decision writing were widespread.

“I said it was a systemic issue and they're saying there's no evidence of any systemic issues here,” Mr. Pieters said.

“There's no evidence because (they) didn't investigate it.”

Clearly readers can't judge if the review was inadequate, but it does raise some serious questions, including the Board investigating itself, and in light of indications during the Gomery Inquiry that civil servants often exceeded their job descriptions I think this derserves more scrutiny.

After all, if you don't ask, you won't know. Nor will we.

That damned gun registry again

Sept. 25 - I linked this in a post below but it really deserves its own spot. The alarm bells that went off when we were told that the feds had spent $1 million in software were not false, and it may well be that the gun registry is a 'Bigger fraud than AdScam':

Critics of the gun registry are eagerly awaiting Auditor General Sheila Fraser's "Canadian Firearms Program" audit which is scheduled to be released in February -- if we're not in the midst of a federal election campaign.

Fraser isn't doing interviews about the audit, which has been underway for months.

The last time her office attempted to look into gun registry spending was 2002 and the results were explosive. In fact, her team was forced to abandon its attempts to follow the spending on the gun registry because of the absence of records.

"The information on cost recovery provided to the government changed as the program developed," Fraser wrote at the time.

Originally expected to be self-financing by 1999-2000, Fraser and her auditors discovered the target for the firearms program to break even was pushed to 2013 -- an assumption that the program collect $419 million in fees in 2002-03 and about $828 million by 2007-08. (Emphasis added)

What part of accountable government don't people understand? People who vote for the Libranos do so in large part because that party says the right things; I get that. But what kind of brain death fails to connect the lapse between "saying the right things" and "doing the right things?"

There is a sick, twisted mentality at work here. Paul Martin has to time elections these days with an eye on inquiries into scandals and the reports they generate.

To reiterate an old rant, if those who froth at the mouth when they read "Halliburton" would apply some of the same passion when they read about the seemingly endless list of government mis-spending and "absence of records" we might find a lot of common ground.

To re-iterate another rant, let's see some concrete proposals from the CPC to force accountability into public spending (and that includes accountability from any agency, institution or foundation that recents public funds.)

Or, to take another view, if the aim of the Libranos is to initiate "Scandal Overdose" then they are succeeding. I know I'm weary of being angry and I can't help but wonder how many Canadians have begun to block out this kind of news simply to bring some sanity back to their lives.

(Link via Newsbeat1 via NealeNews, two of the most informative sites in Canada.)

Ethics and the Liberals

Sept. 24 - Bill and Angry continue to keep their eyes on the growing questions about how some Technologies Partnerships Canada (TPC) loans were obained. Two weeks ago it was about $3.7 million made to 3rd party intermediaries who were used to help obtain the loans, and now it appears that the investigation has expanded from four to as many as 15 companies that are improperly using lobbyists or middlemen.

Some recent revelations bear yet more resemblence to Adscam-style dealings, namely claims that a lobbying firm, Wallding International, is owned by former Cabinet minister and president of the Royal Canadian Mint David Dingwall, was paid a $350,000 "success" fee for his assistance in getting $15 million in federal financing for Bioniche. Angry has more in this post that poses some questions about the lobbying activies of Dingwall and another former Cabinet Minister, Marc Lalonde, who served under Pierre Trudeau, and now works on behalf of TM Bioscience, a company that has also received money from the TPC.

The TPC is now being phased out and replaced with a new agency, the Transformative Technologies Program. Okay, so they discard a name that has been touched with scandal. But now I'm wondering if it is something more after reading this:

NORTH CAPE, P.E.I. (CP) - Prime Minister Paul Martin said Saturday that he intends to make Canada a major producer of renewable energy.

Martin made the commitment as he toured the site of the new Canadian Wind Energy Institute at North Cape, a blustery village at the northwestern tip of Prince Edward Island.

On Friday, the federal government, through the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, announced it will contribute about $3.6 million toward the establishment of the institute.

As well, starting with the 2006-07 fiscal year, Natural Resources Canada will contribute $1 million annually for two years toward operating costs.

That commitment, however, is expected to extend well beyond two years, but tail off gradually as the institute's own sources of income grow.

Are institutes that receive federal financing required to be audited by the A-G or, like foundations, are they exempt?

Bill and Angry are doing fantastic jobs staying on top of this story and, like Adscam, the allegations of wrong-doing involve people who were once entrusted with the governance of this country.

This is very timely: Toronto Tory has set a self-imposed challenge:

Every day, for the next 30 days, I will post an example of a company or individual who has an unethical relationship with Paul Martin, and/or the Liberal party of Canada/Ontario.

There are more details about the challenge at LIBERAL CORRUPTION - THE ONE MONTH CHALLENGE. Somehow I don't think there will be a lack of material.

Sept. 25 - 17:49 - I missed this post by Kate that expands on the role David Dingwall played in Adscam and connects some more dots.

So many scandals, so little time. The gun registry could be a fraud bigger than Adscam (link via Newsbeat1)"

[Auditor General Sheila] Fraser isn't doing interviews about the audit, which has been underway for months.

The last time her office attempted to look into gun registry spending was 2002 and the results were explosive. In fact, her team was forced to abandon its attempts to follow the spending on the gun registry because of the absence of records. (Emphasis added)

I feel sick.

Our crazy Uncle Paul

Sept. 23 - Crazy Paul's billion dollar shell game: maybe Canadians pay closer attention to US matters than Canadian ones in order to stay sane!

Fraud in Canada's health care system

Sept. 23 - News that billing fraud is widespread in Canada's health care system isn't exactly unexpected (Health fraud rampant) but it is dismaying to see it confirmed:

NIAGARA FALLS, Ont. - Canada's health care system is rife with fraud that costs the public and private sectors an estimated $3-billion to $10-billion a year, the country's first-ever survey of health fraud indicates.

"It's a big problem. It's a multi-billion-dollar problem and that's a big drain on the health care system," said Michael Chettleburgh of Fraudbox Inc., which did the survey for the Canadian Health Care Anti-Fraud Association.

[...]

Speakers at the anti-fraud association's annual conference told about fraudulent billings by pharmacists, dentists and other health care professionals, as well as the growing problem of people stealing caregivers' identities to illicitly claim payments.

The article notes that the problem isn't limited to Canada, but the realization that the cracks in the taxpayer-funded health care system here are worsened by the greed of some health care professionals further erodes public faith those in the health sector have a calling to cure and heal.

The Canadian Health Care Anti-Fraud Association page doesn't have the report on its page yet but the results of the survey are available in .pdf here at the Fraudbox Inc. site.

(Via Neale News)

Porkbusters!

Sept. 22 - Glen Reynolds is reporting on the initiative to Cut the fat in order to pay the huge costs of Katrina's devastation, and it struck me that this easily has Canadian applications.

Cut the pork to improve the health care system.
Cut the pork to upgrade the military.
Cut the pork to reduce gas taxes.
Cut the pork to reduce taxes period.
Cut the pork to ______________ (your project.)

Greg Weston on Coffin's sentence

Sept. 22 - Greg Weston writes on the incredibly harsh sentence given to the first convicted participant in Adscam (from Coffin nails Liberals?):

OTTAWA -- The Quebec judge who sentenced one of the AdScam con men to a wrist-slapping for stealing $1.5 million has certainly sent a clear message to all who would even consider ripping off the government.

In the immortal shrug of Jean Chretien: "So, maybe a few million was stolen."

For 15 counts of deliberate and systematic fraud, Montreal advertising executive Paul Coffin was sentenced this week to two years less a day "to be served in the community."

Translated, he has to be home by 9 p.m. weeknights, and lecture university students on "business ethics."

Coffin's pitch to so many young minds will no doubt include horror stories about how his utter lack of business ethics condemned him to a miserable life of big boats, fast cars, fancy houses and expensive wines.

I'm not surprised, but nonetheless I feel ashamed for this fine country.

Paul Coffin betrayed the people he was supposed to serve. He betrayed every single Canadian but the court has ruled that it's no big deal.

Does the word honour even have meaning these days? If it doesn't, and I am becoming increasingly certain that it does not, then dishonour too seemingly has no meaning. And that is the government we're stuck with.

13:57 Sleep can wait; Darcy lends some much needed perspective into Coffin's gentle treatment. Now I'm getting mad again.

Scandal - again!

Sept. 15 - Release of the Gomery Report on Adscam is delayed. The report on the Toronto MFP scandel is out. The issue of accountability - or lack thereof - continues to dismay and anger us.

But scandal seems to be becoming Canada's chief industry, as Bill takes note of yet another Canadian boondoggle which is finally being subjected to scrutiny: Audit of $2.9 billion TPC program expands and (oh my aching head) Paul Martin's mentor, Maurice Strong who was also implicated in OFF, is involved. Again.

One of the findings of the Volcker Inquiry into the U.N. Oil For Food program was the extent to which corruption is institutionalized in the U.N. I fear that much the same may be said of Canada (and Ukraine) and that weeding it out will prove far more difficult than installing new leadership.

The extent of corruption in the civil service and the complacency of the news media are the ultimate impediments to honest government. It's that simple. Shame on the lot of them.

Canadians troops injuried in Kabul

Sept. 15 - They hold the line so others can be free, and too often at a price: Two Canadian soldiers were injured in Kabul by a roadside bomb during a routine patrol in preparation for Sunday's elections. Details are sketchy, but thankfully the injuries are said to be minor.

This attack is yet another in a series intended to prevent consensual government in a Muslim nation and coincides with the terror attacks in Iraq yesterday and today.

Liberal Party Corruption, Act II, Scene 2

July 9 - The following item appeared July 7 in the Globe and Mail and is all the more interesting when put into context with suspicions about Canadian PM Paul Martin's ties with Earncliffe [Act II, Scene 1.] Firm headed by Martin aide got $92,082 for medicare poll:

OTTAWA -- The federal government hired a communications firm with close ties to Prime Minister Paul Martin to track public opinion through every twist and turn of last fall's health-care summit between Mr. Martin and the provincial premiers.

The survey by Veraxis research and communications, which is headed by senior Martin adviser David Herle, tested support for the various proposals being considered, as well as who would bear the blame if the talks were to fall apart.

[...]

Among the survey's listed objectives were to "monitor change in public opinion throughout the course of the FMM [first ministers meeting]."

When that survey ended, the department commissioned another poll by the Strategic Counsel, which is now The Globe and Mail's pollster, at a cost of $162,142 to track public opinion throughout the week after the summit through phone calls and focus groups.

Conservative health critic Stephen Fletcher, who observed the summit first hand, said the government's use of rolling polls is "unbelievable."

Mr. Fletcher said it appears the Liberals are using Health Canada dollars to help craft partisan messages for the Liberals.

[...]

Mr. Herle, who was formerly with Earnscliffe Research and Communications, was the Liberal Party's election campaign manager.

The article contained details of the poll but that is hardly the point: Adscam [Act I] blew open when it was revealed that those receiving the commissions had done little or no work, not when it was revealed that the work they were doing was frivolous. Will the use of taxpayer money to do advance work for the Liberal Party achieve scandal status?

In truth, there aren't many Canadians who will deny that it's time to throw the bums out, but many are convinced that Harper is "scary." I'm tempted to agree: his willingness to go along with the Liberal Party and throw more money into failed programs as well as his denouncement of a "two tiered" health system worries me, but of course that's not what people here mean. But a recent post by The Hack places the Scary Factor in a global context and the conclusion will surprise many.

According to one Canadian, Harper is not right-wing at all in a global context but left of that which is defined as right-wing in many countries. The Hack quotes a fascinating letter by James Allan that appeared in the National Post. Mr. Allan is a Canadian who lived in New Zealand and Australia for nearly 20 years and he brings some long-need perspective to this whole "scary" argument:

But here's the odd thing. In global terms, it's simply not true. Take today's Tories and Stephen Harper out of Canada and plunk them in New Zealand and they would be to the left of Helen Clark's Labour government. Down in New Zealand, there is a two-tier health system; there are civil unions but no gay marriage; the economy is far less heavily regulated in terms of labour laws, tax policy and tariffs than anything Harper is proposing.

The same goes for Australia. Compare the policies of the left-wing Labour Party there (on defence, immigration, the environment, health, education, you name it) to Canadian Tories' policies and Harper consistently stands to the left of Australian Labour, not the right.

And this is the same Tory party that is demonized in Canada for being "too right wing." Frankly, it was disorienting to return to Canada and to be met, continually, with this total lack of global perspective.

It's gotta hurt for Canadians to be told that they lack global perspective, but it gets worse:

All I can say to that is that people down in Australia and New Zealand, even in the U.K., must be made of sterner stuff. They would never rejoice in such self-emasculation.

That's really hitting below the, er, never mind.

Oh, Canada

July 2 - Excellent post by Flea - He's tipped - in which he links to a post which sadly observes the lack of coherent policies in matters other than gay marriage by the Conservative Party of Canada.

The post linked to this one from N=1 who wrote some follow-up posts here, here and here. I would strongly urge Americans to read these posts, as - and I honestly mean no disrespect by this - Canadian conservatives are to some extent freed from the personal concerns of war to examine and debate issues over which we are less focused but which we should not entirely ignore.

Although I have a great deal of admiration for Stephen Harper personally and although terming a union between gay couples "marriage" is not as important to me as to others, I was worried when opposition to gay marriage was the rallying point around which the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative parties merged yet, as I believed there were sound reasons around which to form a political party to oppose Liberal rule, I hoped they would be able to build the party on the basis of principled opposition to the imposition of nanny statism.

Regarding the issue of gay marriage in the U.S., I am opposed to a Constitutional amendment that defines marriage (I don't think it is properly a Constitutional issue) but must admit that it has at least initiated some serious discussion over the issue, something that was missing up here as it was imposed - rightly or wrongly - by judicial fiat.

I may have been unprepared to expand my definition of marriage beyond the traditional one of being a union between a man and a woman, but it is something I know I will come to accept especially now that it has become law in Canada. Legislating it as a right and then later removing it is not something I believe I can accept because I don't believe it would be just.

Like many others, I take issue with the manner in which it came to become law but we've got out own Supreme Court issues and I am far more concerned over the recent U.S. Supreme Court Kelo decision which stripped personal property rights than the Canadian Supreme Court which awarded personal rights and am much more willing to fight the Kelo ruling than Bill C-38 (although Angry could be right, and this is will provoke contingent issues that will deepen Canadian polarization - although I fail to see how any potential challenge to monogamy can in truth be connected to recognition of gay marriage; the definition of marriage remains, in law, as being between two people.)

To put it more concisely, the decision in Kelo vs. New London has put things in perspective. Kelo clarifies that the true battleground is that of personal freedom and property rights vs. the encroachment of the state - which actually believes it has rights not accorded to it by the people - and not that of loving gay couples who want their committment to one another to be acknowledged by the state and, I suspect as importantly, by the people.

The failure of the CPC to assert itself confidently and aggressively in matters other than gay marriage at a period when Canadians are confronting increasingly higher taxes, the disaster of their health care system, the decay of their armed forces and the corruption not only of the ruling Liberal Party but of government itself has been disappointing. It is comparable to the Sept. 10 mentality of Democrats; if they truly believe that gay marriage is the most important issue facing Canadians then they are seriously out of touch with the fundamental issues facing people up here and almost as unfit to run the country as the Liberals.

The Conservative Party up here has behaved much like the Democrats in that both restrict themselves to opposing rather than proposing and thus have failed to electrify voters with vision and solutions. When will either of them grow up? The people of both countries deserve better.

July 3 - 17:20: Maybe I failed to make my one main point about gay marriage strongly enough:

To reiterate: the one prospect I find insupportable is that of allowing gays to marry yet a future Conservative Party government suddenly declaring those marriages null and void. Try to put yourselves in the position of marrying, making plans for a future together and even making joint financial investments and then imagine being told your marriage is no longer legitimate.

Forget the circusy atmosphere we see on television and some of the wilder "activists" showcased by a sensationalist media and focus on the human face of this issue. Gay couples love one another - in probably the same variables of intensity and committment as straight couples - and I believe their love is entitled to respect.

The damage to the institution of marriage was done long before gays emerged from the closet. We can blame easier divorces, the pill, Roe vs. Wade, or the sexual revolution and even the "disposable society" but we simply cannot with any honesty blame gays much less instituting gay marriage.

Continuing to oppose gay marriage now that it has passed in Parliament is much too much like the "selected not elected" crowd that has disrupted U.S. politics far too much in our recent past, and the CPC is likely to face the same kind of backlash that Democrats encountered in '04.

Lastly, a suspicious person (like me) might wonder if the focus on gay marriage as The Most Important Issue of the Day is intentionally diverting attention from other bread-and-butter issues.

There are serious challenges facing Canada and the CPC should endeavour to propose solutions to them. At the risk of getting cyber-slammed, I really think they need to "move on" and exhibit some freaking leadership.

Double-dealing in Librano-land

June 16 - The Judge is Angry:

MONTREAL - First, it was Jean Chretien taking John Gomery to court. Now, Justice Gomery is taking Paul Martin to court.

What gives? Gomery is annoyed that the Martin government had a secret exchange of letters with Chretien's lawyers acknowledging that even as the former prime minister dropped his court case alleging Gomery's bias against him, he could make the same accusations later after the release of the judge's findings.

Gomery didn't know about the letter. He read about it in the papers. And he's furious. The Martin government professes to support him, but it looks as if it was undermining him.

The May 30 letter was signed by federal government lawyer Brian Saunders, but as far as the Gomery Commission is concerned, it was approved by the Clerk of the Privy Council, Alex Himelfarb. Mere government lawyers, acting on their own, don't make deals on behalf of one prime minister with another.

By coincidence, or not, May 30 was the same day Chretien's lawyers withdrew his case, removing a very inconvenient obstacle from the Martin government's path to political recovery.

Gomery was having none of it. The next day the judge said he would take the Martin government to the Federal Court to clear the air about his alleged bias, before he sits down to write his findings and recommendations. His lawyer, Lorne Morphy, complained in a letter to the government that the exchange of letters with Chretien puts "Justice Gomery and the commission in an extremely delicate position" and that to have the allegations of bias hanging out there "is, simply put, unacceptable."

Newsbeat1 has the excerpts from yesterday's Question Period on this issue here.

That damned gun registry again

June 16 - Audit targets firearm registry:

OTTAWA -- Costs for the controversial gun registry program could continue to "spiral out of control" unless the government takes steps to curb spending, an external audit warns.

The financial report compiled by Hill and Knowlton for the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, obtained under Access to Information by Conservative MP Garry Breitkreuz, recommends the government shift the Canada Firearms Centre to another larger department to wrestle down costs.

I have a much better idea of what to do with that infernal registry.

A bewildering number of lawsuits

June 16 - My question about the libel suit against David Frum has been answered - in spades. Many thanks to Candace for finding this discussion thread on the Frum column and for digging up an older item on Adscam-related lawsuits.

I'll state this up front: I believe it is up to bloggers to stand by and defend these commentators. It pisses me off beyond reason that their colleagues are not doing so, but things are what they are in Canada these days and it won't be the first time bloggers were trailblazers.

Frum wrote he has been served with papers accusing him of libel.

There are confirmed reports that National Post columnist Andrew Coyne and reporter Laurent Soumis of the Journal de Montreal have also been served and, although I have yet to find confirmation, CTV's Mike Duffy and Warren Kinsella may also have been served. (Note that I have no way of ascertaining if these four as the ones to which Frum was referring and there are in fact good reason to doubt this is the case.)

Of necessity this is a fairly long post so click on the extended entry for more, but I'm putting Kate's opening on this side of the post because she tears a deservedly giant strip off the feckless Canadian media:

In any sane democratic country, a slap suit against an opinion columnist by a government operative would provoke outrage and non-stop editorials in the mainstream press. The item would be leading the newscasts, with punditry convening soberly on our TV screens. Reporter scrums would pepper government leaders to explain their actions in curtailling that most hallowed (in their eyes) of all freedoms - freedom of the press.

But of course, this is Canada - a nation of "natural governing" one-party rule in which a "living" constitution permits such limits on speech as are consistant with a Liberal Kleptocracy.

So, as the Liberals draft laws that push more and more areas of government operation outside the reach of Freedom of Information requests, weaken protections for whistleblowers, when they brazenly refuse to acknowledge the defeat of their government in non-confidence motions and ignore the Auditor Generals concerns about billions of tax dollars being funneled into unaccountable foundations - the Lloyd Robertsons and Peter Mansbridges busy themselves studiously studying Stephen Harper's facial expressions and providing Canadians "Better News Through Polling" .

They remain virtually silent on the assaults on members of their own profession - silent, because for the most part, the majority of mainstream media in Canada functions as nothing short of a communications arm of the Liberal Party. In other words, they see themselves as nothing less than an unelected arm of government.

I'd ask that Americans readers try (and I know it's hard) to keep in mind that the truth is not relevant in libel suits up here. Also keep in mind that, as I am constitutionally incapable of understanding the libel laws up here because they conflict with my cultural bias toward inherent rights, I have no idea if any of the statements allegedly made by the defendents are libelous under Canadian law.

I don't know if this column is what prompted Tim Murphy to have Andrew Coyne served, but anyone who has read his blog and columns knows that Coyne is damned good at linking to his sources of information and writes well-reasoned columns and posts. I could see why they would want to silence him if we lived in Iran or Zimbabwe, but we don't.

I can't ensure the veracity of this post at the CNEWS forum, but it served as a damned good starting point to pursue the other threads of this story and I was able to confirm at least part of its information.

On the libel suit against David Frum:

Terrie O'Leary vs National Post, CanWest Publications and David Frum: Sent libel notice related to the May 17 edition of the National Post in which Frum wrote, "They might observe that he never manipulated government contracts to direct business in a firm run by his chief of staff's boyfriend." O'Leary claims that the statement is defamatory and calculated to disparage her both as a person and in her former capacity as Executive Asst. to the Minister of Finance of Canada.

I don't know if this is the cause of Frum's notice, but the ironically titled May 17 column Averting Their Eyes from Scandal - Since 1993, Ottawa's Press Corps Has Been Taking a Nice, Long Nap can still be read online. (Links for the the hearings on the Earnscliffe contracts are here and here.)

Mike Duffy of CTV is also rumoured to be sued:

Liberal Party organizer/PMO staffer Karl Littler vs Mike Duffy CTV: Suing for defamation over remarks Duffy made about Littler visiting strip clubs and engaging in improper and unlawful behaviour due to his position as an official of the Liberal Party and Deputy Chief of Staff to PM. Seeking $250 thousand in general damages, $50 thousand in punitive damages.

The remarks were probably made on air so there isn't a link (at least one that I could find.) The best I found was a CTV article in this post from Angry about whistleblower Allan Cutler and staffer Karl Littler (but there's nothing about strip clubs in it.)

And yet another journalist:

BCP Communications, John Parisella, Yves Gougoux vs Sun Media, Canoe and Laurent Soumis: Suing for defamation over May 12 article written by Soumis. The article linked BCP to allegations that Liberal Party election expenses were paid out of the sponsorship program. Seeking $250 thousand in real damages from each defendant, $100 thousand in exemplary damages from each defendant.

I couldn't find a May 12 article in the English Canoe archives, but the Canoe search feature turned up confirmation of the lawsuit against Laurent Soumis in .pdf here and other search results of articles by Sourmis (in French) are here. A quick check in Google turned up this translated item from CBC Radio Canada on testimony about BCP here but it consists mostly of denials.

Frum reported here

Along with at least four other public commentators, I have recently been served with libel papers by a leading figure in this story.

Frum declined to state the name of his accuser so I am going to respect Frum's reticence and not play pin the tail on the donkey.

Blogger Warren Kinsella is supposedly being sued over what he wrote on his blog:

Terrie O'Leary, Earnscliffe Research and Communications vs Warren Kinsella: Libel notices issued to Kinsella and warrenkinsella.com on behalf of Earnscliffe and to Andrew Davis over his reprinting and highlighting of transcript from his appearance before the Public Accts. Committee.

The hearings were published and televised, but for all I know there could be some law forbidding Kinsella to write about it. (If this is true it is worthy of Bizarro World.)

Somewhat unsurprisingly, Kinsella may also be suing on his own behalf:

Warren Kinsella vs Scott Reid: In his blog Kinsella has indicated that he would sue the PMO official for suggesting that he had committed perjury in his appearance before the Public Accts. Committee last month.

Hey, anyone can play! The CPC is suing Immigration Minister John Volpe:

Conservative MP Lee Richardson vs Immigration Minister Joe Volpe: Libel notice filed against Volpe after Volpe associated Mr. Richardson and the Conservative Party with the Ku Klux Klan.

And of course we musn't forget the suits filed by fired patronage appointees Jean Pelletier, Marc LeFrancois, and Alfonso Gagliano who are suing the Canadian government because they deem their reputations were besmirched due to their alleged involvements in Adscam. I don't want to be sued so I'd best not speculate if these lawsuits are Golden Handshakes Librano Style.

Lastly, the Canadian government is suing various people over Adscam (although I don't see Jacques Corriveau on that list.)

Francois Beaudoin won his lawsuit and, more importantly, was vindicated, but what of Miriam Bedard who was crudely attacked by her former boss Pelletier and for which he was supposedly dismissed? (see 2 paragraphs up and remember: Bizarro World.)

Lastly, the Chretien threat to challenge to Judge Gomery is still hanging like a Damocles Sword over the Inquiry and Liberal lawyers are urging Judge Gomery to exonerate both Chretien and Martin.

Canada criticized by U.N. committee on arbitrary detention

May 16 - UN group condemns Canada:

OTTAWA (CP) - A UN committee says it is gravely concerned about Canada's system of jailing suspected terrorists without trial using national security certificates.

The UN committee on arbitrary detention, which is visiting Canada at the federal government's invitation, said persons detained under security certificates are denied the right to a fair hearing.

[...]

The committee noted that all four of the people currently detained under security certificates are Arab Muslims, and one of them has been detained for five years.

All four of the suspects now in detention argue they face a risk of torture if returned to their homelands.

The timing of these criticisms coincides with accusations by the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations that security forces have used unacceptable intimidation when investigating terrorism. Shaken refutes the allegations quite admirably.

But everything happens in threes, right? So of course it's only now being reported that last February yet another member of the Khadr family had come under scrutiny. This latest involved the seizure of Zaynab Khadr's laptop when she landed at Pearson Airport after a trip to Pakistan. The contents of her laptop allegedly included bin Laden tape clips calling for - what else? the murder of Americans. She says she didn't know that the clips and some songs - including one titled "I Am A Terrorist" - were on her computer.

Frum and Steyn on Canada

June 16 - David Frum's A Scandal So Immense is a concise description of events that lead to the political crisis in Canada. He gives just the facts, as they say, and the accumulative impact is immense when viewed in the whole.

By the way, I didn't realize before I read this item that David Frum was among at least five people who have been served with libel papers:

There is though one warning I'd better immediately deliver to readers: Along with at least four other public commentators, I have recently been served with libel papers by a leading figure in this story. ..

Is this public knowledge? I could well have missed reading about it during the past couple of days, but I thought I had kept abreast of most of the big stories.

So even if I'm only the latest in an entire parade of people who have said so, I think it worthwhile to go on record and state that this is outrageous. These suits may well be nuisance suits, but, if only by their stifling effect, they constitute an explicit threat to press freedoms and freedom of speech.

Back to the main subject, Frum touches on some key points over this recent period. On corruption:

Some of that money ended up in the pockets of influential Liberals, allegedly including the brother of former prime minister Jean Chretien. Some was kicked back to the Liberal party and its campaign workers. The Gomery inquiry has also revealed a disturbing nexus--that's a word to which no lawyer can object--between senior figures in the Liberal party and organized crime.

On the Gomery Inquiry:

Then Judge Gomery took his hearings onto cable TV. Night after night, Canadians heard firsthand stories of tens of thousands of dollars in cash left in envelopes on restaurant tables, of alleged Mafia figures giving orders to party chairmen, of kickbacks, bribes, and fraud. ..

On Paul Martin and how he secured the votes to survive the budget vote:

Paul Martin has always benefited immensely from his reputation as the Mr. Clean of the Liberal party. ..

The first thing he had to do was trample on Canada's constitutional traditions. ..

[...]

And then Canadians learned the reason why: Over the period that the Martin government had been losing vote after vote in the House, it had been secretly negotiating with the disappointed loser of the Conservative party's 2004 leadership contest, Belinda Stronach, the billionaire heiress to an auto-parts and land-development fortune.

I've only quoted bits and it deserves to be read in full, especially the five reasons he offers to explain the public's reluctance for a change in government. (Link via Newsbeat1.)

Mark Steyn tells of reading The Globe and Mail on a recent airplane flight. He's not overly complimentary. Then he spies a video monitor which instructs “To begin, press EXIT.”

From Exit strategy by Mark Steyn:

The Liberal Party of Canada” isn’t the catchiest name for a Quebec biker gang. .. it’s essentially engaged in the same activities as the other biker gangs: the Grits launder money; they enforce a ruthless code of omerta when fainthearted minions threaten to squeal; they threaten to whack their enemies; they keep enough cash on hand in small bills of non-sequential serial numbers to be able to deliver suitcases with a couple hundred grand hither and yon; and they sluice just enough of the folding stuff around law enforcement agencies to be assured of co-operation. The Mounties’ Musical Ride received $3 million from the Adscam funds, but, alas, the RCMP paperwork relating to this generous subsidy has been, in keeping with time-honoured Liberal book-keeping practices, “inadvertently lost.”

After a nice transition to a bit where he reminds us that the Westminster system depends on a certain modesty and circumspection from the political class he suggests an exit strategy.

Those Grewal tapes (still)

June 15 - Whether they are altered, edited, or doctored, the Grewal tapes are still controversial.

Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe seems to believe the contents of the tape are genuine, and says the Liberals are lying:

Duceppe said the prime minister has systematically refused to answer questions about when he became aware of backroom discussions with Tory MP Gurmant Grewal.

"When did he know? Did Paul Martin participate in a criminal act?" Duceppe said yesterday outside Parliament.

"He refuses to answer. And it's been a while. We're getting tired of being lied to, right in our face (by Liberals). "They're lying in the House. They're lying to the public."

Top Liberals were heard on tape discussing career opportunities with Grewal in exchange for missing a May 19 confidence vote.

The opposition insists the talks with Grewal were possible violations of anti-corruption provisions in the Criminal Code.

Martin spokesman Scott Reid said the Bloc leader is basing false allegations on doctored tapes.

The tapes are in the custody of the RCMP, and they will eventually get around to examining them (snark.)

Good news! The mob scares Canadians more than we do!

June 15 - If you find this headline shocking then you clearly haven't been paying attention: Canadians see Bush, bin Laden as national security threats. But wait: the facts of the story are far more interesting than it first appears for reasons which, strangely enough, are not explored in the article:

TORONTO -- Canadians believe U.S. President George W. Bush is almost as great a threat to our national security as Osama bin Laden, according to a government opinion poll obtained by the National Post.

The 1,500 people contacted for the poll, conducted last February for the Department of National Defence, listed "International Organized Crime" as the top danger, with 38 per cent ranking it as a great threat to security concern and another 50 per cent listing it as moderate.

But tied for second in the poll were "U.S. Foreign Policy" and "Terrorism," with 37 per cent rating it a great risk. Just behind those worries came "Climate Change and Global Warming." (Emphasis added)

Organized crime worries Canadians, but the article doesn't touch on that but rushes over to the number 2 concern.

Experts said the results reflected a continuing "schizophrenia" in the Canadian public's attitudes towards defence -- still worried about international terrorism even three years after the Sept. 11 attacks, but also concerned about the power and aggressive policies of the Americans.

One expert (me) says that the continuing schizophrenia is manifested by an exclusive focus on the second highest rated threat rather than the first.

The poll, by Ekos Research Associates Inc., surveyed Canadians' attitudes towards a wide range of defence, military and national security issues, part of an annual public opinion polling process by the Department of National Defence.

It was considered accurate within 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Most of those contacted for the poll had "great confidence" in the Canadian Forces' ability to respond to natural disasters in Canada, but only 25 per cent felt the same way about how our military would handle a terrorist attack on Canadian soil.

That's just sad. It's akin to feeling confident about the ability of the fire department to rescue a cat stuck up in a tree but not about their ability to handle fires.

The poll suggested other security concerns preying at the public's mind include "Weapons of Mass Destruction," listed as a great danger by 30 per cent of those surveyed, and "Potential Weaponization of Space," which 26 per cent of those polled found a great concern.

Health threats, such as the SARS outbreak of 2003, nuclear threats, natural disasters and countries in turmoil, such as Sudan or Haiti, were the least worrisome threats according to the poll.

Potential Weaponization of Space. Right. That is clearly of far more concern than genocide in Sudan. (Now you know why prices for tin foil have risen.)

Still, I find it odd that organized crime would rate as a higher cause of concern than U.S. foreign policy and terrorism, unless (and this is a long shot) respondents have take the "Librano" definition to heart, in which case the poll results may be more interesting than the article lets on.

14:22: Via Neale News, according to the latest Angus Reid Consultants poll, health care is the top concern of Canadians followed by poor government and leadership issues.

International issues / War / Peace are way at the bottom at 2%, tied with Unemployment, Same sex marriage and Crime / law and order.

Don't you just love polls?

Protecting the border

June 15 - Canada: Armed Agents Needed on U.S. Border:

While U.S. Border Patrol agents along the frontier are armed, officers of the Canada Border Services Agency are not allowed to carry firearms. They currently are instructed to call the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or local police if they run into a threat and, as officers testified before the committee, that help is often extremely slow in coming.

"The committee has reluctantly come to the conclusion that if the federal government is not willing or able to provide a constant police presence at Canada's border crossings, current border inspectors must be given the option of carrying firearms," the report says. (Emphasis added)

Ouch.

Another proposal calls for Canada to allow up to $2,000 in duty-free goods from the United States by 2010, freeing up customs agents to focus on potential threats to security rather than acting as tax collectors.

"Canada needs a system within which personnel on the crossings are border officers first and clerks second — the reverse of the current situation," the report says. "Raising personal exemptions for travelers will help border officers better direct their attention to border security rather than revenue collection." (Emphasis added)

Double ouch.

Those Grewal tapes

June 12 - Does one really have to be a rocket scientist to see the blindingly obvious? I can well believe that Tory support plummets because the poll (surprise, surpise) focused attention on a secondary issue.

Decima also asked the respondents to its poll, which is considered accurate within plus or minus 3.1 percentage points 19 times in 20, to indicate whose version of events they believed in the Grewal affair. Specifically, they were asked who they believed initiated the discussions about Mr. Grewal crossing the floor.

About 25 per cent sided with the Liberals, who said the Conservative MP initiated the conversation, compared with 23 per cent siding with Mr. Grewal, who said he was called by the Liberals.

If we are to take it as a given that there are serious questions about Grewal's ethics, then the proper question is why on earth Prime Minister Martin's chief of staff Tim Murphy and Minister of Health Ujjal Dosanjh were even talking to him to about crossing the floor, yet this poll sidesteps that issue.

Who made the first overture is not the point; what is alarming is that discussions were held with someone who is supposedly under investigation for misconduct in an immigration matter, and the final discussion on the tapes were held in Grewal's office, which means that Tim Murphy was pursuing the discussions and was free to leave at any point.

Although we often refer to Canada as a one-party state, one thing we overlook is that, in a one-party state, the only way to "get ahead" is to be a member of that party.

Perhaps that's why Benoit Corbeil's allegations that lawyers routinely traded "volunteering" for Liberal party candidates in return for bench appointments were less shocking than they should have been because we secretly suspected that this was indeed the case and that the appointments were due less to competency than to political connections.

The ethical crisis in Canada lies not so much with the political parties and their elites as with the Canadian (or Ontarian) electorate which has chosen to accept the corruption and patronage appointments as "business as usual" and thus admitted, in effect, that this is the best Canada can ever be.

There is a direct correlations between a country's ideals and how strenuously they attempt to achieve those ideals. When, in the name of sophistication, the citizens of a country fail to strive for honesty and ethics in government, they thereby bequeath to their children mediocrity. That is not a legacy they of which can be proud.

Poundmaker update

June 9 - The Poundmaker protest continues but they are running out of money and the car they relied on for transportation has broken down.

Darcey has a brief update and adds

I am guessing they would appreciate moral support so be sure to take some time and email your greetings to Tyrone to pass on: tyrone45 at nativeweb.net.

He linked to this analysis by Lance of Catprint in the Mash which makes several good points about the specifics of the electoral process which laid the groundwork for the protest and how the deficiencies of that process are being challenged. (I would quote some excellent portions, but I can't seem to copy excerpts alone.)

Short version: they are taking peaceful, legal action to redress their grievances. Would that the rest of Canada took note.

Sorry about the light posting - I slept through the day (yay!) and have to hit the road.

"Madison" and "Adams" join the Monarchist

June 8 - I hope Americans and Canadians have been sufficiently intrigued by the links to The Monarchist to continue to read their current outpouring and read their archives.

There are welcoming some new members of that team with familiar names: Madison and Adams, who charges right in with An Atheistic Individualist Defense of Monarchism. (He doesn't say, but I assume the writer is invoking John, not Samuel, Adams.)

The sorest grievance of our Founding Fathers was that they were denied their rights as free Englishmen, and that could not and would not be borne. I think that this Adams incarnation can safely be regarded as one who found a sympathetic hearing from the Crown and Parliament, which brings to bear the "what if" line of historical reasoning which is somewhat applicable in a Canada which was populated by Loyalists but who retained nonetheless a recognition of their duties and rights as Englishmen in this country.

[I mean no disrespect to Quebeckers or Acadians, yet I think it accurate to say that the philosophical connotations of being "free Englishmen" is deeply ingrained in the unfolding of the political histories of the U.S.A. and Canada - at least pre-Trudeau - which is the only basis on which an Adams might still be arguing on behalf of the monarchy. ]

I realize that the teaching of American history has changed a great deal since (ahem) my day, but, if we are to reclaim our heritage, the full recognition of what our traditions and institutions owe to Mother England must be acknowledged and respected, and it wouldn't hurt Canadians to do the same.

Yet at the end of the day, I am an American and thus willing to place my hopes in the works and dreams of men, not the intervention of monarchs however benign and most definitely not in the intervention of someone appointed without Parliamentary review to represent that monarch.

Nonetheless, the site has some of the most thought-provoking essays I've read, and I don't think I'm being overly complimentary when I compare their work to that of Stephen den Beste. I'm only speaking for myself, but some of the essays I've read have resulted in my leaving the computer to pace and reflect on the points they've made.

There are aspects of the Parliamentary system which jar an American consciousness. There are no fixed terms, but that is supposed to provide a different kind of check - yet a check nonetheless - on tyranny:

What the Liberals don't seem to understand is that it is not for the government to determine if it has the confidence of the House, it is the members of the House who make that determination. And a majority of them have just voted for the government to resign on a procedural motion, which obviously constitutes a very serious challenge to the continued legitimacy of their authority to govern this country. The only way for them to get out of this mess now, is to seek clarification from the House at the earliest possible opportunity (as in today), that they still have the democratic and constitutional authority to carry on.

Yet that clarification was delayed until the vote was rigged, which leaves Canada in a limbo state that far too few in Ontario recognize.

I took a Canadian history class, and (perhaps unfortunately) exposed my far too open American nature when I expressed disbelief on learning that such was not mandatory in the Ontario school system. That may explain part of the reason Canadians did not take to the streets when the Martin Rogue Government failed to "seek clarification from the House" at the earliest opportunity - too few realized that respect for parliamentary safeguards as well as protocol demanded the Liberals call that vote immediately and not at a time of their choosing.

We Americans cannot afford to be smug on this: our own school systems have failed to provide comprehensive civics classes which would give our younger citizens a working framework to understand the traditions and workings of our own government, and we should look to the current crisis in Canada as a red flag moment for our own country.

One example: you will not find the phrase "separation of church and state" anywhere in the Constitution, yet far too many Americans believe it resides there, and some of those misguided citizens are lawyers and journalists who ought to know better.

For Canadian readers, it is not so necessary to agree with views advocated by the essayists of The Monarchist as it is to read and study them. Such writings in my country came to be known as a collection of works called "The Federalist Papers" which informs our consciousness to this day, and as Canada finds herself on the brink of an identity crisis, it might be useful to be open to more than one frame of mind before declaring the debate ended.

The Tipping Point, Part II

June 5 - Americans may well wonder that a blog titled The Monarchist has produced some of the most stirring and urgent writings on behalf of liberty in Canada that I've ever read.

(In truth, I wonder myself but I am also bemused by my own feelings for and loyalty to a Queen whose ancestor was utterly reviled by my ancestors so have just filed that contradiction away in the belief that insight will come in its own time.)

Walsingham wrote a follow-up to the widely acclaimed Tipping Point (which dispensed with any last beliefs that all Canadians are inherently passive) and in The Tipping Point - Part II, the basic framework of consensual government and how the federal government have broken that bond is reinforced:

Because the truth is this: in democratic government, process not only matters, it is central. It matters more than anything else; more than any specific outcome that it might produce. The “true left” should understand that it is not simply that a corrupted process that worked against the right - and the West, and Quebec - this time around; might well work against them the next time. They should understand that faith in a process that is open, fair and consistent - i.e., in a government that is representative and responsible - is the only thing, other than tyranny and coercion, which can hold a society together for any length of time. Free men will consent to submit their wills to those of others only when they believe that they do so as the outcome of a process in which they have been heard, on a fair and equal footing, along with all others; and - most critically - that that same process will turn their way, if and when they come to command majority support. Nothing will dissolve the bonds and restraints that make a democratic society function – presuming, of course, that the society is composed of men and women who retain the capacity to be affronted by insult and injustice – faster than the discovery, by any semi-defined and quasi-permanent constituency, that the process is rigged against them.

Americans should recognize that argument; it was our permanent disenfranchisement that lay at the heart of the War of Independence.

I have to go to work and wonder at my co-workers who are more afraid of Stephen Harper than those in government who have stripped them of their rights as free people.

What do you do when you wake up on Planet X?

June 5 - Answer: start a blog and call it Waking Up On Planet X!

As Candace explains, I fell asleep in a democracy ...

It is always cause to celebrate when insightful commenters choose to strike out on their own and start blogs, and given the political situation in Canada and the inclination of the media to elide (at best) or applaud (at worst) the brazen acts of this government, the voices of those who oppose the dismantling of democratic safeguards and the destruction of those institutions meant to separate partisan ends from the country's needs are the more urgently needed.

Welcome, Candace!

What do you do when you wake up on Planet X?

June 5 - Answer: start a blog and call it Waking Up On Planet X!

As Candace explains, I fell asleep in a democracy ...

It is always cause to celebrate when insightful commenters choose to strike out on their own and start blogs, and given the political situation in Canada and the inclination of the media to elide (at best) or applaud (at worst) the brazen acts of this government, the voices of those who oppose the dismantling of democratic safeguards and the destruction of those institutions meant to separate partisan ends from the country's needs are the more urgently needed.

Welcome, Candace!

Joseph Stephanides - fall guy?

June 5 - Fired U.N. Official Seen as Fall Guy. Ya think?

My mind is too full of similarities between Adscam and the OFF scandals to articulate them, and the involvement of Canadians Louise Frechette, Reid Morden and Maurice Strong bodes ill.

Now we can add another set-back to Canada's self-image as a caring society: Canada Free Press has an expose of yet another indication of the Strong family's hypocrisies, this time involving Oxfam, which uses Chinese slave labour to make their anti-povery wristbands.

Canadian Voices

June 4 - The Grewal tapes exposed something horribly wrong in this country. We've grieved and gotten angry, but that isn't enough.

There are some people out there determined to bring honour and integrity back to Canada, and a lot of them are at Harper Liberals .

Everyone has a different breaking point. These people have reached theirs.

What Martin has learned from this period

June 3 - This morning I read that the PM vows to clean up mess:

MONTREAL (CP) - The Liberal party's efforts to rebuild its electoral fortunes in Quebec were reinforced Thursday evening with Prime Minister Paul Martin vowing not to let those responsible for the sponsorship scandal ruin the party's reputation for

honesty? decency? integrity? open government? adherence to Western standards of democracy? No, something ever so much more important:

rehabilitating the country's finances.

"We, the Liberals, put our government finances in order," he told a party fundraiser where an estimated 1,200 supporters each paid $500 to dine on grilled salmon.

"And we didn't do it so that a group of people could tarnish the reputation of our party and cause people to lose confidence in our country's political class."

WTF? Canadian confidence in the political class relied on a balanced budget? Was that why money was stripped from the provinces and the health care system crashed? Or maybe why there was a $41 billion overcharge on the pension plan? Or why the gas surtax, which was supposed to go toward highway maintenance, didn't? How about the extra charges levied on VHS tapes to promote Canadian artists? Surcharge on airline tickets to cover increased security costs? Missing HRDC funds? Gun-freaking-registry?

It was all about the balanced budget! (Now there's a slogan you don't often see on a protest placard.)

The Martin Comedy Revue continues:

Martin, who said he understood the disappointment of Quebecers and Liberals caused by the scandal, vowed to subsequently introduce measures to prevent a repetition of such abuses.

Been there, heard that. Specifics?

"As prime minister, I will do everything in my power to ensure that your government deserves your respect."

Ah, you see, that's part of the problem: the Prime Minister's Office has too much power. How about returning power to the House of Commons where it, you know, actually belongs! No?

Transport Minister Jean Lapierre told the gathering that the event demonstrated that the Liberal party is financed openly and not behind closed doors.

How does a salmon dinner prove that? Because it isn't a golf tournament? I suppose it is nice to know they can organize fund-raising dinners without Joe Morselli or Jacques Corriveau, but can they run a campaign without "fake volunteers?"

"We have nothing to hide. Our books are open and our hands are clean," said Martin's Quebec lieutenant, who was joined at the event by cabinet ministers from across the country, including Conservative-turned-Liberal Belinda Stronach, who received a standing ovation.

I'm going to be sick. Back in a sec.

"Tonight is the beginning of the reconstruction of the Liberal party throughout Quebec. We will rebound in Quebec thanks to the unwavering integrity of our leader, Prime Minister Paul Martin," Lapierre said.

And rebound in Saskatchewan! and in Newfoundland! and in Alber ... (maybe not.) Is he actually channeling Howard Dean? That would be really icky.

Recent opinion polls suggest, however, that the party faces an uphill climb to regain public support in Martin's home province. The Bloc Quebecois has consistently received about 50 per cent of support in polls, suggesting it was headed to winning a record number of Quebec's 75 seats.

If Martin's "unwavering integrity" is the best they can offer then there will be no challenge to the Bloc, because opinion polls cast doubt that voters believe he posseses any integrity, wavering or otherwise.

The audience delighted in Martin's attack on Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe and Conservative Leader Stephen Harper for their "underhanded dealings" that he said are threatening the country's stability.

Clearly the crowd appreciated satire.

Martin said if Bloc MPs wanted to defend Quebec's interests, they would have supported the budget, which contains millions of dollars in annual spending for the province.

What is "bribe" in French? Never mind, the important thing is that Quebeckers recognized it as one and refused to be swayed by baubles and beads.

"Their objective is to destroy the country," the prime minister said. "And in that, they will never succeed."

Because the Liberals have that market cornered!

As for Harper, Martin questioned how the Tory leader can explain "his common agenda with the separatists."

You're losing 'em, dude. Everyone in the room knows why Harper and Duceppe joined forces: to get rid of you and your crooks. Try another tack.

Martin said the interests of Quebecers have been defended by Liberal MPs, senators and ministers who have spearheaded Canada's positions against participating in the U.S. anti-missile shield and in favour of ratifying the Kyoto protocol.

There you go: anti-Americanism plus "you're so progressive":

"Through its progressive ideals, its social values, and its innovative ways of doing things, Quebec plays a key role within Canada," he said.

So that's why the Liberal Party interfered with the political process in Quebec! They couldn't trust Quebeckers to, no, that doesn't track. Why did they interfere with the process in Quebec again?

The Canadian federal system is flexible and allows provincial experimentation and creativity, Martin added,

That's right, I had forgotten that the federal system is flexible (it's so flexible it can ignore non-conficence motions,) it experiments (it cheats,) it's creative (just check out the Adscam invoices! they even constructed a secret Olympic stadium in Rimouski!)

noting past efforts that produced pension plans and ongoing plans for early learning and child care.

Despite references to internal political battles, Martin spent much of his time outlining Liberal achievements over the past 12 years and the party's plans for the future.

As prime minister, Martin said he will follow his record as finance minister and not run deficits as have the other members of the G8.

"We have learned a very important lesson from this period. We can no longer allow the government to live beyond its means."

That is the very important lesson they have learned from this period: don't live beyond one's means.

To repeat: the Liberal minority government is embroiled in a Constitutional crisis, corruption scandals and may have been caught attempting to bribe an MP, and what did they learn? That the government cannot be allowed to live beyond its means.

PoliSci 101: the government has no means except that which it squeezes from us, the taxpayers, and given what has been promised to the provinces and the NDP, the ways in which this government can avoid a deficit are limited. They can raise taxes or renege on promises -- or both.

But the budget will be balanced. You have Martin's word on it because he knows what Canadians really want. Then all we private citizens have to do is learn to live within our (reduced) means.

The end of innocence

June 2 - There couldn't be a worse week to ramp up action at work!

The revelation as to the identity of "Deep Throat" has inadvertantly sharpened the differences between the scandals rocking Canada's Parliament right now and Watergate, and it isn't pretty.

The break-in at the Watergate Hotel eventually revealed illegal wiretaps on political activists, mail tampering, vandalising the Muskie and other campaigns, CIA activity on U.S. soil, and that U.S. presidents since Kennedy had habitually taped telephone conversations. Deplorable as those were, they were mostly acts of agencies that went beyond their mandates and, as a result of the hearings, they were curbed.

That is not what is being revealed in Canada. We should be so lucky up here for the scandals to be about agencies that went beyond their mandates - oh, for the good old days when the RCMP planted dynamite and burnt down barns!

The current scandals are all about personal gain - Adscam is about stealing money, plain and simple. The Liberals offering inducements to MPs to defect and/or abstain on the vote are the acts of a group of people who believe that others are as power-grubbing and mercenary as they are.

That is a poor reflection on Canadians, because the ease with which the Liberals and NDP were able to bribe the provinces and cities is itself an inditement.

When Inky Marks went public, it was pointed out that he had no proof. Grewal got that proof, and he is now being denounced for getting that proof.

It is hardly surprising that accusations of tape-tampering are being leveled, but to my mind the fact that Tim Murphy was in Grewal's office settles the matter: Grewal held the power, so Murphy went to him; Murphy could have walked out at any time; Murphy was in that office because Grewal had something Murphy wanted - a vote.

Had Grewal taped a conversation with a child pornographer in order to get evidence to take to the police he would be hailed as a hero. But he taped conversations that persuade that the worst fears about this government are true: that appointments are handed out as pay-offs - even important positions like Ambassadorships - and if competence is not even a consideration, it explains why government agencies up here are run so poorly. [Note I am not saying that Grewal is incompetent - only that they were going to offer him whatever he wanted, not what he was suited for.]

Watergate was a double-edged sword for Americans. The euphoria of being proven correct - that those funny sounds on our phones, late mail delivery, and strange looks at work were not all due to paranoia - was accompanied with sorrow, because our government had interfered with the right to organize legal, peaceful protests and thus our rights under the First Amendment.

That was the angst of Watergate - learning that being right brings its own costs.

The scandals rocking Canada are all about greed and the lust for power. Those who have long believed the Liberals are corrupt are being proven right, and we are finding it is not a cause to celebrate.

The part that is most perplexing is the failure of Ontarians - and the media - to realize that the Murphy scandal is far more serious than Adscam. The latter is about money, and greed is something we all encounter, but the former is maniuplating the powers of government, and that threatens far more than our pocketbooks.

If Canadians allow this to pass, then truly consensual government in Canada has gone from endangered species to extinction, and I doubt it can be revived by conventional means.

The Grewal tapes

June 1 - I've spent a greater portion of the day reading the Grewal tape transcripts and watching CPAC.

Between those and the new revelations as to the identity of Watergate's Deep Throat I am struck by the cosmic forces that have forced these two scandals to interweave in counterpoint.

Nixon's downfall was due to his attempts to protect his people; Martin is trying to do the same. The word "irony" springs to mind.

What can I possibly say? More importantly, what will Canadians say?

The transcripts of the Grewal tapes are in .pdf here, here, here, and here.)

June 3 - And the missing section here.

(Courtesy of Neale News.)

Question Period - May 30

May 31 - Nice, pointed Question Period in Parliament yesterday with especial note to the Spin Team the taxpayers provide for the Martin Libranos, courtesy of this post at Newsbeat1.

(Question: does anyone else have trouble loading the Parliament webpages? I'm not sure how I'd feel if it was just me ...)

Tape may show Martin knew about offer to Grewel

May 31 - This is all speculation just yet and, despite what we may want to believe, it is probably best to wait until the tapes are fully translated and made available to the public,. Nevertheless, this is intriguing: but according to CTV,

CTV News' Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife reports that the Prime Minister knew of the negotiations.

According to Fife, the full four hours of transcripts of Grewal's taped conversations with a top Martin aide and Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh show:

- Martin was ready to talk to Grewal about defecting like he did with Belinda Stronach
- Grewal was offered a government position two weeks after the vote

The transcripts could be released Tuesday. Conservative House Leader Jay Hill has said the party will be turning the tapes over to the RCMP soon.

The federal ethics commissioner Bernard Shapiro is also expected to announce Tuesday whether he will conduct an investigation into the alleged Liberal deal-making.

As Greg Weston notes in relations to the limited mandate of the Gomery Inquiry, the RCMP has also been compromised by Adscam: Of course, the Mounties themselves were up to their musical ride in almost $2 million of sponsorship cash, much of it hidden in a non-government bank account in Quebec. It is hard not to raise one's eyebrows that they would investigate a matter of political wrongdoing or bribery (although I think it's fair to say that most of us still respect the rank and file Mounties - it's their leaders that are suspect.)

Why didn't he just say no?

May 31 - Editorial in yesterday's Toronto Sun on MP Gurmant Grewel's allegations that the Liberals tried to induce him to abstain on the budget vote - Liberals protest too much - brings up the impropriety of their leaking to the media that Immigration Minister Joe Volpe had asked the RCMP to investigate allegations of wrongdoing by Grewal:

Grewal has denied this allegation and what's more, it was sleazy of the Liberals to smear him this way. This wasn't a case of revealing that Grewal had been charged with anything, merely that the government had requested the Mounties look into it.

Indeed, this incident has become yet another subject of controversy in this affair, with Grewal denying Liberal claims that he wanted the investigation dropped in return for abstaining on the non-confidence vote.

The tapes reveal Grewal and Murphy discussing Volpe's actions, although the Liberals insist this was only about the possibility of having Volpe say something positive about Grewal, to lessen the sting of the immigration controversy for him.

and asks the two most important questions

Even if that's true, if the Grits really believed Grewal had committed immigration improprieties, why did they talk to him at all in the first place? Why didn't they just say "no"?

No, they don't "all" do it

May 30 - Are you tired of people saying "they all do it" whenever you talk about corruption in government? Kate has a good reply and exposes the fallacy of that particular argument in They Are Not The Same:

... The argument that "all polititians are the same" is not only a falsehood - it is a falsehood with a hidden intent. Manufactured in an attempt to pull all those in the public service down to a lowest common denominator, it sustains the apologist's rationale to endorse "The Devil You Know". That particular devil just happens to be the soil in which corrupt governments take root.

Buying into the canard is not a product of cynicism, but an admission that one's own moral compass should be sent in for a rebuild. If we truly believes that "all politiicans are the same", then we must also concede that all citizens are "the same", held to no particular standard of honesty or integrity, and that with such low expectations of government, undeserving of better.

Indeed, and her points add dimension to another canard: People get the government they deserve. If Canadians Ontarians believe they deserve the Liberal Party then they have assuredly earned corruption.

The Librano family business

May 29 - Ben Macintyre writes tongue in cheek for the London Times on the Canadian-American and French-British rivalries in Everybody needs bad neighbours:

In our thoroughly globalised world, the US and Canada, France and Britain, cling anachronistically to their singular, ancient rivalries. Australia and New Zealand look further afield than each other for economic comparisons; Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan do not expend energy anxiously surveying their respective sex lives. But the English Channel and the US border with Canada remain the distorting, two-way mirrors through which these neighbours perceive themselves.

He emphasizes his point that the British-French rivalry is of the sibling order by a quote from columnist Claude Imbert in Le Point "To those French who still believe that Britain is a former Norman colony that went wrong ..." Ouch. We credit the Normans with doubling the English language and introducing chimneys but tend to believe the invaders were, in due time, anglicized, and can always view Shakespeare's account of the Battle of Agincourt in Henry V with some pride so long as we can gather our coats and file out of the theatre thus missing the final lines on the failure of the next generation to retain what Henry V won.

Americans and Canadians will, at the drop of a hat, bring up the War of 1812 and work backward to 1776 to present our list of grievances, but that list seems downright contemporary compared to two countries who can begin theirs in 1066.

Macintyre is looking at a bigger picture set in European terms and his conclusions are interesting but he doesn't address (or perhaps even know about) the impact of Adscam on Canadian thinking and sensibilities.

The family nature of U.S. and Canadian relations is one that we tend to rush past and it has been made easier by the wholesale re-write of history which de-emphasizes British rule and influence up here in order to side-step the end of French rule at the Plains of Abraham (Canada's Culloden, if you will) which brought a reluctant step-brother into the family.

The current scandel proves the point that we can re-write history but we can't undo it. Adscam is directly related to (if only because it formed the pretext for) anglo- and franco-Canadian relations, and many of us are re-examining our former attitudes to the cause of Quebec sovereignty and recognizing that the exposure of how basely that issue was manipulated by the Liberal Party in their pursuit of one-party rule justifies Quebec outrage and, further, may have irreparably damaged prospects for a truly united Canada.

The divide-and-conquer strategy of the Libranos is being exposed, and some are beginning to realize that the implications go far beyond Quebec and permeate the very weave of today's Canada.

Every time Bombardier is granted a contract there are grumblings in Ontario, but which profit most when the contracts are awarded to Quebec: Quebeckers or those who own Bombardier? It's past time to get deeply suspicious of the quasi-Socialist pretentions of the Libranos and look closer at who gains from these contracts. If it is done in the name of national, or family, unity, then why are the kids bickering?

Once the Libranos decided that they were the natural governing party of Canada and set about to do whatever they could to assert their rule they forgot the danger that the kids might get together and compare notes. Some are noticing that one family analogy which may fit is that of a parent who purposefully incites quarrels between the adult children in order keep them bitterly divided and, in the case of a wealthy family with sizeable assets, ensures they will continue to pander to the parent in order to get what they perceive to be their rightful shares.

But Quebec and the West have had enough and, within their own families, are seriously thinking of getting out of the family business and setting up their own. Ontario is the "good eldest child" -- compliant and obediently determined to uphold the patriarch's dominance (although it privately feels that it should get more for its loyalty than the parent is alloting) and is so invested in the family business that it tends to dismiss the mutterings of those who wonder if the price of unity is worth the cost of their dignity.

Like many parents, the Libranos shrug aside the signs of rebellion, thinking that "kids will be kids," and forgetting that the blind love of children for the parent is replaced by a more critical view once the kids grow up. Should the judgement be that the parental unit makes decisions more for its own benefit than that of the family as a whole then the justification for maintaining family unity is lost.

They played a good hand when they projected Paul Martin in the role of the sympathetic "other" parent and, by seeming to overthrew Chretien's iron rule, he gained some traction by apologizing to the kids for taking them and their contributions for granted and promising to address their concerns and to treat them with more respect, fix the democratic deficit, and distribute more of the profits from the family business.

But then the family quarrel was aired in the Commons, and the Libranos retained power by marrying both the NDP and Belinda Stronach and pre-emptively gave a larger share of the profits to the kids. Martin thus, to all appearances, retained control as this placated some of them, but there is a limit to how often that strategy can be successfully employed.

He will likely take the opportunity at the next family gathering (which would be the next election) to praise the children profusely and humbly, and this will work only to the extent that the kids are denied a thorough understanding of the business accounts for the family in part because foundations which receive federal money are not accountable for how they spend that money.

There is another who wishes to be made head of the family, and some of the siblings use their distrust or dislike of Harper as a pretext for their continued support for the Libranos, but I am genuinely perplexed that, by inference, Joe Clark is somehow be seen as more likeable and charismatic than Harper.

[In contrast, President Bush has many qualities I admire but even I wouldn't call him charismatic. My support for him stems from support for his policies, so his personal appeal is not even a factor. The same can be said for Australian PM Howard.]

I also fail to see how anyone can pretend that Paul Martin has personal appeal, and I am stunned that people still worry about the "hidden agenda" of the Conservative Party when, should the allegations at the Gomery Inquiry be proven, it would seem that it is the Libranos who had the hidden agenda and it was to enrich themselves and their friends at public expense rather than anything that resembled governance.

Oddly enough, it may be the experience of living under Liberal despotism that causes fears about the Conservatives; people may believe that the CPC is as capable of forcing unpopular legislation through Parliament as the Liberals.

I hope the Conservatives use the next period to craft and state their policies. Their failure to do so is probably due more to being a new party and needing to have those kind of discussions among their members but Eastern voters are not likely to buy another pig in a poke.

Canadians are facing a dilemma of another sort though when the media projects the value of personal appeal over policies. Is it possible to maintain illusions once the blinkers are off? The polls seem to say yes, and that is the challenge for both the Libranos and the opposition parties - everywhere except Quebec, that is. They, at least, had the grace to feel insulted by the bribery, and rightly wonder how much the rest of the family truly values them when the others don't share in that outrage.

And that's the real pity.

(Links via Neale News.)

Noble Gestures

May 29 - Emergency at work - I was called in this evening* and just got home.

Maz2 and Tony kept the ball rolling these last few days (thanks!) and Andrew Coyne has a post has with a great title: It's a vast right-wing punditocracy! (of course it is) The post has some interesting links on the allegations that members of the Conservative Party were offered inducements to abstain or be absent for the Real and Official Non-Confidence Vote last week.

I particularly like the first one from the Vancouver Sun (link no good unless you have a subscription) in which Arthur Schafer, director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics, scores a grand-slam by making what to my mind is the critical point about using patronage appointments as a form of bribery:

"In my view, the latter is every bit as serious as the former. Perhaps more serious, since the harm to Canada may last longer and be more serious than the 'mere' loss of public money."

Having an elected Senate would be my first choice for Parliamentary reform. Ya hear that, Belinda?

Mark the calandar on this: we learned that Man of Culture Jacques Corriveau is into making Noble Gestures which is why he put 4 volunteers for the Liberal Party on his payroll even though they did no work for him:

Corriveau said he hired Serge Gosselin at his firm Pluridesign in 1999 and paid him $55,000 -- half of that for Liberal-related work.

Pluridesign's financial statements show Corriveau put three other Liberal staffers on his payroll after the 1997 election, paying them $86,509 from 1998 to 2000.

He said he made the backdoor donations to the Grits at the request of ex-Quebec party head Michel Beliveau, adding he felt obliged to after billing $1 million for printing election signs.

I can see why he might feel indebted to the Liberal Party.

I am so very happy that the medical condition which had prevented him from recollecting certain things has improved and am hopeful he will be able to remember even more things.

*Make that yesterday evening, i.e, Saturday evening.

Poundmaker support (updated)

May 27 - Darcey has some updates on the Poundmaker protest: a press release from the Poundmaker Working Group and organizing a grocery run.

Ian Lance is making that grocery run Saturday (tomorrow) and is collecting funds through his Pay-Pal account.

Look, we've complained on this site (as well as others) as to how the outrage over corruption in Ottawa has been largely limited to sighs and laments, but members of the Poundmaker Working Group are not content to wring their hands and wish somebody (else) would do something about corruption in their own community -- they have engaged in an act of civil disobedience because, having already reached their tipping point, they have taken the initiative to push their point home.

Ian has issued a compelling call to support this action in Fighting Corruption Our Way. Is their struggle really that separate from what we've been so angry about? I don't think so.

May 29 - 2:36: Lance reports and writes of something fundamental that he found at the protest and in the Poundmaker Working Group. Great post.

PM's aide Gaetano Manganiello testifies before Gomery

May 25 - PMO staffer says sponsorship firm paid him $25,000 for Liberal work:

An aide in Prime Minister Paul Martin's office told the sponsorship inquiry Wednesday he was paid $28,000 under the table to work for the Liberals in the late 1990s.

Gaetano Manganiello, who is on a paid leave of absence from his job as a media officer in the PMO, said he worked off the books as a party logistics specialist in 1998 and 1999. He said the then-boss of the party's Quebec wing, Benoit Corbeil, approached him at the Montreal headquarters and said the party was in dire financial straights.

Corbeil said the party could no longer afford his salary but explained the Pluri Design graphic firm, owned by Jean Chretien's friend Jacques Corriveau, could step in to pay him, Manganiello testified.

"I was informed by Mr. Corbeil that Pluri Design would pay my salary but I would continue working at the Liberal party," Manganiello told the inquiry, saying he was on the firm's payroll for nine months.

"He (Corbeil) didn't tell me why, but in all fairness, I didn't ask why either."

Gomery's comments as to what has and has not been established about Brault's allegations of illegal contributions are also in the article.

(Via Neale News.)

Even the NY Times ... oh, the infamy

May 25 - Master Meriadoc could lecture us well on the virtues of being unnoticed ... at least for a short period of time.

Was Canada Just Too Good to Be True?.

Actually, it's a pretty good article but either he doesn't know about or chooses to ignore some troubling questions about the procrastination of the Liberal Party in allowing the non-confidence vote or the thoughts in the minds of some Westeners and Quebeckers.

Or maybe he just hadn't read the opening paragraphs of this.

Or, more significantly, this Lorrie Goldstein column that takes a pretty close look at the Grewal-Murphy tape and Insta!Stronach Cabinet post.

May 29 - Today's editorial in the Toronto Sun, Can't we take a little criticism? says that Canadians should be thanking Krauss; it seems that Clifford Krauss has been slammed for his article in the NY Times for puncturing some of Canada's illusions about itself.

We hope Clifford Krauss is reading this, because after the week he's had, he deserves a thank-you.

The New York Times' Canadian correspondent filed a stinging dispatch from Toronto last week that predictably riled many Canucks -- because, we submit, it was true.

I must read the wrong papers, because I didn't know there was hostility to the article. But still, the NY Times has had a few articles about Canada since the publication ban on Jean Brault testimony was lifted that focused on Adscam and the Liberal Party's manipulations to stay in power, and I am somewhat surprised that the latest item from Krauss was received with more outrage up here than his previous report (noted here) and the op-ed by Canadian David Frum which appeared in the NY Times (and noted in the same link) which were far more critical by what they implied.

You go girl!

May 25 - I've had some things on my mind today, like the dissolution of Confederation and moronic pilots, so I needed a really good laugh.

Ask, and it shall be given: Parrish ponders return to Liberal party:

Independent MP Carolyn Parrish says Prime Minister Paul Martin has left the door open for her to return to the Liberal fold.

The Toronto Star reports that the suggestion came from the prime minister himself last Thursday, after she voted in favour of passing the government's budget in a crucial confidence vote.

"He gave me a big hug and a kiss," Parrish told the Star.

She says a colleague asked if it wasn't time for Parrish to return to caucus, and Martin said: "Whenever, you're ready," according to Parrish.

Do you think I could find anyone to take my bet? Not a one. My life sucks.

(Via Neale News.)

The Spirit of '05

May 24 - 11:29: The spirit of Tom Paine is alive and well in Canada. Walsingham has written forcefully and eloquently that The Tipping Point has been reached in Canada and concluded that the only option remaining is to dissolve this confederation.

Will a “spirit of ‘05” now arise here? I believe it is already stirring. The Liberals, with much of Ontario in dumb connivance, have sown the seeds. They do not understand what they have set irretrievably in motion. It is far beyond their sphere of recognition to see that far from saving Canada, they have destroyed it. A Canada worth preserving might just have been revived had this government fallen. But the very factors and forces that prevented that fall have now pointed the future in a very different direction. And I say: so be it. The chasm has been crossed. The tipping point has been reached.

There is more, so very much more, so read the whole thing as well as the comments.

"The Tipping Point" may well take its rightful place beside the pamphlet "Common Sense" and ought to be spread from browser to browser by all who believe in liberty.

(Via Keith, who adds some thoughts in his post.)

May 25 - 7:55 - Despite the bravado in my posted words above, I still feel as though I am in mourning. I felt this way once before: on Sept. 11 (it's an American-sourced feeling.) The logic of Walsingham's post is inescapable, though, and I am somewhat comforted by these words from Occam's Carbuncle if only because he too sees the abyss:

There comes a time, however, when you realize that the apparent complexities of life, while important to our understanding of events, are not what should ultimately speak to us, are not matters upon which to base our fundamental ideas about right and wrong, about what is good or ill for ourselves and our society. The simplest of notions, ones like liberty, democracy, pride, dignity, loyalty, are the ones that must shape our actions. It is precisely these simple ideas that increasingly become meaningless as this party and that interest work to obscure them to their own profit. Are we utterly lost, as Walsingham suggests? Is this the time when Canada, like a reluctant phoenix, immolates itself, and we are left to await whatever incarnation may rise from the ashes? I can't bring myself to say yes. I've urged others to say no. I want to say no. I can't say that either. If you think this is all rather silly and overwrought, then I am sorry for you. Things matter, or they do not.

I found myself humming The Maple Leaf Forever! at work this morning. I'm not sure I want to examine that too closely.

Oh Canada, how much I grieve for thee.

I'm bumping this post up. Walsingham must be read (and Maz2's comment.) I'm even adding a quote of my own:

These are the times that try men's souls. (It's a quote and I refuse to de-gender it.)

Kroll Report

May 24 - The Kroll Report (from the Adscam auditors) can be viewed here.

May 25 - 06:50 - There's a discussion about the future of the Maritime provinces should confederation collapse in the comments well worth reading. Feel free to join in.

Crunching some Adscam numbers

May 24 - Angry in the Great White North has a breakdown of some of the numbers that came out of today's session of the Gomery Inquiry and has a Sample of how the government manages our money:

Out of a total of $46.32 million:
$460,000, or 1%, went to sponsorship
$8.34 million, or 18%, went to actual work done
$26 million, or 56%, went to "unrelated or unknown parties"
$11.52 million, or 25%, was unspent or the invoices were not found

"Not found." Went to "unrelated or unknown parties."

I have no words.

Poundmaker Protest Update

May 24 - From Darcey of Dust My Broom with an update on the the protest by the Poundmaker Working Group who are remaining in the offices of Chief Ted Antoine and the Council until new elections are called. Also he's got more background here and a request for support here which asks for letters of support, supplies and phone cards.

If you're not aware of what has been happening, you can read all Darcey's posts on the Poundmaker protest by going here and scrolling down.

Maybe you think it's none of our business? Publius puts it well: "Functioning along roughly the same mental lines that allowed generations of wife beaters to remain protected under the guise "family unity," so the new imperialists have been allowed to get away with their crimes." (Read the post.)

Now on CPAC - Gomery Inquiry (updating)

May 24 - The session of the Gomery Inquiry currently being aired on CPAC is (at least partially - it's not over yet) in English ... transcript should be available tonight here.

From Newsbeat 1:

Sponsorship loss may be an additional $100 million (CTV says it would now total $355 million)

Groupaction Marketing, which allegedly funded the federal Liberals under the table for years, issued $406,000 in cheques that could have been converted to cash, says a report tabled at the Gomery inquiry Tuesday and,

Kroll also attached a dollar figure to all contributions to the Liberals - registered and unregistered - heard during testimony at the inquiry.

The auditors said $768,000 was donated above board to the party and added, "if the amounts identified by Mr. Brault as payments for a political purpose are included, this amount rises to $2.5 million."

[...]

Documents previously tabled at the inquiry indicate Brault paid the $430,000 to the Pluri Design firm owned by graphic designer Jacques Corriveau, a friend of former prime minister Jean Chretien. Brault has said Corriveau told him the money was destined for the Liberals.

Kroll, while not backing the claim, said "the available documentation does not indicate what services, if any, were provided by PluriDesign to Groupaction for the $430,370 it received."

The auditors said they requested Corriveau's bank statements from 1994 to 1999, along with other financial data, but that the information was "not available for our review."

Coffin may plead guilty.

Gagliano loses suit - Gomery stays. As for Chretien,

If Chretien wins a favourable court ruling, it could block Gomery from delivering two reports planned for the end of the year.

And the elections Martin promised were for after the report was issued.

During the break, you might want to read today's editorial in the Toronto Sun.

Unrelated to Adscam but good nonetheless, Paul Jackson gives some good advice to the "spoiled brats of the entertainment world."

15:55 - Session is back on.

More on the Royal Commonwealth Society of Toronto

May 24 - If you read Bill Strong's post on the Royal Commonwealth Society of Toronto yesterday you might want to make a return visit. Looks as though whoever is behind bloc-Harper.com might be trying to cover some tracks ... lucky thing Kate grabbed a screenshot yesterday.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Private gripe: deleted. I just won't sleep. Ever.

16:45 Neale News is linking to Bill's site and has before and after screenshots of the Whois page for blocharper.com. The first shows the Royal Commonwealth Society of Toronto Foundation as owners of the blocharper.com domain name, and the second shows the Freedom International Association as the owner. Both versions have the same Newmarket address, phone and fax numbers and show Sinclair Stevens as the webmaster and technical contact but the second has different email addresses for him.

Bill has a new post up here.

I don't know that anything illegal is going on, but the overnight change of who is listed as owning the domain name seems to imply that somebody else thinks it is, to say the least, indiscreet for the Royal Commonwealth Society of Toronto Foundation to own a domain name which makes clear it's intention to remove the leader of the Official - and Loyal - Opposition.

This is the website for Freedom International (link from the post on this issue at Colbert's Comments.)

Tax-payers foot bill for Liberals (again)

May 24 - The weight of the Liberal Party's notion of how to best protect their own interests good governance daily becomes more unbearable. The latest: Taxpayers foot $1M bill for Liberals' sponsorship 'war room' for a secret team that monitors the Gomery Inquiry and preps the Prime Minister for questions that might be raised in the House of Commons:

Documents obtained by the Citizen through the Access to Information Act reveal that the rapid-response war room, which is in almost daily contact with the Prime Minister's Office and the government's top bureaucrat, Alex Himelfarb, operates out of the Privy Council Office.

The cost of the strategic office, which does everything from preparing answers for question period in the House of Commons to keeping the Prime Minister's Office abreast of testimony at the inquiry, covers the salaries of staff and expenses.

The war room and its cost came to light on the heels of last week's complaints from Justice John Gomery about officials exaggerating the cost of his inquiry.

Officials at the commission looking into the sponsorship scandal say the total cost of the actual inquiry will come in under $32 million. Judge Gomery said government officials have "leaked" to the media that it is costing departments another $40 million to cover costs at four key departments, including the Privy Council Office. "It's an exaggeration and it's twisting reality," Judge Gomery said last week.

Revelations from the inquiry, which is digging into the $250-million sponsorship scheme, forced the Liberals to set aside $750,000 in a trust fund to pay back money improperly obtained by the party.

One memo to Mr. Himelfarb indicates the strategy office was set up almost immediately after the Martin government launched the inquiry in February 2004 upon the release of Auditor General Sheila Fraser's damning report on the sponsorship program.

Dated Feb. 18, 2004, the memo describes "the intergovernmental co-ordination group" being set up in the PCO, the nerve centre of the federal government, under the proposed direction of bureaucrat Guy McKenzie. However, the summary and attachments are mostly blanked out, under section 23 of the Access to Information Act, due to "solicitor/client privilege."

The office's operating budget now totals $1,068,000 after its first-year budget of $534,000 in 2004-05 was renewed for a second year, according to Hali Gernon of the PCO.

Remember when I expressed some sympathy for why the Conservative Party might not want to release the Grewal-Murphy tape to the RCMP? Read this next bit:

Ms. Gernon said the office has a small staff of about "four or five" employees and since June 2004 has been under the direction of lawyer Ursula Menke, the former deputy commissioner of the Canadian Coast Guard and inspector general of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

The team will continue to operate until the Inquiry concludes and "until the end of the fiscal year to allow any required followup to the inquiry."

Judge Gomery has made it clear he doesn't appreciate the Martin government adding its hidden costs to his overall budget. In an exchange with an ad executive, the judge said: "What they did was ... put together the fees of everyone in the Justice Department that worked on the file, the photocopies they made at the PCO and God knows what other expenses that were totally beyond the commission's control."

Bookkeeping, Librano style. Judge Gomery knows it well.

They'd rather switch and fight

May 24 - Their numbers are growing: Harper liberals

(Thanks, maz2.)

Oh, and bonus points for those who get the reference in the post title.)

The perseverence of Stephan Hachemi

Zahra Kazemi

May 24 - The fruitlessness of soft power has come to be symbolized by one outstanding example: the failure to achieve justice for Montreal photojournalist Zahra Kazemi, who was murdered on or about July 11, 2003, in an Iranian prison for the unspeakable crime of photographing a vigil outside Evin Prison - the very prison in which she would later be tortured and killed.

Those of us who recognized immediately that Kazemi's death was linked to the struggle for democracy in Iran hoped - briefly - that the Canadian government would, by pressing Iran for answers to Kazemi's death, be able to assist their struggle. We were disappointed, because the Canadian government seemed to do more to protect the Iranian mullocracy than a Canadian citizen.

Their calumny was further revealed by later reports that she was defiant in prison and was subjected to unspeakable torture, but we did not get this information from the government which should have pressed the investigation but from British, American and Canadian news sources.

The lethargic response by the Canadian government, first by accepting the dubious explanation of the Iranian government and then by dithering, delaying, and finally mildly protesting was sharply challenged by the news media in Canada, which did not allow the story to die, and by Kazemi's son, Stephan Hachemi.

Coincidentally, 2 months after Jean Chretien stepped down as PM Khazakhstan News reported that he had