Simple answers to simple questions

Back in April, regarding the oft-noted "we didn't have time to read it" excuse for another US Patriot Act outrage, I asked whether everyone in Congress has read the Patriot Act NOW?
Apparently not.

Well, aren't we glad that THAT's over!

Thanks to Dave at The Galloping Beaver, we know now that we can just forget about global warming.
See, there was some temperature data which measured the "hottest year on record" in the United States and it turns out the data was wrong -- by 0.1 degrees -- so as a result 1998 is NOT the hottest year on record, it was 1934, so now all the wingnuts are declaring that global warming is nothing to worry about anymore.
Well, that's a relief, isn't it?
We know we can always take the word of Mark Steyn over any actual scientist.
Of course, Dave is still concerned -- what a worrywart...

More photos I liked

Too busy to blog much, but here are more photos I liked:


Two-day-old baby giraffe Inge nuzzles her mother Elli, in Tierpark Berlin zoo August 3, 2007.


The cutline for this AFP photo just says "Tingo and Magda"





These are both from the Cute Overload website, Pups section, and I couldn't resist sharing them.
Somebody might suspect that we are wanting a new puppy, and somebody would be right ...

Let the finger pointing begin!

This story -- New RCMP boss helped censor Arar report -- is infuriating. I though Elliot was supposed to clean up the RCMP, not go along to get along.
I hope Commissioner Elliot realizes, very soon, that he is no longer a civil servant sworn to protect his Minister at all costs. Now, as RCMP Commissioner, he is sworn to protect the public "without fear, favour or affection of or toward any person".
Usually, these are not competing interests. But occasionally they are.
That his first announcement was an admission of censoring the Arar report was not an auspicious beginning:

“Given what we now know about what they are trying to suppress, it's obviously a concern that the person who is now accountable for the RCMP took such a limited view of the public's right to know about the errors and mistakes committed by the force,” said Lorne Waldman, a lawyer acting for Mr. Arar.
...“The fact that the new RCMP commissioner appears to have been involved in this process is going to pose a challenge to him as he tries to demonstrate that he's turning a new page at the RCMP,” said NDP Leader Jack Layton.
Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion said in an interview that “the key point for me today is not Mr. Elliott, it is which ministers decided on this unacceptable level of transparency for the Canadian people.”

The finger pointing between the civil servants and the politicians about who actually made and approved the deletions has already begun. First, Elliot said

“I was certainly involved in the process leading to that decision, but that decision was a decision taken by government"

Then a spokesperson from Stockwell Day's office said:

“senior officials from various departments” decided to block out the passages before the government signed off on the recommendations."

So basically, we've got an "I didn't do it" game going on here.
But wait, there's more!
To explain why the deletions were made -- apparently its because we don't want the CIA and the FBI mad at us -- some supercilious fop "official" formulates one of the dumbest analogies I've ever heard:

Foreign intelligence is not viewed as fundamentally different from any other borrowed good or service. For that reason, Canada is wary of passing along secrets it gets from other sources, or even pointing to those sources.
“If you borrow your neighbour's pickup truck to haul a load to the dump, you don't give the keys to the kids to go for a Slurpee at the 7-Eleven,” said one official who declined to be identified. “Intellectually, it's not a difficult concept to grasp.”

No wonder the inventor of this allegory "declined to be identified" -- did he think Maher Arar's freedom, citizenship, dignity and future were the "load taken to the dump" or the "Slurpee"?

Great line of the day

On the 2008 Democratic Presidential candidates, Jill from Brilliant at Breakfast writes:

. . . the Gore vigil points out the weakness in the Democratic field. Progressive Democrats in particular are terrified. We're terrified because we are faced with a party that seems to want to lose. . . bipartisanship now means "Do it the Republican way", as we saw with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid's disgraceful performance in dealing with the FISA legislation last weekend.
John Edwards, despite his aw-shucks demeanor and his preposterously youthful appearance, really is the one guy who's shown the stones to take them on. Hillary gives lip service to it, but someone who's hobnobbed with Rupert Murdoch can't be trusted to not buy into "Do it the Republican way." Obama, having been mentored by Joe Lieberman, talks about "changing the tone", but doesn't seem to realize that the tone CAN'T be changed. Chris Dodd has found his voice a decade too late. Only John Edwards is out there telling the Republicans to go fuck themselves -- and that is why there is this concerted effort to destroy his candidacy. Even Schaller has bought into the meme of the inevitability of an Edwards collapse.
It's very disheartening to watch the process play out this way and watch the Democrats getting ready to fall into the trap once again. Does anyone honestly believe that President Hillary Clinton will get us out of Iraq, keep us out of Iran, put Israel's feet to the fire on human rights, stop the relentless march of American jobs to Bangalore and elsewhere, AND institute not just universal health INSURANCE, but national heath CARE? If so, they're as deluded as those who think that Mitt Romney's sons are doing their part for the war effort.

Emphasis mine.

Who says there's no good news in Iraq?

Sounds like some businesses are booming.

"..where they can have their way with him"

Reading the just-revealed sections of the Arar report demonstrates the James Bond Syndrome in action -- the perverse idea that it is just so very sophisticated to take a casual, dismissive attitude toward torturing people, that its all just part of today's international espionage game, that there's nothing actually immoral or illegal about tormenting an Enemy of the State, that the stories they blurt out between screams is the truth and nothing but the truth, and that if Canada wants to play with the big boys then we have to play by their rules.
Read this section from Page 245 (formerly redacted section shown in bold) for a demonstration of this attitude:

In October 2002, CSIS officials knew that the United States might have sent Mr. Arar to a country where he could be questioned in a “firm manner.” In a report to his superiors dated October 11, 2002, the CSIS security liaison officer (SLO) in Washington spoke of a trend they had noted lately that when the CIA or FBI cannot legally hold a terrorist subject, or wish a target questioned in a firm manner, they have them rendered to countries willing to fulfill that role. He said Mr. Arar was a case in point.
On October 10, 2002, Mr. Hooper stated in a memorandum: “I think the U.S. would like to get Arar to Jordan where they can have their way with him.” Mr. Arar’s whereabouts were unknown at the time.

The terminology here makes me sick - "questioned in a firm manner", "where they can have their way with him" They're talking about torture, but they don't appear to care. Neither, apparently, did the CIA.

Here we go again

U.S. pounces on export surge

. . . U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab this week accused Canada of shipping too much lumber to the United States, and hence violating a bilateral agreement aimed at ending the long-running dispute.
Ms. Schwab launched arbitration hearings, which Canadian officials insist they are confident of winning.

Yeah, well, since when has being wrong ever mattered to the elephant next door?

Learning from the Bush administration

Wondering why you missed the news?

Three weeks ago, late on a Friday night, the military released a report into the friendly-fire incident in which one Canadian soldier was killed and 30 others wounded after an American A-10A attack plane accidentally strafed members of the Royal Canadian Regiment at Ma'sum Ghar.

Shatner-watch

Last week, Canada's own William Shatner was in Chicago, of all places.
Nope, not at Yearly Kos. He was at Transvision 2007, which Roy informs us, will help us live forever provided we like doing it in silicone.
Personally, I have wanted to try some of the new silicone cookwear, which is "colorful, nonstick, stain-resistant, hard-wearing, cools quickly, and tolerates extremes of temperature" -- though perhaps it is a somewhat different kind of silicone that the Transvision people are proposing freezer-wrap my personality.
Anyway, back to William Shatner, who is, after all, Canada's own. A reporter for New City Chicago describes Shatner's appearance:

...as the minute hand moves a good half hour beyond Captain Kirk’s scheduled time of arrival, it’s clear that an excited anticipation has swept over the growing crowd. And while the audience only swells to fill half the small Field Museum auditorium, it’s still noticeably larger than for any of the day’s previous presentations. Finally, a speaker approaches the stage to introduce the man of the hour, and after a short, bizarre video featuring a "Star Trek"/James Bond mash-up to transhumanist lyrics like "We can live forever and make everything better!" Shatner takes the stage.
It doesn’t take long for his cool demeanor and slight self-deprecation to get the audience laughing, and it provides a welcome shot of levity into an otherwise far-too-serious afternoon. Whereas speakers like Philippe Van Nedervelde warned of futuristic Unabombers who would blow the planet to pieces with nanotech nukes—and then went on to propose the use of microscopic cameras to perpetually monitor the population and preemptively exterminate "dangerous" individuals—Shatner keeps it lighthearted (and a lot less horrifying). "Why should any of you care about a science-fiction series?" he asks the crowd before coming up with his own response: "This whole vision of the World Transhumanist Association…very Trek-like."

When you think about it, how many other keynote speakers could have come up with that connection?
And if reading this post made you regret missing the whole speech, maybe you need to take The Standardized Should I Stalk William Shatner Test.

Getting Iraq right was simple

I have to say, I am getting very impatient with the wailing and gnashing of teeth over how very, very hard it was, in the fall and winter of 2002-03, to make the right decision on Iraq and to realize that the US invasion of Iraq was a bad decision.
It was, I think, an easy decision -- for three reasons:
First, though Iraq's leader was a murderous meglomaniac, his regional ambitions were completely contained by economic sanctions and the no-fly zones. Hussein even agreed to let the UN weapons inspectors back. They couldn't find anything much.
Second, Iraq had not attacked the United States or Britain or Israel. No nation has any right to launch a preemptive war, not without compelling evidence of immediate threat. And that's what the United Nations was set up to evaluate -- thus we reach the third point. In spite of the worldwide sympathy and support given to the United States after 9/11 and in spite of all the diplomatic pressure exerted around the world by the US and Britain, not even a significant minority of the UN Security Council were willing to support war on Iraq. If you can't get the UN to support you, that's a pretty big clue that something is wrong.
Therefore, ipso facto and quid pro quo, the war was a bad idea.
Michael Ignatieff wrote an article in the New York Times exploring why he was wrong about Iraq, and both Brad DeLong and Matthew Yglesias have critiqued it.
Ignatieff first looks at why he made the mistake of wanting to invade Iraq. Turns out, it was all Harvard's fault:

In academic life, false ideas are merely false and useless ones can be fun to play with. In political life, false ideas can ruin the lives of millions and useless ones can waste precious resources. An intellectual’s responsibility for his ideas is to follow their consequences wherever they may lead. A politician’s responsibility is to master those consequences and prevent them from doing harm.

But Yglesias notes that many actual academics opposed the war. It was the neocon "scholars" of the AEI and the Weekly Standard who pushed it:

The war's foci of intellectual support were in the institutions of the conservative movement, and in the DC think tanks and the punditocracy where the war had a lot of non-conservative support. People with relevant academic expertise -- notably people who weren't really on the left politically -- were massively opposed to the war. To imply the reverse is to substantially obscure one of the main lessons of the war, namely that we should pay more attention to what regional experts think and give substantially less credence to the idea that think tankers are really "independent" of political machinations.

Delong takes issue with Ignatieff's definition of "academic" thinking:

I think what Michael Ignatieff is talking about is not an academic mode of thought but a student mode of thought--a not-too-bright-student mode of thought. A not-too-bright student achieves success by (a) figuring out which book on the syllabus is favored by the instructor, (b) taking that book to be the gospel, and (c) regurgitating large chunks of that book on the exams and in the papers.

Getting back to Ignatieff's article, he also asks why Bush made the mistake of wanting to invade Iraq. Turns out it was all the fault of his own ego:

I should have known that emotions in politics, as in life, tend to be self-justifying and in matters of ultimate political judgment, nothing, not even your own feelings, should be held immune from the burden of justification through cross-examination and argument.
Good judgment in politics, it turns out, depends on being a critical judge of yourself. It was not merely that the president did not take the care to understand Iraq. He also did not take the care to understand himself. The sense of reality that might have saved him from catastrophe would have taken the form of some warning bell sounding inside, alerting him that he did not know what he was doing. But then, it is doubtful that warning bells had ever sounded in him before. He had led a charmed life, and in charmed lives warning bells do not sound.
People with good judgment listen to warning bells within.

But the "warning bell" rang for me, and for the world, when the United Nations wouldn't support it. The United States and Britain should have listened. Chretien got it right:

The White House said Friday it wants Saddam Hussein ousted even if Baghdad disarms, a stand that immediately provoked a sharp response from Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, who said the United States can't just wander the world changing regimes it doesn't like.
Mr. Chrétien, on an official visit to Mexico, reacted with dismay when told of the White House's unflinching insistence on regime change. The demand was stressed by White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, who said the administration's goal is "disarmament and regime change."
"Myself, I think that the consequences can be very grave when we go for a change in regime," the Prime Minister said in French. "... When are we going to go elsewhere? Who's going to be next? ... This is a very dangerous concept."

Yes, and it still is.

Signs

Here's some more signs of "progress" from Iraq -- At U.S. base, Iraqis must use separate latrine.
Seems to me the United States and Canada have both tried something like this before.
And people died to get it stopped:



And we're not finished yet. This was in Toronto, in 2004:

Great line of the day

At The Poorman, Sifu Tweety interrupts his beach holiday to write about the new nuclear conventional wisdom in I’m not lazy, I’m shocked into silence

Twenty years ago, everybody in this country (give or take a baker’s million blazing nutjobs) understood that the use of nuclear weapons was a cataclysmic, final act of madness, a step towards global suicide to be avoided at (almost) any cost. Now, absent an enemy with any real ability to do us harm, the idea that nuclear weapons should be available to use on caves full of crazy idiots armed with weapons that were the height of military sophistication approximately seventy years ago, this idea is the conventional wisdom? Of the Democratic Party? The party that ostensibly wants to end the war in Iraq? Where have you gone, Robert McNamara / A nation turns its loony eyes to you, doot doot doo.
What the fuck, seriously. What. The. Fucking. Fuck. I want off this ball, blundering downhill. I want to go home, to the nation I imagined I lived in. I want to stop caring about politics, about blogs, about far-off presidential primaries: I want everything right-side out and forwards again, you blinkered, blithering, warmongering establishment bastards. It’s enough to drive a lad to the barricades, it is. Just let me finish this Badminton game.

Emphasis mine.

Compare and contrast

In Florida, gay legislators get arrested for soliciting blow jobs in public washrooms and then play the race card in a desperate and despicable attempt to save their career.
In Canada, gay legislators get married.

Great post of the day

Don't miss this amazing post by Ian Welsh My Friend Peter:

Peter was the kindest man I ever met. I moved into his old house one winter in the early nineties. Rent was $235/month, there was a shared kitchen and showers and 7 tenants. On the ground floor lived the landlord - Peter, and his Japanese wife.
I lived there three years. They were thin, cold years for me . . . Peter let me work a lot of my rent off with jobs around the house. I painted this or that, under careful supervision I did plumbing work; I shoveled snow; and I laid bricks. Peter taught me how to learn . . .
Peter was old. He had been born in Germany. And he had fought for Hitler.

Read the whole story.