Harper's war on gay people: I know which side I'm on.

Harper has declared war on gay people. Again. And once again, this is not a fight Canadians wanted. But fight we will.
Dave over at Galloping Beaver lets us know that petulant little Stevie is blinded by the right -- he is pandering to the wingnuts by announcing a vote about gay marriage in the fall.

[The] religious right . . . wanted a vote delayed long enough to mount an intensive campaign and to lobby, threaten or otherwise secure the votes of MPs . . . This is nothing more than proof that the religious right commands a priviledged position in the Conservative Party and that we can expect their homophobic, anti-abortion, bigoted perspective to be advanced at any opportunity.

So now we all get to listen to a whole summer of "well, of course I'm not prejudiced against gay people but I really do believe that civil unions are good enough for the likes of them!" Subtext: you should be glad we let you ride on our bus at all, so just sit at the back and be grateful!
And so to anyone who dishes out the "I'm not prejudiced" argument, I repeat what I said back in January:

We don't get to choose the battle. We only get to choose our side.
I have been thinking lately about how to reply to the apparently-reasonable-sounding argument that I hear from Conservatives and religious people that a person can support gay rights without supporting gay marriage.
But you can't. Not anymore.
We don't get to choose the battle.
No one decided that the second world war would start in defense of Poland. But once Germany invaded, no one could just sit back any longer and say "Sorry, boys, can't fight now because we just aren't organized well enough quite yet. Let's put this off until something else outrageous happens."
No one decided that the right to have an abortion should define the women's movement. But this issue came to symbolize the most basic right, for women to control their own bodies, and therefore people who do not support a woman's right to choose are not feminists and cannot claim to be.
No one decided that the black civil rights movement would make its bones through a bus boycott in Montgomery. But once this boycott began, the black people of Montgomery had to keep on walking no matter how tired they were and how violent things became. The people couldn't say "Sorry, boys, this is really inconvenient for everybody, so can you please take your cause to some other city?" No, Montgomery became a battle that had to be won.
And so it is now with gay marriage. The battle is real and immediate and personal to many gay people, but its has also become symbolic. The Christian Right hysteria against gay marriage is one of the factors that has made this battle so important, because the core of their opposition to gay marriage is bigotry and hate against gay people, which cannot be allowed to win.
When someone says "I don't support gay marriage but this doesn't mean I am a bigot", this simply isn't true. Not anymore. The battle lines have been drawn.
The choice is which side you are on.
You ARE a bigot if you don't support gay marriage.

Great line of the day

Sidney Blumenthal describes the war paradigm of the Bush administration vs. the US constitution:

They believe fervently that the constitution is fatally flawed and must be circumscribed. The Bush administration's holy grail is to remove suspects' rights to due process, speedy trial and exculpatory evidence. The war paradigm is to be strengthened to conduct permanent war against terror that can never be finally defeated. There is no exit strategy from emergency.

Emphasis mine.

Quid pro quo

The Tories were so upset about millions flowing to Quebec advertising agencies -- but apparently in just the last four months they have lost the $5 BILLION which had been allocated for the Kelowna accord!
Funny how this works, isn't it? When governments want to do something, then finding the money is no problem. But when they don't want to do something -- like fulfill the Martin Government promise for $5B in funding for Aboriginal people -- then all of a sudden, well, sorry guys but we just can't find the money.
This story hints at what I think will be the Harper government scenario -- that the Tories intend to force through a new Indian Act as quid pro quo for the Kelowna funding:

Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice has been harshly criticized by some native leaders who say his government is discounting the results of 18 months of good-faith Kelowna talks. "We've said all along, those are laudable targets and objectives and we're supportive of them," Prentice said Friday in an interview.

[Editorial interjection: bullshit!]

He attended the conference in Kelowna last fall as premiers and most native leaders hailed what was billed as an historic milestone in aboriginal relations. "Everyone stood behind the expression of the goals and objectives," Prentice acknowledged. "The issue is ... advancing the money towards those goals and objectives. How's it going to be done? None of those questions were answered."
For his part, Prentice says structural change will be needed to get First Nations out from under an oppressive, outdated Indian Act.
He'll move soon to enhance the rights of aboriginal women, improve education standards and the native child-welfare system, he said.
"You'll see progress and you'll see a roadmap of where we're going to go."

"Structural change" is, I think, code for getting rid of Aboriginal tribal councils, which are perceived as obstructuve and corrupt. And I think that roadmap will say that Aboriginal people won't get the Kelowna money until the Tories pass a new Indian Act.

Today's pop quiz

Media Matters reports this exchange on CNN:

Discussing U.S. negotiations with Iran over its purported nuclear program, CNN senior national correspondent John Roberts commented that 'Iraq endured 11 years of sanctions, and, you know, we still had to go to war to get rid of what it was that they had.' . . . Blitzer responded: 'Good point, John.'

Here's the quiz:
1) What was it, exactly, that Iraq had?
2) Why did the United States "have to go to war" to get rid of it?
3) Why did neither Blitzer nor Roberts remember that Iraq actually didn't have any weapons?
4) And why did they think this had anything to do with Iran anyway?

Pop quiz

1. Do you think Joe Volpe has any chance whatsoever to be elected as leader of the Liberal party?
2. And if so, are you nuts?

That was then, this is now

As someone who lived through the Vietnam War, it struck me as ironic to read Juan Cole's report that Vietnam has won a contract to supply rice to Iraq.
And in 2035, I guess, my children will be amused to see reports of Iraq having a US contract to supply gasoline to the US army fighting in China. . .

This makes me sick

I should have realized:

Canadian troops in Afghanistan have been told the Geneva Conventions and Canadian regulations regarding the rights of prisoners of war don't apply to Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters captured on the battlefield. That decision strips detainees of key rights and protections under the rules of war, including the right to be released at the end of the conflict and not to be held criminally liable for lawful combat.

Ah, yes, what was it we are over there fighting for? Something about democracy, truth, justice and the American way? And we'll get right on that, I'm sure, just as soon as it is convenient, and doesn't impose any annoying regulations or ask us to consider any moral quandries or anything aggravating like that . . .

Facts about Afghanistan

Coming from an agricultural province, it sort of helps put Afghanistan into perspective to find out that it has 200,000 hectares devoted to poppy production -- on a Canadian scale, that's about a third of the land planted to crops in British Columbia -- and that almost 90 per cent of the world's opium comes from Afghanistan's fields -- and of course one can only speculate on the percentage of Canadian pot production which comes from BC!
Anyway, over at Informed Comment, Juan Cole posts about the Kabul riot today which killed 14 people. In his post, he also provides some facts about Afghanistan that should be more widely known than they are:

. . . The US military presence in Afghanistan has quietly been pumped up from 19,000 to 23,000 troops . . . Over 400 Afghans have been killed by US bombing and military actions in only the past two weeks. While most of these are Pushtun nativist guerrillas (coded by the US as "Taliban"), some have demonstrably been innocent civilians . . . the Pushtun guerrillas have been waging a very effective terror campaign in the countryside around Qandahar, and have launched a fierce series of spring offensives . . . While most anti-US actions in Afghanistan come from the Pushtun ethnic group, these Kabul protests, which paralyzed the capital and resulted in the imposition of a curfew, heavily involved Tajiks. Kabul is a largely Tajik city, and the Tajiks mostly hated the Taliban with a passion, and many high officials in the Karzai government have been Tajik. So they haven't been as upset with the US invasion and presence as have been many Pushtuns, especially those Pushtuns who either supported the Taliban or just can't abide foreign troops in their country . . . Significant numbers of Tajiks are clearly now turning against the US, and that is a very bad sign indeed . . . Pushtuns are 42 % of the population and Tajiks 27 %. Pushtuns have usually supplied the top rulers . . .
Despite Bush administration pledges to reconstruct the country, only six percent of Afghans have access to electricity. Less than 20 percent have access to clean water. Although the gross domestic product has grown by 80 percent since the nadir of 2001, and may be $7 billion next year, most of that increase comes from the drug trade or from foreign assistance . . . About half the economy of Afghanistan is generated by the poppy crop, which becomes opium and then heroin in Europe. Afghanistan produces 87 percent of the world's opium and heroin, and no other country comes close in its dedication of agricultural land to drug production (over 200,000 hectares).
The government lives on international welfare. Some 92 percent of Afghan government expenditures come from foreign assistance. The Afghan government is worse at collecting taxes than fourth world countries in subsaharan Africa. Unemployment remains at 35 percent. Unemployment is estimated to have been 25 percent in the US during the Great Depression.
The great danger is renewed Muslim radicalism and the reemergence of al-Qaeda, combined with a narco-terrorism that could make Colombia's FARC look like minor players.

Cole also notes that US media don't want to talk about how NATO troops are being killed and injured in Afghanistan, including of course Canadian troops but also troops from France -- and it is odd to me how France is still targeted by US commentators and comedians as a nation of cheese-eating surrender monkeys while their soldiers are fighting and dying in Afghanistan, as are ours.

They're here, they're there, they're everywhere, so beware!

So let me see if I have got this right:
CSIS says we have to be afraid, be very afraid, of any young brown Muslim-type people living next door because they might be 'Home-grown terrorists'.

. . . young Canadians from immigrant backgrounds are becoming radicalized through the internet and are looking for targets at home, not abroad. "They are virtually indistinguishable from other youth. They blend in very well to our society, they speak our language and they appear to be — to all intents and purposes — well-assimilated," [CSIS deputy director of operations Jack Hooper] said [to a Senate defense committee]. "[They] look to Canada to execute their targeting."

And your evidence for this is . . .?

The men responsible for the 2005 transit bombings in London were from immigrant families, said Hooper. "I can tell you that all of the circumstances that led to the London transit bombings, to take one example, are resident here now in Canada," he said. Training camps in Afghanistan produce terrorists, said Hooper, including a Canadian resident who played a key role in an earlier attack. "The individual who trained the bombers in the August 1998 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi was a former resident of Vancouver who fought in Afghanistan," he said.

Oooohhh, "the circumstances" are "resident" here, just like in London. Well, what can we do about this terrible situation? Build a case and arrest someone, maybe?

Hooper, who complained about cuts in funding, says it is difficult to properly screen immigrant applicants. Of the roughly 20,000 from the Pakistani-Afghanistan region, Hooper said CSIS could only vet about "one-tenth."

Oh. So, I guess the solution is that CSIS needs more money to screen immigration applications. Well, nice to have that problem solved, isn't it?

Doing the right thing

Funny what a difference an apology can make. I had liked Westjet a lot and was disappointed to realize that Air Canada was righteous in accusing them of spying. Now, finally, WestJet has admitted it and has apologized.

Great line of the day

A simple one, from AMERICAblog:

Pope asks why God let Holocaust happen.
Get a mirror.

Expertiness

First, there was truthiness, for when you feel something to be true even if the actual facts show you are wrong.
Now I think we have also identified "expertiness", for someone who feels himself to be an expert even if he doesn't actually know anything about the subject.
The Editors nails Slate writer Gregg Easterbrook for trumpeting his own "expertiness" on global warming when he is not a scientist himself nor apparently is he even capable of reporting accurately on the content of technical reports.
Expertiness personified.

Inquiring minds want to know

Forget global warming, forget energy policy, forget fighting AIDS in Africa.
The American national media certainly can't be expected to understand all this boring policy stuff.
And forget watching the Hayden confirmation hearings on Air Force One if we haven't seen the newest version of King Kong yet. The American media certainly shouldn't have to pay attention during their working day to all this boring news stuff.
And forget the failures in Iraq and the Marine war crimes and Guantanamo and ethnic cleansing of the Iraqi people. The American media certainly cannot construct a narrative out of all this stuff that keeps America looking good to itself.
So lets focus instead on the really important questions:
Did Al Gore spend a whole summer in France when he was 15 or was it just six weeks in the middle of a summer? Or was it when he was 16, really?
Doesn't Jimmy Carter deserve to be censured as the worst president ever?
Did Hillary have to adjust her hair tint to wear that lemon-yellow pantsuit?
And how often do Bill and Hillary get it on, anyway?
Howard Dean says to Chris Matthews:

I think gossip and silliness like that, in the long run, do not overcome the fact that somebody‘s got to do something about gas prices, that we‘ve sent a ton of jobs to China, that we have a budget that‘s so far out of balance that our kids are in debt—those are the issues that matter, not salacious gossip. And I don‘t care who writes it.

But what does he know anyway about the important stuff . . .

Four year terms?

Harper is now proposing fixed dates for elections.
Interesting idea, I think. Harper says:

"Fixed election dates prevent governments from calling snap elections for short-term political advantage. Fixed election dates stop leaders from trying to manipulate the calendar. They level the playing field for all parties. The rules are clear for everybody."

Yes, I can see the advantages, I think.
However, the disadvantages also occur to me, too when we look south of the border -- lame-duck, do-nothing administrations for the last 12 or more months of the four-year terms.
Perhaps being able to go to the polls earlier would resolve this -- though if going earlier is an option then I don't understand what difference is Harper actually proposing to the system we now have, where majority governments seldom go to the polls earlier than four years anyway.
So I will be looking foward to reading various opinions about this on both the progressive and conservative blogs.

"I'm sorry, the military has made a mistake"

One of the funnier scenes in Fawlty Towers is when Basil has to apologize to some guests about a ghastly error he made which was entirely his fault, and he walks toward their room saying to himself over and over "I'm sorry I made a mistake, I'm sorry I made a mistake" and then he flings open the guestroom door and says, "I'm sorry, my wife has made a mistake".
Now Stephen Harper is using it too -- "I'm sorry, the military has made a mistake!"
What a coward -- he couldn't simply apologize to Tim Goddard, saying "I'm sorry, my government's policy was wrong."
No, not Harper. It's always someone else's fault. As described in the Globe, Harper is now saying that the press could have been at Trenton after all when Nichola Goddard's body arrived:

“I had given fairly clear instructions that, when bodies were to come home, families were to be consulted, and if all families were agreed on making that particular ceremony public, that our government should have no difficulty with that. I'm not sure what happened in this case . . . I'll look into it and find out if the family's wishes were different to what was done and why that was the case and we'll correct it in the future."

Yeah, yeah, its all the military's fault -- they obviously took it upon themselves not to follow your "fairly clear" instuctions.
As the Globe article implicitly points out, his statement is a lie -- the actual military policy had been to consult the families, and it was Harper who changed this policy:

Long-standing Canadian military policy has been to consult with families to determine whether they want the media on the tarmac at CFB Trenton when coffins are removed from the planes bringing them home. The overwhelming majority have agreed.
That changed this winter after the Conservatives took office. Reporters were told they were no longer welcome and defence staff said the decision came from the government.

Harper is the guy who thinks he supports the troops -- but he doesn't hestitate to point his finger at them when it is actually his own government that was to blame for the policy.
The opposition has noticed:

“I'm actually struck by Mr. Harper's ability to manufacture facts,” Liberal defence critic Ujjal Dosanjh said yesterday, shortly before the media ban was overturned. “He manufactured the consultation of the families in this case.” NDP defence critic Dawn Black also attacked the government on the contradiction. “You wonder who is telling the truth in this,” she said.

The military has likely noticed too, but they won't be able to say anything.