Operation Enduring Freedom is in the House

The Cons are pissed the other parties don't want to debate the Manley report on Afghanistan in committee :

Mike Wallace, Con : "Canadians deserve a frank and constructive dialogue on this extremely important issue. Shockingly, the Liberals and the other opposition members voted against openness, frankness and transparency."

Peter MacKay, Con, Min. of Defence : "It seems perfectly logical that members opposite who have been calling for a more open, transparent and substantive debate on the subject of Afghanistan would welcome the opportunity....it seems logical that they would want to have a realistic and substantive debate rather than suggest that the committee should just gloss over these issues.

MacKay then called on Dion to "unleash his members" and let them vote on having a debate, after which Foreign Affairs' Maxime Bernier contributed an openly, a transparently, and two honestlies to the discussion which began on Friday with a couple of shockings and Deepak Obhrai asking, "Why are they afraid of Mr. Manley?

Look, assholes, Canadians do want a debate on whether to continue with Operation Enduring Freedom and they want it held in the House where all members can speak to it.
What Canadians are not interested in is having Manley's little retread of a paper he first wrote three years ago (thank you , Scott Ross) go off to a committee that has already investigated and debated the OEF debacle far more frankly, constructively, openly, transparently, realistically, honestly, and substantively than anything you guys have come up with on your own so far.

Hansard Monday bonus. Harper gives us his verdict on the Canadian workers' report showing that the governor of Kandahar province is suspected of torture : "There is no credible evidence in this case."

Enduring freedom is hard work.

Blindsided by science

So we've all been suitably appalled at this news by now :

NaPo : Environment Canada scientists told to toe the line
"Environment Canada has "muzzled" its scientists, ordering them to refer all media queries to Ottawa where communications officers will help them respond with "approved lines."

Anyone remember George Deutsch?
Deutsch was a young Texas college student who was rewarded for his work on George Bush's campaign with a post as a press secretary at NASA. His job was to water down whatever science was deemed to be inconvenient or embarrassing to the Bush administration. It all went sideways when leading NASA climatologist James Hansen complained that he was being "muzzled", that his reports and studies were modified and censored in order to be more in line with the administration’s political policies, particularly on global warming.

Back to NaPo : "The new policy, which went into force in recent weeks and sent a chill through the department research divisions, is designed to control the department's media message and ensure there are no "surprises" for Environment Minister John Baird and senior management when they open the newspaper or turn on the television"

It is not the job of Environment Canada to ensure that Mr.Baird is not "surprised" by chance encounters with science on TV, and it sure as hell is not the job of "communications officers" and the George Deutsches of the world to interpret that science for us with "approved lines".

Bah.

Feb. 2 - Send-a-Mitten-to-Steve Day

The US has a national energy policy.

Mexico has a national energy policy.

Canada has....

Canada has transnational oil companies, NAFTA, and the SPP instead.

Despite exporting 70% of our oil and 61 % of our natural gas every year to the United States, we have no pipelines going east and thus are unable to provide for eastern Canada who must import their oil from Saudi and Albania. NAFTA also prevents us from ever reducing this outflow of our energy resources.

Today, Council of Canadians asks that we email a mitten to Steve, along with a short note demanding that consideration be given to the energy security needs of Canadians. Details here, and a list of cross-Canada action events here.

Yes, I too can think of many other alternative symbols I'd rather mail to Steve other than a mitten, but spare a moment's thought for the hapless posties and go read Five reasons why Canada needs a National Energy Strategy now! instead.

From Hansard :Not-Answering-the-Question Period

Question Period, Jan 31 : Not answering questions about detainees

Dion : "Mr. Speaker, today we heard reports that the government was allowing Afghan forces to take detainees directly during joint operations alongside Canadian mentors.
Because this is not technically a transfer, the detainee transfer agreement does not apply, but beyond technicalities are the immoralities of this practice.
Will the Prime Minister tell Canadians if this unacceptable practice is occurring, yes or no?"

Harper : " Mr. Speaker, as we train the Afghan forces to take more responsibility for the security of their own country, I think it can be assumed that they would also be taking more responsibility for all aspects of the mission."

Dion : "Mr. Speaker, we will get there. The Prime Minister understands the question very well. We are speaking of joint operations. During joint operations, who takes the prisoners? Do the Afghans or the Canadians keep them under their protection? It is a simple question. Prime Minister, what happens during joint operations?"

Harper : "I would assume that if Canadian Forces seize the prisoners they are in Canadian custody and if Afghan forces seize the prisoners I would presume they are in Afghan custody."

Dosanjh : "The government's attempt to circumvent the military's decision to stop detainee transfers is absolutely troubling.
Will the Prime Minister finally come clean with Canadians and admit that it was his government that issued this new policy to circumvent the detainee ban?"

Peter MacKay : blah blah blah "We stand behind the Canadian Forces."

Dosanjh : "We know Canadian Forces conduct joint operations with Afghan soldiers. There are prisoners detained by those Afghan soldiers. Do Correctional Service Canada officials have access to and the ability to inspect those detainees?"

Stockwell Day : "Mr. Speaker, we are very proud of members of Correctional Service Canada because when people volunteer, and these people are volunteers, to go to a country like Afghanistan they do so knowing the risks.
We are very pleased with how those individuals have been working with Afghan authorities, DND and others in the process of trying to demonstrate the types of things that we do here in this country which can guarantee or at least further the causes and interests of human rights everywhere. They are doing a great job."


They can keep this up forever. And they do.

Which "course" are we "staying" till 2011 exactly?

A 23 year old Afghani journalism student has been sentenced to death for downloading material about women's rights off the internet.
Sayed Pervez Kambaksh was convicted of blasphemy by a religious court for distributing "a report from a Farsi website which stated that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the prophet Mohamed."

The Afghan Senate passed a motion yesterday confirming the death sentence. The MP who proposed the ruling condemning Mr Kambaksh is a key ally of Afghan President Karzai.

Malalai Joya : "The majority of seats in Afghanistan's parliament are occupied by some kind of warlord, who is doing crimes under the name of Islam.We can start right now, taking power away from the warlords. Instead, they give them more power. Countries like the US have their own strategic policies in Afghanistan ... As long as [they] support the Northern Alliance with the mask of democracy, there will never be improvements in Afghanistan."

Insert obligatory remark here from any Canadian Con MP about all our wonderful work painting the little Afghan schoolhouses for the little Afghan girls.

Then go and sign the petition at the Independent to free a young journalist who will otherwise be executed for the crime of passing around a paper about women's rights to fellow students and teachers at his university. Go.

Feb.2 Update : 38,000 signed the petition, and along with support from Reporters Without Borders, Malalai Joya, and some British MPs, successfully pressured the Afghan Senate to withdraw its confirmation of a death sentence on Mr. Kambaksh.
Score one for petitions.

"Manley, Best-Selling Author?"

reads the incredulous Jan 30 headline at Embassy Mag, following the news that John Manley's Afghanistan panel report has been down-loaded 160,000 times since its release on Jan 22.

Oh man, Manley must be saying to himself right about now, how soon they forget!

Indeed, who could forget his previous hit best seller, Building A North American Community, written for the US Council on Foreign Relations with Thomas d'Aquino of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and Robert A. Pastor, self-proclaimed father of the North American Union.

Here - let me refresh your memory with a quote from it :

"The Task Force's central recommendation is establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community, the boundaries of which would be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter."

In fact, right now at Amazon, you can get Manley's first best-seller plus his co-author Robert Pastor's Toward A North American Community, both for the low, low price of $33.48.

It's a steal.

Kady O'Malley rocks the House

with her totally brilliant live-blogging of the Chalk River nukes fiasco hearings over at Macleans.ca,
in which she catches Health-is-BigBiz-and-I-got-me-lots-of-shares-in-it-Minister Tony Clement bemoaning the fate of "the best laid plans of mice, women and men."
*snerk*

Our story so far :
~Back in July, Natural Resources (and by "Natural" we are of course including nuking the tar sands and reinstating oil supertanker runs up and down the BC coast Inside Passage) Minister Gary Lunn holds a press conference to announce he is moments away from successfully inking a deal to sell half the publicly-owned crown corporation Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.to General Electric. Oddly this bit of news fails to even break wind in the mainscream media.
~Nov./Dec. : Linda Keen and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission extend the AEC shutdown of the 50 year old Chalk River nuclear reactor for safety violations.
~All parties, repeat, all parties pass legislation to reopen it after some bullshit story about it being the world's only supplier of medical isotopes for diagnosing cancer patients is briefly circulated before being refuted by, you know, actual doctors.
~Gary Lunn, the Natural Resources minister, fires Linda Keen, head of Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, for doing her job, at 15 minutes to midnight the night before she is to testify before an emergency session of the Natural Resources committee which has been specially convened to look into the Chalk River nukes fiasco.
~Jan 29, 2008 : Linda Keen testifies! Tough, forthright, eminently credible, she makes considerable use of sneaky tricks like statistics and logic and her own expertise to confound her Con critics, who, sadly, are apparently reduced to mangling John Steinbeck.

Take it away, Kady!

P.S. : OK, the top of Kady's blog is now featuring a story about Harper's deputy press secretary Dimitri Soudas' part in a backroom federal contract real estate deal intended to suck up votes from Montreal's Hassidic community!!!, but if you scroll down past this latest bit of Con Accountability Act violation, you'll get to her Tales of the Isotopes etc.

Twenty years, twenty weeks, and point double-oh-seven

Twenty years ago on January 28 1988 in R.v.Morgentaler, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled the jurisdiction of the state over women's bodies was unconstitutional.

Justice Bertha Wilson wrote :

"The decision whether to terminate a pregnancy is essentially a moral decision, a matter of conscience. I do not think there is or can be any dispute about that. The question is: whose conscience? Is the conscience of the woman to be paramount or the conscience of the state? I believe, for the reasons I gave in discussing the right to liberty, that in a free and democratic society it must be the conscience of the individual."

So there you have it : In a free and democratic society, the conscience of the individual is paramount.

CBC reports that some fetus fetishists, who presumably hope to one day celebrate the supremacy of the state over the individual here, have attempted to mark the occasion by selling anti-abortion billboard ads for buses and shelters in St John's, Fredericton, and Hamilton. The ad was declined on the grounds that it was misleading.

It reads :

"Nine months… the length of time an abortion is allowed in Canada. Abortion.
Have we gone too far?"

Yes, fetus fetishists, I'm afraid you have gone too far this time.

A fetus becomes viable at around 20 weeks, no?

According to Statscan, the percentage of Canadian abortions performed at the 20 week mark in 2003 was .7% or 0.007. That's point double-oh-seven.

OK, let's try that one as a billboard ad instead :

" .007...the percentage of abortions performed at 20 weeks for medical reasons in Canada."

Yes, I think that would more adequately meet the stringent truth-in-advertising requirements of Metrobus in St. John's, Nfld.

Good luck with it!

And Happy Anniversary, everyone!

UPDATE : Great round-up of the 20 year celebrations from Hope and Onions

SPP, TILMA, and the tar sands

Macdonald Stainsby, writing at The Dominion :

"TILMA is a new set of limitations on government's ability to regulate, and the SPP is the removal of a pre-existing set of regulations. Both TILMA and the SPP have specific aims that go beyond the usual attempt to enshrine investors' rights and protect corporations from government regulations.

Both agreements pave the way--in many cases literally--for the largest industrial project in history to move forward: a project that calls for the extraction of over 170 billion barrels of recoverable oil from the tar sands of Alberta's Athabasca, Peace and Cold Lake regions.

The SPP and TILMA have anticipated popular resistance and preemptively removed the ability of governments to control the massive supply of energy, land, water and labour needed in the tar sands. They similarly preempt governments' ability to regulate the destruction and pollution that the "gigaproject" will create.

In response to Chinese interest in the tar sands, US energy expert Irving Mintzer blurted out, "The problem with the Chinese is that they don't know that the Canadian oil is ours. And neither do the Canadians."

Continued...

How the markets really work

And, yes, it really is this bad.

Go. GO!