Today's pop quiz

1. How many days will it take for the evacuation of Canadians stranded in Lebanon to dissolve into complete chaos?
2. I said "days", but should I have said "hours"?
Now, I know a lot of hard-working civil servants are working hard on this, but how can anyone actually take such Canada's mythical evaluation plan seriously? Here's the plan:

The Canadian government has chartered seven ships with a combined capacity of 2,000 passengers. Girtel said about 30,000 people now have registered with the Canadian Embassy, but it's not clear how many of them want to leave. Ships will ferry back and forth between Lebanon and Cyprus until everyone who wants to leave has been picked up, she said. "People are being contacted and told the evacuation will start (Wednesday). The Canadian government has been working around the clock on this." She said that all registered Canadians will be contacted one way or another and the effort would continue until every single Canadian had been reached.

Here's the reality, and its only just started:

The drive to the harbour used to take 15 minutes but now would likely take an hour or two because the bridges have been bombed, said Chaar . . . Chaar said she has heard nothing from the embassy, has had great difficulty getting through, and has been able to obtain little information when she does get through . . . the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp., Beirut's top-rated radio station, has reported a sit-in by desperate Canadians at a Beirut hotel.

And so each cruise ship would have to make 15 (that's right, fifteen) round trips before everyone is evacuated. Given a day at each trip end for things like refueling, cleaning, restocking - if there is any fuel or food to be had -- and it will be the end of August before all the Caandians are out.

And when they get to Cyprus, what will happen? More chaos, I think. Other countries including the United States are also sending their people to Cyprus, and the CBC reported last night that no plans were in place to accomodate the evacuees -- Cyprus is at the height of its own tourist season now, and there are no hotel rooms available.
We're going to be reading lots of stories like this one:

A pregnant Hamilton, Ont., woman waiting to be evacuated from Beirut expressed her "sheer disappointment in the Canadian government" Wednesday, after she arrived at the port only to be turned away.
Lara Tcholakian, who was on holiday in Lebanon with her husband and one-year-old son, said Canadian officials called her to say she'd be among the first group of Canadian evacuees to leave Beirut and to be at the port at 8 a.m. "When we arrived it was total chaos - thousands of Canadians just waiting inside the gate where the port is, and they were just baking in the sun," she said in a phone call with the Canadian Press from her sister-in-law's home in Beirut.
A Canadian official announced over a loudspeaker that the ship would begin to accept pregnant women, families with young children and the elderly. Tcholakian, six months pregnant with her infant son in tow, was told she was not on the list. Canadian officials told her to go back "in a very abrupt and very rude way."
After nearly six hours at the port, Tcholakian, 33, and her family returned to a relative's house. She said the security situation in downtown Beirut, where the port is located, is so precarious that she resented being told to drive there unnecessarily.
"If you're going to go, you want to make sure you're going to be evacuated instead of driving back and forth and being told to come back later," she said.

Chickenshit understatement of the year

In a blathering article about how Bush should do more dick-swinging at Iran and North Korea, the Washington Post reluctantly admits that perhaps -- just "perhaps", mind you -- the Iraq war is problematic:

It has not helped the neoconservative case, perhaps, that the occupation of Iraq has not gone as smoothly as some had predicted.

Ya think?

Live by the sword...

Cue another Steve temper-tantrum with the media.
This CP story leads with:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper . . . quipped that the enemy now carries news cameras, not guns . . . "These were sand, not cement," Harper said of the reconstructed sandbags [at Vimy Ridge]. "And the enemies carried guns, not (a) camera," he added, looking directly over the lip of the old trench at a small clutch of Canadian TV and still cameras.

Now, what Our Leader probably meant was just that the people looking into the trench 90 years ago were soldiers rather than Canadian news photographers. But the way it came out, of course, implied that the news photographers are now the enemy.
Predictably, he and his media people will throw a fit about how he is being so unfairly treated by the media.
But with the way he treats the media, this is the kind of coverage he is going to get from now on.
CP's Bruce Cheadle writes about how Harper handled himself during his first appearance on the world stage at the G8 -- and it wasn't pretty. The reporter describes Harper's "cold calculus", his "awkard" comments, and how he was "clinically dismissive" of questions about support for Israel:

Harper's seeming lack of nuance, empathy and people skills are making his week-long diplomatic foray . . . an excruciating exercise. Throughout the trip, Harper has distanced himself from reporters. Since leaving Ottawa last Wednesday, he has spoken to media travelling with him only three times, including a brief encounter on the plane.
It appears that his handlers consider every media encounter an element of their larger political "strategy," not as a way of keeping Canadians informed about the government's actions.
That may be one reason behind the perception in some quarters that Harper's government hadn't done enough to plan for the Lebanon evacuation. He simply declined to talk about it.

Luckily, Harper's clumsiness has been completely overshadowed at this summit by repeated Bush buffonery. Great how these things work out, isn't it.

Great lines of the day

From Wolcott, describing Bush's idiotic responses to the Israel-Lebanon war:

In the meantime, as civilians are being slaughtered on both sides, perhaps the president might make an effort not to see quite so blase, detached, and in-character. I understand his exercise regimen is sacred and not to be tampered with, but it looks a trifle cavalier to see him shooting by on his bicycle in St. Petersburg waving at the camera . . . between the news ootage of Beirut going up in flames . . . No doubt exercise helps clear his brain, but if it were any clearer, it'd be a patch of blue sky. He needs to unclear his brain, and let a little reality intrude, and wipe that barbecue grin off his face.

Emphasis mine.

I'm back!

"I''m here! I'm here! Let the bells ring out and the banners fly. Feast your eyes upon me. I know it's too good to be true, but I'm here! I'm here!"
I'm back and we had a great time. Thanks for all your good wishes - more tomorrow...

On holidays

We're off tomorrow morning to Nova Scota and PEI -- we've never been there before so we're looking forward to it.
Posting for the next two weeks will depend on whether I can find an internet cafe. I'll try to check in every day or two, and I plan to post photos when we are back.

Today's Nelson Moment

Ha ha!

On this weekend's Meet the Press, Bill Bennett ominously warned the panel of journalists that Americans were growing extremely angry over the disclosures of classified information by The New York Times and other newspapers. Riding this wave of massive public rage towards the NYT, a protest was organized for yesterday by Cliff Kinkaid of Accuracy in Media along with FreeRepublic.com. The protest was heavily promoted by Michelle Malkin (who announced that she would personally attend) and other pro-Bush bloggers, who urged all patriotic Americans to attend and make their anger at the NYT heard loudly and clearly
. . . 16 protestors actually showed up.

Ooohhh, feel the anger!

Great line of the day

NYT's Nicholas Kristof:

When I was covering the war in Iraq, we reporters would sometimes tune to Fox News and watch, mystified, as it purported to describe how Iraqis loved Americans. Such coverage (backed by delusional Journal editorials baffling to anyone who was actually in Iraq) misled conservatives about Iraq from the beginning. In retrospect, the real victims of Fox News weren't the liberals it attacked but the conservatives who believed it.

Emphasis mine.

I always knew it!

Today, some unsurprising news.
I am a descendent of royalty!
Of course, I share my royal ancestors with just about everyone else on the planet. But I'm not selfish, not a bit - noblesse oblige, you know, and all that. Royal is as royal does, as those of us born to the thone always say:

Even without a documented connection to a notable forebear, experts say the odds are virtually 100 percent that every person on Earth is descended from one royal personage or another. 'Millions of people have provable descents from medieval monarchs,' said Mark Humphrys, a genealogy enthusiast and professor of computer science at Dublin City University in Ireland. 'The number of people with unprovable descents must be massive.'

Makes you realize that democracy came along just in time. Why, without it, we'd be having wars of succession all over the place.

Forest fire situation

I think this is one of the worst fire years we have had in northern Saskatchewan -- here's the latest news:

At least 1,800 people have fled heavy smoke and encroaching flames from a growing number of out-of-control fires in northern Saskatchewan.
It's "a serious fire situation pretty much across the province at this time," Steve Roberts, executive director of Saskatchewan Environment's fire management branch, said Monday.
He said 14 of the 109 fires burning across the province are more than 100 square kilometres in size, and three of those are over 1,000 square kilometres in size . . . The 1,800 people have registered at the government checkpoint in La Ronge, Sask., about 330 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon. They've fled at least five communities north of La Ronge - Stanley Mission, Grandmother's Bay, Waddin Bay, Englishman's Bay and Sucker River - and abandoned campgrounds and cottages. . .

Here, for reference, is a summer view of Stanley Mission:


Here is Grandmother's Bay:


And here is Sucker River:


And here is a map showing all three communities, which are north of LaRonge:

If I can find some fire photos I will post them.

Today's pop quiz

Time Magazine's article on How to Fix Gitmo suggests five steps that Bush can take: work with Congress, release the small fry, process the habeas cases, live by the Geneva rules, and lift the veil of secrecy.
1.Can you list the things which the Bush administration will actually do to fix Gitmo?
2. And is Gitmo capable of being fixed anyway?

Krazy Konservatives

As we were watching Olbermann the other night, my husband said, Am I wrong or have more conservatives gone crazy lately?
I was reminded that a couple of months ago Digby wrote a post exactly about this -- that as the Bush poll numbers kept falling and as more and more Americans turned away from conservative political ideas, they would get shriller and wilder and more out-of-control -- ie, crazy.
So I'm thinking I'll start a bit of a series, just to help keep track of the nuttiness.
Here is today's contribution:
Culminating a week of yelling at the New York Times for treason, when the Wall Street Journal AND the LA Times also published the financial surveillance story, the wingnuts have now decided the Times should not have published a travel item about some island retreat where Cheney and Rumsfeld and hundreds of other wealthy people have summer homes, as summarized by Glenn Greenwald:

. . . America is currently at war and its enemies are domestic liberals and The New York Times. This war was started by Al Gore and Jimmy Carter when they opposed the invasion of Iraq. The New York Times is allied with Al Qaeda and their latest plot against America is to provide their terrorist friends with a roadmap to the vacation homes of Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld so that they can be assassinated. That is what is being reported today by three of the largest 'conservative' blogs on the Internet, along with Horowitz. . .

Rogue State

Reading Sy Hersch's new article about the coming war with Iran, one thought struck me -- how wrong we were to think that the risk of war decreased when the Soviet Union fell.
As it has turned out, the risk of a hot war actually increased -- because there was no one to hold the United States in check anymore, except for the civilized restraint of its political leader.
Then they go and elect cowardly, unprincipled leaders like Bush and Cheney. So all bets are off.
If Russia was still a world power, there is no way, today, that the United States would be planning a war with Iran -- the old Russia would just have announced that it would not tolerate any such attack, and that would be it. No attack.
Today, don't expect such rational and reasonable behaviour -- Bush and Cheney are mad, and Rumsfeld too.
In a paragraph dripping with incredulity, Hersh reports they think of themselves as great historical figures:

The President and others in the Administration often invoke Winston Churchill, both privately and in public, as an example of a politician who, in his own time, was punished in the polls but was rewarded by history for rejecting appeasement. In one speech, Bush said, Churchill “seemed like a Texan to me. He wasn’t afraid of public-opinion polls. . . . He charged ahead, and the world is better for it.”

Gad, they take themselves soooo seriously, don't they.
I am a great admirer of Churchill who, in my opinion, singlehandedly saved the western world from the Third Reich. He was a courageous man, but he was often wrong on his political judgments, from Gandhi and Indian home rule to Edward VIII, primarily because he saw the world in black and white. (Besides, it wasn't Churchill who declared war on Germany, it was that appeaser, Chamberlain.)
Actually, the more we read of American atrocities in Iraq, the more the WWII analogy is starting to fit better the other way round, isn't it, as the occupation of Iraq starts to resemble the German occupation of France.
Arthur Silber writes the plain truth about the upcoming war:

Any military attack by the United States on Iran within the foreseeable future -- even an attack using only conventional weapons -- would be profoundly immoral, and eternally unforgivable.
Remember the critical facts: all experts agree that Iran is approximately five to ten years away from having a nuclear weapon. Moreover, Iran is fully entitled to take the actions it does at present, including the enrichment of uranium . . . under the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to which it is a signatory . . . The position of the United States is an entirely unprincipled one, and one which devolves into incoherence. These central facts lead to only one conclusion: an attack on Iran would represent a blatant, naked act of aggression against a country that does not threaten us. It would not be an act of self-defense, if that term has any meaning at all: there is nothing at present or in the immediate future to defend ourselves against.

And thus, too, the recent attacks on the New York Times and on the Democratic party as "traitors" starts to make more sense now, too -- so that their likely opposition to war with Iran can be brushed aside as just more cowardly treason.

Oh, Canada

Canadians celebrate and here are some photos.

The Snowbirds fly past Parliament Hill:


Special ceremonies were held for the first time at the National War Memorial, to mark the Battle of Beaumont-Hamel , at the beginning of the Battle of the Somme -- 700 men in the 1st Newfoundland Regiment were killed or wounded in the first minutes of the offensive as it began on July 1, 1916:


Governor General Michaelle Jean:


Canadian farmers protest the usual government inaction:

And here is why Michaelle Jean is a great Governor General. Instead of trying to ignore the tractor protest, she welcomed the protestors to Parliament Hill and paid tribute to them in her speech:

As protesters lined tractors and farm machinery along the street in front of the Hill, Governor General Michaelle Jean took note of Canada's prosperity, including in her remarks a thank-you to the people who toil to provide the country with a safe and plentiful food supply. "Ours is a country of great wealth from its plains, forests and mountains that nourish us to the crystal clear waters of our abundant lakes and rivers," she said. "And I was reminded of our bountifulness just yesterday when I received a basket of wonderful fresh farm produce from the farmers of Canada, for which I am very grateful."

A gracious and unifying thing to say.

Great lines of the day

d r i f t g l a s s has a message for American conservatives. Canadian conservatives should also take a gander:

Remember?
Remember when it was all gonna be so cool once the Liberals were out of the way and you could liquidate the hated Federal Government. When the Government is the source of all evil in the Universe? When you could hang every problem in the world on welfare queens?
Remember the glory days of "We won. You lost. Now shut up."?
. . . You wanted this, and now it's yours. All yours.
History is watching you. The future is watching you. The massed billions yet unborn are watching you, and they see a pathetic huddle children who are throwing the world's most expensive tantrum because they don’t want to fix what they destroyed.
They see a no-neck ocean of cowards and fools and bigots, led by liars and crooks. They see you taking your hour in the sun -- the one you traded your ideals, your conscience and your soul to acquire – and pissing it away. Deliberately picking fights over trivia in the hopes that no one notices that you have destroyed a great nation,
They see you failing, in more ways and with worse consequences than any generation in American history. And doing it while giggling and jerking off to Ann Coulter.
Your children and grandchildren see all that you have done and all that you have failed to do and they are ashamed of you, so govern, you weak, stupid, frightened little men. You ARE the government, so quit bellowing and blaming everyone from Michael Moore to Cindy Sheehan for your sins.
Actually step up like men and govern and we’ll spend the next 20 years debating anything else you’d like. Flags and queers and all the rest of the fiddling nonsense.
Govern, or admit that you are uniquely incompetent to actually lead a great nation.
Govern…or shut the fuck up.

I couldn't really pick a single line to highlight. It's all worth reading.