Red Friday

Where'd that bug go reminds us of the Red Friday public rally on Parliament Hill today at noon.

"News Talk Radio 580 CFRA is proud to support the grassroots effort brought to Petawawa by the wives of two men serving in the Canadian Forces. The concept of wearing something red - whether a red shirt, jacket, cap, bandana or whatever - every Friday is meant to let the soldiers and their spouses and children know they are not alone."
There is a song - "We Wear Red", a musical tribute commemorating 9/11 and how "our lives were changed forever", and merchandise - like this Canadian "Support Our Troops" T-shirt with the big "Made in the USA" sticker across it.

And it turns out they are indeed not alone.
Coincidentally, there is also a Red Friday "grassroots effort" south of the border to get people to wear red on Fridays, and they also sell Support the Troops T-shirts .

What a shame these two grassroots efforts didn't get together on the merchandising for this one.

Ever helpful, we here at Creekside have designed a new T to more accurately represent both groups.
We are still working on the song.

The Anschluss watchdogs

Remember the super-secret deep integration conference at the Banff Springs Hotel last week?
And the quite spectacular non-coverage it received from CBC and the print media?

Well today it just became a whole lot more visible thanks to ...

Aaron Paton at the Banff Crag and Canyon who scooped the mainstream media.
Susan Thompson at Vive le Canada who followed up on publishing Mel Hurtig's email last week with a list of the conference's participants and agenda, and
Maude Barlow of Council of Canadians who provides a concise overview in today's Toronto Star, the first big paper to make any mention of it.

On the blogs, skdadl at Pogge summarizes the progress so far, while Ross at The Gazetteer has been pushing on this all week in five separate posts.

Take a bow, Anschluss watchdogs, for paying attention to the little men behind the curtain.

Update : Gosh, thanks just ever so, CBC, for this truly stellar piece of investigative journalism.
And to think they were working without a media press kit from Stockboy!
They did at least quote Banff taxi driver Chris Foote, who as Herbinator mentioned below, should have been prominantly included in my list above for his part in getting the word out.

Steve and Sandra's "Two Bit Plan"TM

Cerberus notes that Steve's "The Five Priorities"TM have suddenly morphed into "The Four Pillars"TM and The Gazetteer gives us his own version of Steve and Sandra.

You're either with the US or against us.

Maher Arar exonerated.
Completely. Unequivocally.

I am happy for him. I am angry for the rest of us.

On Saturday Arar flew from Kamloops to Calgary and then on to Ottawa to hear the results of the federal inquiry that would both clear his name and accuse the RCMP of wrongly telling US authorities that he was "an Islamic extremist suspected of being linked to the al Qaeda terrorist network".

He chose this route over a more direct Vancouver/Ottawa route because of the danger of that flight veering into US airspace. Understandable, wouldn't you say?
He presents his ticket and driver's licence to the Air Canada check-in clerk in Kamloops.
A flag on his name results in a fifteen minute security check
Arar asks the reporter travelling with him why his name is still flagged after four years.

Anyone want to tell him?
Air Transport Association of Canada uses the US Homeland Security no-fly selectee list to screen passengers even on domestic flights from one point in Canada to another. They do this despite Transport Canada's statement that there is no requirement for them to do so. There are reportedly 70,000 people on that list.

In his report, Justice O'Connor "recommends the RCMP and CSIS review their policies governing how they supply information to foreign governments with questionable human rights records."

Are you laughing yet? That's Stockwell Day's department.
It's a fine recommendation but what do you think the chances are that this government, this government with its "You're either with the US or against us" record, will consider the US of fucking A to be 1)a foreign country and 2)with a questionable human rights record?

Aggressive panhandlers

VANOC has squeegeed another 110 million from BC and the feds.
BC's Auditor General responded this week by suggesting the province buy itself a watchdog.
Obligingly, VANOC obtained one itself on Thursday and has decided to name it "Performance and Accountability Agreement", or "Good Dog!" for short.

The total projected Five Ring Circus budget now stands at 2.5 billion.
That's such a big number, it's hard to even imagine.
I find it helps to think of it as being five times what these were worth.

Stop the clock

Yesterday I was furious that there was no mention on CBC or in any newspaper of the Canada/US "deep integration" conference wrapping up today in Banff. One would have thought that the occasion of Donald Rumsfeld's visit to Canada would have rated at least a one-liner somewhere.

Nada. Ditto today.

Silly me. I should have been looking among the Anschluss fans :

"This is how the future of North America now promises to be written: not in a sweeping trade agreement on which elections will turn, but by the accretion of hundreds of incremental changes implemented by executive agencies, bureaucracies and regulators. "We've decided not to recommend any things that would require legislative changes," says Covais. "Because we won't get anywhere." "

"The guidance from the ministers was, 'tell us what we need to do and we'll make it happen,' " recalls Covais, who chairs the U.S. section of the council, which includes 10 CEOs of big companies like Wal-Mart, General Motors and Merck."

"Covais figures they've got less than two years of political will to make it happen. That's when the Bush administration exits, and "The clock will stop if the Harper minority government falls or a new government is elected." "

That's Ron Covais - President of the Americas for Lockheed Martin, a former Pentagon adviser to Dick Cheney and Chair of the US section of the North American Competitiveness Council created during the Harper/Bush Cancun meet in March.
He made these remarks following the last deep integration conference in Washington in June.
The objective of the current Banff conference is to draw up a list of recommendations for ministers of "Canada's New Government" for the reopening of parliament in October.

Stop the clock. Stop it any way you can.
Write to the CBC, national newspapers, your MLA.

It may be inevitable/necessary/natural that one day we will see a North America union with one coin, one flag, one defense perimeter, one education system, one health care system, one energy resource pool, etc.
Opposition to this idea in Canada is often spun as anti-Americanism by its corporate sponsors and their government flacks.
It isn't. It's anti-corporatism. And most Americans agree with us.

Stop the clock.

Update : Sept 20/06

Ok, this story has now finally made it into the mainstream press.

Here's Maude Barlow of Council of Canadians in today's Toronto Star.

Note how many of the details are still very much under wraps.

Affairs of state

Peter MacKay and Condi Rice share a gluey public display on Sept 13 involving Timbits?

~ The national media slathers itself in K-Y jelly.

Thomas d'Aquino, Stockwell Day, Wendy Dobson, John Manley, Anne McLellan, Gordon O'Connor, James Schlesinger, George Shultz, and Donald Freakin Rumsfeld meet at the Banff Springs Hotel Sept 12 - 14 for a conference on North American integration?

~ The national media rolls over and pretends to be asleep.

Among the Banff topics : "A Vision for North America", "A North American Energy Strategy", "Demographic and Social Dimensions of North American Integration", "Opportunities for Security Cooperation".

Yeah, ok, but MacKay says Rice "loves the cool Atlantic breezes here in Nova Scotia, and she left the window open last night."

All the snooze that's printed, fits.

H/T to Susan Thompson at Vive le Canada.

Steve and Sandra and shell and pea

From the Globe&Mail :
"It's expected to take many months for U.S. Customs to return lumber duties to eligible companies and Ottawa will advance the refunds through the Export Development Corp."

From the EDC :
"Canada Account transactions are negotiated, executed and administered by EDC—but the risks under the Canada Account are assumed by the Government of Canada."

How I spent 9-11-2006

by Osama bin Laden

A weight distribution problem

How's that for a creepy statistic?
The obese now outnumber the hungry worldwide.

World Run Day 2006 is looking for local running clubs to join the Fight Hunger initiative of the U.N. World Food Programme, dedicated to ending child hunger by 2015.
Groups will run together on November 5, 2006.
We could certainly use the exercise.