Calgary WINS !!!!!

The Conservative vision of Canada - let's punch out anyone we don't agree with

Here's an ugly picture -- Old issues continue to haunt Harper When a gay activist tried to pin Harper down on his gay marriage stance, "Tory supporters then hit Mr. Smyth with signs and an elderly man punched him in the face before police intervened."
How can anyone believe the country would be better off if these yahoos were in charge?

Strike Two

So lets see -- Harper says he won't change the languages act, though the designated Tory languages critic says they should. And Harper says he won't hamper women's access to abortion, though the designated Tory health critic says they should. So what, exactly, would the Tories do?
This quote from 16th paragraph of this Globe and Mail story is actually the led:
"While the party's platform has not yet been fully released, Mr. Harper's position on abortion is that he would not bring forward any changes to the law. However, if a backbencher pressed the issue, he would allow a free vote." (emphasis mine) Well, you can bet that some Reform backbenchers will "press the issue" so to speak.
Welcome, Canada, to the chaotic world of "free votes", where you elect someone without a clue about what they will do once elected. Free votes are basically a license for every kook and nutcase in Canada to get busy -- organizing pressure groups in ridings, picketing constituency offices, running newspaper and radio ads to get their local MP to vote their way.
Excuse me, Mr. Harper, but in Canada we have PARTIES which have PLATFORMS. Based on the platform, people decide who they will vote for during the ELECTION CAMPAIGN. Then the party which RECEIVES THE MOST VOTES gets to enact its platform by, if necessary, exerting party discipline over its own members to make sure they vote for the platform which the MAJORITY OF THE PEOPLE supported. Its called parliamentary democracy.
It doesn't work very well when, two weeks into the campaign, a party doesn't yet have its platform organized -- "trust us" is not a platform. And it doesn't work at all if, once elected, an MP is constantly subjected to pressure from individuals or organizations in his riding to vote their way, regardless of what his electorate wanted.

Coalition of disgrace

Mike Wilson writes a good blog reminding us of how the Reform and the Bloc worked together in 1992 to defeat the Charlottetown Accord.
Sadly, today the Reform/Conservative party returned to it's old ally, making it official that Stephen Harper will seek to form a coalition of disgrace with the Bloc Quebecois in order to gain power in Ottawa.
I like that term, coalition of disgrace -- I hadn't been able to articulate how dismayed and distressed I felt when this alliance first began to be talked about in the news.
These Conservatives parade their vitrue -- but how can they call themselves principled if they would join with the Bloc just to grab onto power? Its disgusting.

The Boomerang Effect

This was a front page story on today's Washington Post: From Bush, Unprecedented Negativity
Kerry is getting respect from reporters. I've noticed lots of regular coverage on the AP wire reporting his policy speeches. Even more important, though all the negative stuff and the lying to make the opponent look bad worked with McCain and with Gore, its not tripping up Kerry. Rather, its boomeranging on Bush.
I think reporters and editors are ashamed of themselves for how gullible they were about Gore and the Iraq war. They'll never admit it, but now they're reporting that Bush, Cheney and the RNC lie, no matter how much the White House hates them saying it. Threats about being cut off by the Bush campaign no longer work with the media, now that Bush needs them more than they need him. Better yet, all the lying has produced additional coverage about WHY they are lying.
Scott Reed, who ran Robert J. Dole's presidential campaign . . . said the Bush campaign has little choice but to deliver a constant stream of such negative charges. With low poll numbers and a volatile situation in Iraq, Bush has more hope of tarnishing Kerry's image than promoting his own. "The Bush campaign is faced with the hard, true fact that they have to keep their boot on his neck and define him on their terms," Reed said. That might risk alienating some moderate voters or depressing turnout, "but they don't have a choice," he said.

True believers

Gay-rights activists denied communion
The priests in Chicago were gutless and anti-Christian, but the priests in St. Paul were true to their faith. Its too bad that some will see it the other way around.

The man with a mustache is here

This LA Times story Some Find Ties to CIA, Baath Party Worrisome provides some background on Iraq's newest leader, Iyad Allawi, who is described as "worrisome" for people who want a democratic Iraq. So why pick him at all?
. . . one Western diplomat said that Allawi's Baathist past, his prominence as an Iraqi exile leader and his ties to the CIA had all kept him from being the preferred candidate of either the Bush administration or Brahimi. Appointing Allawi to the premiership, the diplomat said, 'hardly communicates the message of a clean break with the past,' that the international community has been pushing for as a sign that the planned U.S. return of sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30 is more than symbolic. 'He's probably not much more popular inside Iraq than Chalabi,' said Judith Yaphe, a specialist on Iraq. 'There are going to be charges that he's corrupt because he has been supported by the CIA for a long time. But nobody's going to be pure.' In the end, she said, the U.S. agreed because 'there was a potential for the Iraqi Governing Council to try to stiff us.' And the U.S., with the clock ticking toward its self-imposed deadline, needed to find a candidate that the council would back. In the end, Baram said, 'any politician who would take this job of prime minister will be on parole and be under scrutiny to make sure he is not using the job to secure his political future.'
And if it turned out that he WAS using the job to secure his own future, then what is the US or even the UN going to do? Another 'regime change'? Another invasion? Forget about it.
Here's the strong man with a mustache, and the US is agreeable because they don't have any other choices anymore, and this guy appears to be a tiny bit more pro-American than Al Sadr. As I have said before, Iraq will never have actual free elections -- Allawi's top priority is going to be to resurrect the army and maintain oil production -- he's not going to be worrying about setting up a commission to draft a constitution, or establishing a voter registration system, or developing a legislative assembly.
Here are my predictions for how it will go -- I think its likely that he will first work out a deal with the religious and tribal and Kurdish leaders to use their militias for security, basically turning over to them the troublesome and problematic cities while he gains control over the money and oil production revenue -- why would he want to be running the cities now anyway, considering how chaotic they are? He will demand that US troops leave the country, and the US will be happy to comply. Then as the city militias collapse from overwork and underfunding, while Allawi's new Iraqi army grows and rearms, he will be able to reassert his authority in the cities too -- and work out some kind of federal relationship with the Kurds. The end result, in about a year or two, and provided he doesn't get assassinated along the way, will be a new dictatorship for Iraq.
And I predict that Abu Gharib will never be torn down -- its too useful both as a symbol for Allawi and as a facility for anyone who dares to ask why there is no democracy in Iraq.

Watch Prom Queen on Tuesday night

Watch CTV for Prom Queen on Tuesday, June 1 at 9pm ET
Its about the Marc Hall case, where a boy had to sue the school board to take his date to his high school prom. So please watch it -- apparently CTV is getting hatemail, and the production company's offices were trashed the other day, so we need to prove that there is a wide audience for a story like this.
There was an old episode of MASH on the other night when Hawkeye is dealing with a gay soldier. And it struck me how much things have changed in the media, how stories like Marc Hall's are seen now as human rights stories, not sexuality stories. It used to be that "gay" stories were actually about straight people, because the filmmakers assumed that the only important or interesting part of the story was how a straight person dealt with a gay/lesbian person -- the "villian" often seemed to be the gay person himself or herself, who had made everyone else so uncomfortable. Oh well, I suppose it was a start. But now, "gay" storylines are about how a gay person feels himself or herself, and usually in relation to a civil rights issue, and the "villian" is the homophobe. This has changed in a very short time, really.
But there is still enough hate to go around, unfortunately. PFLAG has lots of resources, by the way, for anyone who is gay or who has gay friends or children. I once read somewhere that PFLAG says that the best way to end prejudice against gay people is to know one.

Reform in sheep's clothing

The Globe and Mail: Martin comes out swinging in Quebec
Right on, Paul
"We will not plunge Quebeckers and other Canadians back into the unity battles and language struggles of old," Mr. Martin said. "We find ourselves with a separatist leader like Gilles Duceppe who is afraid to speak of separatism during an election campaign. Then we have the two supposed national leaders in Stephen Harper and Jack Layton who would open old wounds and fan the flames of division. We don't need to go down that road and we don't want to go down that road."
I feel the same way about the divisive issues that the Reformer Conservatives would raise again in Ottawa if they ever got into power -- the charter, abortion rights, gay rights, women's rights, bilingualism, multiculturalism, environmental protection, social services, higher education funding, Aboriginal funding, would all swirl down the drain.
Ontario may not believe me -- but Ontario doesn't know Reform like we know them here in the West. And Reform is who the Conservatives ARE -- Joe Clark was right, he knows them.
Don't ever think, Ontario, that you're just sending your own premier a little message by voting Conservative this time, and that the Conservatives will hold back. They will swagger into Ottawa and act as though they have a mandate to do anything they want. And don't think that it really won't make any difference to Canadian policies if the Conservatives are in power -- if you thought the Bush neocons were bad for ideological rigidity, just wait until you see Reform in action.
Here is the 2003 Reform website from BC. Quotations from its platform and principles:
Special interest groups should provide their own financing and have no access to public funding . . Reform BC supports the elimination of the “Charter of Rights and Freedoms” in its entirety, and the return of the common law . . . Transfer payments would be in reverse. The federal government would no longer control the decision-making process regarding the amount returned to the provinces. Instead, provinces would decide the amount to contribute to the federal government in return for federal services . . . Provincial governments should be given exclusive jurisdiction over consumption taxes, including GST revenues. We need to implement a comprehensive, fair and simple single rate (flat) tax . . . Decreasing the government sector wage bill by at least 15 percent through a variety of measures, including staff reductions, privatization initiatives, wage policies, “no-strike” public sector labour policies, increased efficiency and program cuts . . . Marketing boards should be eliminated and replaced by voluntary cooperatives if warranted by the nature of the market or product . . . Reform BC supports greater choice in education through the introduction of a voucher system within both a public and private school system . . . the terms of employment for public sector employees should exclude the right to strike . . . Canada is not officially a bilingual country. It is bilingual only in the House of Commons. Reform BC believes official bilingualism is inappropriate in British Columbia . . . The introduction of a “Three Strikes and You’re Out” policy. Under this policy, anyone who has been convicted three times of an indictable offence would automatically receive a sentence of a minimum of 20 years, with no possibility for parole . . . A provincial (or preferably, national) referendum on the reinstatement of capital punishment . . . We will assert and defend provincial regulatory jurisdiction over firearms, to the exclusion of federal regulatory jurisdiction . . . Members of the judiciary should be subject to recall . . . Reform BC supports the abolition of the Human Rights Commission . . . The Reform BC supports the abolition of parole and parole boards, since the justice system already makes adequate provision for time off for good behaviour . . . Canada was built on a foundation guided by fundamental values and principles which supported the value and dignity of the individual and the importance of the family unit. The Party defines “family” as individuals related by blood, marriage or adoption, and defines “marriage” as the legal union of two people of the opposite sex. . .
Here is the Reform 1993 campaign platform -- their policy on bilingualism hasn't changed.

Bilmon is back, with a vengence

Billmon
The Whiskey Bar is open again, with a brilliant post describing the totality of US failure in Iraq.
So this is what failure looks like -- and, realistically, it's much too late to look to the UN or NATO or our Arab "allies" to save us from the consequences of the administration's folly. Strategic failure on such a grand scale is obviously going to have huge repercussions, not just in Iraq, not just in the Middle East, and not just for the war against Al Qaeda. Much more than 9/11, a U.S. defeat in Iraq . . . has at least the potential to change, if not everything, then lots of things -- from the U.S. political balance of power, to the future of NATO, to the health of the global economy. Old debates -- about the limits of U.S. power and the consequences of U.S. decline -- may be resurrected. America's attractiveness as a destination for foreign investment -- the main prop beneath our current prosperity -- could be undermined. But the ultimate consequences of the Iraq fiasco are really almost impossible to predict. In other words, while we may not be looking into the abyss (to borrow Gen. Hoar's phrase) we are certainly peering out over a dark and fog-covered landscape. Still, we do what we can. So over the next few weeks, I'm going to . . .focus on these unknowns -- Rumsfeld's unknown unknowns, so to speak. The most critical of these, of course, is Iraq itself, and the U.S. position in the Middle East (the most immediate casualty of Shrub's boneheaded play). This sucking chest wound - and what, if anything might be done to heal it - should be the topic of my next post.
Rock on, Bilmon.
When John Kerry is elected, he is going to face a hell of a mess. Here are the first steps as I see them. Regardless of who is in control of Congress, Kerry can:
1. Apologize to the world for America's 9.ll hysteria.
2. Close Gitmo and every other CIA and Homeland Security secret prison in America and around the world. Tell the military and the CIA to put up or shut up -- if they can charge people, do so. If they cannot, let them go home.
3. Host a summit of world leaders and the foreign service staff to announce a new era in international relations and security cooperation.
4. Put Gore in charge of Homeland Security with a mandate to focus on all of the clear and present dangers which that department has avoided. Require the CIA and the FBI to brief him every single day.
5, Send Clinton to the Middle East, with mandate and money for a Palestinian homeland. Then send him to North Korea to make a deal.

Arar error

POGGE has a great post exploring some of the issues around the Arar enquiry and why assertions of the people's right NOT to know should be an election issue. POGGE refers to a Globe and Mail article which quotes government lawyers on the party line: other countries will not want to swap secrets if they think their information (will) . . . be disseminated for general consumption by the Canadian public.
I think one reason governments don't want to reveal intelligence is that, unlike James Bond, we're not finding airliners hidden under a sheet in the ocean, or getting tapes of Blofield's meetings with SPECTRE. In reality, I think our intelligence sources in the radical community are often pretty poor, and their data is sketchy and uncertain and open to interpretation or to willful abuse, basically wishful thinking. The Iraq WMD "intelligence", for example, if it has been publicized, would have been demonstrated as inflated before the war even started, because the various agencies would have realized that their multiple sources were not multiple at all, just multiple copies of a single source, and that much of their so-called data was based on fraud. (And when the US refused to share the details with Chretien's government, Chretien, to his everlasting credit, smelled a rat and kept our boys out of that morass.)
In the Arar case, what has come out so far indicates that they were just so convinced that Canada is a hotbed of terrorism and so eager to find a terrorist that they were suspicious of Arar because he associated with other people of whom they were also suspicious -- sort of presumed guilt by association. If indeed they lacked any actual evidence against him, then they inflated their own activities to impress the Americans -- a phone call, perhaps, where someone said Yes, we've had him under suveillance, we have our suspicions about him, he seems untrustworthy, we've been watching him and he's part of the loop -- not realizing the new American Gitmo-inspired hands-free policy would throw him to the Syrian wolves without a second thought or any follow-up review of actual evidence. And perhaps this is the secret they don't want to discuss in open court.

What does Layton think he is doing?

Layton widens attack on Paul Martin to include two provincial premiers
Is Jack Layton actually a nutcase, or does he just play one on TV?
Jack Layton refused to repent Thursday for the attack he launched on Paul Martin from a church pulpit, instead adding two provincial politicians to his list of sinners who put poor people on the streets. Layton added fuel to the political firestorm he's ignited by saying former Ontario premier Mike Harris shares some of the blame with Prime Minister Martin for increasing homelessness in Ontario. Layton then went further, saying Quebec Premier Jean Charest is heading down the same path with cuts to social housing.
Well, I suppose our premier, Lorne Calvert, is safe, being NDP himself, though he's not exactly overspending on social services these days. But Ralph Klein better watch out, and Gordon Campbell, and . . . come to think of it, they're probably ALL killers according to Layton, frittering away public money on all that health care stuff and highways and education and environmental protection and economic development and First Nations reserves and foreign aid, when they could have been building houses.

Apres moi, le deluge

Conservative language critic resigns but not before his message got sent -- and just listen to Harper's so-called position:
Although Mr. Harper said he does not envision changes at this time, he laid out his own philosophy that communities where French is spoken first are best equipped to keep the language alive. "We have to provide minority service where language warrants, but I think obviously we do it in a way that makes sure that strong communities stay strong."He said his party would make changes to the bilingualism policy in the country only if there was a wide consensus in his own caucus and among parliamentarians.
So what the heck does that mean? I think it means that, if Harper is elected, all the old-line unilingual Reform/Social Credit types from BC and Alberta will be flooding into Ottawa, and we'll start hearing the 30-year-old "lets get the French off the cornflake boxes" crap again.

Thanks, Alfonso

The Globe and Mail - Gagliano sues Martin and Martin says "thanks!" Regardless of how the lawsuit turns out, there isn't a single Canadian who thinks Martin was wrong to fire Gagliano (or maybe there is one, but even Jean Chretien will have the brains to shut up about it.)

Feeling a draft?

Hackworth's column about the exodus of people from the Army states that "Unless so-called Army short tours in the badlands of Iraq and Afghanistan become manageable based on the number of troops available – right now the Army is trying to do the work of 14 divisions with 10 under-strength, active-duty divisions – we’ll see a mass exodus from the Green Machine and the inevitable return of the draft."
Well, of course there will be a return of the draft in the US --does anyone doubt it? They're just waiting until after the election. It's quite clear that the US armed forces are in serious trouble because they are badly understaffed for the missions they are involved in around the world even now -- and don't forget the thousands injured in Iraq, too.
If Bush is elected, the draft will be back by next spring. If Kerry is elected, there will still be tremendous pressure from the military to bring in a draft, at least for some specialities. I'm not sure whether he would do this or not.
And then Canada will get the draft dodgers again, which would be OK -- having met several over the years, they were pretty good immigrants to have, hardworking, productive, etc, so I have no doubt they will be again.