Please, Sir, can I get a raise too?

Members of N.S. legislature get additional raise to cover rising fuel costs: "A legislative committee has quietly awarded provincial politicians in Nova Scotia a substantial increase in their travel and constituency allowance to help them cover rising fuel costs, The Canadian Press has learned. The increase is over and above a planned 2.9 per cent salary increase for members of the legislature." Ooh, and did they think that Nova Scotia taxpayers wouldn't notice?

Another dispatch from Occupied France

The Poorman links to this story -- US troops fighting losing battle for Sunni triangle-- and he titles is "Hearts and minds". But to me, stories like this sound more and more like the stories out of Occupied France during World War II:

The mob grew more frenzied as the gunmen dragged the two surviving Americans from the cab of their bullet-ridden lorry and forced them to kneel on the street.
Killing one of the men with a rifle round fired into the back of his head, they doused the other with petrol and set him alight. Barefoot children, yelping in delight, piled straw on to the screaming man's body to stoke the flames.
It had taken just one wrong turn for disaster to unfold. Less than a mile from the base it was heading to, the convoy turned left instead of right and lumbered down one of the most anti-American streets in Iraq, a narrow bottleneck in Duluiya town, on a peninsular jutting into the Tigris river named after the Jibouri tribe that lives there.
As the lorries desperately tried to reverse out, dozens of Sunni Arab insurgents wielding rocket launchers and automatic rifles emerged from their homes . . . Within minutes, four American contractors, all employees of the Halliburton subsidiary Kellog, Brown & Root, were dead. The jubilant crowd dragged their corpses through the street, chanting anti-US slogans. . . . Perhaps fearful of public reaction in America, where support for the war is falling, US officials suppressed details of the Sept 20 attack, which bore a striking resemblance to the murder of four other contractors in Fallujah last year . . . The violence here seems to encapsulate the growing difficulties the US military is facing in trying to defeat the insurgency . . . The insurgency in eastern Salahuddin province is growing more intense, more deadly and more sophisticated.
Lt Col Gary Brito, the battalion's commanding officer, said that in recent months the number of roadside bombs targeting his men had increased by a third - even though journeys out of base have been cut back. They are having a more devastating effect too.
"Before only two out of 10 used to be effective," he said. "Now four or five have a catastrophic effect, blowing away a vehicle or causing casualties." In the past few months at least four American soldiers in this battalion alone have been killed. Another 39 have been wounded.
Even routine patrols are fraught with danger.
"What the hell was that," shouted Lt Chris Baldwin as a huge explosion rocked Baker Company's convoy of humvees trundling along a street in Dour, another town under Lt Col Brito's watch.
"Contact! Contact!" he bellowed into his radio as the gunners opened fire on a row of nearby houses from where the rocket-propelled anti-tank missile was fired.
As the gunfire died down, the soldiers burst into house after house, their facades peppered with bullet holes.
But, as is so often the case, the attacker had vanished down one of Dour's maze-like alleys.
Instead the Americans were confronted with sullen Iraqis, holding their terrified children to their sides. An old woman sat on her bed, clutching her heart, as the soldiers interrogated the family.
"They heard nothing, they saw nothing, same as ******* usual," said Sgt Jody Miller. Taking another deep drag from his cigarette, he turned to the company's translator.
"Tell them to tell us where the bad guys are so we stop frigging shooting up their houses," he said.
Nobody was hurt but the mutual distrust between the Americans and the local community deepened just a little bit more.

"Mutual distrust"? Try "hate".

DART in Pakistan

Canada's DART has arrived in Pakistan. Here's a photo:

Sgt. Alain Beauvais, from Quebec City, and Pvt. Marie-Clair Proulx, from St. Jean, Que., with Canada's Disaster Assistance Response Team, gives a young boy a tetanus shot at a clinic run by Pakistani doctors from America in Gari Dupata, Pakistan, Friday, Oct. 21, 2005. (AP Photo/CP, Ryan Remiorz)

The anti-war beat goes on...

Tim Goodrich, right, an Air Force veteran and co-founder of a group called Iraq Veterans Against the War, and Army veteran John McNamara, left, await the arrival of the motorcade carrying President Bush enroute to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and dedication ceremonies for the retired Air Force One Boeing 707 aircraft, in Simi Valley, Calif., Friday, Oct. 21, 2005. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)


Cindy Sheehan (C) joins the Grandmothers Against the War vigil in New York October 19, 2005. Sheehan, whose son Casey, of Vacaville, California was killed in Sadr City, Iraq while serving in the Army, joined the eighteen grandmothers who were arrested Monday after they tried to enlist at a military recruiting center in Times Square. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

Charging Bush with war crimes

Daily Kos alerts us to this article in Counterpunch -- Prosecuting Bush in Canada for Torture -- about a group trying to charge Bush with war crimes.

Ms. [Gail] Davidson and Lawyers Against the War have laid charges against George Bush Jr; accusing him of aiding, abetting, and counseling the commission of torture. This charge is based on the abuses of the prisoners held at the U.S. prisons in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba and Abu-Ghraib, Iraq including Canadian minor Omar Khadr, who has been held in Cuba since 2001. "Many Canadians don't realize that we have not only the right but the responsibility to pursue these charges, it is a responsibility that the Canadian government owes not only to the people of Canada, but to the people of the world. The 1987 Convention Against Torture [And Other Cruel, Inhuman Or Degrading Treatment Or Punishment] binds us to this action." . . . "The American legal system seems incapable of bringing him to justice and there are no international courts with jurisdiction. So it's up to Canada to enforce the law that everybody has signed on to but nobody else seems willing to apply."

The attempt to bring charges has been going on for ten months, since Bush's visit to Canada last year, but the case was under a publication ban for some reason. The BC Supreme Court removed the ban because no one could defend it.
Apparently this group, Lawyers against the War, is pursuing charges against Bush in Germany too.

Canadians in Iraq on both sides

Wow, now here's a story: Canadians taking part in Iraqi insurgency:

The head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) says Canadians have joined the insurgency in Iraq. James Judd, the director of CSIS, revealed Thursday evening that some of the foreign fighters in Iraq battling coalition troops are Canadians. He said there aren't many, but more are expected to join. Speaking to reporters at a break during a security conference in Montreal, Judd was asked if Canadians were in Iraq fighting against the American-led coalition. 'Yes, I believe so,' he said. He said there weren't many, 'we're talking single digit numbers.' But he said 'we're aware of several others who are contemplating leaving.' . . . the Prime Minister's Office was 'flabbergasted' that such sensitive information could be released by the head of the spy agency. 'They didn't know it was being spoken about publicly and for that they [the PMO] are very angry.' . . . Acknowledgment that Canadians are fighting in Iraq raises a number of questions, such as what will their status be if they decide to return to Canada. "It raises the longer-term question of what do they bode for the future?" Judd said.

Single digits, of course, means fewer than ten. But still, its a potential mess, isn't it. There are also some Canadians fighting with the Americans in Iraq.
So what happens when they meet up?

Laugh du jour

Cam Cardow, Ottawa Citizen

Great line of the day

Digby writes about reaping what you have sowed, and all that:

It's very hard for me to feel any sympathy for Grover Norquist who is being battered by the religious zealots for daring to speak at a Log Cabin Republican meeting . . . He built a vote machine of ignorant saps who really believe that economic conservatism has something to do with hating gays and traditional families. When you let the nutballs into the tent and give them real electoral power, this is what you get. Wait until Big Business understands that after they get their tax cuts and deregulation they'll have to contend with a generation of creationist witch burners to sustain a first world economy.

Emphasis mine. Yes, its going to be pretty difficult to drill for oil when the engineers on your crew don't believe in geology, or to build space weapons when the technicians didn't attend physics lectures, or to develop new crop varieties when your biologists never studied genetics.

Its criminal

James Wolcott sums it up: " . . . 'criminalizing politics' is exactly what should be done when political criminals deceive a nation into a war . . . "

Great line of the day

In regard to whether or not Fitzgerald is building a strong case against SOMEone, Billmon writes: "the reaction of every judge who has looked at the prosecutors's sealed evidence -- including the judges who ordered Judy Miller sent to the slammer -- has been the legal equivalent of a low whistle. Whatever Fitzgerald's got, it seems to pretty damning . . . "

Frog goes musical

Frogsdong writes a little ditty: "I've looked at George from both sides now
From highs and lows and still somehow
It's George's failures I recall
He really is a loser after all."

Still crazy after all these years

You know, as a confirmed progressive-leftist type, I should probably be opposed to this: 'Open skies' talks take wing: "The federal government is launching formal talks to open up the Canada-U.S. air industry to more cross-border competition and potentially lower air fares."
It will undoubtedly compromise Air Canada's attempts to become profitable, thereby risking Canada's national airline, etc. etc.
But, Lord help me, I just can't work up a sweat over this.
Air Canada doesn't deserve it.
The last time I flew across country, to an event in Fredericton NB with a pause in London Ontario, I had to take a total of six flights. Five of them were late. And I mean LATE -- like mostly by two or more hours.
And at good old Air Canada, no one seemed to care. Apologies are for wimps, I guess.
At one point during this odyssey, I remember, they switched a flight to a different gate. Without changing the sign. I only knew because I asked at the old gate. The rule is, never believe their signs -- always ask.
So while I was waiting at the new gate -- because, of course, the flight was late leaving -- a little old man came up and asked the crew why flight such-and-such hadn't left yet. Well, it had -- from a different gate, which they hadn't bothered to post signage for or to announce either.
Nobody seemed particularly concerned about this -- they just told him to sit down, they're get him onto another flight sometime or other.
There was one flight which left on time. It was the one which was supposed to be my last one. I, however, was not on it because I was late getting off my connector flight. The reason I was late getting off this flight was because the plane was late so the Air Canada gate crew had left the gate before we got there.
So when they finally showed up, I tore down to the final flight's gate, hoping it would be late too -- please, please be late, every other flight on this benighted trip has been late so why should THIS flight leave on time? But, of course, no such luck. THAT flight had left exactly on time, five minutes before. Five minutes! And they KNEW I was coming on the connector flight, me and a couple of other people too. So I asked why it couldn't have waited for us, considering that it was flying across the country and could have made up the five minutes pretty easily, and got told, patronizingly and haughtily, "Well, we have to leave on time, you know!"
Choke, gasp -- I was speechless!
Of course, they booked me onto the next flight, leaving four hours hence. It, however, was late. It couldn't leave because the flight crew wasn't there. They had been on a Chicago flight, which was late. The flight finally left an additional six hours later -- a new lateness record!
The next time my husband and I flew Air Canada, we were trying to get to Vancouver. The flight was -- you guessed it -- late. It was, in fact 20 hours late -- so we missed a full day of a four-day little vacation.

Great line of the day

In Pushing Our Buttons Redux Orcinus says some interesting stuff about US terror warnings. He begins

It's becoming evident that the terrorists with designs on destroying America don't need to actually carry out any attacks to undermine our national security. The Republicans now in power are doing it for them.

And he ends thusly:

If there's anything America needs right now, it is leaders, and thinkers, and media figures who will not play games with our national security -- who will forsake the temptation to parlay the real war on terror into a political marketing campaign. It's a temptation this administration has fully indulged, with the adamant support of its cheering section in the Republican Party. Indeed, it is now apparently even being refined by lesser Republican lights in their local races. And someday, we're all going to pay for it.

And did one of them have the first name "Quentin"?

"A man accused of growing marijuana . . . claimed he was hired to renovate the property . . . by a Mr. Black, a Mr. Pink and a Mr. Blue and had no idea there were 2,500 pot plants growing in the building. Lucin, 33, of Surrey also said the facility was registered to a Mr. Peach. The judge called Lucin's evidence totally unbelievable . . . "

Photos from Ohio

Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin'. We're finally on our own. This summer I hear the drummin' . . . This was running through my head as I searched for these photos from Saturday's events in Toledo. I also posted the commentary on the photos from the Yahoo slideshow. I found this commentary sort of interesting because it obviously was written from the viewpoint of the police rather than of the protestors.


Police are seen in a stand off with an unruly group of prosestors, Saturday, Oct. 15, 2005, in Toledo, Ohio, where violence erupted between police and local protestors. A crowd that gathered to protest a planned march Saturday by a white supremacist group turned violent, throwing baseball-sized rocks at police and vandalizing vehicles and stores, including setting a bar on fire. (AP Photo/J.D. Pooley)


Members of the National Socialist Movement gesture to protesters from the grounds of Woodward High School . . . REUTERS/The Blade/Allan Detrich


Residents protest on Stickney Avenue . . . Members of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement had been scheduled to march under police protection through north Toledo, with anti-Nazi groups set to counter-protest. But police canceled the event and told the neo-Nazi group to leave as tensions rose and violence erupted nearby, the Toledo Blade reported. REUTERS/The Blade/Allan Detrich


Police use tear gas against a group of protestors . . . A crowd that gathered to protest a planned march Saturday by a white supremacist group turned violent, throwing baseball-sized rocks at police and vandalizing vehicles and stores, including setting a bar on fire. At least two dozen members of the National Socialist Movement, which calls itself 'America's Nazi Party,' gathered at a city park just before noon and were to march under police protection. Organizers of the march said they were demonstrating against black gangs that they said were harassing white residents in the neighborhood. (AP Photo/J.D. Pooley)

The news story indicates the crowd was angry at what they perceived as implicit city support of the march. "When the rioting began, [Toledo Mayor] Ford tried to negotiate with those involved, but "they weren't interested in that." He said people in the crowd swore at him and wanted to know why he was protecting the Nazis. They were mostly "gang members who had real or imagined grievances and took it as an opportunity to speak in their own way," Ford said. "I was chagrined that there were obvious mothers and children in the crowd with them," he said."
In the stories coming out of New Orleans, it seemed that some of the black families waiting at the Convention Centre viewed the young men with guns as their protectors - and these young men saw themselves that way, too -- while the police and soldiers saw them as gangsters. Perhaps they were both protectors AND gangsters. I wonder if the same dynamic is at play here in Toledo as well. Are poor black Americans so alienated from police that they experience greater protection and fairer treatment from the black gangs in their midst rather than from the police who, as they perceive it, arrest them too easily, arbitrarily and for no reason?
If so, this is a serious problem and it is up to police forces to solve it. They can solve it only by recruiting many more black officers -- just as, in Canada, police forces and the RCMP had to learn a long and painful lesson about how they could not properly police their various communities if people from those communities had not been hired by the force. For us, this meant many more Aboriginal officers in Western Canada, more East Indian and Asian officers in Vancouver, and so forth. Still far from perfect here, but I think we are getting better.
UPDATE: Ah-ha -- as I suspected, this news story confirms that the Nazis deliberately chose to hold their protest in a black neighbourhood -- they wanted to provoke violence and get black people blamed for it, a longstanding fascist technique.