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?

Ladies & Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen

Flying Spagetti Monster bless the National Film Board of Canada.

Dick Cheney - diplomat

I suppose Cheney would have advised Obama to grab the emperor by the lapels, tell him to remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki and go tend his goldfish?

From The National ToastPost

Former vice-president Dick Cheney is attacking Barack Obama again, this time for the U.S. President’s bow to the Japanese Emperor.
(snip)
Cheney told POLITICO.com, “There is no reason for an American president to bow to anyone. Our friends and allies don’t expect it, and our enemies see it as a sign of weakness.”

Would someone please take the stick out of Dick Cheney's ass and wallop him upside the head with it? Bowing to people when you meet and when you part is a sign of respect and courtesy in Japan, just like shaking hands in the West. It is such an ingrained habit here that I've seen people do it when they say hello and goodbye on the telelphone. Gee Dick, I wonder where all that anti-American sentiment around the world comes from? It couldn't possibly be from arrogant corporate plutocrats like you who fail to demonstrate any respect or common courtesy for other people, could it? Imagine the weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth if a world leader refused to shake the offered hand of the U.S. president?
Treating others with courtesy, consideration and generousity -- even forgiveness or forebearence where appropriate -- is not a sign of weakness, it is a sign of strength and confidence. Blowing your stack at every perceived slight, real or imagined, and behaving like a petulant meglomaniac is the classic trait of every two-bit tyrant and petty dictator in history. Hardly surprising the rest of the world heaved a sigh of relief when Dick Cheney and his band of chest-thumping hicks left the White House.

Sell a few Michelangelos and feed Africa this year

I think most reasonable people, where ever they are on the political spectrum, would agree that hunger and poverty are objectively bad things and the fact that one in six people on this planet does not get enough to eat is pretty awful, especially when we in the wealthy developed world look at the plenty that surrounds us.

So when I saw this story about the UN food conference in Rome, it perturbed me. As usual, all the diplomats sitting at the banquet table agree that hunger in the poorer nations is a terrible thing and "somebody ought to do something about it" - at least, they all agree until coughing up some money to irrigate fields in Africa or start fish farms in South East Asia or build better dykes in Bangladesh is discussed and then suddenly everyone is full of excuses.

But then I read a little further and got really ticked off.

"Despite endorsing the strategy in the first hours of Monday's meeting, the 192 participating countries did not commit to the $44 billion a year for agricultural aid that the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says will be necessary in the coming decades.
Soon after the delegates approved the declaration, Pope Benedict took the floor to decry "opulence and waste" in a world where the "tragedy" of hunger has been steadily worsening. Benedict's speech marked the first time a pontiff attended such a gathering since Pope John Paul II took part in a 1996 food summit.
The pontiff, lending his moral authority as head of the world's 1 billion Catholics, also called for access to international markets for products coming from the poorest countries, which he said are often relegated to the sidelines."

The Pope, who insists that every sperm is sacred and his flock must keep having lots and lots of Catholic babies, who lives in a golden palace full of priceless art in his own nation-state in the middle of Rome with his own private army and bank (estimated to have at least $10 billion invested in foreign corporations), who presides over a global organization that brings in an estimated $50 to $100 million a year in donations alone, who made sure that the Church spent millions defending pedophiles in the U.S. and elsewhere and who wears simply fabulous hats, is decrying "opulence and waste."

Yeah, right.

Sure, the Catholic Church is one of the world's largest charitable organizations and Catholic charities do a lot of good work, but how many of "Peter's Pence" get spent on running a parallel religious school system where there is already a perfectly good public school system? How much of that money is going to the pay for the Monsignor's Cadillac? What is the ratio of bibles to bags of rice that are getting shipped to starving nations? How much is getting spent on making women feel bad about seeking an abortion or using birth control? How many lives, how many man-hours of labour, skull-sweat and angst have been dedicated to appeasing an invisible sky-daddy instead of helping humans in the here and now?

I'm not saying the Catholic Church (or any other church for that matter) doesn't do good works -- it does provide some vital services in some pretty grim places around the world. But for God's self-proclaimed spokesman on Earth to sit in the lap of luxury and start railing about "opulence and waste" is just a bit rich.

Columbus, go home

the General shows us someone who knows how to best handle the teabagger/minutemen xenophobic dingbats, with mockery.

Vacation time

Gone to Hawaii to hunt the wild ukulele and hang out on the beach, see you next week

Weekend uke blogging - turning Japanese edition

the original


the covers

Non-uke cover, but check out the voice on this woman!

I bet the Leafs could have him in the second round

Sure, his fundamentals need a little work, and he's no pretty boy, but this kid is big, strong, tough, dangerous and wild at heart. He's aggressive in the corners, has the killer instinct needed in today's NHL -- he'll really maul the other team.

Pre-emptive halloween uke blogging

The best religions have great hats

"National Toast" or "So Long and Thanks for all the Fishwrap"

It looks like curtains for the Canada's most right wing national rag. As much as I bleed ink and hate the thought of another newspaper closing down, I will not shed a tear for the National Post - I only hope the courts refuse to allow the Aspers to tie this anchor around the collective neck of their other newspapers, which like most other papers have enough financial trouble to deal with already.
The National Post was started by Conrad Black to attack the governing Liberals after Prime Minister Jean Chretien refused to grant Connie a waver and let him become a British aristocrat while remaining a Canadian citizen. The soon-to-be Lord Tubby of Fleet Prisoner No. 90210 Lord Black of Cross Harbour decided that this would not do - mere law was not going this plucky underdog billionaire from achieving the British peerage that every Canadian boy dreams about. Deciding the Globe and Mail was not sufficiently conservative or at his beck and call, Tubby threw some money around, hired the cream of the conservative pundit and columnist crop, and set up the National Post.
It has never made money, nor has it impressed anyone with its editorial brilliance.
Despite the occasional presence of some bright lights, the National Post has been a rag from day one, the print equivalent of the FOX TV news, but without the constant stripper stories or teabag rallies.
Eventually Black gave up, renounced his Canadian citizenship and bought took his seat in the House of Lords and sold the money-burning Reform-Tory organ to the Asper family, long-time Liberal party supporters who under heir-to-the-throne David Asper seem to have converted to the Likud-Republican neoconservatism embraced by movement conservatives in the United States and Canada. The acquistion of the National Post and the former Southam chain from Black, along with their purchase of several specialty TV channels, seems to have been the beginning of the end for the Asper family's CanWest media empire.
Which, given the extent to which the Asper clan seems to like to interfere with editorial policy at their media properties, is just fine by me.
When a news organ with pretentions to respectability starts giving editorial space to hateful, chuckleheaded boobs like Kathy Shaide and "Raphel Alexander" -- well, its time to take Old Yeller out behind the barn and do the decent thing.

Update: Well, the court has ruled that the National Post can take the rest of the former Southam chain of newspapers down with it. This is a shame because some of them, such as the Montreal Gazette, were actually doing okay compared to the rest of the industry. On the bright side, there could be some decent newspapers for sale at fire-sale-on-boxing-day prices for anyone crazy enough to want to take a chance on the newspaper business these days. Otherwise we may as well pucker up and kiss goodbye the Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, Calgary Herald, Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, Edmonton Journal, Regina Leader-Post, Vancouver Province, Vancouver Sun, Victoria Times-Colonist and the Windsor Star. Which pretty much leaves the country with country with a bunch more cities that just won't have a real daily newspaper anymore.