Great line of the day

Matt Yglesias writes about escalating disasters in the Land of Bad Things:

I wasn't super-optimistic that the 2006 midterms were going to cause us to adopt a sound Iraq policy, but I did think it would result in a less unsound one. Instead, we got the "surge" -- our policy actually got worse. I never believed that the infamous September reports were going to make policy more rational, but now it seems to me that they're getting worse . . .
I find it hard to find words to describe what a disaster it may be if the US ends up engineering the return to power of a grossly unpopular ex-Baathist ex-Prime Minister. It's as if people are trying their hardest to come up with policies designed to end with Muqtada al-Sadr marching at the head of a crowd shouting "Death to America" into the rapidly abandoned Green Zone sometime in 2010.

Emphasis mine.

Believe your lying eyes?

So what are you going to believe -- Stockwell Day or your lying eyes?
The video is as plain as plain can be -- the undercover police were pretending to be anarchists and were carrying rocks to the front of the protest line. The middle-aged unionists and the mothers and the teenagers and the grandmothers were not carrying rocks. The police-anarchists refused to drop their rocks and move away in spite of Dave Coles yelling repeatedly at them, "This is our line!"
But now a Quebec police inspector says this:

"One of the extremists gave the rock to one of our police officers and he had a choice to make," Savard said.
"He was asked by extremists to throw the rock at the police, but never had any intention of using it."

No, he was refusing to DROP it, not to throw it. And its pretty obvious to just about everybody. Take a look at some of the 170 comments following this CBC news story:

Why the rocks? Why the face masks? Why the fake arrest? Why the initial denial?

The official statements are some of the most clownish spin I've seen anywhere.

To the police. We, the public, for the most part accept that you must use deception in your fight against criminals. But this was deception against the very people you are supposedly sworn to protect, in this case, members of the public exercising their rights of free speech and public protest. I've joined a protest rally only once in my life, but your behaviour here is going to get me, and I guess a whole lot of grey-hairs like me, rethinking my complacency.

I'm afraid it's pretty clear what the officers intentions were. They were not there to keep the peace.

The video makes it EXTREMELY obvious that the union leaders were the ones to try to keep the peace in their ranks, and the three undercover agents were the ones trying to have the protest break out in violence.

This makes me wonder how much of the supposed "violence" attributes to protesters was incited by the police and right wing politicians.

Now our very own fool, Stockwell Day, has rushed in where angels fear to tread:

"The thing that was interesting in this particular incident, three people in question were spotted by protesters because were not engaging in violence," Day said.
"They were being encouraged to throw rocks and they were not throwing rocks, it was the protesters who were throwing the rocks. That's the irony of this," Day said.
Day added the actions were substantiated by the video that he has seen of the protests.
"Because they were not engaging in violence, it was noted that they were probably not protesters. I think that's a bit of an indictment against the violent protesters," Day said.

As Dawg asks, Is he out of his mind? This isn't what happened at all -- what video Day was watching anyway? Maybe he had another Niagara Falls moment and started thinking that the man in the suit was the undercover cop while the guys in the masks were the protesters.
I agree with Big City Lib:

. . . as a partisan Liberal I can only praise Allah that Public Security Minister Stockwell Day was kind enough to repeat this nonsense, thus dragging that Federal Conservatives right into the heart of the cover-up.

Oh, wait -- maybe THIS was the video that Day watched:

The macaca moment

One of the problems with the anti-globalization protest movement, from the WTO protests years ago in Seattle through to the Montebello protests this week, is the uniformly dismissive tone of the media coverage (some examples in my previous post.
The basic attitude taken by the press (by editors and publishers, of course, as well as by political reporters) has been that the protesters were frivolous and paranoid, the protests were violent and costly, and the police had every right to keep these nutcases far away from Our Very Serious Leaders Who Are Only Trying To Do What's Best For Us All.
The QPP agent provocateur story is a chink in the wall to change that attitude.
Protesters have been saying for years that authorities are trying to discredit protests by infiltration and underhanded tactics -- a hard case to make when the complaints are dismissed as paranoid nuts. But just as video exposed George Allan's "macaca" racism, video has now exposed the inept police "provocateurs" -- who quite obviously intended to provoke violence until the crowd stopped them. As Chet notes, the masks, anarchist outfits, and rocks were not just a fashion statement.

Who was that masked man?

August 22:

. . . Quebec's provincial force has flatly denied that its officers were involved in the incident.

August 23:

Quebec provincial police admitted Thursday that three of their officers disguised themselves as demonstrators during the protest at the North American leaders summit in Montebello, Que.

Now, what does this all remind me of? Oh, yes, Teh Shorter!

Shorter Quebec Provincial Police: Hey, were these the guys you were asking about?

Oh, we thought you meant these guys:

Never mind!

Well, golly

Hmmm...

President Bush summoned up the Alden Pyle CIA agent character of Graham Greene's classic Vietnam novel "The Quiet American" which is essentially a contemplation on the road to hell being paved with good intentions. . . . By reminding people of Greene's book, Bush was inviting listeners to recall the mistakes his administration made in entering and prosecuting the Iraq War. Did he really want to do that?

Well, golly! Maybe Bush actually meant to say Gomer Pyle?



Or even Goober Pyle?

Great line of the day

In Vietnam. Watergate. What's Next -- Disco?, Marty Kaplan says:

There's no longer any doubt about the master narrative of the Bush Administration. Their purpose is to re-litigate the 1970s. Nixon's downfall, let alone all that followed, clearly has stuck in Cheney's craw . . .
So what's next? . . . I'm putting my money on an attempt by GOP culure warriors to expunge disco from the national memory. Don't you have a feeling that this crowd is still in a world o' hurt from humiliations they suffered beneath a twirling mirrored ball yea many generations ago?

So when the 70s-era GOP asked "Do you think I'm sexy?", the answer they got was "No".

"in the best interests of police"

Ross at The Gazetteer has a lot of new information today about the police attempt to incite violence at the Montebello protests.
More here also at Canadian Cynic and Rusty Idols and an update from CBC on today's press conference.
There is, of course, no proof yet of anything untoward, and may never be, but a retired police officer contributes this to the discussion:

... a retired Ottawa police officer who was formerly in charge of overseeing demonstrations for the force said he questions who the masked men really are, after viewing the video.
"Were they legitimate protesters? I don’t think so," said Doug Kirkland.
"Well, if they weren't police, I think they might well have been working in the best interests of police."
He added that if the situation was as it appeared, he did not approve of the tactic. "It's pretty close to baiting," he said.

I'm not sure I understood this comment, but I thought it was an interesting perspective that it would be "in the best interests of police" to instigate a violent riot.
Donald Segretti would be so proud!

"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.