"This is our line"

Here is the YouTube video of the Montebello protest where Paperworkers union president Dave Coles outed three 'agents provocateurs' who may have been trying to start more riots:

. . . Coles makes it clear the masked men are not welcome among his group of protesters, whom he describes as mainly grandparents. He urges them to leave and find their own protest location.
Coles also demands that they put down their rocks. Other protesters begin to chime in that the three are really police agents. Several try to snatch the bandanas from their faces.
Rather than leave, the three actually start edging closer to the police line, where they appear to engage in discussions. They eventually push their way past an officer, whereupon other police shove them to the ground and handcuff them.
Late Tuesday, photographs taken by another protester surfaced, showing the trio lying prone on the ground. The photos show the soles of their boots adorned by yellow triangles. A police officer kneeling beside the men has an identical yellow triangle on the sole of his boot.
Kevin Skerrett, a protester with the group Nowar-Paix, said the photos and video together present powerful evidence that the men were actually undercover police officers.
"I think the circumstantial evidence is very powerful," he said.
The three do not appear to have been arrested or charged with any offence.

I looked through various websites to find these photos, but I couldn't find them.
The tone adopted by the media toward the protest coverage was, as usual, dismissive, describing protesters as "die-hards" and with headlines like Protests fizzle on Day 2 of summit. There was also supposed to be a "protest-cam" set up so that video of the protests could be broadcast to the hotel lobby (not that Harper or Bush would have looked at them) but this got derailed when the camera team was assaulted by protesters -- or were they actually protesters?

Home sweet home

When I googled "worst", this is one of the things that came up -- The Worst City Names in the World

1. Cockburn, Western Australia
2. Twatt, Scotland
3. Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu, New Zealand
4. Muff, Ireland
5. Looneyville, Texas
6. Titty Hill, Sussex, England
7. Thong, Kent, England
8. Gravesend, Kent, England
9. Wetwang, Yorkshire.
10. Spread Eagle, Wisconsin
11. Bald Knob, Arkansas, United States
12. Cockup, Cumbria, England
13. Whiskey Dick Mountain, Washington State
14. Hookersville, West Virginia
15. Hell, Michigan
16. Toad Suck, Arkansas
17. Middelfart, Denmark
18. Horneytown, North Carolina
19. Shitterton, Dorset, England
20. Disappointment, Kentucky
21. Fuking, Austria

They missed Moose Jaw!
This list apparently originated on a travel website which I couldn't open. So I don't know who put it together, but a number of blogs have it now.

Great photo of the day

from greenpagan: He Got Out While the Getting Was Good

Whoa, camel!

Demonstrating an inappropriate levity, I immediately thought of this cartoon and this line in it when I read
this news story.

Traffic circles

It's both ends against the middle.
Alison writes about how American wingnuts like John Birchers and Swift Boaters and Minutemen are attacking the Security and Prosperity Partnership -- and as a result, American progressives are taking the equal and opposite reaction by minimizing it.
Chet Scoville (formerly The Green Knight) summarizes the whole SPP history and controversy here.
The problem, of course, is that while Canadian progressives are worried about our social programs, our economy, our treaties, our independence -- in fact, our whole damn country -- the American wingnuts aren't thinking much about us at all.
It's the Mexican part of SPP that scares them -- just another manifestation of their hysterical "illegal brown people are flooding into our country and taking all our jobs" schtick.
Canada isn't really on their horizon at all -- we are just a bunch of weak-kneed lefties who let the 911 terrorists in. The American wingnut attitude toward Canada is summed up by this quote, reportedly from Tucker Carlson:

[Canada]"is like your retarded cousin you see at Thanksgiving … he’s nice but you don’t take him seriously."

Fear of Mexicans is a dominant theme of the 2006 announcement about the Coalition to Block the North American Union:

. . . [the partnership] would erase U.S. borders, replace the dollar with the "amero," and lead to unlimited immigration . . . the "Trans-Texas Corridor" is designed to function as a NAFTA super-highway, opening Mexican ports with Red Chinese goods from Mexican trucks and trains to move north into the center of the United States. . .

No wonder American progressives are reluctant to make any common cause with these guys.
The Americans on both sides of this divide also have a strange obsession with the "NAFTA superhighway" aspect, as if the only way that a "partnership" could be achieved between the United States, Mexico and Canada is with an actual road.
Even the progressive commenters to Chet's post demonstrate this misconception. The wingnuts envisage convoys of rattletrap Mexican semi-trailers roaring northward full of shoddy Chinese toys, while the progressives ridicule SPP as a flap about road construction.
But one American commenter on Alison's site is still very reassuring, even on that point. Orc, who blogs at This Space for Rent -- about trains and bees and other interesting stuff -- reminds us of a crucial fact:

. . . don't forget that the SPP is ... being planned by a collection of conservative governments here; modern conservatives don't build, they pillage and destroy, and I have the highest confidence that the new highways will dissolve in a whirlpool of embezzled funds.

Demoted in plain sight

Hmmm -- I suspected Harper was trying to hide something in plain sight.
When I saw last night that Canada's Gnu Government(c) had produced a 45-page press release about the cabinet shuffle, I wondered if there was something buried in those pages. This time, Harper's press release included a list of cabinet committee memberships, which his February 2006 cabinet announcement had ignored.
Well, surprise surprise -- turns out there WAS something more.
Finance minister Jim Flaherty has been bumped from the leadership of the treasury board and economic growth committees. Is this a significant demotion for Flaherty? Yes, I think so. While the Budget sets overall directions once a year, it is at Treasury Board (now vice-chaired by Rona Ambrose) where the day-to-day decisions are made about whether ministers will have the money they want for their departments, and it is Economic Growth (now chaired by David Emerson) which sets key economic development policies.

Great line of the day

There's a new interview in Der Spiegel with the US ambassador to Iraq who expresses how disgusted he is with the idea that the American military should leave Iraq. Digby ripostes:

The moral failure was in invading Iraq. It was the original sin from which all these horrors have sprung. To even imply that the majority of Americans who now want to rectify that terrible decision by removing ourselves from the situation will be morally responsible for this mess is an outrage.
I love these lectures and feelings of "disgust" coming from people who apparently still maintain that it was perfectly fine to ignore international law and invade a country for no good reason and turn it into a chaotic hellhole. No moral culpability required for that, no admission of guilt, but lots and lots of sanctimonious posturing about how we will have blood on our hands if the US admits its mistake and withdraws. The obtuseness of that position takes my breath away. We already have so much blood on our hands that it's dripping into everything we touch.

Emphasis mine.

Blame game

Obama sez:

Not all the nation's ills can be blamed on President Bush, Democratic candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday . . .

Well, yes. I suppose we can also blame the millions who voted for him.
Actually, of course, Obama has a point -- Americans have to get beyond the politics of personality and start evaluating presidential candidates based on what they want to do and how likely they are to be able to do it.
Which is particularly difficult with a press that love to report on personality because its so much easier than actually reading policy statements and doing some research -- yes, actual research! -- to determine how realistic the policy statements actually are.
Your typical national media reporter seems to take the Calvin-and-Hobbes approach to research:

Calvin: I've got to write a report for school. Bats. Can you imagine anything more stupid? Heck, I don't know anything about bats! How am I supposed to write a report on a subject I know nothing about?! It's impossible!
Hobbes: I suppose research is out of the question.
Calvin: Oh, like I'm going to learn about bats and then write a report?! Give me a break!

---

Calvin: Hello, Susie? This is Calvin. You know this report we're supposed to write for school? Yeah. My topic is bats. What's yours? Elephants? Hmm. Well, are you going to the library to look up elephants? You are? Great! While you're there, could you research bats too and make copies of all the information you find, and maybe underline the important parts for me and sort of outline it, so I wouldn't have to read it all?
Hobbes: How'd it go?
Calvin: I really loathe girls.

---

Calvin: I think we've got enough information now, don't you?
Hobbes: All we have is one "fact" you made up.
Calvin: That's plenty. By the time we add an introduction, a few illustrations, and a conclusion, it will look like a graduate thesis. Besides, I've got a secret weapon that will guarantee a good grade! No teacher can resist this! A clear plastic binder! Pretty professional looking, eh?
Hobbes: I don't want co-author credit on this, OK?

Personally, I favour Barak Obama and John Edwards in the US presidential race.
Hillary would likely be able to do the job OK, too, I guess, but my problem with her is that she hasn't yet been able to tell anybody why she wants to be president. Obama wants to change politics in America and Edwards wants to change the American economy -- either one would be a worthwhile achievement.

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.