Just ask Nixon

It isn't the misdeeds that get you in real trouble, it's the lies and the cover-up. Rick Hillier and Stephen Harper better bear this in mind and get on the right side of this avalanche of shit and they better do it now. This crapola isn't going to cut it.

Mr. Hillier told MPs that Mr. Colvin's early reports - which the diplomat has said concerned the treatment and monitoring of detainees - "said nothing about abuse, nothing about torture, or anything else that would have caught my attention or the attention of others."

It doesn't matter what kind of excuses they want to make or how they or their defenders want to spin this. The Canadian Forces took prisoners and turned them over to people they knew were torturing prisoners. The brass were told about it and they did nothing for far too long. And now they are trying to claim that they didn't know and that report that were made weren't made. I would direct your attention especially to page five of this document.

Wake up call on climate policy or Obama-crush?

Would it be wrong to speculate that this:

Harper to attend Copenhagen after all
Decision follows announcement that U.S. President Obama would visit city that's playing host to climate summit
John Ibbitson
Ottawa — From Friday's Globe and Mail Published on Thursday, Nov. 26, 2009 8:27PM EST Last updated on Thursday, Nov. 26, 2009 9:57PM EST
With the Chinese and the Americans leaving him no choice, Stephen Harper reversed himself Thursday and announced he would, after all, attend next month's meetings on climate change in Copenhagen.
Reporters frantically phoned and texted the news from the Prime Minister's aircraft as it taxied for takeoff en route to a Commonwealth heads-of-government meeting in Trinidad, reflecting the reluctant, impromptu nature of the decision.

has something to do with this?

Scientists target Canada over climate change
Damian Carrington
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 November 2009 22.54 GMT
Prominent campaigners, politicians and scientists have called for Canada to be suspended from the Commonwealth over its climate change policies.
The coalition's demand came before this weekend's Commonwealth heads of government summit in Trinidad and Tobago, at which global warming will top the agenda, and next month's UN climate conference in Copenhagen. Despite criticism of Canada's environmental policies, the prime minister, Stephen Harper, is to attend the Copenhagen summit. His spokesman said today: "We will be attending the Copenhagen meeting … a critical mass of world leaders will be attending."
Canada's per capita greenhouse gas emissions are among the world's highest and it will not meet the cut required under the Kyoto protocol: by 2007 its emissions were 34% above its reduction target. It is exploiting its vast tar sands reserves to produce oil, a process said to cause at least three times the emissions of conventional oil extraction.

Bad day in Buffalo

In which a blogger and activist is detained and harrassed by fatherland security thugs at the Canada-U.S. border. IANAL, but I don't think a passport-packin' U.S. citizen can be denied entry to the United States. If they are suspected of a crime within the United States or are wanted for crimes elsewhere, they can obviously be held in custody pending trial or extradition, but I don't think the authorities can keep citizen out of their own country just because they don't like them. Nothing is more dangerous or more odious than a bully with a badge.

UPDATE: It appears we have antidemocratic bullies working both sides of the border. Unless they had some reason to suspect Amy Goodman was going to advocate machine-gunning the medal winners or something, her opinions on the Olympics are really none of the Canadian Border Services Agency's damn business.

Friday Uke Blogging

Brought to you by Mood Rings, available at your local gas station counter.

just because

Crisis,What Crisis

Sorry, not much logic in this song. Remember when she admitted that she didn't know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was? Obviously a perfect choice for Obama to name to the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

Viva Woody Guthrie

Tear the Fascists Down - Woody...

Not as sorry as he's going to be

Keddy says he's sorry for referring to unemployed as 'no-good
bastards'
By Alison Auld (CP)
HALIFAX, N.S. — A Nova Scotia Conservative MP who stunned the opposition and advocates for the homeless after referring to the unemployed in Halifax as "no-good bastards" apologized Tuesday for the comments.
In a statement, Gerald Keddy said he did not mean to offend Nova Scotians who are out of work.

I guess it takes one to know one, Mr. Keddy, but people who are soon to live in glass houses might want to watch it with the stone throwing. I'm sure we will hear about this one again come election time and I bet I know who those "no-good bastards" will be voting against.

Why I do my best to ignore Rosie Dimanno - example number fortyleven

Because apparently the reason all those Afghans the Canadian Forces captured were turned over to the Afghans to be tortured is that I, and people like me, said disparaging and oh-so-unfair things about Rick Hillier shooting his mouth off and the U.S. Armed Forces. It was because of us nervous nellies with our namby-pamby attitude toward torture and our complete dominance of the conduct of Canada's New Government that the government dared not stand up to the Afghans or hand prisoners over to the Americans who would have simply fed them cake and ice cream and kept them in air-conditioned luxury at Baghram Air Base and not tortured them at all.
I say "apparently" because that is the way Canada's favorite commonsense fiesty gal reporter (a pose I tire of very quickly since being a female and a journalist have not been mutually exclusive, or even unusual, for several decades) reports it in her latest column.

She seems to think that the abuse at Abu Ghraib was "just a few bad apples" and that not handing over prisoners to the Americans was just the result of knee-jerk anti-Americanism.
She contends that Canada "chose" the Afghans (who live there) over the Americans as front line allies, despite knowing they were medieval barbarians who would torture prisoners as soon as look at them. Not like the Americans.

Of course, she could be right or she could be wrong, totally misinformed, just plain full of it and more interested in attacking people on the antiwar side than making any sense. But it's Rosie DiManno, so what are the odds?

Great minds think alike?