Thoughts From Up Here

sueragingroz.com is live!

2005-06-30T16:36:00.000-03:00

Feel free to visit me over at http://www.sueragingroz.com from here on in.

I'm going to keep this site alive for historical content reasons but I'm not going to be posting here any more.

Thanks everyone for your patronage!

sueragingroz.com

2005-06-29T22:36:00.000-03:00

I just purchased the sueragingroz.com domain and am hosting it on GoDaddy.

I'm going to try something new - build my own blog instead of using blogger.com. I hope to even serve up some audio once I have things figured out.

I'll keep using this site for my blog until the new one is ready for unveiling and at that time, I'll likely be redirecting folks over there.

Wish me luck! I am using b2evolution... let's hope it works out for me!

A chance to do something about the DSM on July 23

2005-06-29T09:46:00.000-03:00

DSM Day - July 23, 2005 - Submitted by davidswanson on Sun, 2005-06-26 20:15. Activism

Downing Street Minutes 3rd Anniversary Events: The Smoking Gun that Proves Bush Lied About Iraq
Mourn the Losses, Learn the Truth, and Investigate the Lies
SIGN UP TO ATTEND. Check for an event near you.
SIGN UP TO HOST. Announce an event that you will host, so that people can sign up for it.
Celebrate the 3-Year Anniversary of the Downing Street Meeting with Your Own Town Hall Meeting or House Party
Be part of a national day of action on Saturday, July 23, 2005.
You and your organization should work with other organizations to form a coalition and hold one large event in your area.
Resources and tips for holding an effective town hall meeting are below. Be sure to invite your Congress Member and Senators, but there's no reason to make the event dependent on their coming. You should certainly hold it, even without them. (But if they didn't have a good reason not to come, make sure there's an empty seat on stage with their name on it where cameras can see it well.)
Where you cannot organize a large event, organize some friends and hold a house party. In either case, post the event on this site so that people can sign up to come. Many of the resources below will come in handy.

The Gild is finally off of the Lily

2005-06-29T09:29:00.000-03:00

THIS was the top story in Google.ca News when I went for my morning browse... Not only is the story important but it's placement is indicative of how Bush is no longer to make his problems go away with an inspiring speech.

Bush Criticized for Linking 9/11 and Iraq - By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, June 29, 2005

(06-29) 05:13 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) -- Congressional critics of President Bush's stay-the-course commitment to the war in Iraq argued Wednesday that the administration lacks sufficient troops on the ground to mount a successful counterinsurgency.
Democrats in particular criticized Bush for again raising the Sept. 11 attacks as a justification for the protracted fight in Iraq after the president proclaimed anew that he plans to keep U.S. forces there as long as necessary to ensure peace.
Urging patience on an American public showing doubts about his Iraq policy, Bush mentioned the deadly 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington five times during a 28-minute address Tuesday night at Fort Bragg, N.C.
Some Democrats quickly accused him of reviving a questionable link to the war in Iraq — a rationale that Bush originally used to help justify launching strikes against Baghdad in the spring of 2003.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi accused Bush of demonstrating a willingness "exploit the sacred ground of 9/11, knowing that there is no connection between 9/11 and the war in Iraq."
Bush first mentioned the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center at the beginning of his speech, delivered at an Army base that has 9,300 troops in Iraq. He acknowledged that Americans are disturbed by frequent deaths of U.S. troops, but tried to persuade an increasingly skeptical public to stick with the mission.
"The war reached our shores on September the 11th, 2001," Bush told a national television audience and 750 soldiers and airmen in dress uniform who mostly listened quietly as they had been asked to do.
"Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war," he continued.
Bush said he understands the public concerns about a 27-month-old war that has killed more than 1,700 Americans and 12,000 Iraqi civilians and cost $200 billion. But he argued that the sacrifice "is worth it."
"We fight today because terrorists want to attack our country and kill our citizens, and Iraq is where they are making their stand. So we will fight them there, we will
fight them across the world and we will stay in the fight until the fight is won."
He offered no shift in course in Iraq and said he did not believe it necessary to send more troops. U.S. forces in Iraq total just under about 140,000 and they constitute the bulk of the coalition fighting force.
Appearing on television news shows Wednesday, some key lawmakers took issue with that position.
Sen. John McCain, interviewed on CBS's "The Early Show," maintained that "one of the very big mistakes early on was that he didn't have enough troops on the ground, particularly after the initial victory, and that's still the case."
Sen. John Kerry, Bush's Democratic opponent in last year's presidential election, told NBC's "Today" show that the borders of Iraq "are porous" and said "we don't have enough troops" there.
Sen. Joseph Biden Jr., appearing on ABC's "Good Morning America," disputed Bush's notion that sufficient troops are in place.
"I'm going to send him the phone numbers of the very generals and flag officers that I met on Memorial Day when I was in Iraq," the Delaware Democrat said. "There's not enough force on the ground now to mount a real counterinsurgency."
Biden argued, "The course that we are on now is not a course of success. He (Bush) has to get more folks involved. He has to stand up that army more quickly."
McCain, R-Ariz., did defend Bush's call to stop terrorism abroad before it reaches the U.S. shore. Appearing on CNN's "Larry King Live" program, McCain said that those spreading violence in Iraq "are the same guys who would be in New York if we don't win in Iraq."
Bush's speech marked the first anniversary of the transfer of power from the U.S.-led coalition to Iraq's interim government. The president cited advances in the past
year, including the January elections, infrastructure improvements and training of Iraqi security forces.
Democrats also criticized Bush for not offering more specifics about how to achieve success in Iraq along with his frequent mention of the Sept. 11 attacks.
"The president's numerous references to September 11 did not provide a way forward in Iraq," Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said. "They only served to remind the American people that our most dangerous enemy, namely Osama bin Laden, is still on the loose and al-Qaida remains capable of doing this nation great harm nearly four years after it attacked America."
Bush urged Americans to remember the lessons of Sept. 11 and protect "the future of the Middle East" from men like bin Laden. He repeatedly referred to the insurgents in Iraq as terrorists and said they were killing innocent people to try to "shake our will in Iraq, just as they tried to shake our will on September the 11th, 2001."
Bush again rejected suggestions that he set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq or send in more troops. Setting a timetable would be "a serious mistake" that could demoralize Iraqis and American troops and embolden the enemy, he said.
The president also said that sending more troops would undermine the U.S. strategy of training Iraqis to be able to as quickly as possible take over the security of their
country.
"Sending more Americans would suggest that we intend to stay forever," he said.
Beyond their criticism, Some Democrats said they thought Bush strengthened his credibility. "I think he told the American people why it's important," said Biden.
Said Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.: "The president needs to do more of what he did last evening. This is a beginning."

It passed!!!!!!

2005-06-28T22:19:00.000-03:00

And now it's on to the Senate (where it will pass) and Royal Assent.

Same-sex legislation passed - Last Updated Tue, 28 Jun 2005 21:07:41 EDT CBC News

The Liberals' controversial same-sex marriage legislation has passed final reading the House of Commons, sailing through with a vote of 158 for and 133 against.

Supported by most members of the Liberals, the Bloc Quebecois and the NDP, the legislation passed easily, making Canada only the third country in the world, after the Netherlands and Belgium, to officially recognize same-sex unions. (More at Link)

Well. I have this to say:

SCC rules to deport Rwandan Genocide Inciter

2005-06-28T14:18:00.000-03:00

It's nice to know that those who incite genocide do not find a happy home here... at least not in this case... I know that there are some aged Nazi's out there who have yet to be deported...

And now we have to deal with the conundrum: we don't extradite to countries with a death penalty unless a deal is struck to prevent the death penalty to be executed in that case.

Canadians don't kill. It's just not what we are about. Rwandans want justice and deservedly so.

Let's hope that they get this sorted out soon. Here's your linky/excerpt:

Alleged Rwandan war criminal must leave Canada: top court - Last Updated Tue, 28 Jun 2005 10:49:44 EDT From CBC News

Leon Mugesera in 2000. (CP photo) -->
Government lawyers have been fighting for 10 years to have Leon Mugesera kicked out of Canada, arguing that in a November 1992 speech, he incited fellow Hutus to kill Tutsis and set the scene for the 1994 slaughter in the African country.
In an 8-0 decision Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled that Mugesera did incite murder, genocide and hatred. The justices also ruled there were
reasonable grounds to conclude that the speech amounted to crimes against humanity.
The court said Mugesera, aware of the country's history, ethnic tensions and past massacres of Tutsis, would have known the consequences of his speech.
"A man of his education, status and prominence on the local political scene would necessarily have known that a speech vilifying and encouraging acts of violence against the target group would have the effect of furthering the attack," the court wrote.
Mugesera had been a member of the ruling Hutu party with close ties to the military. During the 1992 speech, he told 1,000 party members that they should
kill Tutsis and "dump their bodies into the rivers of Rwanda."
He also allegedly spoke of "exterminating these bastards" and warned that "the person whose neck you do not cut is the one who will cut yours."
It is unclear how soon the deportation order involving Mugesera might take effect, or whether he has any options in his struggle to remain in Canada.
The Rwandan government of the day issued an arrest warrant against Mugesera following the 1992 speech. He and his family fled to Quebec City and were initially granted permanent resident status in Canada.
He had been teaching at Quebec's Laval University, but lost his job when the accusations were levelled against him.
Philip Gourevitch, a journalist who wrote a book about the Rwandan genocide, said Mugesera's speech laid the groundwork for the carnage that was to follow two years later.
"He was one of the first to go in a major public speech and say, 'Look, our mistake in the past with the Tutsi minority has been allowing them to survive, has been allowing them to live. We must get rid of them,'" said Gourevitch.

Guy Bertrand, Mugesera's lawyer. ---->
Guy Bertrand, Mugesera's lawyer, had argued that his client never incited people to kill Tutsis or political opponents.
"His speech should be read in the context of legitimate defence," Bertrand argued in written submissions to the Supreme Court.
The speech was the focus of several immigration hearings and appeals since Mugesera arrived in Canada. Two immigration tribunals ordered his removal from Canada.
But the Federal Court of Appeal overturned the verdicts, concluding that Mugesera's remarks had been taken out of context and that he should be allowed to stay in Canada. It ruled that some of the comments had been badly translated and may have been altered to make Mugesera look guilty.
Mugesera had a reputation as a "fervent supporter of democracy, patriotic pride and resistance to invading forces," said the three-judge Federal Court appeal panel. They described the overall themes of his speech as "elections, courage and love."

Better late than never I suppose

2005-06-28T10:42:00.000-03:00

I should focus on local news more. I had absolutely no idea that the following took place until I did some digging on the campaign for equal marriage website... We are still waiting until EVERYONE in Canada shares this right (hopefully later today) before I start planning a wedding in earnest but it is nice to know that NB kinda sorta snuck in under the wire...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Jun 23, 2005 - NB becomes 8th province to extend equal marriage

Failing to pass bill would be cowardly attempt to transfer issue to the
courts (Ottawa, ON)
Today the Court of Queen’s Bench of New Brunswick ruled that the Charter requires that same-sex couples be given access to civil marriage and ordered the inclusion of same-sex couples in civil marriage in the province.
While Canadians for Equal Marriage (CEM) is pleased with the decision, it laments the fact that the conservative Party insists on stubbornly opposing passage of Bill C-38. Despite the fact that all MPs have made up their minds on equal marriage, the Conservative Party persists in trying to prevent Parliament from voting. With this decision, there remain only two provinces (PEI and Alberta) and two territories Nunavut and Northwest Territories) in the country that exclude same-sex couples from marrying. This decision follows similar decisions in the other seven provinces and the Yukon, which also said that excluding same-sex couples from civil marriage violates the equality provision (s.15) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Supreme Court of Canada re-affirmed these decisions in its December 9, 2004 reference decision.(More at Link)

And the Greatest American is....

2005-06-28T02:43:00.000-03:00

And no... it's not the monkey....

The greatest American? Lincoln? Einstein? No - it's Ronald Reagan - Jamie Wilson in Washington - Tuesday June 28, 2005 The Guardian

As an actor he had a sidekick called Bonzo. And as politician, he never quite lived down his quip to start bombing Russia in five minutes. But in life Ronald Reagan was forgiven most of his faults, and in death America now regards him as the greatest of them all.

Edging out Abraham Lincoln, the man who abolished slavery and guided the country through civil war, Reagan, the B-movie star whose presidency is commonly regarded as having brought down the Soviet bloc, won the popular vote to be crowned the greatest American ever. (More at Link)

And for some perspective on this... check out The Greatest Canadian and The Greatest Briton.

It's do or die time folks...

2005-06-28T01:47:00.000-03:00

The same-sex vote will likely happen tomorrow and Harper is grasping at straws now...

Check out the bolded portion of today's same-sex marriage linky/excerpt:

Vote on same-sex bill likely on Tuesday - CTV.ca News Staff

Members of Parliament have set the table for a final vote on Bill C-38, the same-sex marriage bill, to happen as early as Tuesday evening.
Late Monday, MPs passed a motion 163 to 106 limiting further debate on the legislation to about eight hours.
The bill is currently at what's called report stage, and must proceed to a third reading and be passed in a vote in the House of Commons before it can receive royal assent and become law of the land.
Earlier Monday, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper said that although the bill will likely pass, it lacks legitimacy because it will do so with help from the Bloc Quebecois.
"Because it's being passed with the support of the Bloc, I think it will lack legitimacy for a lot of Canadians. The truth is, most federalist MPs will oppose this legislation," Harper said.
The comments raised the ire of members of all political stripes.
Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe countered that the Bloc's mandate "is every bit as legitimate as any member who sits in this chamber.
"That's what they call democracy.'' He added that Harper could help end the Bloc's influence by backing Quebec independence.
The Liberals, who need the Bloc's support to get the legislation passed, defended the separatist party. Justice Minister Irwin Cotler called Harper's comments hypocritical.
"It hasn't seemed to have troubled Mr. Harper about any other votes in the past, in which he's asked for and voted together with the Bloc, so why should this now suddenly be an issue of legitimacy?" he told reporters.
"If that's the case then all his votes in concert with the Bloc would lack legitimacy themselves," he added, pointing to recent budget bills which the Tories and the Bloc both voted against in the House of Commons.
NDP Leader Jack Layton said Harper's remarks are further proof of why many Canadians aren't embracing the Conservatives.
"Mr. Harper is essentially saying that Quebecers' votes don't matter .... So he wants to deny equality to same-sex partners, and he wants to deny equality to Quebec voters.
"Maybe Mr. Harper should think about why people aren't listening to him by just simply looking at what he says."
Conservative justice critic Vic Toews, meanwhile, backs his leader's remarks.
"The federalist MPs in Canada, the majority of them, would oppose (gay marriage) on a free vote. So what we are seeing now is simply an agreement by this government with the separatist Bloc -- who have no long-term interest in staying in Canada.''
Last week, the Liberals made a deal with the Bloc and the NDP to push the Liberal-NDP budget bill through in a surprise midnight vote. The vote passed because the Conservatives had seven caucus members missing. If the Tories won, it would have toppled the government and triggered an election call.
A vote on same-sex legislation is not considered a confidence motion so there's no danger of the government falling should they lose. But the bill is expected to pass easily because of support from the Bloc and the NDP -- although some Liberal backbench MPs may vote against it.
Thompson reported Monday night that 11 Liberal MPs, in fact, wanted to keep debate on Bill C-38 going and voted against closure.
There are about 30 Liberals who are expected to vote against the bill -- among them is Dan McTeague.
"Frankly, I think this legislation will not provide the kind of guarantees let alone the respect of Canadians' views," he told Canada AM on Monday.
"If there is indeed a diversity, what has happened now is completely and utterly one-sided and I have a responsibility to protect that."

If it weren't so darned important, it would be laughable. I think I'll save my giggles for the celebration AFTER Royal Assent is granted. And then I can start planning my wedding...

Giving the term "Ivory Tower" a whole new meaning

2005-06-28T01:14:00.000-03:00

When I attended University, we used to throw the term "Ivory Tower" around quite a bit - particularly in Law School. We used the term to refer to folks, usually professors, who didn't have much grasp on what was actually happening out there in the courtrooms and boardrooms of the nation much less on what was happening on the street.

Here's your linky/excerpt:

GOD AND COUNTRY by HANNA ROSIN A college that trains young Christians to be politicians. Issue of 2005-06-27 Posted 2005-06-20

...I found Muench in the Patrick Henry cafeteria at lunchtime one day a few months later. She is twenty-one years old and has clear, bright hazel eyes and sandy-brown hair that she straightens and then curls with an iron. Patrick Henry is a Christian college, though it is not affiliated with any denomination, and it gives students guidelines on “glorifying God with their appearance.” During class hours, the college enforces a “business casual” dress code designed to prepare the students for office life—especially for offices in Washington, D.C., fifty miles to the east, where almost all the students have internships, with Republican politicians or in conservative think tanks. When I met Muench, she was wearing a cardigan and a navy skirt. The boys in the cafeteria all had neatly trimmed hair, and wore suits or khakis and button-down shirts; girls wore slacks or skirts just below the knee, and sweaters or blouses. Most said grace before eating, though they did it silently and discreetly, with a quick bow of the head.... (More at Link).

After reading the article above, I have come to the conclusion that my professors were quite worldly in comparison to the folks that are being "educated" at Patrick Henry College. I use the term "educated" loosely here because I firmly believe that an educational institution is supposed to expose its students to many conflicting ideas and it provide them with the ability to discern and choose among them in accordance with one's life experience and/or influences.

I think that Patrick Henry College would be more aptly described as a training institution. These students are being provided with narrowly construed and tightly packaged information that they will need in order to operate in a political atmosphere. The ideas that they are being presented with are monotonous in tone and serve only to further consolidate belief systems that were imprinted on them when they were children being raised in a sheltered home school environment. I see no "education" at Patrick Henry College. That's a shame because some of these students seem to be quite sharp and they are missing out on something pretty special: the ability to think for themselves.

Is this scary? It will be if the Republican Party maintains sufficient power in the beltway long enough for these graduates to achieve any sort of real stature.

I hope that any americans who read the above article look upon it as incentive to work that much harder in 2006 to ensure that power in the beltway is held by broad thinkers.

It's amazing what you can find in a bucket

2005-06-27T10:35:00.000-03:00

This post has nothing to do with politics unless you are keen on the politics surrounding feral cats...

You see, I live on a farm that has 36 acres of forest and 4 acres cleared land. The farm has a barn. The barn has a cat named Bootsy. When we bought the farm, the previous owners made us promise that we would keep Bootsy fed. I've seen Bootsy about 3 times since I moved in - he's a long haired tabby with white boots. Pretty cute... He's actually let me pet him once... but he's feral and he keeps small animals away from our garden so it's a pretty even deal.

Anyway, my father was up for a visit and he told me that he finally saw Bootsy. Turns out it wasn't Bootsy. You see, it was spring and it seems that Bootsy managed to hook up. I don't know what her name is so I'll just call her Mama.

I think you know where I'm going with this...

Anyway, we were planting tomatoes in a thunderstorm on Friday evening. I was a bit freaked by the chain lightening in the distance so we were in a bit of a rush... At one point, I went to throw out a piece of paper in a big bucket (4 feet tall and about three feet in diameter) in the barn. I looked into the bucket and stopped because I saw something small and furry at the bottom. I've never actually looked into this particular bucket before so I had absolutely no idea how long the creature had been there. I called my other half over because I'm not much for finding dead animals...

Well it wasn't dead. It was a kitten.

We guessed that she must have been about five weeks old. We looked up and saw the entrance to the barn's loft above the bucket and quickly figured out what must have happened. Well we set up Bucky (short for bucket) in a box with some food and water and some cream to see if Mama would claim her in the morning.

We returned in the morning and the box was knocked over, the food was gone and poor Bucky was hiding behind a table. So....

We took Bucky to the vet and got her cleaned up. The vet was impressed with her state of health despite her ordeal. She got her deworming meds and is set up for her first round of shots next week.

Well we used to have four cats - 3 boys and one girl so I suppose that it's fate that we have returned to that particular state of affairs.

As I write this missive, she's living in the spare bedroom upstairs because we don't want to rush the introductions with the rest of the family.

Kitty has figured out that she exists because she meowed once so he's pretty much camped out by the door to the spare room.

The siamese have no idea that she's there and neither do the dogs at this point...

Personality-wise, it's hard to figure out what she's going to be like.

She likes to be clean - grooms herself regularly. She knows how to use a litter box and she's an avid eater.

But of course, she's still pretty scared of everything and her first instinct is to hiss at you when you go to pick her up.

She does like to play...

Because she's so young, I'm thinking that she's going to adjust to the chaos that is our household.

At this point, she doesn't have much choice!

I'll keep you guys posted...

And it's a democracy... why?

2005-06-24T11:30:00.000-03:00

I was listening to a repeat airing of Ms. Randi yesterday while finishing up my deck...

If you want to know how I did this, I'll let you in on a little secret. I have a wireless hub in my office that transmitted the internet radio stream to a laptop downstairs in the family room which in turn podcasted the show to 107.9 FM on my radio in the garage.

Gotta love technology. It rox.

Ok - back to what I heard on the show. It seems that the abuses of power in the House have taken on new levels. You see, on June 10th, the chairman of the most powerful Judiciary Committee (yes that is the committee that would be responsible for bringing any sort of impeachment proceedings agains the sitting president) decided to unilaterally end a hearing of testimony vis a vis the sunsetting of certain clauses in the Patriot Act because he didn't like what he was hearing.

The witnesses were called in an early morning session by the Democrats because they wanted to get on the record some of the abuses that have taken place since the Patriot Act was enacted.
The witnesses that had been called previously by the republicans were unanimously glowing about the importance of the legislation and the need to keep it as part of the law.

Instead of following the normal rules of the House:

1. He cut witnesses off mid-sentence
2. He would not allow Democrat representatives to speak when they asked for the floor
3. He had someone bully the reporter into stopping her note taking
4. He had the session unilaterally adjourned without unanimous consent

It was quite the scene.
For video evidence of what the republicans call democracy, go here: (requires real player)

Some deft political manouvering

2005-06-24T11:13:00.000-03:00

Well, I promised you that I was going to keep an eye on this story, so here's hour linky/excerpt:

Liberals extend sitting of House - Conservatives vow to bring as many MPs as possible to prolonged spring session -By BRIAN LAGHI , GLORIA GALLOWA and BILL CURRY - Friday, June 24, 2005

OTTAWA -- The Paul Martin government succeeded yesterday in prolonging the spring sitting of the House of Commons even as MPs worked late last night to end the budget standoff that, in part, forced the extension.

The move essentially means that the Commons will sit into next week. MPs also decided to end a week-long game of political chicken by voting on a $4.6-billion amendment to the budget bill.

Liberal officials said they had their full complement of MPs in the House, as did the New Democrats, to vote fore the measure. The Conservatives were short at least three members before the vote took place. If the numbers held, the Liberals were expected to survive what is likely the final confidence motion of the spring sitting.

One distant fear for the government last night was that Liberal backbenchers opposed to same-sex marriage would vote to topple the government to prevent the legislation from being passed.
The agreement to go ahead with the vote at about midnight was a shock to most MPs, who were expecting it next week.
The bill was the subject of controversy earlier in the day as Tory MPs continued to threaten to defeat the legislation and the government. However, some Tories said they would probably stop short of precipitating the minority government's demise.

Loyola Hearn, a Conservative from Newfoundland, said he is unlikely to vote against Bill C-48 because that would mean that the Atlantic accord, which would provide more than $2-billion in equalization payments to his province and is before the Senate, would die along with the Liberal government.

"We could easily look at the Liberals and say, 'You guys have fooled around with the Atlantic accord from Day 1 and you are now holding it up in the Senate simply as a blackmail attempt to assure passage of other bills,' " Mr. Hearn said.

But "what it means if the government is defeated is [when it is] within two days of getting $2-billion, your province has absolutely nothing."

If the Liberals were returned to office in a summer election, it is possible the accord could never be resurrected, he said.

"That's not just another item in that budget," Mr. Hearn said. "It's our future. And so, if it comes to that, you make the choice you have to make."

Because the federal Parliament is so evenly divided, Mr. Hearn's vote took on added importance.

But the Newfoundland Tory didn't think he would have to vote against his party to keep the government from falling.

With the support of the Bloc Québécois and the NDP, the Liberals had little problem winning a vote late yesterday to approve a motion to extend the sitting indefinitely and an earlier motion to shut down debate over the extension. Still, 14 Liberal backbenchers voted against the motion. Many are known to oppose the same-sex marriage bill.

The Tories warned yesterday that they will bring as many MPs as possible to the House during the extended sitting, which could cause the Liberals some trouble.

The Tory muscle-flexing appeared to cover over backbench skittishness among some MPs, who said yesterday that they have no idea what the party's strategy is. Party Leader Stephen Harper shared little with MPs at their caucus meeting this week, said one MP, and no one has been told yet to put their riding workers on election footing.

Another MP said the Tories would need the support of one or two Liberals on the confidence motion, lest they be accused of sparking an election Canadians don't want.

Veteran Conservative MP John Reynolds told reporters he would "love" to have an election that would focus on two recent allegations of government corruption involving immigration permits and Industry Canada grants, as well as the Gomery inquiry into the sponsorship scandal.

'Oh Lamentable Day'

2005-06-23T00:43:00.000-03:00

Thoughts From Up Here

If Jon Stewart is indeed god, then Stephen Colbert is Jesus.

I have just received news that Stephen Colbert is leaving the Daily Show. I have to say as a huge fan of the show, I pretty much almost cried (okay I did cry) ...until I read the rest of the information and realized that he was off to start his own show (The Colbert Report). The best part is that this show will air right after the Daily Show! The son of god won't have gone far.

Still, things will not be the same. What will happen to the segment "This Week in God"? What about all of his special reports? The "Ted Hitler" bit made me laugh so hard I nearly popped a vessel! Or how about "The God Machine?", remember when he gave it up for lent and had to use the crank...? Ah the good times. Stephen Colbert will be surely missed, and that is for sure.

And for all of you who have never watched the show, I suggest you start, but you have missed a hell of a correspondent. I wish the best of luck to Colbert, and keep reminding myself that he won't have gone far.

Stephen correspondent I salute you!

Click below for more information on his departure and new show (just a brief blurb)

Click me!

MP's working in summer

2005-06-22T14:52:00.000-03:00

What will they think of next? Well that is the question before the House right now - whether to extend parliament into the summer so as to finish some heretofore unfinished business.

Generally MP's have extended vacations over Christmas/summertime. Generally this time is spent in the home riding getting in touch with the feelings of constituents, raising money and/or preparing for the next election. Or it's spent at the cottage roasting hot dogs. I guess that all depends on how safe your seat is.

At any rate, I do hope that they extend this session and pass the same-sex bill. We are still discussing whether to add our names to the NB suit but I want to see if the bill passes first. Because if it passes, the expense of extending the suit to include new parties can be saved.

I'm definitely going to be keeping tabs on this one.

Here's your linky/excerpt from the Globe and Mail.

MPs to vote Wednesday on extending Parliament - By ALLISON DUNFIELD Wednesday, June 22, 2005 Updated at 1:07 PM EDT Globe and Mail Update

MPs will hold a vote Wednesday afternoon to decide whether to extend this session of Parliament.

It is expected to pass, because it has the support of most Liberals and NDP and likely the Bloc Québécois.

The Bloc has said they will only support the motion to extend the sitting if it states specifically that MPs will sit until the same-sex bill is passed.

The Liberals want to introduce a motion to prolong the sitting of the House of Commons because they want to push the same-sex marriage bill, C-38, and the budget bill, C-48, through the Commons. Only one final vote remains on C-48.

The Liberals say they are committed to sitting until the legislation goes through.

Liberal House Leader Tony Valeri met privately with his counterparts in the other parties earlier this week and provided them with a draft agenda that would have MPs sit for an extra three weeks to ensure passage of the bills.

The last day of this session of Parliament was supposed to be Thursday.

Although Wednesday afternoon's vote to extend the session is likely to pass, several Liberal MPs who are opposed to same-sex marriage may vote against it in protest against bill C-38.

At least one, Roger Galloway, a back-bench member of the government, has said outright that he would not vote for the extension. Others with similar views on C-38 will be absent from the House.
But other MPs say it's time to pass the legislation.
"I think we've been dealing with this issue for two years. We know in Ontario, same-sex marriage has been occurring for two years, that eight of the ten provinces already allow same-sex marriage, yet there's a disconnect. We do not have federal legislation. The Prime Minister has been clear this is an important piece of legislation and we've debated it thoroughly," said Ontario's Mark Holland in an interview with CBC Newsworld.

If the vote fails to pass, Mr. Valeri has said he would ask the Speaker to recall Parliament during an adjournment. The rules say the Speaker can reject a request if it is not in the public interest, and Mr. Valeri said it is not certain the Speaker would consider the same-sex bill important enough.

By the way. Those who still feel that same-sex marriage will spell the end of civilization as we know it might want to go outside. If they do so, they might just find that the sky is still there.

If the sky does fall in or the world ends in some fashion, it will most likely be due to our reckless stewardship over the environment rather than to our evolving social mores.

It's finally done... well.... almost

2005-06-21T16:12:00.000-03:00

We still have to build and install (and paint) one more gate... but the bulk of the work is done!

Follow the links below to see the pics...

Taken from back of house.

Taken from back of house at slightly different angle - you can see the partially
finished shingling job on the garage in this one...

Taken at an angle looking back on the lump of rocks where the fire pit is going
to be when I finally get around to it....

Taken from one of the corners - this is the hunk of bushes that cyrus likes to hang out in...

DNS issues finally sorted

2005-06-21T10:59:00.000-03:00

I finally own www.thoughtsfromuphere.com and have configured it to forward to this blog...

Not that this means anything to you guys.... but it saves a bit of typing...

Working outside

2005-06-21T10:44:00.000-03:00

It has been sunny so far this week which means that I'm outside finishing up all that work that I wanted to finish up in May/June when it was raining non-stop....

This means that you might not be hearing from me as much this week... but then you never know.. the weather here can change at a moments notice...

The drums are starting to sound

2005-06-21T10:40:00.000-03:00

Looks like the word impeachment is being bandied around with some seriousness these days...

The source is a Canadian paper of course...

Launch drive to impeach Bush, activists urge - By PAUL KORING Friday, June 17, 2005

WASHINGTON -- The emotive and charged word "impeachment" was voiced yesterday on Capitol Hill as a clutch of Democratic congressmen, backed by distraught mothers of soldiers slain in Iraq, put together a piece of theatre that could become the summer's political drama.

John Bonifaz, a self-styled constitutional lawyer and anti-war activist, suggested there are sufficient grounds to launch an inquiry into whether the President should be impeached for lying to Congress about the justification for the war.

"The United States House of Representatives has a constitutional duty to investigate fully and comprehensively the evidence revealed by the Downing Street minutes and other related evidence, and to determine whether there are sufficient grounds to impeach George W. Bush, the President of the United States," Mr. Bonifaz said.

Cindy Sheehan, mother of a soldier killed in Iraq and founder of the Gold Star Families for Peace, accused Mr. Bush of waging a "needless, senseless" war and "betraying" servicemen like her son, Casey, killed in action in Baghdad in April of 2004.
"I believed before our leaders invaded Iraq in March, 2003, and I am even more convinced now that this aggression on Iraq was based on a lie of historic proportions, and was blatantly unnecessary," Mrs. Sheehan said.

"The so-called Downing Street memo, dated 23 July, 2002, only confirms what I always suspected: The leadership of this country rushed us into an illegal invasion of another sovereign country on prefabricated and cherry-picked intelligence."

The memo, written by an aide to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, summarizes the view of a senior British intelligence officer who just returned from Washington. "The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," the memo says. The document is regarded by some as the "smoking gun" that proves the Bush administration bent the facts to justify the war.

Both Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush have flatly denied that accusation, and rejected that interpretation of the memo.

So far, neither the memo, nor the anti-war movement has generated a groundswell of opposition to Mr. Bush, although the latest polls show his approval levels sagging.

In yesterday's meeting, Michigan Democrat John Conyers presided over an elaborate and effective media event that focused attention on the still-unexplained discrepancies between Mr. Bush's public pronouncements in the months before the Iraq war and documents suggesting he had made up his mind to go to war long before.

Not since the impeachment blotted out all else in former president Bill Clinton's second term, has the term been bandied about on Capitol Hill.

Mr. Conyers's pseudo-hearing yesterday was a bit of a sham. The majority Republicans rejected his call for formal hearings into the Downing Street memo. Still, with more than a dozen of his fellow Democrats crammed into a small, flag-bedecked room, an effort was made to give the meeting the appearance of a hearing. In spite of the cameras and microphones and congressional niceties, it was, in fact, devoid of legality and had no powers of subpoena.

But the political stakes remain high for the President.

So far, no groundswell of opposition to the war, or doubts about the reasons that led to it, has seriously shaken his presidency. Even the stunning absence of any concealed weapons of mass destruction has failed to produce the kind of anti-war momentum that forced the United States to quit Vietnam more than 30 years ago.

Yesterday, the White House dismissed Mr. Conyers's "hearing" as a stunt of no importance. "This is simply rehashing old debates that have already been discussed," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

But just like the sex scandal that besmirched Mr. Clinton's presidency and resulted in his impeachment, and the Watergate break-in that doomed Mr. Nixon, some on Capitol Hill believe an obscure British memo could be the spark that ignites the kind of anti-Bush wildfire that the Democrats failed to produce in last year's election.

"It reminds me of the little blurb that appeared in the paper that said there was a break-in at the Watergate," said another mother of a slain U.S. soldier.

State of Same-Sex Marriage in New Brunswick

2005-06-17T16:59:00.000-03:00

I refer to my wife as my wife because we WERE considered to be "common law" spouses when we lived in Ontario.. but as soon as it's legal in NB, we are gonna do the deed and make it official...

Two things are getting in the way:

1) Martin has admitted that the next same-sex legislation vote is going to be put off to fall...

2) NB refuses to hand out licenses even though the courts have ruled that we can marry:

According to http://www.religioustolerance.org

By the end of 2005-APR, same-sex couples are free to marry in seven of ten provinces of Canada -- British Columbia, Ontario, Manitoba, Newfoundland/Labrador, Nova Scotia, Quebec, and Saskatchewan. Same-sex marriage is not permitted in two territories (Northwest Territory and Nunavut) Territory, and in three provinces (Alberta, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island).
Same-sex couples there are in a legal limbo. The courts have decided that the couples can marry, but the province appear to be refusing them marriage licenses until ordered by a court.

For more information go to: http://www.religioustolerance.org/hommarbnb.htm

Some more from that site:

2004-APR-26: Lawsuit filed: Four same-sex couples who lived in New Brunswick have sued the province for the right to marry or to have their existing marriages recognized. They are:
1) Art Vautour-Toole and Wayne Toole, who were married in Ottawa, ON and have unsuccessfully attempted several times to have their marriage recognized by the province;
2) Wayne Harrison and Ross Leavitt, who were also married in Ontario and were
unable to have their marriage recognized;
3) Catherine Sidney and Bridget McGale, an engaged couple;
and 4) Jim Crooks and Carl Trickey, a second engaged couple.
Their lawyer, Allison Menard, filed the suit at Moncton's Court of Queen's Bench. She is handling the cases free of charge.
It names both the provincial and federal attorneys general as defendants. No hearing date has been set. Ms. Menard said that "They're frustrated with the current system."
She told the Globe and Mail: "Because Parliament is not doing its job, these couples are being forced to make their challenge in court." One difficulty faced by the couples is that they are considered married in seven out of ten provinces, but are only considered friends or roommates by the province of New Brunswick. This causes confusions when they attempt to obtain passports or other identification, because their documents don't match. Menard said: "It places a greater burden on them."
She hopes that the conflict can be settled out of court. She said: "We'll see if there's a way for us to negotiate a resolution, or if we're going to have to go through a hearing." The chances of settling without a lawsuit proceeding seems remote as Premier Bernard Lord has said in the past that his government has no plans at the moment to allow same-sex marriage. He has said: "When the federal government decides to change the legislation on the definition of marriage, the government of New Brunswick will act accordingly and respect the new definition of marriage as decided by the Parliament of Canada."
Alex Munter, national spokesperson for Canadians for Equal Marriage -- a group which supports SSM -- said: "It is clear that this court action is a last resort taken by gay and lesbian couples in New Brunswick who want to join the other nearly 90 percent of Canadians who live in jurisdictions where same-sex couples have the right to marry, They don’t have that right in New Brunswick, even though they are Canadian citizens, taxpayers and contributing members of their community."
Referring to the current paralyzed state of the Canadian Parliament, Munter said: "The courts are being asked to uphold the Constitution because Stephen Harper, despite saying he wants Parliament to decide this issue, is not giving our Parliamentarians the chance to do so. This action is being taken more in sorrow than in anger.
Sorrow because the clear will of the majority of Members of Parliament is being thwarted. The political process has been hijacked by those who put Parliamentary games ahead of human rights." 4
The Telegraph-Journal reports that: "For his part, Mr. Vautour-Toole has been a regular visitor to the Moncton Service New Brunswick outlet where he's attempted to have his name legally changed since he and his partner married in Ontario in 2003.
'We basically used all the avenues we could without doing this,' Mr. Vautour-Toole said, referring to Monday's court filing. 'We were hoping we wouldn't have to use this. It's been very frustrating'." 5

For any Canadians who are interested...

Contact Information for New Brunswick Premier Bernard Lord
Email Address: Premier@gnb.ca
Mailing Address:
The Honourable Bernard Lord
Premier of New Brunswick
Box 6000
Fredericton, NB
Canada
E3B 5H1
Phone Number: (506) 453-2144
Fax Number: (506) 453-7407

Mr. Harper's info:
Hon. Stephen Harper
Political Affiliation: Conservative Caucus
Constituency: Calgary Southwest
Province: Alberta
Telephone: (613) 996-6740
Fax: (613) 947-0310
Email: Harper.S@parl.gc.ca

This information was freely obtained on public websites.

For my part, I'm going to have a discussion with my wife about possibly adding our names to the suit. It will have implications for her at work so it definitely needs to be discussed first... but boy am I ever leaning that way...

I promised you more on the Basement Hearings

2005-06-17T13:38:00.000-03:00

While I'm gathering links, here's one for you to look at:

The Impeachability of the Bush Administration

How about this.. you can watch the recording of the meetings yourself on CSPAN.

Arar Inquiry lights a fire under Canada's Ambassador to Syria

2005-06-17T12:20:00.000-03:00

I'm very pleased to see that this inquiry is still making the news. Every report that is published is additional vindication to Arar's family. The publication ban is keeping most of the details out of the press but when these gems hit the airwaves I do appreciate them.

Here's today's story on the issue:

Sharp rebuke for ambassador over Arar comments Last Updated Fri, 17 Jun 2005 09:31:35 EDT CBC News

There were sharp words Thursday from one former ambassador to another. Former Canadian ambassador to the UN Paul Heinbecker berated his colleague Franco Pillarella for comments made at the Maher Arar inquiry.
Pillarella, who was Canada's representative in Damascus during Arar's detention, told the inquiry he had no indication of Arar's torture or even of serious human rights abuses in Syria.
Franco Pillarella, Canada's former ambassador to Syria.
Heinbecker said those comments have tainted the reputation of the entire foreign diplomatic service and he wants the government to take action.
Arar, a Canadian citizen, was deported in September 2002 by U.S. authorities after they arrested him in New York as he was flying home to Canada. The Ottawa engineer spent almost a year in prison and says he was repeatedly tortured.
For years, human rights abuses in Syria have been well documented, widely discussed and publicly debated. But Pillarella testified earlier this week that he was not aware of any human rights violations during his tenure.
"I did not have any indication that there were serious human rights abuses committed, that I could verify," he told the Arar inquiry.
Pillarella, who is also the former head of the Department of Foreign Affairs human rights division, said there was no evidence that Maher Arar had been tortured.
"Yes, there is an indication that there are concerns he might be aggressively questioned. Why should I jump to the conclusion that that means torture?"
Heinbecker spent 40 years in the Department of Foreign Affairs. He says everybody knows Syria has a bad human rights record and for Pillarella to say otherwise, casts a pall over the entire foreign service.
"I think it puts the Department of Foreign Affairs and the foreign service in a bad light," he said.
Heinbecker says the Arar inquiry is getting to the bottom of what can happen when there is a communications breakdown between the intelligence services and the embassy. He says Pillarella's comments make that breakdown even worse.
He says it is the ambassador's job to know the situation in-country and act accordingly.
"He cannot be contradicted by anyone else with a 'wink-wink nudge-nudge.' We've got national security interests here the ambassador can't tell you about so you go ahead and do whatever you've got to do. I'm not saying that happened here, in fact I'm taking people's word that it didn't happen."
But Heinbecker says the onus is now on the government to find a new way of keeping an eye on government officials and agents working abroad to make sure something like this never happens again. He's proposing an official oversight body for both the intelligence and consular communities.
"In my own judgment I would like to see somebody given a responsibility to look into what happened and propose some safeguards to make sure it doesn't happen again."
Pillarella is now the Canadian ambassador to Romania, Bulgaria and Cyprus.
Heinbecker says after his comments this week, it's natural that people will worry what may happen if they need consular assistance in those countries.

Live 8 Comes to Toronto

2005-06-17T12:13:00.000-03:00

First the Stones come to Moncton and now this! I don't know how my heart can handle it!

:P

Live 8 gig in Toronto July 2 - Fri, June 17, 2005 By AP and CP (reported in the Winnipeg Sun)

DUBLIN, Ireland -- There will be a Live 8 concert in Toronto on July 2, in part to pressure the Canadian government to increase aid to Africa, organizer Bob Geldof confirmed yesterday.
He also announced that concerts in Tokyo and Johannesburg will take place the same day, joining the five others dedicated to raising awareness of poverty.
The gigs in Toronto and Tokyo were chosen in part to pressure the Canadian and Japanese governments to give aid to Africa, Geldof said.
"Three weeks ago Europe agreed, unbelievably, to double aid, throwing the ball back to the Yanks, the Japanese and the Canadians," the musician said in a speech at an event marking the 150th anniversary of University College Dublin.
In Ottawa, Prime Minister Paul Martin said Canada has taken the lead on the forgiveness of Third World debt, primarily in Africa.
"We did it when I was the finance minister, Mr. (Ralph) Goodale at the last G-7 finance ministers meeting was one of the leaders in the debt forgiveness package that was brought down and which I think all Canadians can feel very, very proud of," he said.
"If you take a look at what we have done in terms of foreign aid, we have doubled it, going out in terms of our projections we're increasing it by 8% a year. And the bulk of this money is in fact going to Africa."
Details for the Toronto show were still being hammered out yesterday.
Organizers said they won't be ready to release the information until next Tuesday.
"Many, many elements of the concert are being finalized as we speak. We anticipate on Tuesday we will be able to announce venue, ticketing and the lineup," said Katherine Holmes, a spokeswoman for Canadian Live 8.
The logistics of the show are being organized by several people, including former Sony Music Canada president Denise Donlon. But the main reins are being handled by concert magnate Michael Cohl, a major player behind the 2003 SARS benefit concert in Toronto.
Cohl's longstanding relationship with the Rolling Stones, who are spending the summer in Toronto practising for a fall tour he's organized, has prompted speculation they will be part of the show.

I personally think that this has more to do with the fact that Toronto is the Stone's home away from home than it has to do with pressure on a government that has led the way toward debt forgiveness in the third world, but hey - it's a good cause isn't it?

I remember when Live Aid aired. I was working retail back then and watched most of it on a tee vee in a shop in the mall in which I worked.

I'm very happy to be seeing this again. It's about bloody time!

ARGH!!! Just pass the bill already!!!

2005-06-17T12:01:00.000-03:00

To say that I'm annoyed by the antics in Parliament with respect to the same-sex legislation would be to put it mildly... I don't know who I'm more annoyed with - the Tories for being so blatant in their bigotry or Martin for playing games.

Same-sex bill will be put off until the fall, PM indicates - 'How long it takes us to get it through is really up to Mr. Harper,' Martin says - By BILL CURRY AND CAMPBELL CLARK
Friday, June 17, 2005 Page A4

OTTAWA -- Prime Minister Paul Martin is indicating that the same-sex-marriage bill will be put off until the fall and says Conservative Leader Stephen Harper is to blame for the delay.
Mr. Martin and his senior ministers would not commit yesterday to keeping MPs in their seats until C-38, the same-sex bill, is passed.
"It very much is a priority," Mr. Martin said as he emerged from a cabinet meeting. "How long it takes us to get it through is really up to Mr. Harper. . . . Mr. Harper has said the judiciary should not decide these things, it should be Parliament. Well, he has his chance. And let Parliament decide."
Mr. Harper has vowed that his party will drag out the debate until the House rises on June 23, pushing the vote to the fall.

When asked about his government's previous pledges to pass the bill before the summer recess, Mr. Martin said there are no guarantees in a minority Parliament.
The bill emerged from committee yesterday with new wording aimed at alleviating concerns from religious groups, and a further government amendment is on the way aimed at protecting the charitable status of churches.
The controversy over same-sex marriage has flared up once again in what are supposed to be the final days of the spring session, with the leadership of both sides digging in their heels even as many MPs are eager for the summer recess.
Mr. Harper dismissed the Prime Minister's taunts, saying it is the opposition's job to oppose items with which it disagrees.
"I'd be perfectly happy to take the credit for C-38 not passing. It's a bad piece of legislation," he said. "We believe we should be finding a great Canadian compromise where we can recognize a range of rights and benefits and preserve the traditional definition of marriage."
Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe and NDP Leader Jack Layton both said Mr. Martin is to blame for the continuing delay over C-38 and both said they would agree to sit until the legislation is approved.
"That Mr. Martin would say it's up to Stephen Harper whether or not human rights are finally, after so many years, extended to lesbians and gays . . . talk about an abdication of leadership," Mr. Layton said. "That means that all of his song and dance and expensive advertisements that he ran in the election meant nothing."
Federal Justice Minister Irwin Cotler said yesterday that the latest amendments should address the concerns of religious groups, but added that he is not able to do anything to protect justices of the peace who refuse to perform same-sex marriages
because justices of the peace are a provincial matter.
Although the amendments appear to have appeased the harshest critics in the Liberal caucus, Conservative justice critic Vic Toews blistered the committee for rejecting more than a dozen of his party's amendments.
The Conservatives suggested this week that they had a deal with the Liberals to allow the Liberal-NDP budget bill, C-48, to pass in exchange for a pledge that the gay-marriage bill be put off until fall.
But Tory House Leader Jay Hill said that negotiations fell apart because he refused a Liberal demand that the same-sex bill advance to the final stage in the House. The government's main budget bill, C-43, easily passed a final Commons vote yesterday afternoon and is now before the Senate.
Liberal backbencher Tom Wappel, who opposes same-sex marriage, said that he and other MPs are planning to put forward additional amendments in the full Commons next week, when the bill goes through what is called "report stage" before its final
vote.
"Any amendment is better than no amendment," he said. But he said the amendments passed at the committee stage do not make him feel better about the bill.
"No, because the battle is only beginning to be joined and the other side will do everything it can to ensure that an opinion that views homosexuality as anything but normal is bigotry. And they will do anything they can to undermine whatever amendments are put forward."

News Flash. To infer that homosexuality is something other than "normal" is bigotry. I don't mind calling a spade a spade. Do you?

2005-06-16T19:26:00.000-03:00

Letter to Pres Bush Concerning the "Downing Street Minutes"
The Honorable
George W. Bush
President of the United States of America
1600 Pennsylvania Ave,
N.W.Washington, D.C. 20005
Dear Mr. President:
We the undersigned write because of our concern regarding recent disclosures of a Downing Street Memo in the London Times, comprising the minutes of a meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers. These minutes indicate that the United States and Great Britain agreed, by the summer of 2002, to attack Iraq, well before the invasion and before you even sought Congressional authority to engage in military action, and that U.S. officials were deliberately manipulating intelligence to justify the war.
Among other things, the British government document quotes a high-ranking British official as stating that by July, 2002, Bush had made up his mind to take military action. Yet, a month later, you stated you were still willing to "look at all options" and that there was "no timetable" for war. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, flatly stated that "[t]he president has made no such determination that we should go to war with Iraq."
In addition, the origins of the false contention that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction remain a serious and lingering question about the lead up to the war. There is an ongoing debate about whether this was the result of a "massive intelligence failure," in other words a mistake, or the result of intentional and deliberate manipulation of intelligence to justify the case for war. The memo appears to resolve that debate as well, quoting the head of British intelligence as indicating that in the United States "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
As a result of these concerns, we would ask that you respond to the following questions:
1)Do you or anyone in your administration dispute the accuracy of the leaked document?
2) Were arrangements being made, including the recruitment of allies, before you sought Congressional authorization to go to war? Did you or anyone in your administration obtain Britain's commitment to invade prior to this time?
3) Was there an effort to create an ultimatum about weapons inspectors in order to help with the justification for the war as the minutes indicate?
4) At what point in time did you and Prime Minister Blair first agree it was necessary to invade Iraq?
5) Was there a coordinated effort with the U.S. intelligence community and/or British officials to "fix" the intelligence and facts around the policy as the leaked document states?
These are the same questions 89 Members of Congress, led by Rep. John Conyers, Jr., submitted to you on May 5, 2005. As citizens and taxpayers, we believe it is imperative that our people be able to trust our government and our commander in chief when you make representations and statements regarding our nation engaging in war. As a result, we would ask that you publicly respond to these questions as promptly as possible.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.
Sincerely,

Signed by 500,000+ citizens and 120 congresspeople as at the time of posting... This is being delivered to Dumya following the "basement hearings" as I post this.

More to come on the basement hearings tomorrow, where, for the first time, I've heard a congressperson mention the words "treason" and "Bush administration" in the same context... These are heady times... watch for moderate republicans to start jumping ship - including the "Freedom Fries" guy (Walter Jones) who has now officially requested from the Bush Administration a time table of extraction from Iraq.

For details, please see John Conyer's site.

EU Budget Crisis

2005-06-16T12:26:00.000-03:00

Budget crisis threatens EU - Basic principles of economic union at risk - By DOUG SAUNDERS
Thursday, June 16, 2005 - Updated at 4:49 AM EDT From Thursday's Globe and Mail

London — Days after the proposed European Union constitution was shattered by French and Dutch voters, two other pillars of Europe's economic union are teetering this week on the edge of collapse.
As leaders of all 25 EU member states gather in Brussels today for a two-day summit, they appear unable to come close to any agreement on a long-term budget for the federation. The most basic questions of the economic union are falling into deep and fundamental debate, with little agreement over any aspect of the EU's future direction or the way out of its current economic malaise.
At the same time, yesterday saw new challenges to the viability and independence of another EU institution, the European Central Bank.
With ECB leaders and leading central bankers wary of making cuts to the long-standing European prime interest rate of 2.0 per cent, the bank has come under severe pressure from countries facing fiscal and productivity crises, including Germany and France, to cut rates to stimulate the economy.
It now appears that this political pressure could pose a direct threat to the autonomy of the central bank.
x A growing number of commentators suggest the euro currency itself could become a victim of the deep budgetary and economic discrepancies between member nations. Yesterday, Jean-Claude Juncker, the Prime Minister of Luxembourg who holds the rotating EU presidency until the end of the month, suggested strongly that the bank's monetary policy might come under direct political control. (More at link)

It is a shame that this is happening now. At a time when Bush's fiscal policy would make a drunken sailor proud, it would have been nice to be able to put money somewhere safe. I wonder where Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are going to invest their money now that the Euro is in so much trouble...

Osama who?

2005-06-16T12:20:00.000-03:00

Oh yeah! I remember him... he's the one that was actually responsible for the 9/11 bombings. Why is he still at large again? Oh yeah... because it suits BushCo's purposes to have him remain at large... or maybe it's because they are too incompetent to catch him... or maybe it's because he died of liver or kidney disease a couple years ago... will we ever know?

Anyway, here's your linky/excerpt from that most reliable news source, CNN:

U.S. diplomat: Bin Laden not in Afghanistan - Thursday, June 16, 2005 Posted: 1322 GMT (2122 HKT)

(CNN) -- The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan said Thursday that he does not believe Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar are in the central Asian country.
Zalmay Khalilzad's remarks came a day after a purported Taliban military commander told a Pakistani TV station that the two men were "alive and well."
"Mullah Omar is not in Afghanistan," Khalilzad said at a news conference in the Afghan capital, Kabul. "I don't believe that Osama is in Afghanistan."
The U.S. diplomat did not say where he thought either of the two might be.
American officials have said they believe the men are somewhere in the mountains that line the Afghan-Pakistan border.
The Taliban ruled much of Afghanistan from the mid-1990s until an American-led
coalition drove the group from power in November 2001 in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in the United States.
Speaking on camera Wednesday with Pakistan's private television station GEO, Mullah Akhtar Usmani, a self-proclaimed senior Taliban commander, said Omar was in good health.
"The rumors of his illness have been spread by our enemies," Usmani said.
Usmani, who said he's a member of the Taliban leadership council, declined to say if Omar takes part in any of that group's meetings.
"I would not like to reveal the fact whether we meet or not, but what I can tell you is that I am still getting instructions from him," he said.
As for al Qaeda leader bin Laden, Usmani said he also was alive and well.
"Yes, he is absolutely fine, but I would not tell you where he is," he said. (More at link)

Some Disgusting Politics - playing with lives

2005-06-16T12:08:00.000-03:00

Trading money for rights. That seems reasonable if you are a tory these days. No wonder Belinda left the party. Thankfully this kind offer was rejected by the Liberals.

Not to be fussy, but I would like to be able to marry my long-time spouse at some point this year...

Here's the good news about the goings-on described below: The Tories are again showing their true colours by flip-flopping on the budget issue yet again in order to bring Canada back into the 20th century... They have no fiscal policy. They have a moral policy and their morals are construed as narrowly as those in the bible belt in the United States. Their morals do not include human decency nor do they bely any sort of understanding of the concept of consent between two adults.

Tories offer budget bill passage for same-sex marriage delay - Last Updated Thu, 16 Jun 2005 08:39:16 EDT CBC News

The federal Liberals have rejected an offer by the Conservatives to allow the passage of a $4.6-billion budget bill if the government delays the same-sex marriage legislation.
The Tories said in exchange for the delay, they wouldn't filibuster Bill C-48, the budget amendment negotiated between the Liberals and the NDP.
A filibuster could force the House of Commons to sit into the summer, past the scheduled end of its current session next Thursday.
Scott Reid, a spokesman for the Prime Minister's Office (the one that Bush thinks is cute) , told the Canadian Press that the government will not accept the Tories' proposal.
"There is no deal and there will be no deal between the government and the Conservatives to delay the civil marriage legislation until the fall. Period," he said. Reid said that he can't guarantee that same-sex marriage legislation would pass during this session.
"But we can guarantee that we will play no part in compromising one bill for another," he said.
Conservative House leader Jay Hill said there had been some negotiations. "If we were to get a delay of [the marriage bill] until the fall and perhaps some other concession, we'd be happy."
Hill said a primary concern of the Tories was getting out of the spring session with the same-sex marriage bill "not progressing any further."
"If we can get that, it'll be worth our while to see [the budget bill] go," he said, adding that the budget bill will eventually pass anyway.

Another great DSM Editorial - this time about CNN

2005-06-14T20:10:00.000-03:00

Downing Street Memo: CNN Turns Facts Into Fiction - Village Voice June 14 2005

Help! Isn't it bad enough that the U.S. press has bungled the story of the Downing Street Memo? I mean, the estimable Walter Pincus of the Washington Post is just now digging into the details of the juicy story that Michael Smith of the Times of London broke on the weekend of May 1.
But this evening, here's CNN Headline News saying that the Downing Street Memo "suggests that the Bush administration saw the Iraq war as inevitable …"
Jesus wept.
Yeah, like Hitler saying that his invasion of Poland was inevitable.
Whoever did the rip-and-read at CNN stopped reading the memo at least a sentence too soon.
Here's the relevant passage from the Downing Street Memo:
" … Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. … "
It was the "military action" that "was now seen as inevitable." Who did this "seeing"? Not the Bush administration.
Memo to CNN reader of Downing Street Memo: The sentence following is "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD."
Get it? The point of the Downing Street Memo is not that the Bush regime "saw the war as inevitable." The point is that it wanted the war and had decided that military action was going to happen—and then figure out the justification.
Last January, after Jon Klein took over CNN's U.S. operations, he vowed that CNN would do a lot more"storytelling."
That seems to be working out.

The next time you flip on CNN looking for "real news", keep this editorial in mind...

Not only can we marry....

2005-06-14T19:55:00.000-03:00

But gays and lesbians can even get married IN THE MILITARY..

Gee... it would be nice if I could get married in New Brunswick but today is about good news.

Military performs first gay wedding - Last updated Jun 14 2005 08:40 AM ADTCBC News

HALIFAX – Two men were married at the chapel on the Greenwood base in May, in what's being called the military's first gay wedding.
Lt.-Cmdr. David Greenwood, the base's head chaplain, said a sergeant and a warrant officer were married May 3 in front of about 45 guests.
"This couple had been waiting a very long, long time," said Greenwood, declining to give their names because he hadn't asked for permission.
As an Anglican, Greenwood could not perform the marriage. He made the arrangements for the service and a United Church minister from nearby Wolfville performed the vows.
"I looked after the co-ordination in accordance with our military policy of receiving the couple with dignity and respect," said Greenwood.
"I was there to preach and welcome the community on behalf of the base chaplaincy."
Greenwood said the ceremony was relaxed and low key, and there was no dry eye in sight when the couple signed the marriage documents.
Last September, the Nova Scotia Supreme Court ruled that banning same-sex marriages is unconstitutional, effectively changing the definition of marriage in the province to "the lawful union of two persons to the exclusion of all others."
The military has said it's willing to host gay weddings in jurisdictions where it's legal.
Greenwood said he has been told that a second same-sex marriage may be in the works at CFB Valcartier later in the year.

Video context for DSM

2005-06-14T19:50:00.000-03:00

Please go here and watch the video... It requires Real Player which you can access for free if you follow the link.

Source: http://www.hijackingcatastrophe.org

DSM on NBC

2005-06-14T11:25:00.000-03:00

You heard it here last! The blood is officially in the water and the sharks are starting to circle. The question remains - what will the republicans do? Wait for the democrats to take the house/senate in 2006 and call for impeachment? Or will they quietly shuffle Dumya and his handler off to the side for health reasons (we already know Cheney has a bad heart and there are rumours regarding Bush's ticker as well)...

Or will the media do Wacko Jacko to death so that we don't pay attention to this? The best thing that Wacko Jacko can do for his country is to take himself quickly and quietly to Switzerland so that the media will have nothing to report on except maybe the real news...

These are definitely becoming interesting times...

More British memos on pre-Iraq war concerns - Officials deny intelligence that facts were fixed to invade Iraq - By Andrea Mitchell - Correspondent NBC News Updated: 6:34 p.m. ET June

WASHINGTON — It started during British Prime Minister Tony Blair's re-election campaign last month, when details leaked about a top-secret memo, written in July 2002 — eight months before the Iraq war. In the memo, British officials just back from Washington reported that prewar "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" to invade Iraq.
Just last week, President Bush and Blair vigorously denied that war was inevitable. “No, the facts were not being fixed, in any shape or form at all,” said Blair at a White House news conference with the president on June 7.
But now, war critics have come up with seven more memos, verified by NBC News.
One, also from July 2002, says U.S. military planners had given "little thought" to postwar Iraq.
“The memos are startlingly clear that the British saw that there was inadequate planning, little planning for the aftermath,” says Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
And there's more. To prepare Blair for a meeting at the president's ranch in April 2002, a year before the war, four other British memos raised more questions.
After a dinner with President Bush’s then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Blair's former national security adviser David Manning wondered, “What happens on the morning after” the war?
In yet another 2002 memo, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw asked, “What will this action achieve? Can (there) be any certainty that the replacement regime will be better? Iraq has had no history of democracy.”
Monday, Rice, now U.S. secretary of state, told Chris Matthews from MSNBC-TV's “Hardball,” “I would never claim that the exact nature of this insurgency was understood at the time that we went to war.”
Vice President Dick Cheney also told a National Press Club luncheon Monday, “Any suggestion that we did not exhaust all alternatives before we got to that point, I think, is inaccurate.”
In fact, current and former diplomats tell NBC News they understood from the beginning the Bush policy to be that Saddam had to be removed — one way or the other. The only question was when and how.
© 2005 MSNBC Interactive

Rape is no longer a crime

2005-06-13T20:21:00.000-03:00

Thoughts From Up Here
You can physically rape the public, or you can politically rape them. It doesn't seem to matter anymore. It doesn't seem to be a serious crime. Jacko and Dumbya can stick it wherever they want, and we are forced to take hush money, lies, or threats. And if you don't accept these terms? Well that is when the bomb drops (literally and metaphorically)

DSM - more links

2005-06-13T19:24:00.000-03:00

You know about the Downing Street Memo right?

Of course you do....

Ok - then go here, here, and most especially here. The last link is to the Path of War Timeline on therawstory. It goes back to 1998 and the forming of PNAC and culminates in the invasion in March 2003.

If you do any of the links, do the last one..

Here it is again.

Happy reading!

The Verdict and Bush

2005-06-13T17:44:00.000-03:00

In case you haven't heard, the infamous Michael Jackson has been found innocent on all charges. This is the time when we learn that more important things than say the Downing St. Memo is the actions of some perverted freak that had nothing better to do than get some lawsuits against him. Now this is where we learn that Bush has done the same thing, even though there is evidence of his foreplanning (the DSM) no one seems to care. More proof that American politics is way too messed up to try and fix.

Last time I checked with our Canadian problems (the Liberal money scandal) we at least probe the problem and see if there is more to it, it is even beginning to look as if one of our former PMs may be getting criminal charges. It may not be much but it is certainly a nice start. The amazing thing is that even if there was an election we still put faith in our stealing government. Now our present PM was the finance minister at the time. Doesn't that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?

reh

Civil Liberties in a time of Total War

2005-06-13T13:38:00.000-03:00

Until I read The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague In History by John M. Barry I had no idea with respect to President Wilson's treatment of civil liberties once the United States finally entered into WWI. While shocking and a bit surprising to me, this administration's actions should be familiar to most americans as it is an important era in american history.

I bring this up because it is relevant today. My source for the following excerpt is americanpresident.org.

Civil Liberties during the War Years
A minority of Americans bitterly opposed U.S. entry into World War I. Even such notables as the Speaker of the House and the president of Columbia University were skeptical about intervening beforehand, but most Americans supported Wilson's decision. Some German Americans and Irish Americans, however, led antiwar rallies and joined with the American Socialist Party in denouncing the war. Socialists greatly increased their share of the vote in several cities in 1917, winning 22 percent of the vote in New York City and 34 percent in Chicago.
To mobilize public opinion in support of the war, Wilson created the Committee on Public Information headed by George Creel, a muckraking journalist. Creel launched a campaign to sell the war to the American people by sponsoring 150,000 lecturers, writers, artists, actors, and scholars to champion the cause. His "Four-Minute-Men," meaning that they were prepared to make a four-minute speech anytime and anywhere a crowd gathered, made 755,190 speeches in theaters, lecture halls, churches, and social clubs and on street corners all over the nation. In the resulting patriotic fervor, opponents to the war were painted as slackers and even traitors. "Americanization" drives pressured immigrants to abandon their native cultures. Some states prohibited the use of foreign languages in public. New York State required voters to demonstrate literacy in English. Libraries publicly burned German books. Some communities banned playing the music of Bach and Beethoven, and schools dropped German courses from their curriculum. Sauerkraut became "liberty cabbage," and German measles was renamed "liberty measles." Some Americans with German names were beaten in the streets and even lynched. To avoid such violence, others anglicized their names.
Wilson sponsored the Espionage and Sedition Acts, prohibiting interference with the draft and outlawing criticism of the government, the armed forces, or the war effort. Violators were imprisoned or fined. Some 1,500 people were arrested for violating these laws, including Eugene V. Debs, leader of the Socialist Party. The Post Office was empowered to censor the mail, and over 400 periodicals were deprived of mailing privileges for greater or lesser periods of time. The Supreme Court upheld the Espionage and Sedition Acts as constitutional. Leaders and members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), known as "Wobblies," were especially singled out for attack. In one incident, Justice Department agents raided IWW offices nationwide, arresting union leaders who were sentenced to jail terms of up to twenty-five years. The IWW never recovered from this persecution.

Freedom Fries anyone? Yum!

What keeps Canadians up at night

2005-06-13T13:12:00.000-03:00

Bush. Yes. It's official. Canadians see BushCo as a threat to their national security...

This one is a keeper:

Canadians see Bush, bin Laden as national security threats - poll Chris Wattie CanWest News Service Monday, June 13, 2005 - From the StarPhoenix

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."
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.
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.
John Thompson, the director of the MacKenzie Institute think-tank on security issues, said Canadians have always had mixed feelings about the U.S.
"There's a huge split in the Canadian public mind, between people who are worried about terrorism and people who think that the U.S. are the real terrorists," he said. "There are still a lot of people who are sticking to the old ideal of fuzzy internationalism or soft power . . . yet there are also a lot of people who are not relaxed yet after Sept. 11th."
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.
Thompson said people are correct to be skeptical about the Canadian Forces' ability to respond to a terrorist attack on Canada. "We could barely handle a major domestic incident like the ice storm today, forget about a terrorist attack," he said.
"There are major problems and that's becoming clear to the Canadian public."
But the poll found a great degree of public affection for their armed forces and overwhelming support for more funding and better equipment for the troops, even if it means higher taxes or less spending in other areas.
Just over three quarters of those surveyed said the Canadian Forces was underfunded, and 44 per cent believed that a decade of government cuts to the defence budget had hurt Canada's international reputation while 43 per cent thought the cuts have put the safety of soldiers at risk.
(National Post) © The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2005

The fact that SARS is off of the radar is troubling for me because we are due for a major epidemic... but I do feel heartened by the overwhelming support we seem to be showing for our folks in uniform. It's a nasty job that someone has to do and we should make sure that they can do it properly and as safely as possible.

Debt Relief for the Third World

2005-06-13T12:43:00.000-03:00

Normally I would be absolutely thrilled about a story like this because the crushing debt that Third World countries stuggle under is the primary roadblock to progress. Debt relief has been a crusade of Canada's and Bono's for quite some time... But the cynical side of me can't help but wonder about what strings are attached. Let's hope that I'm wrong and this really is a sign that the First World is committed to doing something tangible to help create some sort of worldwide economic balance...

At any rate, here's your linky/excerpt:

G8 Scrap Debt of Poorest Nations By: Deutsche Welle Published: Jun 13, 2005 at 07:35 from Yubanet.com

The finance ministers of the world's eight wealthiest nations agreed Saturday on a deal for immediate 100 percent multilateral debt relief totaling $40 billion (33 billion euros) for 18 of the world's poorest countries.
"I can confirm that the G8 finance ministers have agreed a 100 percent debt cancellation for the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC)," British Finance Minister Gordon Brown said at the end of a two-day meeting in London.
The G8, comprising Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States, agreed to immediately write off $40 billion of debt owed by 18 countries to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the African Development Bank.
The 18 nations include Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guyana, Honduras, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
They are the first to qualify for eligibility for a debt relief joint initiative backed by the three financial institutions. The HIPC initiative offers debt relief to the world's most impoverished nations that agree to undertake economic reform.
More can qualify
Nine further countries would become eligible for 100 percent debt relief for an additional $11 billion over the next 12 to 18 months, Brown said.
Thereafter 11 nations would receive similar debt cancellation of $4 billion, bringing the total amount of debt relief to $55 billion."We are conscious of the abject poverty, of the relentless and unyielding poverty that so many countries and individuals face," Brown said. "We have been driven forward by the urgent need to act."
Former South African President Nelson Mandela had said the need for a deal was "urgent" in a letter sent to the G8 members.
"I hope you will do everything within your power to ensure your meetings... will finally conclude in a truly historic agreement for 100 percent debt cancellation," he wrote. (More at Link)

How do you solve a problem like a Gitmo?

2005-06-13T12:36:00.000-03:00

Well it looks like the White House is not united on this one. Your linky/excerpt below is interesting to me not just because the fate of Gitmo is up in the air, but that there is public discussion of disagreement within the White House... I suspect that we will be seeing more of this as time passes...

White House split over prison's fate By Michael Gawenda- -Washington June 14, 2005 - from The Age.

Differences within the White House have increased over the future of the American prison at Guantanamo Bay, with Vice-President Dick Cheney saying there are no plans to shut it down.
"The important thing here to understand is that the people that are at Guantanamo are bad people," he said on the Fox cable television network.
Mr Cheney's support for keeping the prison open appears to contradict comments by President George Bush that the Administration is canvassing closing it and despite evidence that the prison is damaging America's reputation in the Muslim world and more revelations that inmates have been mistreated and abused.
Mr Cheney's support also indicates that there are differences at the most senior levels of the Administration over whether Guantanamo should be shut down. Mr Bush, in an interview on Fox last week, said that the Administration was "exploring all alternatives" to Guantanamo.
White House officials made it clear that Mr Bush had meant to convey his view that Guantanamo was proving to be a problem for the Administration and that if there was another way of handling the detainees, closing it might be the way to go.
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld contradicted Mr Bush, saying he knew of no discussion within the Administration about closing Guantanamo.
He did say, however, that if it was possible to send the detainees back to their home countries, with assurances that they would be kept in detention there, that would be the best outcome.
Observers believe that Mr Bush and senior military officers are increasingly concerned about the way Mr Rumsfeld has overseen and set the rules for interrogations and treatment of detainees for alleged terrorists. (More at link)

And where did I get this story? Australia! Ozzy Ozzy Ozzy! Oy Oy Oy!

Mad cow officially being talked about in U.S.

2005-06-13T12:24:00.000-03:00

Beef stocks slip on mad-cow news By William Spain, MarketWatchLast Update: 10:56 AM ET June 13, 2005

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- News that a cow previously found clean of bovine spongiform encephalopathy might have had it after all took a small bite out of beef-related stocks Monday.
On Friday, the Department of Agriculture said that a sample from a cow that had been cleared last year as free of BSE -- more popularly known as mad-cow disease -- generated a possible positive under more intensive testing.
More than 375,000 animals from a targeted cattle population have undergone a rapid BSE test since last June, and the USDA said three of them tested inconclusive and were subjected to additional tests.

Of those three, one "came back reactive," the USDA said.
Shares of Tyson Foods (TSN: news, chart, profile) , the world's largest meat company, lost one cent to $18.36 and rival Smithfield (SFD: news, chart, profile)slipped 12 cents to $27.94. On the restaurant side, hamburger giant McDonald's(MCD: news, chart, profile) fell 15 cents to $29.38 while Wendy's (WEN: news, chart, profile) gave up 1.6% to $47.15 and Outback Steakhouse (OSI: news, chart, profile) eased 17 cents to $44.42.
In a note to investors, Wachovia's Jonathan Feeney said the test result is "not as big of a deal as it looks."
Beef numbers are "at risk for Tyson and likely to stay bad for Smithfield.... This is a positive test that will be re-examined -- but as always with mad cow, perception is much more important than reality."
That perception could be a blow to the USDA's credibility, he added, and could hurt Tyson and Smithfield because it will put talks over the resumption of beef exports "likely on hold indefinitely."

I suppose that shoot, shovel and shut up is not going to fly anymore...

I think I get it now

2005-06-12T11:34:00.000-03:00

I just spent a week down in the US at a technical conference. I happened to be "working" the conference and I went 10 days solid without looking at the news. I had/have absolutely no idea what is going on in the world.

Yes, I have discovered how seductive a project can be. It keeps your focus until you forget that you really are part of a larger society after all..

I had a fabulous time and now am completely exhausted...

But I have also discovered something else. Maritimers are serious about summer. The winters are so long and dark that the merest hint of sun has us out there doing work around the house... just like I'm about to go out and do now...

I promise to get caught up and less discombobulated and posting regularly again very soon.

Thanks Jon for covering for me!

At TechEd in Orlando

2005-06-04T15:01:00.000-03:00

I'm at TechEd in Orlando. I'm swamped with work and unable to blog...

Once things die down, you'll be hearing from me.

:)

Some Confusion on My Part

2005-06-01T20:00:00.000-03:00

Thoughts From Up Here

I have to confess to some confusion over the downing street memo.

Does anyone remember what happened with Clinton? He lied to the nation about having sex with someone he wasn't married to? He almost got impeached over it? Yeah we all remember him. He committed an immoral act and was almost impeached for it.

Now, I believe that Bush has done the exact same thing to the American nation. He has lied to the people he is supposed to serve and protect. He lied about justifying an unjustifiable war.

What is the difference? Clinton hurt one woman, Bush killed thousands. Anyone who can lie about a war and play this sick little game with human lives should be locked away. What is scary is that man is leading the world's super power. I'm sorry but that just makes me nervous as I cower underneath my chair waiting for the world to end. So many peoples' lives lay in the hand of a immoral moron.

Maybe it's just me. Maybe Bush really didn't do all that bad, but I still don't get it. The concept shouldn't be all that hard- DON'T SEND YOUR PEOPLE TO DIE ON FALSIFIED INFORMATION! COMMON SENSE PEOPLE!

Thank you for your time, I'll just go back under my chair now....

What more folks should be doing these days

2005-06-01T12:53:00.000-03:00

Taking 'Downing' to the Street

Last week, concerned citizens in Tampa, Florida staged a rally in front of the local ClearChannel offices to demand media coverage of the Downing Street Memo story. And they took some pictures. (follow link for pictures)
And they're just getting started. The organizers have informed us that they will be holding another demonstration:
Thurs, June 2 at 4:30 p.m. -
Fox Channel 13
3213 W Kennedy Blvd
Tampa, FL 33609
A second demonstration back at ClearChannel is also in the works. If you live in the Tampa area, make yourself a sign and join the fun. (They look like they're having a good time, don't they?)

This was sent to me by a friend of mine who was at the protest. More of this needs to happen. Help flush out those numbers! Raise a stink!

Rhetoric heats up on North Korea

2005-06-01T11:08:00.000-03:00

Is there such a thing as a "tactical" nuclear weapon? In my mind, they all seem like pretty blunt instruments to me... but the term "tactical" nuke is being bandied around as an actual option these days.

There have been quite a few signs since the re-selection and inauguration including the appointments of Rice, Gonzales and Bolton to name a couple and they all point to the same place - some sort of aggression by the U.S. on some other state this summer.

It seems ironic that we are talking about this again given the contents of the Downing Street Memo. You'd think that a government that was exposed as one which would falsify information in order to hoodwink the world into a conflict would be soft pedalling the military options these days...

Anyway, here's your linky/excerpt from the International Herald Tribune/Asia-Pacific edition.

Bush calls military a N. Korea option - By Choe Sang-Hun International Herald Tribune THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 2005

SEOUL President George W. Bush's remark that a resolution to the North Korea nuclear arms dispute would be "either diplomacy or military" marks a shift in tone from his previous statements that played down the military option. In numerous other pronouncements, Bush had unequivocally ruled out a U.S. invasion of the North, without commenting on the possibility of a military air strike.

"It's either diplomacy or military, and I am for the diplomatic approach," Bush said Tuesday in Washington. "And so for those who say we ought to be using our military to solve the problem, I would say that while all options are on the table, we've got a ways to go to solve this diplomatically."

Late in his first administration, Bush said: "We have no intention of invading North Korea." The president repeated that phrase verbatim on subsequent occasions.

His remarks Tuesday, while elliptical, appeared to make the point that not all military options had been ruled out. They came amid increasing speculation among Korea analysts that the United States may be preparing to adopt a tougher - and possibly aggressive - approach to the North. At the very least, they are likely to increase the uncertainty North Korea harbors as to Washington's intentions.

Underscoring this point, South Korea's top diplomat warned Wednesday that diplomacy will not work unless the United States and North Korea remove mutual distrust.

While Bush said he still wanted to give diplomacy a chance, Washington's refusal to rule out the military option publicly was the latest sign that it has no intention of easing its uncompromising stance on North Korea.

Against North Korea's nuclear brinkmanship, the Bush administration has adopted a policy of playing down the North's threats, publicly criticizing its leader, Kim Jong Il, and gradually tightening an economic noose around the impoverished country - while dangling an unconditional return to disarmament talks as the only option for the North. That policy was further confirmed Tuesday when the State Department disclosed that the United States and its allies intercepted two shipments of materials destined for North Korea's nuclear and chemical weapons programs in the past nine months.

The disclosure followed a series of U.S. initiatives designed to further isolate the country. Washington has been removing officials supporting negotiation with the North from the administration, cutting off contacts with North Korea and blocking its main source of cash: shipments of illicit drugs, counterfeit dollars, missiles and possibly nuclear materials.

Meanwhile, North Korea poured cold water over South Korea's efforts to build reconciliation. In an abrupt notice that embarrassed Seoul on Wednesday, it slashed by two-thirds the number of South Koreans allowed to visit Pyongyang to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the historic inter-Korean summit on June 15, 2000.

As an excuse, the North cited recent American criticism of its leadership and the Pentagon's decision to send 15 Nighthawk stealth fighter jets to South Korea.

The hard-line stances between the United States and North Korea raised doubts over the prospect of diplomacy producing early results despite Bush's rhetoric.

"Despite efforts to clear distrust between the United States and North Korea, we are sorry that the situation is not evolving in a favorable way," Foreign Minister Ban Ki Moon of South Korea said Friday.

The State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Tuesday that an international interdiction campaign by the United States and its allies aimed at stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction were zeroing in on North Korea and Iran.

"Bilateral cooperation with several governments prevented North Korea from receiving materials used in making chemical weapons, and cooperation with another country blocked the transfer to North Korea of a material useful in its nuclear programs," Boucher said.

Washington has suspected North Korea of trading its long-range missile technology for nuclear weapons know-how from Pakistan and hard currency from countries like Libya. North Korea calls its missile exports a legitimate trade and reportedly had warned to U.S. negotiators that it might export nuclear materials as well.

Boucher also rejected criticism that verbal attacks on Kim Jong Il, including Vice President Dick Cheney's description of Kim on Monday as an "irresponsible leader," would confuse the North Koreans, when coupled with Washington's diplomatic overtures.

"There's no problem with speaking the truth just because we're waiting for North Korea to come back to the talks," Boucher said. "I don't see any contradiction.

North Korea also throws daily scorns at American leaders, including Bush, whom it once called "Hitler, Junior."

Washington's harsh words, starting from Bush's "axis-of-evil" statement to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's designation of North Korea as an "outpost of tyranny," may have deepened the country's determination to build atomic bombs as a survival and bargaining tool.

"For Pyongyang, President George W. Bush and his associates appeared to demand surrender, not a negotiation," said Hamm Taik Young, vice president of the Seoul-based Institute for Far Eastern Studies. North Korea's weapons of mass destruction "are weapons of deterrence as well as desperation," he said.

Faced with U.S. military threats, "North Korea will keep Seoul as hostage," Hamm said. North Korea believes that fears of its long-range artillery and missiles deployed only 50 kilometers, or about 30 miles, from Seoul remain a deterrent against any U.S. invasion.

Amid the deadlock, Washington and Seoul were increasingly leaning on China, the only country with significant influence on North Korea. Beijing hosted three rounds of inconclusive six-nation talks and is trying - some critics say, too slowly - to reconvene a fourth round after a year's hiatus.

"We're constantly in touch with our Chinese counterparts," Bush said. "Sometimes people move a little slower than American society in the world. And sometimes expectations around the world are maybe different from ours."

A Bizarro Memorial Day Moment

2005-05-31T00:19:00.000-03:00

Before heading off to see Sarah McLachlan tonight, I saw the weirdest news story on the Global Television Network.

I'm not a huge fan of Global News as a rule. Izzy Asper, to me, was Canada's answer to Rupert Murdoch... but I digress...

Anyway, I was watching it and this story came on about honouring the American soldiers that fought for "our freedom" in the war of 1812.

Apparently, there is this "dead man's island" near Halifax where American POW's and other assorted international prisoners were buried when they died in captivity during various wars etc... Anyway a plaque was put in place and several american tourists were on hand to pay their respects.

While it is always nice to pay respect to the dead who are lost in combat, I thought it was odd when one of the speakers was quoted as thanking the soldiers for dying for "our freedom".

Maybe I heard him wrong, but I tell ya, I couldn't supress the chuckle.

It's like we were thanking the american soldiers for invading our country while the British were busy with the French overseas.

So in the spirit of Memorial Day, I just have to do it. I have to thank the american soldiers who invaded my country for no apparent reason except "to bring freedom to us". You just gotta love that Manifest Destiny don't ya?

If memory serves, these soldiers failed in their task and Canada thankfully remained Canadian. And the last time I checked, I was pretty darned free.

I know that Memorial Day is a hard day for Americans, especially in this time of war, but I had to share a story that looked at the lighter, and more subtly ironic side of things... I waited until the day after to post it, out of respect to those who are dying overseas right now.

A little bit of Bush bashing... a lot of great music!

2005-05-30T23:57:00.000-03:00

And that pretty much sums up my evening at the Sarah McLachlan concert tonight. Being a big city gal, I'm used to seeing concerts in big fancy and often impersonal venues. The only venue that could be called intimate in Toronto is Massey Hall... I would also count the old round at Ontario Place but it got replaced by that awful Molson Centre.. But I digress.

Being new to the smaller centre of Moncton, I didn't know quite what to expect. This is what I got:

1) A shitty and uncomfortable rather smallish venue (our juniour league hockey rink).
2) A hugely appreciative and fun audience.

The opening act was the best that I have ever seen in my years of concert-going. Being a bit out of the loop, I had never heard of them. They were a Swedish band called The Perishers. They had a nice 45 minute set and I liked their stuff so much that I actually went down and bought their album during the break. I generally never do that.

Then of course, Ms. McLachlan took the stage. Now, I've been a fan of hers for a long time. The first time I ever heard of her was back in the 80's when she was touring with Jane Siberry. So I am more than a bit familiar with her music.

But I had never seen her in concert. Ironically, she kicked off this 2 year long tour in Toronto and Montreal back when I used to live there. I've switched cities twice in the interim and managed to catch her on her first concert date back in Canada in a very long while.

Just before she sang I Will Remember You, she commented on how nice it was to be back in Canada. It seemed from her comments that she is clueing in to the weirdness that is happening south of the border. And then after she sang the song, she, in typical Canadian fashion, admitted to the crowd that she had spent the entire song punishing herself for not making clear to the audience that her frustration was with the president and not the people. The audience "got it" and were very understanding and she continued to give one fabulous performance after another.

She even got a spontaneous standing O after singing Angel. She was a bit taken aback - maybe even a bit stunned. In any event, it seemed to make us all feel kinda warm and fuzzy inside. You see, it wasn't just a Canadian moment, it was a Maritime moment. You may not realize this, but she is a Maritimer - Haligonian to be exact. She admitted to feeling a bit bashful about the fact that she hadn't been here in something like 4 years. She honestly didn't know how she would be received after such a long absense.

If only we could keep her here a little while longer....

Disaffection = Disaster?

2005-05-30T16:01:00.000-03:00

Today, two news stories appeared before me with the same underlying theme.

One was a CBC poll that was released in Canada that illustrated the increased level of distrust that Canadians have for their political leaders and the system in general.

The second, was the more widely reported story about the rejection of the new European Union constitution by the French.

Both stories have the same underlying theme - a general dissatisfaction with the political system. This seems to be manifesting itself in low voter turnout, a lessening participation in the political process and the re-emergence of more extreme political factions.

Canada has been rocked by a scandal that could see our former prime minister being punished criminally should the facts come out as many of us expect as the Inquiry into the scandal continues. But at least there is an open public Inquiry in Canada. I see no public Inquiry into such matters as the Downing Street memo and the missing billions in Iraq to name two.

Ironically, there is still one political leader in Canada that still has the trust of the people: the rather leftist Jack Layton. I am a huge fan of Jack Layton, but it is safe to say that he is not exactly a centrist politician. In addition, one could argue that the rise in dominance of the political far right in the United States and the polarization of politics there is also symptomatic of this move away from the centre. This polarization is taking place in Europe as well and this can be evidenced by the results of the constitution referendum in France.

Those that voted against the EU constitution did so for two major reasons. Some, as members of the far right, voted against allowing people from other countries to freely move into France and take jobs no doubt due to feelings of racism and xenophobia. A greater number of the poor and those on the far left saw the EU constitution as being a symbol of globalization, the sort of globalization that sparked so many protests back in the 90's. Remember Seattle?

So, while the middle opts out and watches reality television and plays video games, those who are still politically engaged are finding themselves to be increasingly marginalized and therefore strident in their desire to make the world a better place, or in the case of the far right, a whiter, more heterosexual and god-fearing place.

In the mind of the modern western politician, what these engaged folks seemed to be slow to understand was the inevitability of the globalization and the concurrent general lowering of the standard of living of average individuals in the western world to the point where the middle class may very well cease to exist.

It must have come to a shock to these modern western politicians when those engaged folks managed to stop the EU in its tracks. Maybe they are on to something after all.

The bottom line seems to be rather simple: the political leadership in Europe at least, has no choice but to listen to them now.

This missive was written by Sue Raging Roz with the intention of sharing it with the folks at Radio News America.

Ah those fickle French

2005-05-30T10:22:00.000-03:00

I am no stranger to contrary francophone voters. I am Canadian after all.. But this vote on the European constitution was more than simply about expressing simple contrariness. This was a referendum on the democratic political system itself and the system lost. It is a symptom of a much larger problem - a generation of voters expressing their cynicism with respect to the growing forces of globalization and corporatization of Europe and the rest of the world.

Political leaders would do well to listen to this wake-up call.

France shatters EU unity - Voters overwhelmingly reject European constitution By DOUG SAUNDERS Monday, May 30, 2005 Updated at 4:02 AM EDT From Monday's Globe and Mail

Six decades after war-battered European countries first began dreaming of a borderless "United States of Europe," the project faced its most serious setback last night as citizens of France voted strongly against a continent-wide constitution.
In a referendum that followed a surprisingly intense national debate in France, 55 per cent of French citizens voted to reject the European Union constitution and 45 per cent accepted it, with two-thirds of voters showing up. The 474-page document, more than a decade in the making, requires the acceptance of all 25 member states.
While it was not entirely clear last night that the constitution is completely dead -- some leaders, including Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, insisted that it could be salvaged -- it is almost certain to plunge Europe into a lengthy political crisis. Wednesday, the Dutch are set to vote in their own referendum, and polls show voters firmly against the document. And the British, who are among the most skeptical toward Europe, will hold their own vote some time next year.
This is a turning point in the history of Europe -- there will be a Plan B in the technocratic sense, in that Europe will continue to function and exist, but psychologically it will cease to exist in the same way," said Dominique Moisi, a scholar who was a chief strategist on the French Yes campaign.
In Paris last night, the No voters celebrated jubilantly in the rain-drenched Place de la Bastille, relishing the revolutionary, anti-elite legacy of that location and the populist anger represented in their vote.
On one level, it was a vote against President Jacques Chirac (who endorsed the constitution and glibly assumed that it would easily pass) by an electorate that has grown wary of his leadership.
But it was also a far wider rejection of the political status quo by the first generation of European voters who have no connection to the Second World War or the postwar decisions that led to the creation of the EU. For those voters -- polls showed that the young and those with less formal education held the largest proportions in the No camp, with only those over 65 showing a strong Yes position -- the threat of slipping back into nationalism holds far less menace.
...
The verdict is certain to provoke a deep reconsideration of the basic role of the EU. The proposed constitution would have made it a fully democratic body, with the citizen-elected European Parliament having full authority for the first time. But it also would have expanded the EU's control over both international trade and social policies.
The latter upset voters on the far right, who resented a constitution that would have allowed free movement of European foreigners into their country and imposed a charter of rights, including a right to strike, for all 450 million citizens.
But the largest body of resistance came from the left and from the poor, the less educated and unemployed, who felt that the constitution imposed a "corporate Europe" of open trade, privatized services and international investment, over the "social Europe" of generous social services and redistribution of wealth.
(More at Link)

Canadian cynicism at an all time high

2005-05-30T10:11:00.000-03:00

The CBC has released a poll that gauges the level of trust and satisfaction that Canadians have in their leaders and politicians. The poll results can be found here.

But the most telling question/answer was this:

If you lost your wallet and it was found by one of the federal political party leaders, which one do you think would be the most likely to return it to you?
Jack Layton - 27
Stephen Harper - 19
Paul Martin - 18
Gilles Duceppe - 8
None - 14
DK/NA - 14

Jack Layton of course, is the leader of the NDP. This result could mean that folks trust him or that they don't know enough about him not to trust him...

A video that you may have forgotten

2005-05-27T17:55:00.000-03:00

If you are a fan if Rick Mercer's, you probably already saw the video I'm about to point you to.

If not, it's worth a look. After you look through it, scroll through my site and look at the entries that relate to Belinda Stronach. I was browsing the site today and when I saw the vid, I was killing myself laughing at the obviousness of the outcome that we witnessed with her defection to the Liberal party.

Ok enough of my rambling prelude.

Go here: http://www.cbc.ca/mondayreport/backissues.html

Scroll down to "Rick on a date with Belinda Stronach"

It's worth a look :)

Sweet Little Lies

2005-05-27T15:49:00.000-03:00

Often, when listening to, or hearing about American news, I am often forced to wonder whether I have indeed taken the wrong coloured pill.

First, the United States Government (in the person of Scott McClellan) comes out with multiple denouncements of Newsweek in response to an apparently spurious four line story that mentions the flushing of the Quran down the toilet at Gitmo. Apparently this four line "LIE" resulted in the deaths of innocent Afghanis.

Never mind the fact that it was the Bush-Co sponsored Afghani "government" that fired on these innocent Afghanis or the fact that Afghanis have more things to worry about than the flushing of the Quran.

Then, Newsweek apologizes for the story, citing that their sources cannot confirm the details or some such. Prior to 9/11 such behaviour on the part of a news organization would come as a shock to me. Now it is expected. The Government bullies the media and the media rolls over and asks for a treat.

Then the facts come out in the international media. Here's a recent example from the Asia Pacific Media Network. The story is entitled "US: FBI records detail Quran abuse by US Guards" and I quote:

An inmate at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp accused US guards of flushing a Koran down the toilet in 2002, newly declassified FBI documents reveal.

In other words, the truth is coming out. The Quran flushing actually happened. Again, never mind the fact that Afghanis don't spend their spare time reading Newsweek...

So? What is the response to this blatant misrepresentation by Bush-Co (in the person of Scott McClellan)?

Deny the bullying of Newsweek. You see, according to the new alternate reality that has been created for your viewing pleasure on CNN/Fox/whatever, Scott McClellan never said any such thing about Newsweek causing "lasting damage" to the Muslim world.

Either it's all in your imagination or you suffer from short term memory loss. You pick.

And this is not the first time. Remember when Bush said that there was no direct link between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden? Remember when Bush admitted that there were no WMD's? Do you even know what the Downing Street memo is? How about the 9/11 commission report or the title of the August 6 th memo that Condi shared with you? How about the exit polling data on Election night. Do you remember that?

If you don't remember or know about these things, you are doing your country a disservice and you are making the Bush Administration very very pleased.

You see, the only weapon that can be successfully wielded against a regime like Bush-Co. is a strong and long memory.

When you walk into the ballot box in 2006, remember what has gone before. If you do that and act according to your conscience, then Ms. Randi can make good on the promise that she made on the air on May 26th and do her best to ensure that articles of impeachment are brought to the House Judiciary Committee.

Remembering a few key facts can't be that hard, can it? If you can remember who won the first round of American Idol, then you can remember when Bush lied to you. It's really very simple.

This missive was written by Sue Raging Roz with the intention of sharing it with the folks at Radio News America.

You Go Randi!

2005-05-27T09:42:00.000-03:00

I am reproducing in full, the text of RANDI RHODES' STATEMENT ON THE STATE OF THE MEDIA FOR THE DEMOCRATIC MEDIA FORUM ON MEDIA BIAS from her main site (www.therandirhodesshow.com).

Thank you Congressman Conyers for calling together media professionals who have worked their entire adult lives in media and understand that the news has been Canceled. The American Press is far from Free today.
First:
Political litmus tests are as common in my business as they are in yours.
If you are a conservative there is room on the dial, in the news rooms and on the cable channels for you, (provided you have the right hair, jewelry and stylist) If you are a liberal, and your life's dream was to report news, anchor news or be an investigative journalist, you will see, day after day, your stories censored, edited, or just killed. Corporate and government interference in reporting the news can also affect journalists who have no particular political agenda. They simply report the facts as they find them. If these facts are inconvenient or unflattering to the Republican Majority Party agenda they can be accused of being an accessory to murder, unpatriotic or fired.
Just this past week the White House decided to call Newsweek Magazine an accessory to murder for printing a story of Koran abuse that the ICRC has clearly documented for more than three years, in three separate countries. Cuba, Afghanistan and Iraq.
News is essential for a vibrant participatory Democracy to continue to work and serve all who are lucky enough to be naturalized or born here. Unfortunately the forces at work are dumbing down the citizens AND IT IS BY DESIGN. How can anyone explain to a sane viewer that on the second day of Republicans and Democrats battling out the way the Senate will advise and consent to judicial nominees, the lead story on ABC World News Tonight was Star Wars bootlegging. On the second day of Republicans invoking something called the "Nuclear Option" -- So named because the fallout would be so devastating to democracy as we know it , the lead story on Fox News was two missing kids in Idaho. Michael Jackson, the Runaway Bride were also lead and sometimes the only story reported on various NEWS Channels. Aren’t we a Nation at war?
Don’t our troops deserve to come home to a country that knows what they’ve accomplished? A country that knows what they have been through?
Where is the Downing Street Memo? I saw Colin Powell and George Tenet receive the Medal of Freedom. Should they give it back? If American knew the facts regarding the policy to attack Iraq and the manipulation of the facts to make them fit that policy, maybe they would be better equipped to speak truth to power. Or at the very least to understand what our professional military has been sent to do.
In his half hour newscast Lou Dobbs somehow manages to tell me that North Korea came to the table for the first time to discuss their nuclear status. That Kim Jong Il won’t talk to the American President but they will talk to South Korea. He was able to report that FBI Director Robert Mueller asked Congress for increased power to subpoena personal records from employers without judicial review. That means he was asking to take anyones’ employment records without a judge agreeing that there was some real reason to gather information about you.
I was grateful for that newscast. I am also grateful to Jim Lehrer for doing a real fact based hour long newscast each night. But these two news broadcasts shouldn't be the exception. These should be the standard we hold all newscasts to. Report what happened today, while I was working, or while you raised your children.
On a day when America has ground troops fighting in two foreign wars and the US Senate made an agreement to debate life time appointments to the Federal Judiciary only two newscasts told me some of the news. Today you will take up Stem Cell research. What are the scientific facts about the benefits of such research?
And even National Public Radio, federally subsidized to serve in the public’s best interest, is now telling us that the Bush Administration feels that there is too much news and not enough music on the PUBLIC AIRWAYS.
The dumbing down of America is by design. The less people know the happier this Administration and its loyalists are. An educated middle class is not in the best interests of a one party government. Censored media is an earmark of every country that is not free today. The one common denominator in suppression of freedom is a rigged press.
The public is most useful to the power elite when their bordems are entertained and their curiousity ended.
When they stop believing the news is real people stop caring about anything but their own survival. When free people are encouraged to just get on with their lives
without critical information to make their lives meaningful it is the beginning of the end of personal decision making, and therefore, personal freedom.
Now some will argue that corporate news answers to the bottom line. It must turn a profit or it cannot continue to produce and broadcast the news. Let's explore the theory of the "marketplace decides".
If a free market place and the bottom line profit of a news corporation was at the
heart of the bias we see against reporting news, if it were simply just a profit center, and the corporate news was giving the people what they really want by CANCELING the news and replacing it with infotainment, celebrity trials and gossip, or one runaway bride as you are told by these Captains of industry, than Fox News would simply not exist.
What do I mean by that? Well in the past six months, Fox News has lost 58% of it's
viewership. In the most recent ratings period available, April 2005 Fox News claims only 455,000 viewers in their target demographic of 25 -54 Persons. If it was just a question of profits, tell me…how are they making money with so few viewers and such high priced journalists? They can't, and they don't. And it isn't just Fox News or CNN, whose viewership is a very small 277,000 viewers in primetime, people have just decided the news has been cancelled and so they do not watch. Nor do they trust the news to report the most important stories of the day. Americans are not stupid, they know that they are being lied to and that the news is censored.
With your permission I’d like to Admit for the record a chart of .
CHART of and CNN Ratings (pdf)

Primetime ratings for Fox and CNN (pdf)
So what is really going on? Certainly not good business. Corporate news has simply become propaganda for a Republican majority today, a Republican majority tomorrow, a Republican majority forever. If it is overt propaganda perhaps they are entitled to do exactly that but they shouldn't be able to brand it as NEWS. If there is covert propaganda, than we already have laws on the books that should be enforced.
Essentially, the News has been cancelled. Opinon on a limited number of subjects has replaced fact finding and reporting.
As an American consumer of news I have been cheated and lied to. I have the right to a free press, Free of government sanctions for reporting what is true. Journalists have the right to be watchdogs and report the facts without unjust retribution from their employers, or worse, their government. Access to public policy makers should not be a quid pro quo situation. The White House, Congress, The US Supreme Court should never be allowed to take away access if a reporter does not file a favorable news story. If a public figure does something that affects the public a reporter should be free to report the unvarnished facts as we find them, without fear of retaliation or sanction. The Federal Government should promote a market place free from sanctions for a complete and vibrant newscast. Journalism should be free to fully inform the public. The free press has become yet another “check and balance” that finds itself in crisis.
Factors like media deregulation have caused the power of information to be in too few hands. Today essentially 5 giant coporations with vast holdings manage all of our information.
Managing a few corporate titans into muzzling their reporters is easier than managing a few hundred owners of the public airwaves. Cable news doesn't even bother to compete anymore. It just omits any news that might impact unfavorably on any corporate business that maybe before this Congress or the FCC. The Telecom bill for example. This is an enormous problem. Perhaps it is best for their business to not disseminate real information. But then they shouldn’t be allowed to call it NEWS .
The word news ought to mean something. But maybe the news has become more about corporatism and less about democracy. Or, maybe I'm wrong, but there is one way to find out. Standards must be put in place for anyone who wishes to brand themselves as News.
Standards that guarantee a free press. A press that is free to report without being accused of murdering people by the White House. No Party Leader should be allowed to threaten an industry with unfavorable legislation if a story whose facts show lapses in ethics, or lies about war, or any fact that is unflattering is aired.
The News media must be free to show the American wars. Or free to talk about Real ID being shoved into a War Spending Bill. Free to report prisoner abuse, casualty counts or misuse of Homeland Security assets and personell.
Americans must be able to trust this information. News has to be held to a higher standard of accuracy rather than opinion. You would never know that Tom DeLay used The Department of Homeland Security to hunt down legislators that he disagreed with. Nor would you know that General Abizaid finds the mess in Iraq getting worse, not better. Where are the voices of our soldiers? Where are the pictures?
I am emboldened to believe I am right about the coporate agenda taking over the public interest in news reporting. Getting a White House Press Pass is as easy as
promising to ask softball questions and eat up time. Asking a hard question or being afforded a follow up question is almost unheard of. No journalist is free to question authority without being shut down, shut out or cut off completely. A reporter is always aware of being sent to the back of the room…never to be called on again. If a journalist losses access, they lose their job.
News conferences are scripted. Town Hall meetings don’t include certain members of the town whose hall is being used to hold the meeting. This practice is heinous and it’s hardly reported. I find out from people who were turned away.
I am here today to convince you that there is a need for Congress to act. That there is an essential need to guarantee that our press, especially TV News organizations (because if it isn't on TV it didn't happen) are allowed to perform this meaningful public service of informing and capturing events so that an educated electorate prevails in all of their endeavors.

As you know a free press is the Fourth Estate in democracy. It is essential for religious freedom, free markets, human rights and good government. Over 60 years ago Eleanor Roosevelt and Wendell Wilkie founded an organization called Freedom House. It was designed to be a watchdog looking around the world for indications of
eroding democratic principles as well as an organization that promotes freedom and democracy. As such, it monitors a key factor in vibrant democracies…THE MEDIA.
http://www.freedomhouse.org/aboutfh/index.htm
Freedom House to this day remains a bipartisan organization of leading Democrats and Republicans, business and labor leaders, scholars, writers and journalists. The Chairman is Former CIA Director James Woolsey has served two Republican Presidents and two Democratic Presidents. As a leading proponent of democratic values and it's steadfast opposition to dictatorships of the far left and far right, it has always concerned itself with MEDIA.
The most current survey of free countries, partly free countries and not free countries has just been released. In Global Press Freedom Rankings for 2005 (pdf) The United States media is ranked 29 th in the world. 29th. The leading exporter of "democracy" is ranked 29 th in Freedom of the Press.
Latvia , Barbados and Palau beat us.
So what can we do?
First, Congress must act to adopt standards for labeling a broadcast, NEWS.
For the health of the American people we've insisted on labeling food. Pick up any packaged food and you will see how many grams of fat, carbohydrates, sodium etc. It's just so people can make choices. They don't have to be good choices, but they know what they're putting in their bodies. Yet the American mind is left to wonder, is this news or commentary? Am I listening to opinion or am I hearing facts. There is a TV rating system for language and violence. There should be one that helps separate fact from opinion.
Have we liberated Afghan women? Can we see their progress? Where does the world’s heroin come from? What happened in Iraq yesterday? Who is leading the government of Iraq? Tell me the name of our generals in the North? The South? How many days have gone by since we said we’d capture Osama Bin Laden? How much of America do foreign countries own?
Here at home, where are the real job opportunities? What laws did Congress make today? Do Americans know that The Real ID act has passed and that it will require them to enter into a National Data Base complete with biometric information, within 3 years if they want to travel on an airplane? Do they know that there was no debate on the issue and that it was shoved into a Supplemental Spending Bill for Iraq?
How many Americans go without health care? Where does America rank in the world for health care? How many of our troops are home? How many are in VA hospitals? Do they have a hard time getting their jobs back if they are reservists or guardsmen? Is TriCare working for them? Is No Child Left Behind Leaving Our Children Behind? How do teachers feel about the new testing requirements? Are any classes being cancelled to teach to this test? How much of my salary is taxed for Social Security? If I make less than 90 thousand dollars my whole paycheck is taxed…if I make over 90 do I stop paying into the system?
How do we go about making economic decisions about our families if we don't know why gas is so expensive, or where the new economic opportunities are? Where are the progress reports on Homeland Security? If we'vet made any improvements why aren't we told? Don't I deserve to know if a chemical plant 14 miles from my family’s home is secure?
There is a right to a free press expressly guaranteed to each and every one of us, and yet there are no standards for corporations who brand themselves as news providers. We had standards for sitcom families and their sleeping arrangements. We have language standards for radio stations, but no news standards that define what journalistic principles must be present in order to brand as news.
Second, I think we need to bring back the fairness doctrine which served this country well from 1949 through 1987. It simply guarantees competing viewpoints on issues of public importance. There's never been and Equal Time requirement as is widely believed. We viewed station licensees to be "public trustees" and therefore, they had an obligation to present different viewpoints on issues of public importance. License holders were also required to actively seek out stories of interest to the public and air programs addressing those issues.
I found the Fairness Doctrine in the museum of TV archives. Dust it off and put it back on the public shelf.
Thirdly, finally and most importantly
We need to protect our journalists. They must be free to report and never be penalized with lost access to the people they cover or with retribution from partisan employers. Journalists have died covering Afghanistan and Iraq in numbers that surpass the numbers of lost journalists in Viet Nam. And that is saying a lot. Coverage of Viet Nam went on in earnest for 12 years. Yet in just 2 and a half years there have been more journalists killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This Congress must honor them with the protection they deserve in order to bring those stories home to air. They must also be free to report on the very powerful who shape our policies both here and abroad without fear.
This is the 21 st Century. It is the Information Age, and Gentle Ladies and Gentlemen, we are 29 th in the world for a free press. The news has been cancelled. I came here today to ask that Congress recognize the need to act on these three basic remedies.
Information is the coin of the realm.
If you fail to act, the public will never know that we are the party of ideas. That we are the party of business and labor. That we are the party of education and health. That we are the party of personal privacy and open government. That we are the party of freedom and justice. And that we understand how to gain economic freedom for all and part of that first step toward a richer life is getting the information you
deserve.
If you fail to act, I will be a member of a minority party for a very long time, that is if the two party system can survive this new propaganda machine called the news.

In closing, passing good legislation takes time. Speaking out at every opportunity does not. Let’s do both.
Thank you for listening. Randi Rhodes

If you have read the above statement, maybe you will begin to understand why I'm such a fan of Randi Rhodes. If you liked what you saw, I strongly encourage you to visit her site - www.therandirhodesshow.com and listen to her every day on Air America Radio.

For more information about this forum, go to The Raw Story. I take no credit for sussing this out and commenting on it. This is all Randi.

A Band-Aid on a Festering Wound

2005-05-27T09:34:00.000-03:00

Before I share with you my linky/excerpt for the day, I want to share a picture with you:

Iraqi forces to blanket Baghdad

By ESTANISLAO OZIEWICZ Friday, May 27, 2005 Page A1 - With a report from
Reuters News Agency

More than 40,000 Iraqi soldiers and police officers will set up a security belt around Baghdad in a desperate effort to try to squelch the bloody tide of unrelenting insurgency that has killed more than 600 people this month alone, officials said yesterday.

In an undertaking that has been dubbed Operation Lightning, troops will divide the city's eastern half into seven sectors and west into 15, setting up 675 fixed and mobile checkpoints and conducting raids on suspected insurgent hideouts, Defence Minister Sadoun al-Dulaimi said.
"We will establish, with God's help, an impenetrable blockade surrounding Baghdad
like a bracelet surrounds a wrist," Mr. al-Dulaimi said. ". . . You will witness unprecedented, strict security measures."

It will be the largest operation in Baghdad by Iraqi forces since the defence of the capital during the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.

Military analysts said yesterday there is reason, based on historical precedent, to believe that the capital blockade could succeed in eventually choking off an insurgent effort that has killed hundreds of people through drive-by shootings and suicide car bombings in recent weeks. (More at Link)

And now for a climate change moment...

2005-05-26T13:53:00.000-03:00

Climate change. Gotta love it. I don't even trust the weather anymore...

Here's your flood links:

Rain, floods batter southern Nova Scotia

Here's a pic from the CTV website:

In New Brunswick, the St. John river overflowed three weeks ago... I'm beginning to forget what the sun looks like...

But there is an upside: Atlantic climate not friendly for West Nile - it seems that the mosquito populations are taking a beating from the bad weather.

Senate Hearings on Wilkins

2005-05-25T14:28:00.000-03:00

It seems as if Mr. David Wilkins has undergone a bit of a transformation in the last few weeks in the run up to his confirmation as U.S. Ambassador to Canada which should take place shortly.

He started off as a close personal friend to GWB, the man who saved Georgie's political behind during the Republican nomination race in 2000. If it wasn't for Mr. Wilkins, we might have Gore or McCain as president. Ooohhh.. I love him already...

At first, this selection came as a shock to Canadians because this individual is from the South and knew exactly squat about us as a nation and our issues as neighbour to the U.S.

But it seems that he has done his homework. He performed surprisingly well today at the confirmation hearings in the eyes of Canadian reporters (as heard on the CBC)... Some even go so far as to say that his close personal friendship with dumya will work to Canada's favour as we will now have the "ear" of the President.

I take a different view. I see a "yes" man for Dumya. I see a messenger of the Bush regime in Canada. As always, time will prove me right or wrong.

Here's your linky/excerpt from embassymag.ca (it's a bit dated but has lots of context):

Embassy, May 18th, 2005 COLUMN By David Jones "Firewall" Wilkins Comes to Ottawa

Mr. David Wilkins, Republican Speaker of the South Carolina legislature, is being transformed into Ambassador David Wilkins, representative of the people and government of the United States to Canada. The process, highly complex and largely invisible to the public, surfaces at points such as the official announcement of his nomination by President Bush and will culminate with his arrival and presentation of credentials to the Governor General in Ottawa.

In between, there already has been much "vetting" and, henceforth, there will be much briefing and study. For the nomination and confirmation process has become increasingly politicized during the past generation as one or another fiscal irregularity, personal short coming, or verbal indiscretion has sunk a candidacy for high office. And while an ambassador is not a Cabinet secretary, the President has by his nomination invested an element of political capital in an ambassador and would suffer an element of political embarrassment by his public withdrawal.

In previous years, presidents have lost inter alia prospective CIA directors, Supreme Court justices, attorney generals (twice), a defense secretary, and a labor secretary. Consequently, we can be sure that the detailed security background investigation associated with a senior appointment has determined that Mr. Wilkins' military service record is properly documented, that his federal taxes have been paid, that he has not hired an illegal alien (and has correctly paid social security taxes for anyone he has employed), and that he has no pending actions for an overly "hands on" approach in gender relationships or faces charges of discriminatory practice under equal opportunity rules. By the time one exits from such security reviews, you can be sure that the candidate is as close to "clean as a hounds tooth" as such an investigation can determine.

One particularly painstaking element is the financial disclosure statement. A requirement just being introduced into Canadian public life, it has been a U.S. government requirement for almost 20 years. Thus, Mr. Wilkins has provided detailed information on his debts and assets; his stock and property holdings -- and those of his spouse and children. Likewise, political contributions must be identified/specified. For a mature adult with reasonably substantial assets, the process of identifying all holdings and having them verified and documented often requires serious, protracted work by accountant and lawyer. Former U.S. ambassador to Canada James Blanchard described the "mountain of paperwork" that took weeks for him to complete, resulting in the conclusion that "nothing could ever be more tedious, arduous, or time-consuming." It is hard to explain in retrospect that one "forgot" a loan or a property when being grilled by a congressional committee.

At this juncture, the Office of Government Ethics has forwarded Mr. Wilkins' nomination to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In due course, perhaps as early as the week of May 16 or 23, there will be a hearing, probably by the Foreign Relations Committee's subcommittee on Western Hemispheric Affairs. The normal protocol is for Mr. Wilkins to be accompanied and presented by one or both of the senators from his home state. Often the committee addresses several ambassadorial nominations in the same session. Mr. Wilkins will be prepared for questions from the subcommittee, but these (if any) are usually pro forma. At the end of the hearing, the full Senate will -- eventually -- act. Timing is unpredictable and, with the Senate facing the prospect of intense controversy over judi cial nominations, action on many issues (including routine nominations) could be delayed.

Not that one anticipates Mr. Wilkins having the trouble with the Senate that has afflicted proposed UN ambassador John Bolton. Mr. Wilkins has avoided suggesting, for example, that the top 50 feet of the Peace Tower would not be missed or that it would be efficient to conflate the four Atlantic provinces into one, or some comparable, head-slapping, "Why did he say that!?" non sequitur.

Further Preparation

Over the coming weeks, Mr. Wilkins will be receiving briefings and holding consultations. His commitments in the South Carolina legislature end in early June. He is scheduled to attend a two-week State Department "charm school" for new ambassadors, career diplomats as well as political appointees; starting on June 6, there will be inter alia briefings on embassy functions, financial aspects of embassies, and diplomatic operations. Subsequently, he will have a full range of senior level briefings around Washington. Canada and the United States interact on virtually every level; the Department of State will seek to have Mr. Wilkins meet with cabinet officials such as the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Attorney General. Other appointments with the Departments of Commerce and Agriculture and the Trade Representative are high on the list; likewise, briefings by the CIA and Department of Defence. And, in late June, we anticipate a day of briefings by Canadians on bilateral issues of mutual interest.

The objective -- and all is contingent on Senate ratification -- is for "Ambassador Wilkins" to arrive in Ottawa, present his credentials to the Governor General, and be present to host the traditional July 4 Independence Day celebration at the Residence. Should this evolve as hoped and planned, Ambassador Wilkins will return to South Carolina for several weeks to complete his personal affairs prior to formal relocation in Ottawa and the assumption of his duties as ambassador.

Another Political Ambassador

Every career diplomat hopes to be led by another career professional. At a minimum, it reaffirms one's own professional future -- that there will be room at the top for you. More subtly, a career ambassador knows what to expect and what can be requested from his diplomatic and Foreign Service national staff; and his staff knows that he knows these "ropes." On the other hand, any diplomat who has completed the introductory "A-100" course also knows the reality that roughly one-third of senior posts are filled by political appointments. Many of these (much, if not all of the time) will be the most prestigious and important positions (London, Paris, Berlin, Mexico City and, yes, Ottawa).

Essentially, political appointees come from three general categories: academia, business, and politics. The academics arrive with theories and constructs of international relationships that often do not survive their initial contact with foreign affairs reality. Businessmen sometimes decide that our bilateral relations should be run as if the U.S. government was a private enterprise and when they discover that the country to which they are assigned cannot be taken over in a stock merger, they become frustrated and focus on the equivalent of counting paperclips in their embassy. Politicians, however, are often a better fit in diplomatic affairs. They recognize that government is not the enemy, and bureaucrats concentrate both on doing their bidding (and keeping them out of trouble). Moreover, they can appreciate that diplomacy (as politics) is the craft of the possible and that lasting
relationships are not zero-sum exercises.

Feckless Speculation

Thus, it is meaningless to the point of being silly to speculate on "Ambassador Wilkins" views on softwood lumber based on the strength of his views as "Speaker Wilkins." To be concise: Where you sit is where you stand. Thus as a senior political figure in South Carolina, he has defended his state's concerns over softwood lumber imports. Just as Premier McGuinty argues that Ontario is disadvantaged by $23 billion in the give/get ratio, and Ottawa should return $5 billion. As U.S. ambassador, Mr. Wilkins would present strongly and effectively our softwood lumber position; he is not, however, the sole determinant for the position and, if the U.S. government's position were altered after interagency consultation and bilateral negotiations, he would present that position.

Nor is it terribly helpful to suggest that Mr. Wilkins' lack of long, intimate association with Canada will handicap him in his understanding of and operation within Canada. For many of our senior officials assigned to Ottawa, it is their first extended experience with Canada. Good briefings and adult political instincts will assure that the ambassador will not declaim "You're just like us" as well as preparing him for any substantive negotiations that may be necessary. Nor is it necessary to have spent your youthful years being smashed into the boards of a hockey rink to appreciate the grace and elegance of the game and the skill required for its mastery. To be sure, Ambassador Wilkins may decide that any weather you don't have to shovel is good weather. Nevertheless, the Georgia southern origins of Ambassador Gordon Giffin (1997-2001) did not reduce his diplomatic effectiveness.

The Bottom Line

What Ottawa wants and needs in a U.S. ambassador is the assurance that the ambassador has a reasonably close personal relationship with the President. Canadians may not always have been pleased to hear Ambassador Cellucci was "disappointed" over Ottawa's nonparticipation decision in Iraq or "puzzled" by its nonparticipation in missile defense, but they could be confident that Cellucci was not freelancing.

From media reporting, the Bush-Wilkins relationship appears reasonably intimate. If he has a Dubya-derived nickname, it might be "Firewall" as that is what Wilkins provided during the 2000 primary campaign. South Carolina's Wilkins-led Bush supporters stopped the early primary surge by Senator John McCain cold.

Canadians will certainly note the difference between a Massachusetts twang and a South Carolina drawl, but it will be a difference in tone rather than in substance.

-- David Jones is a former political counsellor with the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa.

If I can be so bold as to make a prediction, I would like to hazard this: Mr. Wilkins, upon having his first taste of winter in Ottawa, will pack his bags and go screaming back to South Carolina. Rick Mercer will follow up with yet another funny clip of Canadians asking that he not allow the door to hit him on the way out...

The New Gulag - American Style

2005-05-25T14:19:00.000-03:00

Just remember, I'm not the one comparing Gitmo to the Gulag... Amnesty International is doing it for me:

Linky/excerpt:

Amnesty likens Guantanamo Bay to 'gulag' - Last Updated Wed, 25 May 2005 12:56:24 EDT (CBC News)

LONDON - Human rights organization Amnesty International says the United States should shut down its prison camp in Guantanamo Bay.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks on America, the U.S. has used the controversial jail, located at its army base in Cuba, to hold people it considers extremists. In most cases, no formal charges have been laid against the prisoners.
In its annual human rights report, published Wednesday in London, Amnesty said Guantanamo was a human rights failure.
"Guantanamo has become the gulag of our time," Amnesty Secretary General Irene Khan said as she called for the closure of the camp.
Governments betraying human rights about 540 prisoners from some 40 countries are being held at Guantanamo's Camp Delta. Some 200 others have been released, with some of those now jailed in their own countries.
Khan said Guantanamo was exemplary of the U.S., and other governments around the world, failing to uphold human rights despite paying lip service to ideas of justice and democracy.
"Governments are betraying their promises on human rights. A new agenda is in the making with the language of freedom and justice being used to pursue policies of fear and insecurity. This includes cynical attempts to redefine and sanitize torture," said Khan.
Darfur human rights catastrophe Darfur in Sudan was a "human rights catastrophe," where the international community's inactivity "betrayed" hundred of thousands of people, the report said.
But it singled out the U.S. for failing to take "principled leadership" on human rights. According to Amnesty, the U.S. administration's failure to fully investigate torture of Iraqi prisoners in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail illustrated the "huge gap between rhetoric and reality" concerning human rights.

"The U.S. administration's attempts to dilute the absolute ban on torture through new policies and quasi-management speak such as 'environmental manipulation,' 'stress positions' and, 'sensory manipulation,' was one of the most damaging assaults on global values," Amnesty said.
Amnesty on Canada
The report also criticized Canada over a number of issues and alleged abuses.
Amnesty said indigenous women and girls in Canada suffered a disproportionately high incidence of violence.

The report also mentioned "continuing concerns" about Canadian police using Taser guns. Six men have died in incidents involving the controversial devices, but their use has not been suspended despite the government promising a review, Amnesty said.
Amnesty also criticized Canada for alleged police abuses such as the killings of Dudley George and Neil Stonechild.
The organization listed Maher Arar as one of four Canadians who allege Canada was complicit in their being tortured abroad by foreign security services.
And the report highlighted controversial Canadian practices such as the security certificates, used to detain six suspected extremists without laying charges.
Amnesty's report covers 149 countries.

With the United States government showing itself to be without a moral compass, one would think that the natural choice would be to look to a country like Canada to fill the role of international concience. As much as I would like to see Canada fill that role, we still have work to do...

I like to call it breathing room

2005-05-25T14:13:00.000-03:00

That seems to be what Paul Martin received last night: room to breathe/govern Canadians.

And yes, we have those savvy Newfies to thank for a Liberal seat pickup in last night's by-election. This coupled with the Stronach defection gives Liberals that balance of power that they need to sustain government so long as they keep the NDP happy in their coalition. With the summer break looming, the issue of governance in Canada is about to find its way to the back burner.

Here's your linky/excerpt:

Survivor: Ottawa In classic Liberal fashion, the PM avoids getting voted off the island - JOHN GEDDES (Macleans)

Paul Martin has a new political persona: classic Liberal survivor. It's not the first time he has switched identities. For years he was a vague presence on the edge of the Liberal party's collective imagination, intriguing because he possessed both a shipping company and the name of his famous politician father. Plunging into politics, he came to acquire a double image -- tough rival to Jean Chrétien and determined slayer of the federal deficit. When he finally ousted Chrétien, he tried to rebrand himself as historic change agent. That one never took. Then his party was rocked by scandal, he ran an uninspired election campaign, and looked unsure of how to get anything done with the minority he was left to lead. Playing a weak hand as prime minister, Martin was in danger of being recast as incurably indecisive and ineffectual. (More at Link)

The Downing Street Memo

2005-05-20T13:34:00.000-03:00

I have been ignoring this story and for that I apologize. I have been pressed for time and have been focussing on local news lately. But this memo cannot be ignored even though the US mainstream media chooses to try and forget it's there. Are they trying to forget because they have too much to gain from their Haliburton stocks? It's all food for thought.

Anyway, here's your linky/excerpt:

Why has 'Downing Street memo' story been a 'dud' in US? A mid-2002 British memo saying US was planning to 'fix' intelligence to fit plans to invade Iraq has not been big news. By Matthew Clark csmonitor.com

There may have been a point at which the US news media would have been all over a story about a British official's report that the Bush administration appeared intent on invading Iraq long before it sought Congress' approval – and that it "fixed" intelligence to fit its intention.
But May 2005 is apparently way past that point.
Days before British Prime Minister Tony Blair secured a third term in the country's parliamentary election earlier this month, The Sunday Times published a "secret Downing Street memo."
The document was written by British national security aide Matthew Rycroft based on notes he took during a July 2002 meeting of Mr. Blair and his advisers, including Richard Dearlove, the head of Britain's MI-6 intelligence service who had recently met with Bush administration officials.

Among other things, the memo said:
Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The [National Security Council] had no patience with the UN route .... There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action. ...
It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.
The memo's authenticity was not disputed by Blair's office.

"But the potentially explosive revelation has proven to be something of a dud in the United States," reports the Chicago Tribune.
The White House has denied the premise of the memo, the American media have reacted slowly to it and the public generally seems indifferent to the issue or unwilling to rehash the bitter prewar debate over the reasons for the war. All of this has contributed to something less than a robust discussion of a memo that would seem to bolster the strongest assertions of the war's critics.
The Los Angeles Times reported last Thursday that the story "appears to have blown over quickly in Britain."
But in the United States, where the reports at first received scant attention, there has been growing indignation among critics of the Bush White House, who say the documents help prove that the leaders made a secret decision to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein nearly a year before launching their attack, shaped intelligence to that aim and never seriously intended to avert the war through diplomacy.
Democrats and other war critics have launched campaigns to get this story a wider hearing.
In a letter to President Bush released May 6, 89 Democratic members of Congress said the memo "raises troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war as well as the integrity of our own administration." This move failed to gain the sort of media attention that normally elicits a quick response from the administration, which did not comment on the memo until Monday.
Asked Monday about the memo's implication that Iraq intelligence was being "fixed", White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, "The suggestion is just flat-out wrong."
In a piece published on the Political Gateway, a website which "tries to bring input from all sides of the political arena to allow free and open discourse on a range of subjects," columnist Bud Beck writes that the British memo story "isn't news by any stretch of the imagination."
This is not the Watergate burglary and it is not a fabricated Gulf of Tonkin incident. It is nothing new, just a new version of something that is old - so old it has become all but too boring.
The critics of the war, all of them Democrats, have accused Bush and his top aides of misusing what has since been shown as limited intelligence in the prewar period. The notes of the meeting between Dearlove and Blair now prove it. So what? The same critics have been unsuccessful in getting an investigation into the misuse of the intelligence and as long as they are in the minority they never will. What are they expecting to happen here that didn't happen in Britain?
In Sunday's Washington Post the paper's ombudsman Michael Getler wrote that his e-mail inbox was "inundated last week by write-in campaigns provoked by two self-described media watchdog organizations, both on the liberal side of things."
Mr. Getler wrote that he received over 1,000 e-mails attacking the Post for not following up on the Sunday Times disclosure the memo. Getler wrote that he was "amazed that The Post took almost two weeks to follow up on the Times report."
The key line in the leaked memo, in my view, is the assessment by British intelligence, after a visit to Washington, that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." That kind of assertion has been made by critics and commentators, but it has not been included in official post-invasion assessments here about how the country went to war under what turned out to be false premises about weapons of mass destruction and other matters. Investigating that assessment, coming from the key US ally in the war, certainly seems journalistically mandatory. Indeed, while official US commissions and committees have documented just how bad US intelligence was, they have stopped short of assessing what happened to that intelligence after it was prepared.
Hearst Newspapers columnist Helen Thomas lamented last week that Britons and Americans – in her judgment – no longer care about the credibility and accountability of their leaders.
I am not surprised at the duplicity. But I am astonished at the acceptance of this deception by voters in the United States and the United Kingdom.
I've seen two US presidents go down the drain – Lyndon B. Johnson on Vietnam and Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal – because they were no longer believed. But times change – and I guess our values do, too.
But Thomas Patrick Carroll, a former officer in the Clandestine Service of the CIA, suggests in the conservative Front Page Magazine that those dwelling on the memo may be missing the forest for the trees.
It is simply inexcusable for opinion makers and public intellectuals (e.g., those who made such a fuss about the 'revelations' in the Downing Street memo) not to grasp the strategic imperatives behind what we are doing in Iraq and elsewhere. It's certainly okay to disagree with our strategy, but for supposedly sophisticated commentators to miss the entire point and continue raving about WMD and UN sanctions is simply beyond the pale.

Well we still have a government. Woo Hoo!

2005-05-19T23:28:00.000-03:00

I managed to catch the vote live on the Tee Vee... It was high drama, I tell you!

Seriously, it was very interesting because the deciding vote was held by an independant named Chuck Cadman. He had been holding his cards very close to his chest for the last couple of weeks, likely because he wanted to milk his 15 minutes of fame... Had he come out and told everyone that he was voting with the Liberals, there is no chance that he would have gotten as much publicity as he did. But hey, I guess everyone deserves their day in the sun and today was definitely his.

When he stood up to put his yes vote in on the NDP sponsored money bill that was the crux of the afternoon, the government side of the House erupted into mad applause and the Tories/Bloc members were visibly crestfallen. But Cadman did the right thing. He did the thing that he was elected to do. He canvassed his riding to see if his constituents wanted an early election and then once he gathered the data, he did some hard thinking and did what was best for his constituents.

Had Belinda not jumped the fence, it would not have come down to Cadman. But he was not the only hero of the day. Another less talked about independant MP also came on side with the Liberals. Because she stated her intentions to support the government a while ago, she was ignored for the most part. That is, until this morning when she came down with appendicitis. Yet she came to the Hill, in considerable pain, and gave her vote to the House.

You might remember her - her name is Carolyn Parrish. She's the one who stomped on the Bush doll and made so many disparaging comments about right wing american politics. Due to the embarassment that her comments brought to the government, she was booted out of the Liberal caucus. No doubt her actions today will result in her quietly re-joining the Liberal Party as if nothing had ever happened.

I'd like to say that Canadian politics doesn't always get this exciting, but with what we went through in the 90's with the separation debate, I cannot. Today was exciting in a positive way. Today was about putting the public interest before partisan politics.

IMHO today was a good day. The goverment will continue to govern until the fall. The same-sex legislation and the Atlantic Accord are still alive and well.

And the Brits are watching too!

2005-05-19T11:14:00.000-03:00

I'm not used to us poor little Canucks getting so much attention! This is actually a great synopsis from the Opinion.telegraph:

Exciting Canada(Filed: 19/05/2005)
The spectacular defection of Belinda Stronach should save Canada's ruling Liberal Party in a budget vote today. But long domination of Canadian politics has left it tainted with corruption and impotent to halt the march of Quebec separatism. Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party should reap the harvest of these failings in federal elections expected, if Paul Martin and the Liberals survive today, in the spring of 2006. Such a victory would mark a historic electoral shift; the Right has come a long way since the Progressive Conservative Party was all but annihilated in 1993.
In the midst of this crisis, the Queen, who arrived in Saskatchewan at the start of a nine-day official visit on Tuesday, provides a reassuring presence. Canada's head of state, she is a symbol of continuity as the federation continues to search for its identity, whether in the relationship between its component parts or in contradistinction to the American giant next door. The prospect of a Liberal defeat led to talk, first of postponing, then curtailing, the royal tour. It now appears that it will go ahead as planned.
The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh landed on the same day that Miss Stronach, a high-profile Conservative MP, defected to the Liberals and was immediately rewarded with a Cabinet post. Her parting shot was to accuse Mr Harper of being insensitive to the concerns of women, urban Canada and Ontario, the dominant province. She also said that his attempt to force an early election would aid the Quebec separatists. In an evenly balanced parliament, her switch should allow the Liberals to scrape through with the help of the Speaker's vote.
Yet the standing of the ruling party continues to be undermined by evidence to the Gomery commission, which is investigating allegations that the Liberals, under Jean Chrétien, financed their campaigns in Quebec in part through kickbacks from advertising agencies given lucrative contracts to promote federalism in the province. That promotion was launched in the wake of a Quebec referendum on independence, which was defeated by the narrowest of margins in 1995.
The Meech Lake Accord, the Charlottetown Agreement, the Calgary Declaration: all have been mileposts in Canada's long and vain attempt to accommodate Quebec. Despite having bribed the province, the Liberals now look set to lose out at federal level to the Bloc Québécois, to the advantage of the Conservative Party, with which it is temporarily allied. The challenge now facing Mr Harper is to make inroads into Liberal-dominated Ontario, which accounts for around a third of parliamentary seats. Having jumped ship, Miss Stronach may soon find she has abandoned one opposition party for another.

The only elements of the excellent coverage above that I would disagree with are the following:

The only thing that Canadians dislike more than corruption is right wing policy
The Queen is actually doing her best to steer clear of the controversy... Ironically, because she happens to be in-country, the writ should be dropped by her and not Adrienne Clarkson.... Interesting constitutional questions there for sure...

All in all that is great media coverage - speak to the story, grab the relevant elements and provide historical context. The U.S. media could take a page from this book.

Oh Look! The American Media is actually paying attention!

2005-05-19T11:10:00.000-03:00

Linky/excerpt:

Canadian Government Faces Confidence Vote - All Eyes in Canada on Parliament Hill As Minority Government Faces Confidence Vote - By BETH DUFF-BROWN Associated Press Writer

TORONTO May 19, 2005 — Canadian eyes were turned to Parliament Hill for Thursday's confidence vote the most dramatic in decades but with the defection of a Conservative member of parliament to the Liberal ranks the defeat for the minority government of Prime Minister Paul Martin has grown less certain. (More at Link)

High Drama on Parliament Hill

2005-05-19T11:00:00.000-03:00

If there was a day to follow what is going on in the Canadian Parliament, today is that day. It's climax time folks!

The big budget vote is today and every MP has to be there to vote on it. The slightest glitch, like a case of appendicitis could mean the fall of the government and a snap election.

Check out today's linky/excerpt from the National Post:

Appendicitis may sideline MP Carolyn Parrish who was to vote with
Liberals Canadian Press May 19, 2005

OTTAWA (CP) - The uncertainty surrounding the federal budget vote
Thursday has taken a bizarre twist.
CTV's Canada AM reported that Independent MP Carolyn Parrish, a former Liberal who was to vote with the government, has said told it she has appendicitis and may miss the crucial vote.
"She just told us she's got appendicitis and she's very sick," CTV's Robert Fife reported.
The Canada AM report said when asked whether she would be in the House for the vote on which rests the fate of the minority Liberal government, she said "I'm not sure."
In a full House of Commons, the Tories and Bloc Quebecois would hold 152 votes and so would the Liberals, with support from the NDP and Parrish.
Parrish is on record as saying she planned to support the Liberals.
Independents David Kilgour and Chuck Cadman were keeping secret Wednesday how they will vote. The Tories would need both to bring down the government.

You Go Belinda!

2005-05-17T17:18:00.000-03:00

Well, I haven't always been a fan but I do admire the woman's moxy. This woman was a contender for the leadership of the Conservative Party and now she's a Liberal cabinet minister. This is BIG news and it could save the Liberal government from collapse on Thursday. This also means that the same-sex legislation will be potentially back on track for passage as well.

And she may not be the last red tory to jump ship. There are two other Conservative MP's from Newfoundland who are currently sweating bricks over the potential failure of the Liberal government because it may mean the failure of the Atlantic Accord - a deal that will bring a whack of cash to the Maritime provinces in Oil and Gas revenues. If the Atlantic Accord fails because they participated in bringing the government down, they will undoubtably lose their seats.

Now that the pressure seems to be off, I'm a bit disappointed that we are no longer as likely to have an election... I really wanted to see the Conservatives get the bum reddening that they so richly deserved.

Ah well, there will always be another day.

Here's your linky/excerpt from the good old CBC.CA:

Conservative Stronach joins Liberals Last Updated Tue, 17 May 2005 14:11:54 EDT

OTTAWA - Belinda Stronach, who ran for the leadership of the Conservative party in early 2004, has crossed the floor to the Liberal party and will sit in Paul Martin's cabinet.
INDEPTH: Belinda Stronach

Paul Martin welcomes Belinda Stronach into the Liberal party in Ottawa, Tuesday. (CP photo)
The millionaire businesswoman becomes minister of human resources and skills development, the prime minister said Tuesday morning. She will also help the Liberals implement the recommendations in the Gomery report on the scandal-plagued sponsorship program when it is delivered later this year.
Stronach's defection could keep Martin's minority government in power as it faces two key votes on its 2005 budget Thursday.
"After difficult reflection, I reached a conclusion," Stronach told reporters in Ottawa. "I cannot exaggerate how hard this was for me, but the political crisis affecting Canada is too risky and dangerous for blind partisanship."
She also said Conservative Leader Stephen Harper is not sensitive to the needs of all parts of the country, and is jeopardizing national unity by allying himself with the Bloc Québécois.
"The country must come first," she said.
Send us your thoughts
Stronach said that someday, the Conservatives will grow and strengthen to become a worthy challenger to the Liberals. In the meantime, she thinks her place is with a party that is more responsive to the needs of cities, women and young people.
She also said she is looking forward to tackling the Gomery recommendations when they are presented.
"Only when the people of Canada have renewed confidence and faith in the systems of government can we return to economic prosperity."
Small-l liberal in Conservative ranks
Stronach, 39, is a small-l liberal who has not always been comfortable within the Conservative ranks, especially on the issue of same-sex marriage.
Last week, she said it would be unfortunate if the Liberal government fell before the 2005 budget was passed because it contained measures on municipal funding that were of great importance to her constituents in the Toronto-area riding of Newmarket-Aurora.
FROM MARCH 10, 2004: Belinda Stronach secures nomination in riding
The former president and CEO of auto parts maker Magna International Inc. lost the Conservative leadership race to Harper in March 2004.
Stronach's father, Magna founder Frank Stronach, ran unsuccessfully for the federal Liberals in 1988 when John Turner was leader of the party.
Stronach said she broached the matter with former Ontario premier David Peterson, who is a family friend, after running into him and his wife at an event in Toronto last week.
Peterson, a Liberal who led a minority government in Ontario in the 1980s before winning his first majority, spoke to her at some length before arranging conversations with federal Liberals and eventually the prime minister.
'I can count,' Martin says of budget vote
The alliance with Stronach could keep Martin's minority government alive in two key budget votes expected Thursday.
Her defection from the Conservatives gives the Liberal-NDP coalition on the budget a total of 151 votes, not including Speaker Peter Milliken, a Liberal MP who votes only in the case of a tie.
The Conservatives and Bloc have a total of 152 votes.
There are three Independent MPs, one of whom, Carolyn Parrish, has said she will vote with the Liberals. The other two, Chuck Cadman and David Kilgour, have not said which way they will vote.
"We still don't know whether the budget will pass or not, [but] I've got to tell you, I can count," said a visibly pleased Martin, calling Stronach a "gutsy" new part of his team.
In the June 2004 election, Stronach beat Liberal Martha Hall-Findlay in her riding by 689 votes.
Martin said Hall-Findlay, who has already earned the Liberal nomination for Newmarket-Aurora for the next election, has agreed to step aside in favour of Stronach's candidacy.
Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Lucienne Robillard had been leading the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development since mid-January, when cabinet was shuffled.
Robillard will now be intergovernmental affairs minister only.
Pressed on how her decision will affect her romantic relationship with Central Nova MP Peter MacKay, the deputy leader of the Conservatives, Stronach called that a "personal matter" that she did not intend to comment upon.
She also said she had the "greatest respect" for MacKay.

Another News Source Muzzled

2005-05-16T13:21:00.000-03:00

This time, it's Newsweek that has been caught in an "error" that has resulted in the declaration of Holy War in many parts of the Muslim world.

Was Newsweek in the wrong? By their own admission, they seem to be. However, the cynical side of me just has to wonder whether they were told to issue the retraction because of the furor that the article has caused.

Either way, the damage is done. Relations between the west and the Muslim world will never be the same again.

Here's your linky/excerpt from Salon.com.

Holding Newsweek accountable - The Pentagon decries the magazine's use of anonymous sources in an untrue story that sparked violent protests among Muslims. By Julia Day
May 16, 2005

The Pentagon has attacked as "irresponsible" an article in Newsweek magazine alleging that U.S. military interrogators desecrated copies of the Quran, and accused the magazine of "hiding behind" anonymous sources.
Bryan Whitman, a spokesman for the Pentagon, claimed the report, published in last week's issue, was "demonstrably false," adding that it had had "significant consequences that reverberated throughout Muslim communities around the world."
"Newsweek hid behind anonymous sources, which by their own admission do not withstand scrutiny. Unfortunately, they cannot retract the damage they have done to this nation or those that were viciously attacked by those false allegations."
The magazine has apologized for the story, in which it alleged interrogators at Guantánamo Bay had flushed a copy of the Quran down a toilet.
"We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst," the apology read.

Have you ever been so tired that you can barely lift your arms to type? I'm that tired right now...

I'm not ignoring you...

2005-05-10T09:43:00.000-03:00

I'm in the middle of a project right now that is taking me away from the news/internets. I will be done in a week or so and I'll be back posting as usual.

Please don't forget about me in the interim!

:)

The Kingdom of Heaven - Well Timed?

2005-05-06T15:44:00.000-03:00

I don't usually post movie reviews, but given the current political climate in the world, ie the fact that in some ways we are re-living the Crusades, I think it apt to mention it.

Will I see Kingdom of Heaven? Not until I've seen Crash first.

Here's your handy dandy linky/excerpt:

MOVIE REVIEW: "Kingdom of Heaven" - 'Heaven' Can Wait: Epic about the Crusades never captures the imagination because it sacrifices intimacy for combat.

East and West collide as impassioned armies, Christian and Muslim, battle to determine the fate of the Middle East.
The 21st century?
Not in "Kingdom of Heaven," epic-minded director Ridley Scott's latest historical pageant, if hardly his most successful. (The Oscar-winning "Gladiator" still claims that title.)
Set in the late 12th century, just before the Third Crusade, "Kingdom of Heaven" casts a sometimes stirring, sometimes stilted glance back to the days when Christian crusaders fought Islamic warriors for control of the territory they called the Holy Land -- and its most sacred city, Jerusalem.
The historical details may be unfamiliar to all but dedicated medieval history scholars. Dedicated moviegoers, however, should recognize the terrain and the characters struggling to conquer it.
There's the noble knight on a moral quest, battling an almost-as-noble enemy while fending off enemies from within -- including himself.
And if you don't recognize him in his original armor, think of all those cowboys fighting all those Indians in all those wide-open-spaces Westerns, providing an all-American variant on the classic chivalric quest.
Ridley Scott remembers. More importantly, he and screenwriter William Monahan (a former Spy magazine editor making his big-screen debut) realize those one-sided recollections need a shift in perspective.
And in that sense, "Kingdom of Heaven" comes through, offering a more even-handed account of the conflict. More importantly, the movie also puts a human face on a traditionally faceless enemy.
If the movie had the dramatic momentum to match its good intentions -- and a leading man worthy of leading the charge -- "Kingdom of Heaven" might have been as powerfully thought-provoking as it is pulse-pounding.
Instead, the movie (and its makers) opt for big moments and big battles, all too often sacrificing character-driven intimacy for epic combat.
At least it's state-of-the-art epic combat. (More at Link)

I know that this is frivolous.. but...

2005-05-06T15:30:00.000-03:00

Linky/excerpt:

Stones roll into Moncton this summer - Canadian Press May 6, 2005

MONCTON, N.B. -- The world's greatest rock 'n' roll band will be heading to New Brunswick this summer.
Ian Fowler, director of community service for the City of Moncton, said the Rolling Stones will headline a large outdoor concert in Moncton in September.
"We're on the verge of making history with the largest concert event ever in Atlantic Canada," he told the Moncton Times and Transcript on Thursday.
The exact date and ticket prices won't be announced until Tuesday, but Fowler said promoters DKD Events and The Next Adventure say the Stones will perform at a 140-hectare site at Magnetic Hill, where Pope John Paul II held a papal mass in 1984.
Fowler couldn't confirm rumours that Bryan Adams, The Tragically Hip and Santana will also perform on the show.
At least one other Canadian destination, Ottawa, is expected to be on the Stones' itinerary.
The Rolling Stones Fan Club of Europe website, iorr.org, reports rumours that the band will play Ottawa's Lansdowne Park before heading to Moncton. The group last played Ottawa in 1968.
The Stones have had a longstanding connection to Canada. They often rehearse for their world tours in Toronto and in 2003 headlined a SARS benefit that drew 450,000 spectators.

The Torontonian in me should be blase about this story because the Stones are a fixture at the Horseshoe Tavern whenever they are preparing for a concert tour...

But come on! This is Moncton! The Hub of the Maritimes! It has TWO, count them TWO MALLS!!!! It has a Starbucks! (and more Tim Horton's per capita than anywhere else in the world) It is home to the (really fugly) reversing Chocolate River! It boasts such highlights as the Magnetic Hill petting zoo.

I do live near Moncton and trust me I love it here but the reality is that there isn't a whole heck of a lot of excitement around here so when there is some, I gotta call it out.

Trust me. This is a really really big deal.

It just gets worse and worse for Martin

2005-05-05T14:26:00.000-03:00

His name is now in the Sponsorship scandal mix now that the publication ban has been lifted on recent testimony by Chuck Guite, the man who used to run the sponsorship program.

We still have a government for now... Is it functioning? Not so much... There should be a very interesting question period today, but alas, the Hockey is on so I will have to catch it on the evening news...

I'm curious to see how Scott Brison fares in all of this. He was a Tory at the time of the scandal and his hands are clean of this whole mess. I wonder if we are ready for an openly Gay PM? I know I am....

In any event, here is your linky/excerpt:

Martin denies implication in sponsorship scandal

CTV.ca News Staff
Prime Minister Paul Martin is shrugging off allegations that link him to the mishandling of federal sponsorship program funds.
Martin's name came up Wednesday, when Justice John Gomery lifted his publication ban on testimony by the man who ran the now-defunct program in the late 1990s, Chuck Guite.
The decision made public a week's worth of the retired bureaucrat's sensational claims and allegations, including his suggestion of a direct link between Martin and the misdirection of program funds meant to promote federalism in Quebec.
Testifying about his post-retirement experience as a lobbyist for Toronto ad firm Vickers & Benson, Guite said he was told that the then-finance minister had authorized a plan guaranteeing the firm would not lose it lucrative contracts with the sponsorship program.
Outside his weekly cabinet meeting on Thursday, Prime Minister Paul Martin firmly denied ever having a conversation on the subject.
"As you know I've always said I've never interfered in a contract," Martin told reporters on Parliament Hill.
"I believe that it is important that we let Justice Gomery actually make his report because it is actually important to put an end to these mud-slinging campaigns," Martin added in French.
The prime minister's comment echoed earlier statements from his spokesperson -- who called Guite's testimony not only third-hand, but also false -- as well as Public Works Minister Scott Brison.
In an interview earlier Thursday, Brison said Canadians should be proud of how the Liberal leader has been dealing with outrage over the sponsorship program.
"Canadians ought to respect the prime minister and the fact the prime minister has put country above party," Brison told CTV's Canada AM, praising Martin for making, "a significant political sacrifice to get to the truth." (More at Link)

The Good Old Hockey Game

2005-05-05T12:25:00.000-03:00

In deference to the first "real" game of the 2005 World Championships in Austria this afternoon where Canada will face off against the USA at 3pm EDT, I will share with you some song lyrics from Stompin Tom:

The Hockey Song (The Good Old Hockey Game) - by Stompin' Tom Conners

Hello out there, we're on the air,
It's hockey night tonight!
Tension grows, the whistle blows,
And the puck goes down the ice.

The goalie jumps, and the players bump,
The fans all go insane!
Someone roars, "Bobby scores!"
At the good old hockey game.

Oh! The good old hockey game,
Is the best game you can name!
And the best game you can name,
Is the good old Hockey game!

Second period....
Where players dash with skates a-flash,
The home team trails behind;
But they grab the puck and go bursting up,
And they're down across the line.
They storm the crease like bumble bees,
They travel like a burning plane!
We see them slide the puck inside,
It's a one-one hockey game.
Oh! The good old hockey game,
Is the best game you can name!
And the best game you can name,
Is the good old Hockey game!
Third period....
Last game of the playoffs too!
Oh, take me where the hockey players,
Face-off down the rink!
And the Stanley Cup is all filled up,
For the champs who win the drink.
Now the final flick of a hockey stick,
And on one gigantic screen!
Well, the puck is in - the home team wins,
That good old hockey game.
Oh! The good old hockey game,
Is the best game you can name!
And the best game you can name,
Is the good old Hockey game!

Blair set to retain power

2005-05-04T11:23:00.000-03:00

One would wonder why this is the case. Britons are very much against the invasion of Iraq. Why not turf Blair and go with the alternatives?

I think, that as a Canadian who has experienced the parliamentary system her whole life, I might be able to provide some insight. The Angus Reid polls put Labour at 39% and the Tories at 29% with the Liberal Democrats following up with 22%.

You see, the Labour Party has traditionally been the centre/left party in England, similar to the Liberal Party in Canada. In a campaign that has been fought largely on domestic issues and not foreign policy, Britons are bleeding their support to the Liberal Democrats and not the Tories becuase while they disagree with the foreign policy of the Labour Party, they favour the more socialist domestic policies proffered from the left.

We face a similar situation in Canada right now on the eve of our own election. The Liberal Party has faced a huge scandal yet Canadian voters will likely bleed their support to the more leftist Bloc Part (in Quebec) and the NDP Party (in the rest of Canada). This will likely result in another Liberal minority coalition government.

Its tough on voters when the ruling Centre/Left party makes bad ethical or policy decisions. That sort of behaviour puts the voter between the archetypal rock and hard place. The voters in Great Britian and in Canada will inevitably ask themselves the following question as they enter the polling station:

"Do I throw the baby out with the bath water or don't I?"

45 Dead in Northern Iraq

2005-05-04T11:20:00.000-03:00

People die every day in Iraq. It is a statement in and of itself that I only call this incident out because of the sheer volume of victims. However, I hope that this missive can be seen as yet another light that should shine on the violence that is occuring on a daily basis over there.

An elected democratic government that is too frightened of violent retaliation is not going to be very effective at actually governing. To say that this is indicative of poor war planning and of the abject failure of the Bush administration to effect decent foreign policy is to be trite.

Anyway, here is your linky/excerpt from forbes.com:
At least 45 killed in suicide car bombing in northern Iraq - UPDATE
05.04.2005, 05:59 AM (Update to change toll of wounded, detail; background)
ARBIL, Iraq (AFX) -

At least 45 people have been killed in a suicide attack in the Kurdish city of Arbil in northern Iraq, the local governor said.
Another 95 people are reported wounded, according to governor Nawzad Hadi.
Police said a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb near a group of police recruits in the town.
'A suicide bomber entered the recruiting centre and blew himself up, killing 45 people and wounding 95,' Hadi added.
Hadi said: 'We will continue fighting terrorists until we root them out. They will not scare us,'.
Arbil, 350 km north of Baghdad, is the fiefdom of Massoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), one of the two Kurdish factions in Iraq.
The targeted recruitment centre was also a major office site for the KDP.
Sunni-backed insurgents have attacked Iraqi police and army targets repeatedly in recent weeks, killing at least 30 and wounding more than 100 since an upsurge in violence six days ago that coincided with the formation of a new government.

Another tragic anniversary to remember today

2005-05-04T11:07:00.000-03:00

Today is the 35th anniversary of the massacre at Kent state. Anyone who is a student activist and who isn't familiar with this incident should make themselves aware. This incident constituted a pivotal moment in the germination of the Vietnam protest movement.

Here's your linky/excerpt from the wikipedia:

The Kent State shootings occurred at Kent State University in the city of Kent, Ohio, and involved the shooting of students by the National Guard on May 4, 1970. Over the course of four days, Kent State students protested against an American invasion
of Cambodia which President Richard Nixon launched on April 25 and which Nixon announced in a television address on April 30. There were significant national consequences: hundreds of colleges closed throughout the U.S., and the event further divided the nation along political lines. (please see more at the link)

Finally a Tory tells it like it is

2005-05-03T12:33:00.000-03:00

Now I'm not the biggest fan of Belinda Stronach. But I do think that she belongs to the wrong party. I do enjoy the fact that she is not keeping her mouth shut and is not marching in lock step with the rest of the crew.

Here's your linky/excerpt:

Push for quick election risky, Stronach says CTV.ca News Staff

Despite boasts of unanimous support for plans to topple the government, some high-profile dissent is being heard from within the ranks of the Conservative party.
Hours before Conservative leader Stephen Harper emerged to declare his whole party backed the push for an early election, Belinda Stronach said it's risky and could backfire.
Stronach told reporters that parts of the budget -- especially the billions earmarked for municipal infrastructure -- are very important to voters in her riding north of Toronto.
"I do have a concern that voting against the entire budget will impact negatively in my riding," she said.
"However, I think it's important to say that if this government is serious about doing some good and doing what's right in the public interest, they could pull out certain elements of the budget that all parties could move forward on and agree to."
The former Conservative leadership contender stopped short, however, of telling the paper whether she thought a quick election is necessary.
Watching developments in Ottawa, CTV's Mike Duffy said the comments nevertheless betray a rift made clear during the day's proceedings in the House of Commons.
"Neither Belinda nor Peter were up there leading the applause as their colleagues got up. They're disenchanted," he said. "They're not a hundred per cent behind Stephen Harper." (More at link)

Perverting the Lexicon of Freedom

2005-05-03T12:23:00.000-03:00

I watched the live coverage of the ceremony at the Canadian war cemetery in Groesbeek this morning on the CBC. And yes, only Eggs and Clarkson were there which is disgraceful from a Canadian government point of view but we were well represented by our Canadian forces and our vets. I even saw a goodly sampling of the RCMP in their best serge. The ceremony was well attended and very respectful of the dead and what they suffered to bring freedom to the Dutch.

Freedom. I tend to avoid using the term now. I also avoid using these other terms:

Liberty
Democracy
Justice
Right
Evil

I tend to avoid these terms because they have been perverted by the Bush administration. When I hear the word Liberty now, I think about the liberation of Iraq. When I think about Democracy, I think about the farce that passes for democracy south of the 49th. When I think of Justice, I think of "Justice Sunday". When I think of Right, the Religious Wrong comes to mind. And when I think about evil, it's all about the Axis of Evil.

Interestingly enough, I found out today, watching the CBC coverage of the event, that I wasn't alone. I was listening to the commentators and one of them had to stop himself when discussing the liberation of the Netherlands. He was discussing how they were liberated from Evil and he had to stop himself and clarify. He made a distinction between the Evil that was the Nazi regime and the farce of the Axis of Evil. He characterized WWII as being the last truly just and right war that the world has ever engaged in and that the conflicts since then have had no absolute delineation between good and evil.

I would qualify his comments somewhat to highlight the fact that "evil" deeds have been done since WWII, in Rwanda the former Yugoslavia for example. But then we didn't fight in a just war in Rwanda and Clinton/Blair dropped a few bombs in Kosovo as I recall.

I don't know how long it will take before these words are used again without stain. Maybe simpler times are needed for that. And I don't for see simple times for us in the near or long term.

Since when has the Government ever had anyone's interests but their own at heart?

2005-05-02T16:47:00.000-03:00

Thoughts From Up Here

This post is sort of a side note to my aunt's previous post "the liberals need every vote they can get to stay alive". Let me say that politics has never disgusted me more. It got to the point where there would only be two people representing Canada at the VE day celebration from Belgium. Only one of the major political parties sent a representative- The New Democratic Party. The Bloc and The Conservatives pulled out their representatives, forcing the Liberals to pull out. Why? Because they didn't want a vote of non-confidence to occur while they were gone.
This is a ceremony to remember all of those who died for us! They gave their lives to give us freedom (that might not have been the government's intent at the time, I'm sure it involved money and power some how) but the men who lived and died on the battle field were doing it for their country, and preserving the rights of future generations. Can there not be political cease fire or something? Do they really have to be absent from such a ceremony for their own selfish reasons. Steven Harper did not need to take those actions, and neither did the Bloc.

It has gotten to the point where politicians' agenda has become more important then honouring those who protected their freedom and allowed those crooks into office in the first place. I hope they are comfortable sitting at those mahogany desks, clicking their pedicured nails while honest men and women sacrificed their lives to give us a chance. And how do they thank them? With a slap in the face.

I know that these are some pretty pessimistic views, but remember this was written while I was very angry and upset. Well I can't really blame politicians, after all "absolute power corrupts absolutely".

This pessimistic outlook on life was brought to you by JonStewart_is_a_god.

Oh yeah - I forgot all about North Korea

2005-05-02T12:39:00.000-03:00

Well maybe I didn't forget, but I'm sure that NK is not exactly first on the minds of most North Americans these days. Maybe this story from the English version of Chosun will help:

U.S.: North Korea Apparently Fires Missile into Sea of Japan

A top U.S. official says it appears North Korea has launched a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan.
A few hours after the first reports surfaced of a possible North Korean missile test, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card was interviewed on American television. He told CNN's Late Edition there is reason to believe the initial Japanese reports are true.
"It appears that there was a test of a short-range missile by the North Koreans, and it landed in the Sea of Japan," he said.
Mr. Card made clear the Bush administration is monitoring the situation closely, and said North Korea has taken similar action in the past.
"We are not surprised by this," he said. "The North Koreans have tested their missiles before."
Earlier, on the Fox New Sunday television program, the White House chief of staff said Washington is aware of North Korea's intentions.
"Well, I think, they are looking to kind of be bullies in the world," said Mr. Card. "And they are causing others to stand up and take notice."
Mr. Card stressed that the United States remains committed to multi-national diplomacy to deal with Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions. Echoing comments made by President Bush at a news conference Thursday, he said North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has not kept his word, and the United States has no confidence that he ever will.
"We have the Russians and the Chinese and the South Koreans and the Japanese working very closely with us to try to have them [North Koreans] recognize that, first of all, they [North Koreans] have to keep their word," he added. "Second of all, they must not have any program that could lead to nuclear weapons."
Appearing on CNN, Senator Carl Levin, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said multi-party negotiations are important. But he stressed, they are not enough.
"We also ought to do what our ally, the South Koreans, want us to do, which is also, in addition to the multi-lateral talks, talk directly to the North Koreans," he said. "That is what has been missing."
North Korea walked away from the six-nation negotiations in February.
VOA News

I'm thinking that Mr. Card and leader of North Korea need new names. How about Mr. Pot and Mr. Kettle?

Liberals need every vote they can get to stay alive

2005-05-02T12:29:00.000-03:00

Given the content of my previous post, this CBC news story seems that much more interesting:

Liberals pull minister home from Europe- Last Updated Mon, 02 May 2005 08:26:41 EDT

OTTAWA - The federal Liberals have called Minister of Veterans Affairs Albina Guarnieri back to Canada, just one day after she arrived in Holland for ceremonies leading up to the 60th anniversary of VE-Day.
The Liberals will need her vote in the House of Commons if one of the opposition parties launches an effort to defeat Prime Minister Paul Martin's minority government when Parliament resumes Monday after a weeklong break.
Guarnieri is travelling back to Canada Monday with NDP MP Peter Stoffer from Nova Scotia, who was also called home to be present in the House of Commons.
The move leaves no federally elected politicians marking this week's commemorations of the end of the Second World War in Europe.
The Conservative party and Bloc Québécois had declined to send any MPs to the VE-Day events.
Guarnieri was supposed to make speeches Tuesday and Wednesday at two Canadian war cemeteries. She will be replaced by Senator Art Eggleton, a former minister of defence in Jean Chrétien's Liberal government.
Gov. Gen. Adrienne Clarkson is also representing Canada at ceremonies in Europe this week.
Guarnieri hopes to be able to return to Holland for the parade of veterans next Sunday, which is the actual anniversary of VE-Day.

Fasten your seatbelts folks! It's going to be a very interesting week!

Tulips and Maple Leaves

2005-05-02T12:17:00.000-03:00

Have you ever been to Ottawa in spring? I used to live there and you have to go through a special effort not to see the various tulip beds that blanket the city at this time of year.

These tulips are a gift from the Netherlands, a country that was liberated by Canadian soldiers, 7,600 of whom lost their lives to bring freedom and food to this battered country. I found a nice summary of the events that gave rise to the extremely strong bond that exists now between these two countries:

The Liberation of Holland will always be one of the most important moments in the history of World War II for Canadian Soldiers. As a result of their efforts, the German invasion of the Netherlands was reversed and the Dutch people were freed once more.
Canadian troops had been fighting in France, Italy, Belgium, and in Germany since the D-Day landing. These troops were moved to the Netherlands to push the German troops occupying the northeast back to the sea and to drive German troops in the west back into Germany.
The Liberation campaign was fought on several fronts including:
The Battle of the Scheldt which, when successful, would open up the supply lines from Normady through the port of Antwerp and into the Netherlands. The advance began in October 1944 and by November 8th, the several Canadian divisions with assistance from the 52nd British Division had put an end to all German resistance in the area.The German mines were cleared from the channel and November 28th saw the first shipment convoys passed through the channel lead by the Canadian-built freighter Fort Cataraqui. There were over 12,000 casualties in the First Canadian Army and 6,367 of these were Canadian born soldiers.
The Rhineland Campaign followed the Battle of the Scheldt and had a front over 200 miles long. The campaign took approximately 3 months and featured divisions of Canadian, British, and American soldiers. It was during this time that two Canadians, Sergeant Aubrey Cosens and Major F.A. Tilston, were awarded the Victoria Cross for their gallantry and courage. By March 10, the Germans had blown up the bridges on the Wesel and had retreated from their last main line of defence on the banks of the Rhine.
The Final Phase took place in Northwest Europe. It began on March 23rd when the Allied forces moved across the Rhine and began the assault. Two Canadian divisions (the 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade and the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion) participated in the joint Allied effort. A third Victoria Cross was earned during this effort, this time by F. G. Topham who was a medical orderly. The First Canadian Army's role was to open up supply routes to the north and clear the way into northeastern Netherlands, the coast of Germany and Western Holland.
Fighting had to be called to a halt and negotiations were held to permit relief supplies to be sent into parts of the Netherlands which had been starved over the course of a winter known as the "Hunger Winter". Canadian pilots dropped food packages from the air to the intense relief and joy of the Dutch people and as the Canadian troops liberated town after town, they were faced by the heart-breaking images of starving and beaten people crying and applauding in gratitude for their rescue.
The National Tulip Festival is one of the results of the Canadian interventions on behalf of the Netherlands during WWII. The royal family of Holland during the war fled the country for England in order to avoid capture by the invading German armies. Since the situation in England was equally bad, Queen Juliana decided to take her young family to Canada for safety. They lived in Government House in Ottawa and during their stay, Queen Juliana gave birth to a daughter, Princess Margriet. Since it was law that members of the Dutch Royal Family could not be born off of Dutch soil, the Government of Canada temporarily declared the wing of the Ottawa Civic Hospital where Margriet was born to be a Dutch protectorate (part of Holland) so that the baby could be technically meet the requirements of being born "in" Holland.
As a thank you gesture for providing a place of sanctuary for her and her family, as well as in recognition of the role Canadian soldiers played in the Liberation of the Netherlands, Queen Juliana presented Ottawa with 100,000 tulip bulbs in 1945. The blooming of the blubs became a national tourist attraction and the first official Tulip Festival took place in 1953. Queen Juliana herself attended the Festival during a royal visit in our Centennial year of 1967. Princess Margriet of the Netherlands
returned to Ottawa in 1995 to officially open the Festival and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Liberation of the Netherlands.
Every year, the Dutch people donate 10,000 bulbs and in 1995, an additional 5,000 bulbs for Parliament Hill,1,000 for each provincial and territorial capital and 1,000 for Ste. Anne's hospital in Saint-Anne-de-Bellevue, Que. (the only remaining federal hospital in Canada, administered by Veterans Affairs Canada) Now the Festival features over 2 million blooms.

This week marks the 60th anniversary of VE day, and many events are planned throughout Europe to comemmorate and to celebrate a victory that really was for the "good guys".

But like any good news story, there is always a darker side.

When I was a kid, I lived in a rural Dutch "neighbourhood" in Kingston for about 18 months. The friends that I made were Dutch and I realized that Dutch is NOT an easy language to pick up. I also learned that there are still very visceral feelings among the Dutch with respect to germany because there was a German family in the neighbourhood that was looked upon by my neighbours with scorn and suspicion. It was something that I didn't fully understand at the time.

Time, I think has acted as somewhat of a salve between these two communities, so much so that when I was in university, I befriended a German Canadian who ended up marrying a Dutch Canadian. They decided to merge their last names and yes, their merged last names had 17 letters.

While I am heartened by the fact that I actually know a german/dutch couple, I can't put myself in the shoes of those who were my dutch neighbours and I can't begin to understand what they went through because I wasn't there.

Sadly, while young dutch children are taught all about their history and the involvement of Canadians in the liberation of the netherlands, I as a child, had only one source for that particular story, my dutch neighbours. This was not taught to me in school as well it should have been. It clearly is being taught more frequently today because the excerpt above was put together by the students and staff at Confederation Public School. The very existence of the summary on a public school website is a very very good sign that this has not been completely ignored by our school system.

It was a shining moment in Canadian history and has resulted in a very warm and lasting bond between our two nations and it should be properly remembered.

Bush Press Conference

2005-04-29T15:32:00.000-03:00

You can find the Bush Press Conference Archive on C-Span (Media Player File) if you click here.

Below is the entire transcript as reported on SFGate.com.

(04-13) 19:26 PDT (AP) -- Text of President Bush's press conference at the White House on Tuesday, April 13, 2004, as transcribed by eMediaMillWorks Inc.:

BUSH: Good evening. Before I take your questions, let me speak with the American people about the situation in Iraq.
This has been tough weeks in that country. Coalition forces have encountered serious violence in some areas of Iraq. Our military commanders report that this violence is being instigated by three groups. Some remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime, along with Islamic militants, have attacked coalition forces in the city of Fallujah. Terrorists from other countries have infiltrated Iraq to incite and organize attacks.
In the south of Iraq, coalition forces face riots and attacks that are being incited by a radical cleric named al-Sadr. He has assembled some of his supporters into an illegal militia and publicly supported the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah.
Al-Sadr's methods of violence and intimidation are widely repudiated by other Iraqi Shia. He's been indicted by Iraqi authorities for the murder of a prominent Shia cleric.
Although these instigations of violence come from different factions, they share common goals.
They want to run us out of Iraq and destroy the democratic hopes of the Iraqi
people. The violence we have seen is a power grab by these extreme and ruthless elements. It's not a civil war. It's not a popular uprising. Most of Iraq is relatively stable. Most Iraqis by far reject violence and oppose dictatorship.
In forums where Iraqis have met to discuss their political future, and in all the proceedings of the Iraqi Governing Council, Iraqis have expressed clear commitments. They want strong protections for individual rights.
They want their independence. And they want their freedom.
America's commitment to freedom in Iraq is consistent with our ideals and required by our interests. Iraq will either be a peaceful, democratic country or it will again be a source of violence, a haven for terror and a threat to America and to the world.
By helping secure a free Iraq, Americans serving in that country are protecting their fellow citizens. Our nation is grateful to them all and to their families that face hardship and long separation.
This weekend, at a Fort Hood hospital, I presented a Purple Heart to some of our wounded, had the honor of thanking them on behalf of all Americans.
Other men and women have paid an even greater cost. Our nation honors the memory of those who have been killed, and we pray that their families will find God's comfort in the midst of their grief.
As I have said to those who have lost loved ones, we will finish the work of the fallen.
America's armed forces are performing brilliantly, with all the skill and honor we expect of them. We're constantly reviewing their needs. Troop strength now and in the future is determined by the situation on the ground. If additional forces are needed, I will send them. If additional resources are needed, we will provide them.
The people of our country are united behind our men and women in uniform, and this government will do all that is necessary to assure the success of their historic mission.
One central commitment of that mission is the transfer of the sovereignty back to the Iraqi people. We have set a deadline of June 30th. It is important that we meet that deadline.
As a proud, independent people, Iraqis do not support an indefinite occupation, and neither does America. We're not an imperial power, as nations such as Japan and Germany can attest. We're a liberating power, as nations in Europe and Asia can attest as well.
America's objective in Iraq is limited, and it is firm. We seek an independent, free and secure Iraq.
Were the coalition to step back from the June 30th pledge, many Iraqis would question our intentions and feel their hopes betrayed. And those in Iraq who trade in hatred and conspiracy theories would find a larger audience and gain a stronger hand.
We will not step back from our pledge. On June 30th, Iraqi sovereignty will be placed in Iraqi hands.
Sovereignty involves more than a date and a ceremony. It requires Iraqis to assume responsibility for their own future.
Iraqi authorities are now confronting the security challenge of the last several weeks.
In Fallujah, coalition forces have suspended offensive operations, allowing members of the Iraqi Governing Council and local leaders to work on the restoration of central
authority in that city. These leaders are communicating with the insurgents to ensure an orderly turnover of that city to Iraqi forces, so that the resumption of military action does not become necessary.
They are also insisting that those who killed and mutilated four American contract workers be handed over for trial and punishment.
In addition, members of the Governing Council are seeking to resolve the situation in the south. Al-Sadr must answer the charges against him and disband his illegal militia.
Our coalition is standing with responsible Iraqi leaders as they establish growing authority in their country.
The transition to sovereignty requires that we demonstrate confidence in Iraqis. And we have that confidence. Many Iraqi leaders are showing great personal courage, and their example will bring out the same quality in others.
The transition to sovereignty also requires an atmosphere of security, and our
coalition is working to provide that security.
We will continue taking the greatest care to prevent harm to innocent civilians, yet we will not permit the spread of chaos and violence. I have directed our military commanders to make every preparation to use decisive force if necessary to maintain order and to protect our troops.
The nation of Iraq is moving toward self-rule, and Iraqis and Americans will see evidence in the months to come. On June 30th, when the flag of a free Iraq is raised, Iraqi officials will assume full responsibility for the ministries of government. On that day, the transitional administrative law, including a bill of rights that is unprecedented in the Arab world, will take full effect.
The United States and all the nations of our coalition will establish normal diplomatic relations with the Iraqi government.
An American embassy will open, and an American ambassador will be posted. According to the schedule already approved by the Governing Council, Iraq will hold elections for a national assembly no later than next January. That assembly will draft a new permanent constitution, which will be presented to the Iraqi people in a national referendum held in October of next year.
Iraqis will then elect a permanent government by December 15, 2005 - an event that will mark the completion of Iraq's transition from dictatorship to freedom.
Other nations and international institutions are stepping up to their responsibilities
in building a free and secure Iraq. We're working closely with the United Nations envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, and with Iraqis to determine the exact form of the government that will receive sovereignty on June 30th.
The United Nations Election Assistance Team, headed by Karina Perelli, is in Iraq
developing plans for next January's election. NATO is providing support for the Polish-led, multinational division in Iraq. And 17 of NATO's 26 members are contributing forces to maintain security.
Secretary of State Powell and Secretary of State Rumsfeld and a number of NATO defense and foreign ministers are exploring a more formal role for NATO, such as turning the Polish-led division into a NATO operation and giving NATO specific responsibilities for border control.
Iraqis' neighbors also have responsibilities to make their region more stable. So I'm sending Deputy Secretary of State Armitage to the Middle East to discuss with these nations our common interest in a free and independent Iraq, and how they can help achieve this goal.
As we've made clear all along, our commitment to the success and security of Iraq will not end on June 30th. On July 1st and beyond, our reconstruction assistance will continue and our military commitment will continue.
Having helped Iraqis establish a new government, coalition military forces will help Iraqis to protect their government from external aggression and internal subversion.
The success of free government in Iraq is vital for many reasons: A free
Iraq is vital because 25 million Iraqis have as much right to live in freedom as
we do.
A free Iraq will stand as an example to reformers across the Middle East.
A free Iraq will show that America is on the side of Muslims who wish to live in peace, as we've already shown in Kuwait and Kosovo, Bosnia and Afghanistan.
A free Iraq will confirm to a watching world that America's word, once given, can be relied upon, even in the toughest times.
Above all, the defeat of violence and terror in Iraq is vital to the defeat of violence and terror elsewhere and vital, therefore, to the safety of the American people.
Now is the time, and Iraq is the place, in which the enemies of the civilized world are testing the will of the civilized world. We must not waver.
The violence we are seeing in Iraq is familiar. The terrorists who take hostages or plants a roadside bomb near Baghdad is serving the same ideology of murder that kills innocent people on trains in Madrid, and murders children on buses in Jerusalem, and blows up a nightclub in Bali and cuts the throat of a young reporter for being a Jew.
We've seen the same ideology of murder in the killing of 241 Marines in Beirut, the first attack on the World Trade Center, in the destruction of two embassies in Africa, in the attack on the USS Cole, and in the merciless horror inflicted upon thousands of innocent men and women and children on September the 11th, 2001.
None of these acts is the work of a religion. All are the work of a fanatical political ideology. The servants of this ideology seek tyranny in the Middle East and beyond. They seek to oppress and persecute women.
They seek the death of Jews and Christians and every Muslim who desires peace over theocratic terror. They seek to intimidate America into panic and retreat, and to set free nations against each other. And they seek weapons of mass destruction, to blackmail and murder on a massive scale.
Over the last several decades, we've seen that any concession or retreat on our part will only embolden this enemy and invite more bloodshed.
And the enemy has seen, over the last 31 months, that we will no longer live in denial or seek to appease them.
For the first time, the civilized world has provided a concerted response to the ideology of terror - a series of powerful, effective blows.
The terrorists have lost the shelter of the Taliban and the training camps in Afghanistan. They have lost safe havens in Pakistan. They lost an ally in Baghdad. And Libya has turned its back on terror.
They've lost many leaders in an unrelenting international manhunt. And perhaps more frightening to these men and their movement, the terrorists are seeing the advance of freedom and reform in the greater Middle East.
A desperate enemy is also a dangerous enemy. And our work may become more difficult before it is finished. No one can predict all the hazards that lie ahead or the cost that they will bring.
Yet, in this conflict, there is no safe alternative to resolute action. The consequences of failure in Iraq would be unthinkable.
Every friend of America in Iraq would be betrayed to prison and murder, as a new tyranny arose. Every enemy of America in the world would celebrate, proclaiming our weakness and decadence, and using that victory to recruit a new generation of killers.
We will succeed in Iraq. We're carrying out a decision that has already been made and will not change. Iraq will be a free, independent country, and America and the Middle East will be safer because of it.
Our coalition has the means and the will to prevail. We serve the cause of liberty, and that is always and everywhere a cause worth serving.
BUSH: Now I'll be glad to take your questions. I will start with you.
QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President.
Mr. President, April is turning into the deadliest month in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad, and some people are comparing Iraq to Vietnam and talking about a quagmire. Polls show that support for your policy is declining and that fewer than half of Americans now support it.
What does that say to you? And how do you answer the Vietnam comparison?
BUSH: I think the analogy is false. I also happen to think that analogy sends the wrong message to our troops and sends the wrong message to the enemy.
Look, this is hard work. It's hard to advance freedom in a country that has been strangled by tyranny. And yet we must stay the course because the end result is in our nation's interest.
A secure and free Iraq is an historic opportunity to change the world and make America more secure. A free Iraq in the midst of the Middle East will have incredible change.
It's hard. Freedom is not easy to achieve. I mean, we had a little trouble in our own country achieving freedom.
And we've been there a year. I know that seems like a long time. It seems like a long time to the loved ones whose troops have been overseas. But when you think about where the country has come from, it's a relatively short period of time.
And we're making progress. There's no question it's been a tough, tough series of weeks for the American people. It's been really tough for the families. I understand that. It's been tough on this administration. But we're doing the right thing. And as to whether or not I made decisions based upon polls, I don't. I just don't make decisions that way. I fully understand the consequences of what we're doing. We're changing the world, and the world will be better off and America will be more secure as a result of the actions we're taking.

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. What's your best prediction on how long U.S. troops will have to be in Iraq? And it sounds like you will have to add some troops. Is that a fair assessment?
BUSH: Well, first of all, that's up to General Abizaid, and he's clearly indicating that he may want more troops. It's coming up through the chain of command. And if that's what he wants, that's what he gets.
Generally, we've had about a 115,000 troops in Iraq. There's 135,000 now as a result of the changeover from one division to the next.
If he wants to keep troops there to help, I'm more than willing to say, yes, General Abizaid.
I talk to General Abizaid quite frequently. I'm constantly asking him does he have what he needs, whether it be in troop strength or in equipment. He and General Sanchez talk all the time. And if he makes the recommendation, he'll get it.
In terms of how long we'll be there, as long as necessary, and not one day more. The Iraqi people need us there to help with security. They need us there to fight off these, you know, violent few, who are doing everything they can to resist the advance of freedom. And I mentioned who they are.
And as I mentioned in my opening remarks, our commanders on the ground have got the authorities necessary to deal with violence, and will -- will in firm fashion.
And that's what by far the vast majority of the Iraqis want. They want security so they can advance toward a free society.
Once we transfer sovereignty, we'll enter into a security agreement with the government to which we pass sovereignty, the entity to which we pass sovereignty. And we'll need to be there for a while.
We'll also need to continue training the Iraqi troops. I was disappointed in the performance of some of the troops. Some of the units performed brilliantly. Some of them didn't. And we need to find out why. If they're lacking in equipment, we'll get them equipment. If there needs to be more intense training, we'll get more intense training.
But eventually, Iraq's security is going to be handled by the Iraqi people themselves.
Oh, let's see here. Terry.
QUESTION: Mr. President, before the war, you and members of your administration made several claims about Iraq: that U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators with sweets and flowers; that Iraqi oil revenue would pay for most of the reconstruction; and that Iraq not only had weapons of mass destruction but, as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said, we know where they are.
How do you explain to Americans how you got that so wrong? And how do you answer your opponents who say that you took this nation to war on the basis of what have turned out to be a series of false premises?
BUSH: Well, let me step back and review my thinking prior to going into Iraq.
First, the lesson of September the 11th is that when this nation sees a threat, a gathering threat, we got to deal with it. We can no longer hope that oceans protect us from harm. Every threat we must take seriously.
Saddam Hussein was a threat. He was a threat because he had used weapons of mass destruction on his own people. He was a threat because he coddled terrorists. He was a threat because he funded suiciders. He was a threat to the region. He was a threat to the United States.
That's the assessment that I made from the intelligence, the assessment that Congress made from the intelligence. That's the exact same assessment that the United Nations Security Council made with the intelligence.
I went to the U.N., as you might recall, and said, either you take care of him, or we will. Any time an American president says, if you don't, we will, we better be prepared to. And I was prepared to.
BUSH: I thought it was important for the United Nations Security Council that when it says something, it means something for the sake of security in the world.
See, the war on terror had changed the calculations.
We needed to work with people. People needed to come together to work. And therefore, empty words would embolden the actions of those who are willing to
kill indiscriminately.
The United Nations passed a Security Council resolution unanimously that said, disarm or face serious consequences. And he refused to disarm.
I thought it was very interesting that Charlie Duelfer, who just came back -- he's the head of the Iraqi Survey Group -- reported some interesting findings from his recent tour there. And one of the things was, he was amazed at how deceptive the Iraqis had been toward UNMOVIC and UNSCOM, deceptive in hiding things.
We knew they were hiding things. A country that hides something is a country that is afraid of getting caught, and that was part of our calculation. Charlie confirmed that.
He also confirmed that Saddam had the ability to produce biological and chemical weapons. In other words, he was a danger. And he had long-range missiles that were undeclared to the United Nations. He was a danger. And so we dealt with him.
And what else was part the question? Oh, oil revenues.
Well, the oil revenues, they're bigger than we thought they would be at this point in time. I mean, one year after the liberation of Iraq, the revenues of the oil stream is pretty darn significant.
One of the things I was concerned about, prior to going into Iraq, was that the oil fields would be destroyed, but they weren't. They're now up and running.
And that money is -- it will benefit the Iraqi people. It's their oil, and they'll use it to reconstruct the country.
Finally, the attitude of the Iraqis toward the American people -- it's an interesting question. They're really pleased we got rid of Saddam Hussein, and you can understand why. This guy was a torturer, a killer, a maimer. There's mass graves.
I mean, he was a horrible individual that really shocked the country in many ways, shocked it into a kind of a fear of making decisions toward liberty. That's what we've seen recently. Some citizens are fearful of stepping up.
And they were happy -- they're not happy they're occupied. I wouldn't be happy if I were occupied either. They do want us there to help with security.
And that's why this transfer of sovereignty is an important signal to send, and it's why it's also important for them to hear we will stand with them until they become a free country.
Elisabeth? Excuse me.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE), Mr. President. To move to the 9-11 commission, you yourself have acknowledged that Osama bin Laden was not a central focus of the administration in the months before September 11th. I was not on point, you told the journalist Bob Woodward. I didn't feel that sense of urgency.
Two and a half years later, do you feel any sense of personal responsibility for September 11th?
BUSH: Let me put that quote to Woodward in context, because he had asked me if I was -- something about killing bin Laden. That's what the question was.
And I said, you know, compared to how I felt at the time, after the attack, I didn't have that -- and I also went on to say, my blood wasn't boiling, I think is what the quote said.
I didn't see -- I mean, I didn't have that great sense of outrage that I felt on September the 11th. I was -- on that day, I was angry and sad. Angry that al-Qaida -- I thought at the time al-Qaida, found out shortly thereafter it was al-Qaida -- had unleashed this attack. Sad for those who lost their life.
Your question, do I feel -- yes?
QUESTION: Personal responsibility for September 11th?
BUSH: I feel incredibly grieved when I meet with family members, and I do quite frequently. I grieve for, you know, the incredible loss of life that they feel, the emptiness they feel.
There are some things I wish we'd have done, when I look back. I mean, hindsight's easy. It's easy for a president to stand up and say, now that I know what happened, it would have been nice if there were certain things in place.
For example, a Homeland Security Department. And why -- I say that because that provides the ability for our agencies to coordinate better and to work together better than it was before.
I think the hearings will show that the Patriot Act is an important change in the law that will allow the FBI and the CIA to better share information together.
We were kind of stovepiped, I guess is a way to describe it. There was, you know, kind of departments that at times didn't communicate -- because of law, in the FBI's case.
And the other thing I look back on and realize is that we weren't on a war footing. The country was not on a war footing, and yet the enemy was at war with us. And it didn't take me long to put us on a war footing.
And we've been on a war ever since. The lessons of 9-11 -- one lesson was we must deal with gathering threats, and that's part of the reason I dealt with Iraq the way I did.
The other lesson is, is that this country must go on the offense and stay on the offense. In order to secure the country, we must do everything in our power to find these killers and bring them to justice before they hurt us again. I'm afraid they want to hurt us again.
They're still there. They can be right one time; we got to be right 100 percent of the time in order to protect the country. It's a mighty task.
But our government has changed since the 9-11 attacks. We're better equipped to
respond. We're better at sharing intelligence. But we've still got a lot of work to do. Dave?
QUESTION: Mr. President, I'd like to follow up on a couple of these questions that have been asked.
One of the biggest criticisms of you is that whether it's WMD in Iraq, postwar planning in Iraq, or even the question of whether this administration did enough to ward off 9-11, you never admit a mistake. Is that a fair criticism, and do you believe that there were any errors in judgment that you made related to any of those topics I brought up?
BUSH: Well, I think, as I mentioned, you know, the country wasn't on war footing, and yet we're at war.
And that's just a reality, Dave. I mean, that was the situation that existed prior to 9-11, because the truth of the matter is most in the country never felt that we'd be vulnerable to an attack such as the one that Osama bin Laden unleashed on us.
We knew he had designs on us. We knew he hated us. But there was nobody in our government, at least, and I don't think the prior government that could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale.
The people know where I stand, I mean, in terms of Iraq. I was very clear about what I believed. And, of course, I want to know why we haven't found a weapon yet. But I still know Saddam Hussein was a threat. And the world is better off without Saddam Hussein.
I don't think anybody can -- maybe people can argue that. I know the Iraqi people don't believe that, that they're better off with Saddam Hussein -- would be better off with Saddam Hussein in power.
I also know that there's an historic opportunity here to change the world. And it's very important for the loved ones of our troops to understand that the mission is an important, vital mission for the security of America and for the ability to change the world for the better.
Let's see. Ed?
QUESTION: Mr. President, good evening. I'd like to ask you about the August 6th PDB.
BUSH: Sure.
QUESTION: You've mentioned it at Fort Hood on Sunday. You pointed out that it did not warn of a hijacking of airplanes to crash into buildings, but that it warned of hijacking to obviously take hostages and to secure the release of extremists that are being held by the U.S.
Did that trigger some specific actions on your part in the administration, since it
dealt with potentially hundreds of lives and a blackmail attempt on the United States government?
BUSH: And I asked for the briefing. And the reason I did is because there had been a lot of threat intelligence from overseas. And so, I -- part of it had to do with the Genoa G-8 conference that I was going to attend. And I asked at that point in time, let's make sure we are paying attention here at home, as well. And that's what triggered the report.
The report itself, I've characterized it as mainly history. And I think when you look at it, you'll see that it was talking about a '97 and '98 and '99.
It was also an indication, as you mentioned, that bin Laden might want to hijack an airplane but, as you said, not to fly into a building, but perhaps to release a person in jail. In other words, he would serve it as a blackmail.
And of course that concerns me. All those reports concern me. As a matter of fact, I was dealing with terrorism a lot as the president when George Tenet came in to brief me. I mean, that's where I got my information.
I changed the way that the relationship between the president and the CIA director. And I wanted Tenet in the Oval Office all the time. And we had briefings about terrorist threats.
This was a summary. Now, in the -- what's called the PDB, there was a warning about bin Laden's desires on America. But, frankly, I didn't think there was anything new. I mean, major newspapers had talked about bin Laden's desires on hurting America.
What was interesting in there was that there was a report that the FBI was conducting field investigations. And that was good news, that they were doing their job.
The way my administration worked, Ed, was that I met with Tenet all the time. I obviously met with my principals a lot. We talked about threats that had emerged. We have a counterterrorism group meeting on a regular basis to analyze the threats that came in. Had there been a threat that required action by anybody in the government, I would have dealt with it.
BUSH: In other words, had they come up and said, this is where we see something happening, you can rest assured that the people of this government would have responded and responded in a forceful way.
I mean, one of the things about Elizabeth's question was, I stepped back and I've asked myself a lot, is there anything we could have done to stop the attacks? Of course I've asked that question, as have many people in my government. Nobody wants this to happen to America.
And the answer is that had I had any inkling whatsoever that the people were going to fly airplanes into buildings, we would have moved heaven and earth to save the country, just like we're working hard to prevent a further attack.
Let's see -- Jim?
QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. You mentioned the PDB and the assurance you got that the FBI was working on terrorism investigations here. The number they had used was 70.
But we learned today in the September 11th hearings that the acting director of the FBI at the time now says the FBI tells him that number was wrong, that he doesn't
even know how it got into your PDB. And two of the commissioners strongly suggested the number was exaggerated.
Have you learned anything else about that report since that time? And do you now believe you were falsely comforted by the FBI?
BUSH: No, I heard about that today, obviously, and my response to that was, I expect to get valid information. As the ultimate decision maker for this country, I expect information that comes to my desk to be real and valid.
And I presume the 9-11 commission will find out -- will follow up on his suggestions and his recollection, and garner the truth. That is an important part of the 9-11 commission's job, is to analyze what went on and what could have perhaps been done differently so that we can better secure America for the future.
But of course I expect to get valid information. I can't make good decisions unless I get valid information.
QUESTION: Has the FBI come back to you, sir?
BUSH: No, I haven't talked to anybody today yet. I will, though.
We'll find out. John?
QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. Two weeks ago, a former counterterrorism official at the NSC, Richard Clarke, offered an unequivocal apology to the American people for failing them prior to 9-11. Do you believe the American people deserve a similar apology from you, and would you prepared to give them one?
BUSH: Look, I can understand why people in my administration are anguished over the fact that people lost their life. I feel the same way. I mean, I'm sick when I think about the death that took place on that day. And as I mentioned, I've met with a lot of family members, and I do the best to console them about the loss of their loved one.
As I mentioned, I oftentimes think about what I could have done differently. I can assure the American people that had we had any inkling that this was going to happen, we would have done everything in our power to stop the attack.
Here's what I feel about that: The person responsible for the attacks was Osama bin Laden. That's who's responsible for killing Americans. And that's why we will stay on the offense until we bring people to justice.
John?

QUESTION: Mr. President, thank you. You mentioned that 17 of the 26 NATO members providing some help on the ground in Iraq. But if you look at the numbers -- 135,000 U.S. troops, 10,000 or 12,000 British troops. Then the next largest, perhaps even the second- largest contingent of guns on the ground are private contractors, literally hired guns.
Your critics, including your Democratic opponents, say that's proof to them your coalition is window dressing. How would you answer those critics?
And can you assure the American people that, post-sovereignty, when the handover takes place, that there will be more burden-sharing by allies in terms of security forces?
BUSH: Yes, John, my response is I don't think people ought to demean the contributions of our friends into Iraq. People are sacrificing their lives in Iraq from different countries. We ought to honor that, and we ought to welcome that.
I'm proud of the coalition that is there. These are people that have got leaders that have made the decision to put people in harm's way for the good of the world. And we appreciate that sacrifice in America, and we appreciate that commitment.
I think that one of the things you're seeing is more involvement by the United Nations, in terms of the political process. That's helpful. I'd like to get another U.N. Security Council resolution out that will help other nations to decide to participate.
One of the things I've found, John, is that, in calling around, particularly during this week -- I spoke to Prime Minister Berlusconi and President Kwasniewski -- there is a resolve by these leaders that is a heartening resolve. Tony Blair is the same way.
He understands, like I understand, that we cannot yield at this point in time, that we must remain steadfast and strong, that it's the intentions of the enemy to shake our will.
That's what they want to do. They want us to leave. And we're not going to leave. We're going to do the job.
And a free Iraq is going to be a major blow for terrorism. It'll change the world. A free Iraq in the midst of the Middle East is vital to future peace and security.
Maybe I can best put it this way, why I feel so strongly about this historic moment. I was having dinner with Prime Minister Koizumi, and we were talking about North Korea, about how we can work together to deal with the threat. The North Korea leader is a threat.
And here are two friends, now, discussing what strategy to employ to prevent him from further developing and deploying a nuclear weapon. And it dawned on me that, had we blown the peace in World War II, that perhaps this conversation would not have been taking place.
It also dawned on me then that when we get it right in Iraq, at some point in time an American president will be sitting down with a duly elected Iraqi leader, talking about how to bring security to what has been a troubled part of the world.
The legacy that our troops are going to leave behind is a legacy of lasting importance, as far as I'm concerned. It's a legacy that really is based upon our deep belief that people want to be free and that free societies are peaceful societies.
Some of the debate really centers around the fact that people don't believe Iraq can be free; that if you're Muslim, or perhaps brown-skinned, you can't be self-governing or free. I'd strongly disagree with that.
I reject that. Because I believe that freedom is the deepest need of every human soul, and if given a chance, the Iraqi people will be not only self-governing, but a stable and free society.
Let's see here, hold on. Michael?
QUESTION: Mr. President, why are you and the vice president insisting on appearing together before the 9-11 commission? And, Mr. President, who will we be handing the Iraqi government over to on June 30th?
BUSH: We'll find that out soon. That's what Mr. Brahimi is doing. He's figuring out the nature of the entity we'll be handing sovereignty over. And, secondly, because the 9-11 commission wants to ask us questions, that's why we're meeting. And I look forward to meeting with them and answering their questions.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) I was asking why you're appearing together, rather than separately, which was their request.
BUSH: Because it's a good chance for both of us to answer questions that the 9-11 commission is looking forward to asking us. And I'm looking forward to answering them.
Let's see. Hold on for a minute. Let's see. Oh, Jim.
QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President.
BUSH: I've got some must-calls. I'm sorry.
QUESTION: You have been accused of letting the 9-11 threat mature too far, but not letting the Iraq threat mature far enough. First, could you respond to that general criticism?
And, secondly, in the wake of these two conflicts, what is the appropriate threat level to justify action in perhaps other situations going forward?
BUSH: Yes. I guess there have been some that said, well, we should've taken pre-emptive action in Afghanistan, and then turned around and said we shouldn't have taken pre-emptive action in Iraq.
And my answer to that question is, is that, again I repeat what I said earlier, prior to 9-11, the country really wasn't on a war footing. And the, frankly, mood of the world would have been astounded had the United States acted unilaterally in trying to deal with al-Qaida in that part of the world.
It would have been awfully hard to do, as well, by the way. We would have had - we
hadn't got our relationship right with Pakistan yet. The Caucus area would have been very difficult from which to base. It just seemed an impractical strategy at the time. And, frankly, I didn't contemplate it.
I did contemplate a larger strategy as to how to deal with al-Qaida. You know, we were shooting cruise missiles and with little effect. And I said, if we're going to go after al-Qaida, let's have a comprehensive strategy as to how to deal with it, with
that entity.
After 9-11, the world changed for me, and I think changed for the country. It changed for me because, like many, we assumed oceans would protect us from harm. And that's not the case. It's not the reality of the 21st century. Oceans don't protect us. They don't protect us from killers.
We're an open country. And we're a country that values our openness. And we're a hard country to defend. And therefore, when we see threats overseas, we've got to
take them - look at them in a new light. And I've given my explanation of Iraq.
Your further question was, you know, how do you justify any other pre-emptive action?
The American people need to know my last choice is the use of military power. It is something that - it's a decision that is a tough decision to make for any president, because I fully understand the consequences of the decision.
And therefore, we'll use all other means necessary when we see a threat to deal with a threat that may materialize. But we'll never take the military off the table.
We've had some success, Bill, as a result of the decision I took. Take Libya, for example. Libya was a nation that had - we viewed as the terrorist - a nation that sponsored terror, a nation that was dangerous because of weapons. And Colonel Gadhafi made the decision, and rightly so, to disclose and disarm for the good of the world.
By the way, they found, I think, 50 tons of mustard gas, I believe it was, in a turkey farm, only because he was willing to disclose where the mustard gas was. But that made the world safer.
The A.Q. Khan bust, the network that we uncovered thanks to the hard work of our intelligence-gathering agencies and the cooperation of the British, was another victory in the war against terror. This was a shadowy network of folks that were willing to sell state secrets to the highest bidder.
And that, therefore, made the world more unstable and more dangerous. You've
often heard me talk about my worry of weapons of mass destruction ending up in the hands of the wrong people. Well, you can understand why I feel that way, having seen the works of A.Q. Khan. It's a dangerous - it was a dangerous network that we unraveled, and the world is better for it.
And so what I'm telling you is, is that sometimes we use military as a last resort, but other times we use our influence, diplomatic pressure and our alliances to unravel, uncover, expose people who want to do harm against the civilized world.
We're at war. Iraq is a part of the war on terror. It is not the war on terror; it is a theater in the war on terror. And it's essential we win this battle in the war on terror. By winning this battle, it will make other victories more certain in the war against the terrorists.
Let's see here. Judy?
QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. Sir, you've made it very clear tonight that you're committed to continuing the mission in Iraq, yet, as Terry pointed out, increasing numbers of Americans have qualms about it. And this is an election year.
BUSH: Yes.
QUESTION: Will it have been worth it, even if you lose your job because of it?
BUSH: I don't plan on losing my job. I plan on telling the American people that I've got a plan to win the war on terror. And I believe they'll stay with me. They understand the stakes.
Look, nobody likes to see dead people on their television screens. I don't. It's a tough time for the American people to see that. It's gut-wrenching.
One of my hardest parts of my job is to console the family members, who've lost their life. It's a chance to hug and weep and to console, and to remind the loved ones that the sacrifice of their loved one was done in the name of security for America and freedom for the world.
One of the things that's very important, Judy, at least as far as I'm concerned, is to never allow our youngsters to die in vain. And I made that pledge to their parents. Withdrawing from the battlefield of Iraq would be just that, and it's not going to happen under my watch.
The American people may decide to change. That's democracy. I don't think so. I don't think so. And I look forward to making my case. I'm looking forward to the campaign.
Now's the time to talk about winning this war on terror. Now's the time to make sure that the American people understand the stakes and the historic significance of what we're doing.
And no matter where they may stand on this war, the thing I appreciate most about our country is the strong support given to the men and women in uniform. And it's vital support. It's important for those soldiers to know America stands with them, and we weep when they die, and we're proud of the victories they achieve.
One of the things I'm also proud of is what I hear from our soldiers. As I mentioned, I pinned the Purple Heart on some of the troops at the hospital there at Fort Hood, Texas. A guy looks at me and says, I can't wait to get back to my unit and fulfill the mission, Mr. President.
The spirit is incredible. Our soldiers who have volunteered to go there understand the stakes, and I'm incredibly proud of them.
John?
QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. In the last campaign, you were asked a question about the biggest mistake you'd made in your life, and you used to like to joke that it was trading Sammy Sosa.
You've looked back before 9-11 for what mistakes might have been made. After 9-11, what would your biggest mistake be, would you say, and what lessons have learned from it?
BUSH: I wish you'd have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it.
John, I'm sure historians will look back and say, gosh, he could've done it better this way or that way. You know, I just - I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with answer, but it hadn't yet.
I would've gone into Afghanistan the way we went into Afghanistan. Even knowing
what I know today about the stockpiles of weapons, I still would've called upon the world to deal with Saddam Hussein.
See, I'm of the belief that we'll find out the truth on the weapons. That's why we sent up the independent commission. I look forward to hearing the truth as to exactly where they are.
They could still be there. They could be hidden, like the 50 tons of mustard gas in a turkey farm.
One of the things that Charlie Duelfer talked about was that he was surprised of the level of intimidation he found amongst people who should know about weapons and their fear of talking about them because they don't want to be killed.
You know, there's this kind of - there's a terror still in the soul of some of the people in Iraq. They're worried about getting killed, and therefore they're not going to talk. But it'll all settle out, John.
We'll find out the truth about the weapons at some point in time. However,
the fact that he had the capacity to make them bothers me today just like it would have bothered me then. He's a dangerous man. He's a man who actually not only had weapons of mass destruction - the reason I can say that with certainty is because he used them.
And I have no doubt in my mind that he would like to have inflicted harm, or paid people to inflict harm, or trained people to inflict harm, on America, because he hated us.
I hope - I don't want to sound like I have made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't - you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one.
Yes, Ann?
QUESTION: Looking forward about keeping United States safe, a group representing about several thousand FBI agents today wrote to your administration begging you not to split up the law enforcement and the counterterrorism ...
BUSH: Yes.
QUESTION: ... because they say it ties their hands, it gives them blinders, that they're partners.
Yet you mentioned yesterday that you think perhaps the time has come for some real intelligence reforms. That can't happen without real leadership from the White House.
Will you? And how will you?
BUSH: Well, you're talking about one aspect of possible - I think you're referring to what they call the MI5. And I heard a summary of that from Director Mueller, who
feels strongly that we - and he'll testify to that effect, I guess tomorrow. I shouldn't be prejudging his testimony.
But my point was that I'm open for suggestions. I look forward to seeing what the 9-11 commission comes up with. I look forward to seeing what the Silberman-Robb commission comes up with. I'm confident Congress will have some suggestions.
What I'm saying is, let the discussions begin, and I won't prejudge the conclusion. As the president, I will encourage and foster these kinds of discussions, because one of the jobs of the president is to leave behind a legacy that will enable other presidents to better deal with the threat that we face.
We are in a long war. The war on terror is not going to end immediately. This is a war against people who have no guilt in killing innocent people. That's what they're willing to do. They kill on a moment's notice, because they're trying to shake our will, they're trying to create fear, they're trying to affect people's behaviors. And we're simply not going to let them do that.
And my fear, of course, is that this will go on for a while, and therefore, it's incumbent upon us to learn from lessons or mistakes, and leave behind a better foundation for presidents to deal with the threats we face. This is the war that other presidents will be facing as we head into the 21st century.
One of the interesting things people ask me, now that we're asking questions, is, can you ever win the war on terror? Of course you can.
That's why it's important for us to spread freedom throughout the Middle East. Free societies are hopeful societies. A hopeful society is one more likely to be able to deal with the frustrations of those who are willing to commit suicide in order to represent a false ideology.
A free society is a society in which somebody is more likely to be able to make a living. A free society is a society in which someone is more likely to be able to raise their child in a comfortable environment and see to it that that child gets an education.
That's why I'm pressing the Greater Middle East Reform Initiative to work to spread freedom, and we will continue on that. So long as I'm the president, I will press for freedom. I believe so strongly in the power of freedom.
You know why I do? Because I've seen freedom work right here in our own country. I also have this belief, strong belief, that freedom is not this country's gift to the world. Freedom is the Almighty's gift to every man and woman in this world.
And as the greatest power on the face of the earth, we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom. We have an obligation to help feed the hungry. I think the American people find it interesting that we're providing food for the North Korea people who starve.
We have an obligation to lead the fight on AIDS, on Africa. And we have an obligation to work toward a more free world. That's our obligation. That is what we have been called to do, as far as I'm concerned.
And my job as the president is to lead this nation and to making the world a better place. And that's exactly what we're doing.
Weeks such as we've had in Iraq make some doubt whether or not we're making progress. I understand that. It was a tough, tough period. But we are making progress.
And my message today to those in Iraq is, we'll stay the course, we'll complete the job.
My message to our troops is, we'll stay the course and complete the job, and you'll have what you need.
And my message to the loved ones who are worried about their sons, daughters, husbands, wives is, your loved one is performing a noble service for the cause of freedom and peace.
BUSH: Let's see. Last question here. Hold on for a second. Those who yell will not be ask - I tell you a guy who I have never heard from.
Don?
QUESTION: Thank you, sir. Appreciate it.
BUSH: This was - it's a well-received ...
QUESTION: Following on both Judy and John's questions, and it comes out of what you just said in some ways, with public support for your policies in Iraq falling off the way they have, quite significantly over the past couple of months, I guess I'd like to know if you feel, in any way, that you have failed as a communicator on this topic.
BUSH: Gosh, I don't know. I mean ...
QUESTION: Well, you deliver a lot of speeches, and a lot of them contain similar phrases and may vary very little from one to the next. And they often include a pretty upbeat assessment of how things are going, with the exception of tonight. It's pretty somber.
BUSH: A pretty somber assessment today, Don, yes.
QUESTION: But I guess I just wonder if you feel that you have failed in any way. You don't have many of these press conferences where you engage in this kind of exchange. Have you failed in any way to really make the case to the American public?
BUSH: You know, that's, I guess, if you put it into a political context, that's the kind of thing the voters will decide next November. That's what elections are about. They'll take a look at me and my opponent and say, let's see, which one of them can better win the war on terror?
Who best can see to it that Iraq emerges a free society?
And, Don, you know, if I tried to fine-tune my messages based upon polls, I think I'd be pretty ineffective. I know I would be disappointed in myself.
I hope today you've got a sense of my conviction about what we're doing. If you don't, maybe I need to learn to communicate better.
I feel strongly about what we're doing. I feel strongly it's the course this administration is taking will make America more secure and the world more free and, therefore, the world more peaceful.
It's a conviction that's deep in my soul. And, you know, I will say it as best I possibly can to the American people.
I look forward to the debate in the campaign. I look forward to helping - for the American people to hear, you know, what is the proper use of American power. Do we have an obligation to lead, or should we shirk responsibility? That's how I view this debate.
And I look forward to making it. Don, I'll do it the best I possibly can. I'll give it the
best shot. I'll speak as plainly as I can.
One thing is for certain, though, about me, and the world has learned this: When I say something, I mean it. And the credibility of the United States is incredibly important for keeping world peace and freedom.
Thank you all very much.

More details re: Canadian Killed in Iraq

2005-04-28T12:32:00.000-03:00

No commentary here - it's to early to tell what exactly went on.

Canadian killed in Iraq was Toronto-area trucker - Last Updated Thu, 28 Apr 2005 09:30:44 EDT - CBC News

TORONTO - A Canadian man who was killed in Iraq last week – possibly by U.S. troops – lived near Toronto for years and also held Iraqi citizenship, the CBC has learned.
Some media cited unidentified sources who said he may have died after U.S. forces "tracked" a target, using a helicopter gunship, but Foreign Affairs said it's still investigating conflicting reports of the death. The deparment didn't release his name or other details.
However, the CBC confirmed on Wednesday that Ali Alwan, 44, had dual citizenship and lived in the Toronto suburb of Newmarket for at least seven years until last August.
Then he packed up his apartment and travelled to Iraq with his wife Thuraya and two children.
His boss, Vijay Doobay, said Alwan told him that he would return soon.
"A month or two, he said. There was every indication, in my mind, he was going to return."
Alwan was a skilled mechanic and drove tractor-trailers for a living, delivering Canadian auto parts into the United States.
"He wasn't really enthused about crossing the border as much as he was," Doobay said. "He was making five trips a week from Newmarket across to Michigan and back, and he'd always been held up at the border, because of what he told me, because of his race."
Doobay said Alwan was a hard worker and family man who'd been back to Iraq in the past – at least once, when his father died and left him some land.
"He told me probably on two or three separate occasions that Iraq wasn't a pleasant place to be."
Now Doobay wants to know what truth there is to published reports suggesting U.S. involvement in the death.
U.S. officials have denied any involvement. Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs will only say assigning blame is premature.
It's still trying to get a complete picture of what happened from authorities in Baghdad.
The day Alwan died, there were a number of bombing and shooting deaths in Iraq. In one, Iraqi soldiers shot the driver of a civilian car after a roadside bomb attack on the outskirts of Baghdad.
Foreign Affairs officials have been in touch with Alwan's family, who are receiving assistance from the Canadian Embassy in Amman, Jordan, and the British Embassy in Baghdad.

Oh What a lovely choice...

2005-04-28T12:18:00.000-03:00

U.S. ambassador to Canada named- Last Updated Thu, 28 Apr 2005 08:43:32 EDT - CBC News

WASHINGTON - U.S. President George W. Bush has officially nominated David Wilkins, a longtime family friend and top Republican fundraiser, to be the new American ambassador to Canada.
The White House made the announcement on Wednesday night, ending weeks of speculation that Bush had chosen Wilkins, a lawyer who has served as house speaker in the South Carolina legislature since 1994.
The appointment must still be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. If approved, he will replace Paul Cellucci, who left the ambassador's job in March.
Wilkins, 58, was to be named to the post earlier in April, but Bush delayed the announcement to travel to Pope John Paul II's funeral in Rome.
A father of two, Wilkins is a fiscal and social conservative who headed Bush's two campaign efforts in the state.
He raised more than $200,000 US for Bush in last year's election and is close to the president's father, George H. W. Bush.
It's less clear how much he knows about Canada. The Associated Press reported that Wilkins had only been to the country once, about three decades ago while he was in the U.S. Army Reserve.
He reportedly passed on previous offers of an ambassadorship to Chile and a federal judgeship offered by Bush in 2001.
Rumours about his appointment were fuelled by news media reports earlier this month in Columbia, S.C., sparking a race to replace him in the state legislature.

Yep. Those are some stunning credentials. He must really know a whole lot about Canadians and their issues. Gee. You'd think that a politician from a northern state would be a wise choice here. Oh but I'm being logical. Don't mind me but it does seem that this is the most well thought out appointment that BushCo has made since.... Bolton.

This should be good times. I wonder what sort of funny video This Hour has 22 Minutes will make when we say goodbye to this guy?

*SueRagingRoz shakes her head and presses "Publish Post"*

The Pink Tide

2005-04-28T11:41:00.000-03:00

I have a pink blog. Really, I should be discussing something called the Pink Tide. It's just too tempting to pass up.

First a linky/excerpt:

South America's leftward sweep - BBC News - Wednesday, 2 March, 2005, 16:03 GMT
...

Three-quarters of South America's 350 million people are now ruled by left-leaning presidents, all of whom have been elected in the last six years.
Mr Vasquez (of Uraguay) is expected to follow a centrist economic policy. Even though there are important differences, for example, between the fiery rhetoric of Venezuela's President Chavez and the cautious economic policies of President Lula of Brazil, there are some common themes emerging.
It should be no surprise, for example, that the first measure President Vasquez of Uruguay announced was the restoration of diplomatic links with Cuba.
Many of these new governments are indeed sympathetic to the left's revolutionary past, and a radical foreign policy can help to give them legitimacy amongst their supporters.
"Lula needs the credentials lent to him by both Chavez and Castro," Larry Birns, director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs, told the BBC, "as they are both concerned with social justice and other leftist causes. Lula's party, the Workers Party, also has that kind of creed and belief."
But on the economic front they are inspired less by Fidel Castro's state control of the economy than by the social democrat or "third way" experiences in Europe and within their region.
Lula looks to the left's revolutionary past for his credentials. A former President of Uruguay, Julio Maria Sanguinetti, says the Vasquez government will be no different.
"It will follow a centrist economic policy with a traditional leftist rhetoric," he said in a BBC interview.
"It will continue the same monetary policy and rigorous fiscal discipline. It will continue to service the debt, and it will continue to prioritise good relations with the
USA."
Another common element of the "pink tide" is a clean break with what was known at the outset of the 1990s as the "Washington consensus", the mixture of open markets and privatisation pushed by the United States. That failed to narrow the gap between the rich and millions of poor.
Cautious economics
There's a general miasma that governments are too beholden to the United States," says Larry Birns. "The new generation of leaders who resent the traditional US domination of the region are standing up to the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas. They are also getting closer to Europe than Washington would like."
Many are seeking friendly relations with China. But it is clear that - with the exception of Venezuela - Washington is not over-concerned with the "polite distancing" of much of Latin America from its free market recipes or its foreign policies, including towards Cuba.
This is because most governments are still pro-foreign investment, and fiscally cautious even though they want to do more for the poor. And even in the case of Venezuela, President Chavez's bark is different to his bite. So far he has made no moves to stop oil exports to the USA or stop foreign companies investing.
Some right-wing analysts say Washington should be more concerned about another common theme of this "pink tide".
Many of these new presidents are seeking to diversify their foreign relations, particularly with China but also with other emerging powers. President Chavez's next port of call after his trip to Uruguay is India.

And now Condi is touring South America and cozying up further with the president of... you guessed it - Columbia! If this wasn't so tiresome and dangerous, it would be humourous.

A Step in the Correct Direction - NDP Pact

2005-04-27T13:25:00.000-03:00

Linky/Excerpt:

PM pins hopes on NDP lifeline. Layton props up Liberals - but for hefty $4.6B. Concessions on housing, tuition, corporate taxes - ANDREW MILLS AND LES WHITTINGTON - OTTAWA BUREAU (Toronto Star)

Jack Layton has thrown Paul Martin a $4.6 billion lifeline. Whether it is enough to save the Prime Minister remains to be seen. The Prime Minister and the NDP leader struck an extraordinary deal yesterday to, in essence, bring in a new 2005 budget, with the hope that it could keep the minority Liberal government from being defeated in the House of Commons in the next few weeks.
The deal amounts to a massive rewrite of the Feb. 23 budget, adding $4.6 billion in new spending over the next two years. It includes more money for housing, foreign aid, gas taxes for cities, funds to lower post-secondary school tuition fees and a delay in tax cuts for major corporations.
The Conservatives and Bloc Québécois appear to have enough votes to defeat the government - and dash the NDP's plans - if Tory Leader Stephen Harper moves a motion either of non-confidence, or on the budget itself.
But the machinations of the vote are mind-boggling.
Martin last night deferred to Layton, who announced the "agreement in principle" at 5:30 p.m., with the Prime Minister adding some details two hours later. The two men met in Toronto on Sunday night after Layton demanded changes to the budget in exchange for his support.
Martin said the NDP will vote with the government on any motions of non-confidence until the budget receives "Royal Assent." Royal Assent is when Governor General Adrienne Clarkson signs the budget bill into law. That could be weeks, or theoretically, even months away.
Layton defended the new spending by saying "there is a crisis of faith in politics today." Canadians, he said, expect the NDP to "get something done for people and the environment. They don't send us here to play games. They send us here to work for their families and get as much done as we can for their families, their communities and our environment - with balanced budgets."
But Harper and Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe appear to remain determined to bring down the government over the sponsorship scandal.
The sponsorship inquiry by Justice John Gomery has heard testimony about senior members of the Quebec wing of the Liberal party taking kickbacks from advertising companies which did little for receiving millions of dollars from the federal government.
Late last night, Harper issued a statement saying, "my first response is that Mr. Martin and Mr. Layton think $4.6 billion of taxpayers money is the price to make corruption go away, but I wonder if the taxpayers of Canada are going to think the same thing."
But Layton said "there should be an election about Liberal corruption and broken promises and there will be. I believe we have an obligation to get as much done as we can in the short time ahead - which means job one is getting a better, balanced budget passed. Because it's long past time politics was about people."
The NDP leader added that Harper and Duceppe could vote for elections, "that's their choice, but for us, it's more important to have a good budget. Martin said last night the deal is all about "making Parliament work." He wants it to work until Gomery issues his final report, slated for Dec. 15.
The Prime Minister told Canadians in a televised speech last Thursday night that he would call an election within 30 days of Gomery issuing his report. But even with the NDP pact, the numbers don't appear to be in Martin's favour.
In the House of Commons now, the Liberal/NDP total is 150 votes; the Tory/Bloc 153 votes. One seat is vacant in the 308-member House and the Speaker, Liberal Peter Milliken, only votes when there is a tie.
There are three independents. One of them, Carolyn Parrish, will vote against an election. David Kilgour, who recently left the Liberals because of the sponsorship scandal, is leaning towards voting with the Tories.
B.C. MP Chuck Cadman is wavering. Yesterday, he told the Star he has not made up his mind, after telling other media outlets Monday he would vote with the Tories. (More at Link)

This attempt to save the minority government will likely fail, but I know that when I voted NDP in the last election, I was looking for a Liberal Minority government with the NDP holding the balance of power. The article below shows a hint of that. However it will fail because:

The Liberals are facing a scandal which is a big deal to Canadians but is a drop in the bucket compared to what BushCo. are up to.
The NDP didn't garner enough seats to make this pact into a meaningful majority coalition government.
Separatist sentiment is on the rise so the Bloc wants this government to fail so that they can capitalize on it with more seats in Quebec in another election.

The political left in Canada is divided into three parties and one of those parties no longer wants to play ball because of this scandal. The interesting thing for me is that while the Bloc will gain seats, it seems that a goodly portion of Liberal Party support is bleeding not to the Conservatives but to the NDP and more NDP seats means a true "small l" liberal majority coalition in the next parliament.

I for one see that as a good sign. It could mean that if the Tories are dumb enough to force an election, the three winners will be the Bloc, the NDP and the political left in Canada.

Now - for the reason behind the "Nucular" Option

2005-04-26T14:31:00.000-03:00

I would like to introduce everyone to America's newest jurist, California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown. She was confirmed recently after a bitter debate that straddled party lines.

She had an occasion to speak with the faithful on Justice Sunday. While her remarks did not form part of the Justice Sunday agenda, they may as well have been part of that particular initiative.

Her key remarks were as follows:

"There seems to have been no time since the Civil War that this country was so bitterly divided. It's not a shooting war, but it is a war,"

These are perilous times for people of faith, not in the sense that we are going to lose our lives, but in the sense that it will cost you something if you are a person of faith who stands up for what you believe in and say those things out loud."

She added that atheism "handed human destiny over to the great god, autonomy, and this is quite a different idea of freedom…. Freedom then becomes willfulness."

After the religious wrong has been able to wrest control over most levels of government from these atheists and secular humanists, they are now crying "persecution". The term "persecution" should bring to mind people such as:

There is no evidence in modern day America that people of faith are being persecuted by the U.S. Government. In fact, the evidence shows the contrary with the implementation of Faith Based & Community Initiatives, the nomination of justices such as Janice Rogers Brown and the use of the term Crusade by the President himself to refer to the "War against Terror".

The attempts made by Democrats in the Senate to ensure that the Judiciary is meant to preside over all americans regardless of faith can hardly be construed as persecution. To deny a nominated justice solely on the basis of their religion would be persecution. To deny a nominated justice based on evidence of that person's agenda and closed-mindedness with respect to social issues is not persecution.

Article 18 of the The United Nations INTERNATIONAL COVENANT ON CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS states:

Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching.

This covenant is intended to include those who are not Christians as well. But then United Nations seems to have little bearing on Americans these days.

For more detailed information about the rise of the religious right in the Republican Party and the American government, please visit http://www.theocracywatch.org.

My source for this Justice Brown's comments is Faith 'War' Rages in U.S., Judge Says - A Bush nominee central to the Senate's judicial controversy criticizes secular humanists - the Los Angeles Times.

More on the debacle that is Free Iraq

2005-04-25T11:05:00.000-03:00

Rice and Cheney push Iraqis to form cabinet By Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Joel Brinkley The New York TimesTUESDAY, APRIL 26, 2005 - From International Herald Tribune

Worried about a political deadlock in Iraq and a surge in mayhem from an emboldened insurgency, the Bush administration has pressured Iraqi leaders to end their stalemate over forming a new government.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney have personally exhorted top Kurdish and Shiite politicians to get together.
The effect of the U.S. pressure was unclear. Shiite leaders once again said they were on the verge of announcing their new government, perhaps as soon as Monday. But similar predictions have been proved wrong several times in recent weeks.
The White House pressure, reported Sunday by U.S. officials in Baghdad and Washington, was a significant change in the administration's hands-off approach to Iraqi politics.
The change was disclosed as insurgents unleashed a new and devastating technique, with twin double bombings at a police academy in Tikrit and an ice cream parlor in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad that killed 21 and wounded scores more.
In each attack, a second bomb detonated within minutes of the first, killing and wounding policemen and bystanders who had rushed to care for victims of the initial blasts.
The explosions hit two of the favored targets of Sunni Arab insurgents: police recruits and Shiites. The recruits' training is critical to improving security in Iraq and providing the United States an exit strategy.
The Shiites make up a majority in Iraq, but nearly three months after national elections they have yet to form a new government - a failure that U.S. officials fear is giving strength and confidence to the insurgents.
Washington's approach to the political negotiations had stressed that the Iraqis needed to form their own government without interference.
But American and Iraqi officials have increasingly blamed the delay for a rise in violence in recent weeks that has killed hundreds of Iraqis and threatens to destroy what remains of the political and security momentum that followed the successful Jan. 30 elections.
Rice on Friday telephoned Iraq's new president, Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, to urge him to complete the government "as soon as they could" and "to get a status of where things were," a senior State Department official in Washington said Sunday. The official stressed that Rice had not told Talabani how to form a government, just that the process needed to be concluded.
(snip)
Under the interim constitution, the prime minister will relinquish the post if he fails to form a new government within 30 days of his appointment. That clock runs out on May 7.
(More at Link)

We in the software world are familiar with the term "Death March Project". There's a great book out there called Death March: The Complete Software Developer's Guide to Surviving "Mission Impossible" Projects by Edward Yourdon... An excerpt from the Amazon Editorial Book Review is below.

Death march projects are becoming increasingly common in the software industry. The symptoms are obvious: The project schedule, budget, and staff are about half of what is necessary for completion. The planned feature set is unrealistic. People are working 14 hours a day, six or seven days a week, and stress is taking its toll. The project has a high risk of failure, yet management is either blind to the situation or has no alternative. Why do these irrational projects happen, and what, other than pure idiocy, leads people to get involved in them?

I'm thinking that maybe someone should mail this book to Cheney and Rice. Do you think they'd get it? And if so, do you think they'd understand it?

A government on the brink

2005-04-25T10:54:00.000-03:00

Liberals waver on tax cuts NDP demands shelving of $4.6B in corporate breaks as a condition of support for budget - Anne Dawson, Allan Woods and James Gordon CanWest News Service with files from The Canadian Press From Canada.com/finance April 25, 2005.

Excerpt:

TORONTO -- Prime Minister Paul Martin is being pressured by his caucus to scrap $4.6 billion in corporate tax cuts in the budget to get the NDP on-side and fend off manoeuvres by the Conservatives and the Bloc Quebecois to defeat the fragile minority Liberal government.
Martin, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper and NDP Leader Jack Layton, all earing traditional Sikh head scarves, launched a pre-election campaign Sunday at a eligious event at Toronto city hall, where Harper and Layton put their political gendas before thousands of Sikhs attending Khalsa Day celebrations.
Martin kept to a non-political script, praising the million-strong Sikh community across the country for the contribution they have made to Canada, while Harper drove home his party's opposition to same-sex marriage, telling the crowd that those who oppose it have a "friend" in the Tories.
"In Canada today, only we Conservatives defend the traditional definition of marriage," he said.
Layton told the crowd that he's pressing the government to call an Air India inquiry and have the fundamental symbols of Sikhism officially recognized in the House of Commons.
Meanwhile, strategists for Martin and Layton were saying little about a planned eeting between the two leaders Sunday night to discuss a possible coalition or alliance to keep the Liberal minority government in power a little longer.

You have to love minority governments. They are all about horse-trading and catering to the needs of parties that, while not in power, hold the balance of power. Universal Medicare came into being under a minority government. It was hoped that this particular minority government would bring about same-sex marriage as a national legal institution. But the sponsorship inquiry has provided the Tories with an opportunity that they are too stupid to let pass. They will force an election and I predict that the electorate will spank them for it.

As far as we are concerned, the Liberals have already been punished for the sponsorship scandal with this current minority government. Canadians voted for this. Clearly they wanted to see the parties work it out.

With respect to the demise of the same-sex marriage legislation, I can seek solace in the highlighted passage above: only one party currently supports an anti-gay platform and that party is in a clear minority in the House of Commons. If Canadians behave at the polls as I predict that they will, this will not change a whole heck of a lot.

Internet2

2005-04-25T10:30:00.000-03:00

Have you heard of it? If not, go here and here.

Basically this is a private/public venture that currently involves 200 universities to deploy a "new" internet that is light years faster than the current internets that we know and love.

While you look into Internet2, I want to pose the following two questions for you to keep in mind:

Who will control this new technology?
Will it be made freely available to small ISP's?

It is my fear that the answers to those questions will bely the underlying intent of this new super high speed internet: control over information.

I have visions of jack and jersey sixpack being lured to the new technology because of its speed and the ability to truly see high quality video on demand. I also have visions of jack and jersey being lulled into a sense of complacency as they witness a plethora of drivel passing across their screens while at the same time being unable to access content as can be seen on the links to the right of this missive.

Missives such as these will find a smaller audience as folks flood over to the new format. The last attempt to forge a free and unabashed media may be relegated to the dustbin of archaic technology.

Maybe I'm being a bit orwellian but I can't help but believe that the current administration feels that a big mistake was made with respect to the creation of an open and free and uncontrollable network, the network that you are currently connected to. Maybe I'm going a bit overboard with this particular paranoia. But I do know this - I will stick with the current uncontrollable free internet as long as it's still out there.

To play devil's advocate, maybe this really is an attempt for universities to communicate without the clutter of commercial traffic. Right now, Abiline, or Internet2 is connected to the existing internet even though it is a private network. So long as it stays connected, its users have access to free content.

But let's say some media companies decide to build a parallel closed network based on the same technology? Could they pull it off? Could we see a new closed internet that is as informative as Fox News?

If it's fast enough, Jack and Jersey will hop right on.

Working on a Project Right Now

2005-04-22T03:28:00.000-03:00

I haven't been able to post for the last couple of days because I'm in the middle of a new project that involves getting the word out there... Once the details have been hashed out and we go public, I will post the details here.

In the interim, I will endeavour to get a post in tomorrow!

Upping the Anti in Parliament

2005-04-19T22:09:00.000-03:00

From the CBC:

Opposition threatens to shut down governmentLast Updated Tue, 19 Apr 2005 18:44:10 EDT

OTTAWA - The opposition parties in Parliament are threatening to grind all government operations to a halt after the Liberals cancelled what is known as an Opposition Day.
Bloc Québécois House leader Michel Gauthier said Tuesday's meeting with the government "didn't go well." All three opposition parties are outraged at the Liberal action.
Opposition Day is when opposition parties can introduce any motion they want, including a vote of non-confidence that might topple the government.
Gauthier says the opposition parties have enough power in the current minority situation to control Parliament – to bring it to a stop if they choose. "We have decided to show to the government that we have ... the power and we will use it."
Most of government is controlled by parliamentary committees. Those committees can stall legislation to a snail's pace and they can refuse to grant money for travel. Right now, combined, the three opposition parties have the majority of members on all committees.
The Conservatives and the BQ say they've had enough, so they're flexing their muscles, effectively shutting down the government.
Gauthier says "nothing more will stand ... all bets are off."
The House of Commons is now at a stalemate. Either the Liberals will have to back down and restore the cancelled Opposition Days, or the Conservatives and the BQ will do everything they can to keep the Liberals from actually governing.

Will this blow up in the faces of the opposition parties? It's one thing to express discontent at an old scandal. It's another thing to halt the wheels of government. Canadians don't like being forced to the polls once a year. Whoever forces such a vote will be spanked. The smartest strategy that the NDP can take right now is to sit quietly in the background and let the Conservatives and the Bloc get the exposure...

If an election is forced, folks who are discontented with Liberal Party corruption who are also angry at being forced to vote again so quickly will likely look to the left and that means the NDP.

I really think that, outside Quebec, the NDP has the most to gain from this situation. Don't mess it up!

Elsewhere in the news

2005-04-19T21:51:00.000-03:00

Yes. There are things going on besides the coronation of a right wing former member (albeit compulsory) of the Hitler Youth as Pope.

First your linky/excerpt from the New York Times:

Sept. 11 Suspect May Be Set to Admit Guilt - By ERIC LICHTBLAU Published: April 20, 2005

WASHINGTON, April 19 - Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person accused in an American court of being part of the Sept. 11 conspiracy, has indicated a willingness to plead guilty to terrorism charges in connection with the attacks, people involved in the case said on Tuesday. But they cautioned that Mr. Moussaoui's history of erratic statements, as well as questions about his mental competence, made such a plea far from certain.
A guilty plea would bring an unexpected resolution to the long-stalled prosecution, which has created headaches for the Justice Department and kept Mr. Moussaoui in jail for three and a half years without trial. Barring a plea, he is now expected to be tried this year, after numerous appeals and delays centering on his unsuccessful demands to gain access to imprisoned leaders of Al Qaeda, who, he says, would clear him. (More at Link)

Kinda makes you wonder what would have happened if the perpretrators of 9/11 were hunted down and prosecuted instead of having a war zone created for them to continue to perpetrate acts of violence and terror on innocent Iraqi citizens.

But I guess we can only wonder about such things.

No Oil? Well then you deal with your own genocides...

2005-04-17T20:56:00.000-03:00

I saw Hotel Rwanda last night. I knew this story fairly well as a Canadian because it received a fair amount of coverage in the media up here and the story of Romeo Dallaire captured my attention/imagination but I had no feel for the human scale of this tragedy until I saw the film.

A composite character that was largely based Dallaire was played by Nick Nolte and it was this character, Col. Oliver, who had one of the most potent speeches in the film. He informed the protagonist that the reason why the U.N. chose to turn their back on the genocide basically boiled down to the fact that the western world sees absolutely no value in these people beyond what natural resources they may or may not occupy.

The movie was a fantastic human depiction of heroism in the face of the organized mass-murder of almost a million Tutsis. Something I learned from the film is that this genocide happened partly because the Tutsis had been classified by a past colonial power (Belgium in this case) as being somehow special because they were taller, lighter skinned and had narrower noses. This special treatment and the creation of a colonial Tutsi ruling class by the Belgians is what underlay the hatred that the Hutu leadership was able to take advantage of to unleash a genocide.

Why was nothing done back in the early 90s? Where was the outrage? What happened to "Tears are Not Enough" and "We Are the World". What happened to "We Ain't Gonna Play Sun City"? It seems that at some point in the past, we in the west seemed to care on some levels about what was going on in Africa. And we can't blame this one on Bush either because Clinton was in power at the time of the genocide. Amnesty International did a great piece on the inaction of the world community in 2002 and you can find it here.

It would be easy to watch the film and then move on with my life with the thought that this was an isolated incident and safe in the knowledge that it will not happen again. But I can't because it is happening right now in Darfur and in the Congo and elsewhere. These days, the continent is being ravaged by AIDs and war and we are either ignorant or willfully blind to what is going on.

Did you know that there is a "World War" being played out in Africa right now? I first came to know about it because I saw an episode of E.R. Why didn't I hear about it on the news? Maybe this is the media's fault... that it is up to us to be our own media now. It is up to us now to inform ourselves. The information is out there. It's only a point and click away.

Please educate yourself on what is happening in Africa. 600,000 lives are at stake in Darfur alone. I will help by providing some useful links:

Darfur: A Genocide We Can Stop - this site is a very useful political action page which provides you with the tools that you need to help.

Genocide Watch: Yes we actually have Genocide Watch out there on the internets... If you go here, you can arm yourself with information about what is going on in Ituri in the Eastern Congo.

When I think on all of this, do I see irony in the "liberation of Iraq?" Sure... we all know that Iraq has oil and that is why they were liberated... but to stop my analysis there is also wrong. After thinking about this long enough, anyone in the western world should feel is shame.

Oh those fickle French....

2005-04-17T20:48:00.000-03:00

While I am no expert on french politics and I cannot speak for the motivations of the electorate, I do find the story at the following linky/excerpt to be a bit troubling. If the EU is stalled by a no vote on the referendum, it may lose influence and the Euro (which is increasingly becoming the "safe" international currency) could lose some traction as well.

I was starting to take the E.U. for granted as a potential future viable superpower that could do something at least to keep the Bush Administration in check. I see a no vote on the referendum as a backwards step in that regard.

EU foreign ministers rally to save French referendum By Daniel Dombey in Brussels and Peggy Hollinger in Paris Published: April 17 2005 17:05 Last updated: April 17 2005 17:05:

Europe's foreign ministers have rallied round the embattled French campaign for the European constitution, arguing that a No vote on the May 29 referendum would set back the European Union's drive to play a bigger part on the world stage.
Many officials fear that a French rejection, which could prove terminal for the constitutional treaty, would also halt the EU's enlargement drive - sometimes dubbed "the most successful foreign policy in the world". It could also kill reforms intended to boost the EU's diplomatic clout, such as the creation of an EU foreign minister and a new external action service.
"If we want Europe to play a role in the world it is necessary to be in favour of the constitution," said Benita Ferrero-Waldner, EU external relations commissioner, at a weekend meeting of foreign ministers in Luxembourg.
But a series of opinion polls has put the No vote ahead and President Jacques Chirac is widely deemed to have put in a disappointing performance in a televised debate last week. Support for a No vote has risen in subsequent polls, now standing at 56 per cent.
The EU's enlargement drive could be particularly stricken because the debate in France has focused on fears about the possible effects of the EU's expansion last year to 25 member states and on the prospect of Turkish membership in about a decade's time.
Some EU officials fear that if France rejects the constitution it may not be possible to begin the entry negotiations with Turkey in October this year, as scheduled. (More at link)

The whole gay thing

2005-04-15T19:43:00.000-03:00

I have a need to do some ranting. I have been reading thread after thread on the message boards and have gotten into umpteen conversations "in real life" on the whole "gay thing." I have also seen a rise in homophobic sentiment north of the border as the same-sex legislation makes its way through the house (only to die on the paper once the government falls - a whole separate rant). I need to clear a few things up here.

First, I have to "out" myself. Yes, I am a lesbian and have been out of the closet since 1991. I also have been in a long term committed relationship since 1993. It's one one of those relationships that lasts a lifetime. We would like to formalize the arrangement and make it so that when one of us dies, our family aren't tied up in court for years with the remaining spouse over the money. I would like to make it so that when one of us is sick, the other can make decisions without being questioned or challenged. I could go on... but the point is, there are benefits that marriage provides that cannot be obtained otherwise.

So, in answer to the myriad questions that have been put to us "gay folk" over the last while, I would like to supply some answers. I'm going to use the universal term "Gay" because it gets tedious writing gay lesbian transgendered bisexual over and over again...

Gay is NOT the new Black. Comparing oppressions is like comparing apples and oranges. Everyone has their own challenges in life. We should all be respectful of diversity and just because I'm in a minority group doesn't mean that I don't have to work on my own diversity issues. That also means that just because you belong to a minority group... well you know where I'm going with that... Gays are not visible minorities. However, visible minorities can usually count on their family members for support whereas gays often end up being hated by those who are supposed to love them no matter what. Those who are disabled have their own set of challenges... I could go on, but I think you get my meaning.
Civil unions are not the answer. Civil unions are not federal legal institutions and they do not provide the same protections as marriage. Each state has their own set of rules and they vary across the country. Also, to say that gay people can only participate in civil unions is to say that they are separate but equal. That reasoning did not work with the black community prior to the civil rights movement and it won't work for the gay community now. It's a non-starter.
Marriage is a legal institution not a religious institution. When you get married in a church, it has no legal meaning unless you first go to your local government and obtain a marriage license. You do not get divorced in church. If you have your marriage annulled, you still have to obtain a divorce. This is also a non-starter.
Allowing same-sex marriage is not a restriction of religious freedom. If a church chooses not to allow someone to marry for whatever reason (they are divorced, for example) that is up to the church. No one is forcing churches to marry gay couples any more than they are forcing churches to marry previously divorced couples. This is just common sense. But if your religious organization takes taxpayer dollars you can count on the fact that human rights laws come along with that money as a rider... I say this because the catholic school board in Canada is funded by the government therefore it should be regulated by the government. This is also common sense.
Allowing same-sex marriage does not open the door to pedophilia bestiality or polygamy. The law requires that for sex has to be consensual. In order to be capable of consent, you have to be:

A human being. Animals do not possess sufficient mental capacity or communication skills to consent to any sort of sexual activity.
An adult. A child is not legally capable of consent for the same reason.
Not under any sort of duress. It can be successfully argued that the power dynamic that is associated with a polygamous relationship can nullify consent. The same can be said for incestuous relationships.
Not of diminished capacity or under the influence of drugs or alcohol to such an extent as to nullify consent. Etc. etc.

So. If you find yourself in a discussion with someone who is adamantly against same-sex marriage, please consider the above when formulating your arguments. If they argue religion, state that they have a right to their religious beliefs but that has no bearing on a legal institution. If they use the slippery slope argument, define the term "consent" to them.

Also, inform them that the ability for same-sex couples to marry has absolutely no impact on the ability of heterosexual couples to marry. If they think that same-sex marriage somehow denigrates the institution, call their bigotry out for what it is. Don't be afraid to use the term "bigot".

If they say that the majority of people are against same-sex marriage, politely inform them that the majority of people used to be against interracial marriage. If they bring up judicial activism, inform them that interpreting the constitution as is mandates that gay couples be treated in the same way as other couples. To do otherwise would be judicial activism. Also inform them that constitutions and bills of rights etc. were created in order to protect the minorities from the tyranny of the majority.

If none of this works, wish them a happy rapture.

This rant was brought to you by Sue Raging Roz.

Clinton Speaks

2005-04-14T10:54:00.000-03:00

Well he speaks alot. But this is a particularly good one and I know about it thanks to Rroja of the RRMB. To be honest, I was wondering what was happening with Clinton, with his being all presidential and bush-friendly these days...

Well he still knows how to give a good speech. The sad part? It only reminds us of how different the world would be today if they didn't have presidential term limits... There'd be no deficits and it's quite possible that the U.S. wouldn't be in a state of war right now but instead going through a very public and cathartic trial of those responsible for the 9/11 attacks. But that's just me :).

Linky/excerpt (this one is full of paraphrasing so if you can get the text of the speech, let me know):

Clinton wows Drew crowd with advice and anecdotes - By Jenna M. McKnight, Daily Record

MADISON -- Former President Bill Clinton told a crowd of at least 3,000 at Drew University on Wednesday night that this country should work harder to fight inequalities, build friendships and create a more integrated global community.
His charismatic speech was speckled with personal anecdotes and focused less on politics and more on the state of humankind.
"What I want you to think about tonight is what is the nature of the 21st century world in which we find ourselves," he told the diverse crowd packed into the Simon Forum and Athletic Center. "What is your role and responsibility, whether you're in public life or whether you're a private citizen."
(snip)
Clinton told the audience, "Our big challenge in this exciting time is that we live in a world where there is so much inequality. No matter how pretty you paint the picture of the modern world, more than half of the people aren't in it."
Clinton said more than half of the world's population still lives on less than $2 a day; 1 billion go to bed hungry each night; a billion and a half have no access to clean water.
He also cited the enormous number of people afflicted with AIDS, a cause he has championed since leaving office.
All proceeds he made from Wednesday night's lecture were donated to fight AIDS.
"All over the world people are trying to build a future while being hobbled by a disease that shouldn't be killing all the people that are being killed," Clinton said.
"It's a maddening problem, but it is representative of the drastic inequalities in the modern world."
In his speech, Clinton frequently touched upon his experience in the tsunami relief effort and said the United States' goodwill helped boost its worldwide image.
Before the tsunami, only 36 percent of Indonesians had a favorable view of America, he said. That number jumped to 60 percent following the outpouring of aid from the United States.
In contrast, 58 percent of Indonesians felt positively about Osama bin Laden. After the tsunami, that number dropped to 28 percent.
"The only reason cited was our response to the tsunami. They knew we had no political agenda," Clinton said.
"You have no idea what it does to help the image of our country around the world."
Clinton said global interaction today goes far beyond economics and has led to what he calls the "age of interdependence."
He cited medical and technological advancements, from our understanding of genetics to the ever-growing use of the Internet.
When he was elected president, there were 50 sites on the Internet. When he left office, there were 50 million sites.
Americans are using the Internet more than ever to donate to causes they support, he said. For instance, one-third of American households donated money to the tsunami relief effort. About half-of those donations were made over the Internet, linton said.
All of that is really good and really exciting," he said. "But there are also negatives to this age of interdependence."
Clinton cited the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as an example. "9/11 was made possible by our interdependent world," he said.
"This age of interdependence, like any age that has preceded in human history, has good and bad points."
As for the war in Iraq, Clinton said it has cost the United States more than $200 billion. But whether people support it or not, "we should all hope that it works."
"We need to have a strategy of not only fighting our enemies," he said, "but making more friends and fewer enemies."
Clinton also spoke against the nation's ever-growing deficit. "Here we are the strongest, richest country in the world," he said, "and we expect (other countries) to lend us money to pay for our government because our people are too selfish to pay for our government."
"We can't hope to lead a more integrated world unless we make a more perfect union at home," he said. (more at link)

Yep. Listening to the man speak pretty much makes me sad.

So you think McCarthyism is a historical thing?

2005-04-13T17:45:00.000-03:00

Uhm.... It's back. The world will never be safe from Roger Ebert. Spongebob? Forgettaboutit!

If you want to know what is being said about folks "on the left", please go to the discoverthenetwork.org website.

The front page tidbit about Roger Ebert:

Movie critic
Claims that George W. Bush stole the 2000 Presidential election
"[W]e've had a concerted policy of taking money away from the poor and giving it to the rich wholesale, and at the same time, we have the runaway corporations and the greed."

Other names on the supposed "enemies list":

Bettey Friedan
Carl Bernstein
Noam Chomsky
George Clooney
Erica Jong
Chris Matthews (K that one is funny)
Nancy Pelosi
Rob Reiner
Tim Robbins
Gore Vidal
James Zogby

Do you want to know if you are special enough to make it to the list? Go here.

Iran Anyone?

2005-04-13T17:04:00.000-03:00

First, a bit about the author that I'm about to cite:

He was a weapons inspector that spent 12 years working with the U.N.
He is a registered Republican
He correctly predicted that the U.S. would not find any weapons of mass destruction because they had already been destroyed
He correctly predicted that an insurgency would arise in Iraq after it was occupied.

Are you interested in what he has to say about American foreign policy these days? If so, please check out this article:

Sleepwalking to Disaster in Iran by Scott Ritter - Published on Wednesday, March 30, 2005 by Al Jazeera (found on Common Dreams)

Late last year, in the aftermath of the 2004 Presidential election, I was contacted by someone close to the Bush administration about the situation in Iraq. There was a growing concern inside the Bush administration, this source said, about the direction the occupation was going. The Bush administration was keen on achieving some semblance of stability in Iraq before June 2005, I was told.
When I asked why that date, the source dropped the bombshell: because that was when the Pentagon was told to be prepared to launch a massive aerial attack against Iran, Iraq's neighbour to the east, in order to destroy the Iranian nuclear programme.
Why June 2005?, I asked. 'The Israelis are concerned that if the Iranians get their nuclear enrichment programme up and running, then there will be no way to stop the Iranians from getting a nuclear weapon. June 2005 is seen as the decisive date.'
To be clear, the source did not say that President Bush had approved plans to bomb Iran in June 2005, as has been widely reported. The President had reviewed plans being prepared by the Pentagon to have the military capability in place by June 2005 for such an attack, if the President ordered.
But when Secretary of State Condi Rice told America's European allies in February 2005, in response to press reports about a pending June 2005 American attack against Iran, she said that 'the question [of a military strike] is simply not on the agenda at this point -- we have diplomatic means to do this.'
President Bush himself followed up on Rice's statement by stating that 'This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous.' He quickly added, 'Having said that, all options are on the table.' In short, both the President and the Secretary of State were being honest, and disingenuous, at the same time.
Truth to be told, there is no American military strike on the agenda; that is, until June 2005.
It was curious that no one in the American media took it upon themselves to confront the President or his Secretary of State about the June 2005 date, or for that matter the October 2004 review by the President of military plans to attack Iran in June 2005.
The American media today is sleepwalking towards an American war with Iran with all of the incompetence and lack of integrity that it displayed during a similar path trodden during the buildup to our current war with Iraq.
On the surface, there is nothing extraordinary about the news that the President of the United States would order the Pentagon to be prepared to launch military strikes on Iran in June 2005 . That Iran has been a target of the Bush dministration's ideologues is no secret: the President himself placed Iran in the 'axis of evil' back in 2002, and has said that the world would be a better place with the current Iranian government relegated to the trash bin of history. (more at link)

Now remember, I'm only the messenger....