Israel's war against civilians

For once, I would like to be spared the usual "fog of war" excuses, the moral equivalence arguments (the lone rocket attack on Haifa, after days of Israel bombing civilian areas in Beirut), the "Hizbollah started it" childishness. Israel's mailed fist spares nobody, not even children--in the words of her acting President, Ehud Olmert, "No one will be exempt." The Fourth Geneva Convention be damned. 106 Lebanese are dead, most of them civilians.

This story says it all:

Fleeing refugees, including women and children, were cut down on a road adjacent to the Lebanese-Israeli border in an air strike as they left the village Marwaheen. The bodies of several children, one headless, were sprawled on the ground. Police said 15 were killed in the afternoon attack and an Associated Press photographer counted 12 bodies in the two cars.

Some further detail here:

Eighteen civilians, including nine children, were burnt alive in an Israeli helicopter gunship attack yesterday on residents fleeing border villages in south Lebanon, UN peacekeepers and hospital sources said. The van was carrying families fleeing the village of Marwaheen after Israeli loudspeaker warnings to leave their homes. Seven of the dead were from a single family.

Israeli forces ordered inhabitants of the border village of Marwaheen to evacuate. UN peacekeepers at a nearby UN base refused to take in the villagers, stating that they could not confirm Israel's orders. Half of those targeted in the attack were children or teenagers. As reported, "Pictures showed charred bodies of children strewn across the road."

Is this what Prime Minister Stephen Harper calls the "right of Israel to defend itself?" Is this a "measured response?" What measure is he using?

The last word to Larry C. Johnson at No Quarter (h/t Robert McClelland):

While most folks in the United States buy into the Hollywood storyline of poor little Israel fighting for it's [sic] survival against big, bad Muslims, the reality unfolding on our TV screens shows something else. Exodus, starring Paul Newman, is ancient history. Hamas and Hezbollah attacked military targets--kidnapping soldiers on military patrols may be an act of war and a provocation, but it is not terrorism. (And yes, Hezbollah and Hamas have carried out terrorist attacks in the past against Israeli civilians. I'm not ignoring those acts, I condemn them, but we need to understand what the dynamics are right now.) Israel is not attacking the individuals who hit their soldiers. Israel is engaged in mass punishment.

How did Israel respond? They bombed civilian targets and civilian infrastructure and have killed many civilians. Let's see if I have this right. The Arab "terrorists" attack military units, destroy at least one tank, and are therefore terrorists. Israel retaliates by launching aerial, naval, and artillery bombardments of civilian areas and they are engaging in self-defense. If we are unable to recognize the hypocrisy of this construct then we ourselves are so enveloped by propaganda and emotion that, like the Israelis, Hezbollah, and Hamas, we can't think rationally. We can only think in terms of tribalism and revenge.

It really can't be put much more lucidly than that.

Killing off the Left

h/t Robert McClelland

When right-wingers get upset with us, it seems we get a choice of rope, gas chamber or firing squad.

Not the sort of people you want around your kids, I'm thinking.

Mexico City in flames: "Alamo" gang defiant

MEXICO CITY, July 12 (Faux News Services) -- Mexico City is under renewed aerial bombardment today, as the "Alamo" gang continues its offensive against the US today, raining sticks of dynamite over the US-Mexico border. The Mexican death toll now stands at 60, including a number of children.

US warplanes dropped leaflets over large areas of Mexico, warning people to stay away from known Alamista strongholds. "I would, if someone would tell me where the hell they were," said one Mexican in La Villa de Guadalupe, a suburb of Mexico City that has been virtually obliterated in the bombing.

Meanwhile, President-elect Felipe Calderon, from a bunker in an undisclosed location, expressed frustration. "I've been stuck in here since the election," he said. "First it's half of Mexico, now it's the US. I thought they were our friends. What am I supposed to do? I can't even control my own kids, let alone the Alamistas."

The whereabouts of two Americans kidnapped by the gang last week are still unknown, although State Department officials believe they are now in Cuba. Meanwhile President Bush has threatened a blockade of Venezuela. "Chavéz is in this up to his eyeballs," said one State Department official.

A wider war, according to top military analysts, is now a looming possibility. But, while some world leaders have called upon the US to show "restraint," Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada remains a strong supporter of the US offensive. "The terrorists kidnapped two Americans," he said. "The US is reeling. Now is not the time for loyal friends and allies to question this measured response."

Backgrounder: The "Alamo" gang, in fact a loose confederation of Mexican youth gangs that want the return of Texas to Mexico, has been responsible for tossing sticks of dynamite at border patrols and into US-Mexico border towns. Until the current conflict, only a few light injuries had been reported, in El Paso. Pressure has been exerted on the Mexican government before this, but its often corrupt federales have been of little or no use. Mexican government requests to the US for assistance to build its military have been rebuffed because of Mexico's support of the Rome Statute: like Israel, the US is of the view that its citizens should be exempt from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

Experts now believe that Cuba is behind the renewed tension on the US-Mexican border. Its President, Fidel Castro, has publicly criticized the US and is considered to be the force behind Venezuelan Hugo Chavéz, Bolivian President Evo Morales, Argentinian President Néstor Kirchner, Ecuadorian President Alfredo Palacio and numerous other South American leaders, as well as unions seeking to organize maquiladora workers in Mexico itself. Rumours of a Cuban nuclear program, as yet unsubstantiated, have poured further oil on the flames.

"Islamofascism must be stopped in its tracks," said a worried President George W. Bush today. "The dominoes are falling, and the time is now."

(--Faux News staff, with files from the Jerusalem Post and the Globe & Mail)

Mexican "Alamo" gang attacks Americans

CIUDAD JUÁREZ, July 12 (Faux News Services) -- A rowdy group of T-shirt clad Mexican gangsters attacked American tourists in a Ciudad Juárez nightclub earlier today. Shouting, "¡Si, nosotros recordamos el Alamo!" the young thugs seriously injured several, killed one, and kidnapped two. The latter's whereabouts are unknown.

"This is a serious provocation," President George Bush stated grimly at a Rose Garden press conference moments ago. "I'm holding the President of Mexico--whoever that turns out to be--personally responsible." Noting current problems with illegal immigration, Bush added, "We've turned a blind eye long enough. The wall is going up, and terrorism will not stop us."

He then announced that he had ordered the immediate carpet-bombing of Mexico City. "No one is exempt," declared Bush. "We shall keep up the pressure until our kidnapped citizens are safely returned." Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada applauded the move, saying, "The United States has a right to defend itself." Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, asked to comment, replied, "Don't bother me. I'm kind of busy right now."

UPDATE: Based upon information that at least one of the thugs' T-Shirts bore the likeness of Che Guevara, it is now believed that the two kidnap victims have been removed to Cuba. According to one highly-placed State Department source, "An invasion is not out of the question."

Fair and Balanced

Twenty civilian Palestinians dead so far; as many as 52 Lebanese civilians already dead at the hands of the Israeli Defence Forces.

Meanwhile, Israel is reeling...

Craig Murray mirror sites

The truth is out there.

h/t LFCM:

Currently the following mirror sites have Craig Murray's documents, as a UK injunction looms:

Blairwatch
Dahr Jamail
The Iraq Memo
The Torture Telegram
Many Angry Gerbils
Politics in the Zeros
Duncan Mcfarlane
James Cranch
D-Notice
Adrbaz
www.freace.de (German)
Pickled Politics
An Oxford Mirror
Ministry of Truth (US)
Septic Isle
Voltaire Net

LFCM provides interesting information on .torrent files as well--copyright law, it seems, has been left in the dust.

UPDATE: (July 12) Tony Blair's bully-boys have forced Craig Murray to remove some of the documents from his site. In his words:

New Labour are not as stupid as they seem. I have now had a chance to take legal advice, and that advice is as follows. To defend this case would cost the price of a London house. I don't have a house, in London or anywhere else. I am therefore obliged to give in to force majeure and remove some of the documents from my own site. This reeking government is therefore able to mask its stink on this particular miniscule corner of the internet.

Here is another piece of legal advice I received. Copyright cases cover one instance of publication in one place. Anyone else who has published any government documents that might be Crown Copyright, or not, (and I believe there are hundreds of thousands of documents on the web on which the government could, by the argument in Mr Buttrill's letter, claim copyright), is an individual case and can wait to hear from Mr Buttrill.

Force Majeure wields a two-edged sword.

More mirror-sites have popped up here, here and here.

Craig Murray documents extraordinary rendition

Craig Murray, for those who don't know, was the British Ambassador to Uzbekistan who was removed from his post on October 14, 2004, after criticizing that country's human rights record. (One method of execution in Uzbekistan is boiling alive.) By all accounts, he became fairly outspoken about this sort of thing, and, as any Ludlum or Clancy reader would predict, soon found himself embroiled in a web of allegations, including sexual misconduct and drunkenness.

He was cleared of all charges, but began to be noisily critical of the American and British governments' use of Uzbekistan as a place for the extraordinary rendition of suspected terrorists. (Just as well, by the sound of it, that Maher Arar was bundled off to a relative rest-camp like Syria instead.) That got him sacked by the Tony Blair government. But he would not shut up.

Murray now has his own website, and a regular column in the Guardian. He ran against then-Foreign Secretary Jack Straw last year, memorably stating in his campaign literature that "a vote for Jack Straw is a vote for lies, torture, and George Bush." His on-going human rights campaign has met with various threats from the British government, who have brandished the Official Secrets Act and tried to suppress his recently-published book, Murder in Samarkand. The book has now appeared, but with omissions demanded by the British government.

That government is at present feverishly trying to suppress a number of incriminating documents that form the material basis of the book, and that bear out Murray's claims of British and US complicity in torture. On July 7, Murray received letters* from Foreign Office lawyers telling him to remove these documents from his site by yesterday or face a High Court injunction. Creatively enough, the Foreign Office is going after Murray on alleged breaches of copyright this time rather than of the Official Secrets Act.

But the irrepressible Murray has the international blogosphere to fall back on.

I am sorry to trouble you, but believe that we now face a threat both to
the Web and to Freedom of Information in the UK which must be
challenged. The British government is arguing that government
documents, even if released under the Freedom of InformAtion [sic] Act
or Data Protection Act, cannot be published, on the web or elsewhere, as
they remain Crown Copyright. They have required me to remove documents
from my website on that basis, under threat of legal action - see
the attached letter from the Treasury solicitors.

If you think about it for a moment, the government could thus cancel out
almost the whole purpose of the Freedom of Information Act; information
released would be just for the private use of an individual. Newspapers
- or bloggers - could not publish it in any detail.

If accepted, this extraordinary use of copyright could keep literally
everything - everything - produced by government a secret.

The documents in question are the supporting evidence for my book,
Murder in Samarkand, which has just been released. The government
continues to claim my story is untrue. There is one important advance
in all this. Up until now the government refused to acknowledge the
documents were authentic. Now Buttrill's letter specifically
acknowledges all of the documents and claims copyright over them.

Some of these documents have already been published widely on the web
(not least due to the efforts of many of you on this list), particularly
the "Tashkent telegrams" on CIA and MI6 use of intelligence obtained
under torture in the UK. Those are now admitted as authentic.

Some are new to the web. Perhaps the most important is the chart of the
changes the British Government insisted be made to the book. These are
extremey [sic] revealing for what they admit to be true - for example, only
minor changes are requested in the key meeting between senior officials
on the legality of using intelligence from torture, at which it was
confirmed that this is US and UK policy.

Perhaps still more revealing is the insistence on removal of the
assertion that "Colin Powell knowingly lied" when he claimed that bombs
in Tashkent were the work of al-Qaida. The British government insisted
on removal not because it was untrue - as detailed in the book, they
know full well it is true - but because it would "Damage UK-US relations".

The changes requested were made in the book, because my publisher would
not publish without. That is why the truth needs to be out there on the
web.

It is on the face of it very strange that the British Government is
going after me over the Copyright Act and not the Official Secrets Act.
The answer is simple - under the Copyright Act there is no jury. A jury
would never convict for campaigning against torture, and be most
unlikely to accept that documents released cannot be published. The
table of changes requested by the government is not even a classified
document in the first place. But a single judge may be more malleable -
John Reid had put a huge effort lately into browbeating judges over
anything connected to the so-called War on Terror. As the government
know very well I have no money to pay a small, or even large [sic] fine, they
can get the book and documents banned and me in jail without having to
convince any jury of pesky citizens.

How to fight back?

Well, we must not let the documents disappear from the web. There is as
yet no legal ruling on these matters, Mr Buttrill's claims are only
highly controversial legal contentions. So if you post the documents
pending a court ruling, there is a danger you may be contravening the -
civil, not criminal - law, but then again you may not. You would quite
likely receive a threatening letter from Mr Buttrill. Now you have this
email from me, NSA and GCHQ are almost certainly tracking you, (they
can, incidentally, reciprocally spy in the other country for each other
and then swap the info, because neither needs a warrant to spy abroad),
but then they probably were already.

The publisher had firm and very expensive legal advice that it was not
contravening any civil or criminal law to publish in the book links to
web pages containing the documents. So you are almost certainly on safe
legal ground in publishing this link to the Dahr Jamail site if you do
not wish to mirror the docs yourself.
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/murray/

Feel free to publish this email and the letter from Mr Buttrill [attached].

It might also be helpful if we urged people to contact him, by phone,
email or letter, and ask him complex questions about the fascinating and
difficult legal and ethical questions thrown up by the government's
position. As a government servant he's obliged to reply.

Finally, the government made plain to parliament that it would act
against the book itself if it was published. As it only came out on
Friday, no injunction yet but it could happen any time. So if you are
interested in getting it, buy now and beat the injunctions! It is
available from most online booksellers, though bookshops seem very
reluctant to stock it.

Many Thanks,

Craig Murray

And many thanks to you, Craig Murray. It's an honour to help out.

Check out the documents, people, now safely out of reach of Blair's censors. But make sure you have the stomach for it.

h/t Blairwatch
_____________
* Text of the two letters:

1.
7 July 2006

Dear Mr Murray

INFRINGEMENT OF CROWN COPYRIGHT

The Treasury Solicitor acts for the Foreign Secretary in this matter. This letter should be treated as a letter before claim in accordance with the Civil Procedure Rules 1998.

It has come to our attention that, on 4 July 2006, you placed 15 documents on your website (www.craigmurray.co.uk) which you describe as "supporting documents" relating to your book 'Murder in Samarkand'. We have reviewed the documents and it is clear that in each case (save for document 12 and the majority of document 13) the copyright in the documents subsists with the Crown. I refer you to section 163(1) of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 which states:

"163(1) Where a work is made by Her Majesty or by an officer or servant of the Crown in the course of his duties --
(a) the work qualifies for copyright protection notwithstanding section 153(1) (ordinary requirement as to qualification for copyright protection), and
(b) Her Majesty is the first owner of any copyright in the work".

We take the position that all of the documents (save for 12 and the majority of 13) were produced by an officer or servant of the Crown in the course of their duties. As you do not have permission or a licence to reproduce the documents we consider that Crown copyright has been infringed. In particular, you should note that the statement on your website that " Net posting is not breaching copyright because there is no charge to access the documents" is wrong as a matter of law. Whether or not a charge is made is wholly irrelevant to the issue of copyright infringement. Further, even if a document is released under the Data Protection Act or Freedom of Information Act that does not entitle you to make further reproductions of that document by, for example, putting them on your website or making further copies to be provided to third parties. The copyright remains enforceable.

As you are infringing Crown copyright, you are required to remove the documents from your website immediately and to provide an undertaking that you will not further infringe Crown copyright by reproducing these documents, or any other document or documents in which Crown copyright subsists and which relate to Foreign and Commonwealth Office matters, without permission or licence. If you do not do this by 4pm on Monday 10 July 2006 my client will issue a claim in the High Court for an injunction requiring you to remove the documents. The claim will be issued without further notice to you. An application for an interim injunction will also be made.

If my client is forced by your actions to issue proceedings, she will seek to recover from you the legal costs incurred as a result. Such costs are likely to be substantial. You are strongly advised to seek legal advice.

We are copying this letter to your publishers Mainstream Publishing. We consider this to be necessary as you state on your website that 'Murder in Samarkand' will be an "interactive book" containing URL links to the Crown documents. In the circumstances we consider that your publishers should be aware of my client's proposed course of action in view of your infringement of the Crown's rights.

I look forward to receiving your response.

Yours sincerely

(signed)
Gareth Buttrill
For the Treasury Solicitor

Cc. Mainstream Publishing

2.
7 July 2006

second letter

Dear Mr. Murray

INFRINGEMENT OF CROWN COPYRIGHT

You have requested more time to seek legal advice. I have my client's instructions.

We are prepared to extend the deadline for you to give an undertaking until 4pm on Thursday 13 July 2006 on condition that the documents referred to in my first letter are immediately removed from your website and not reproduced by you anywhere else whilst negotiations regarding the undertaking are ongoing. If you do not immediately remove the documents from your website the offer of an extension will be withdrawn and the original deadline of 4pm on Monday 10 July will apply.

In the event that you fail to give the required understanding by 4pm on 13 July, or if the documents reappear on the website during the course of negotiations, my client reserves the right to issue a claim against you without further notice.

I should be grateful for your response by return.

Yours sincerely

(signed)
Gareth Buttrill
For the Treaasury Solicitor


Craig Murray's response to the second letter:

From: craig
To: Gareth Buttrill
Sent: Monday, July 10, 2006 8:43 AM
Subject: Re: Infringement of Crown Copyright: letter before claim

Mr Buttrill,

Thank you for this second letter. It is rather a peculiar request. You
claim to be willing to extend the deadline for me to be able to take
legal advice, providing that I concede the principal point in the meantime.

I cannot see the need for this haste. In copyright cases it is not my
understanding that it is generally considered necessary to remove a
publication from circulation pending a court decision. For example,
there was a recent highly publicised copyright case over the Da Vinci
code. Was it deemed necessary by the court to withdraw the Da Vinci
Code from sale while the case was heard? No, it was not.

Your peremptory demands reveal the motive behind your actions in this
case - the suppression of information for political purposes. I don't
believe it is right to use Crown Copyright in this way. Otherwise the
government has an arbitrary power to keep secret absolutely anything
that it does. Your contention in your letter of 7 July that the
government can use Crown Copyright arbitrarily and politically to
suppress material released under the Freedom of Information Act, would
obviate the whole purpose of that Act in giving the public a "Right to
know" what is being done in their name.

I have this morning contacted solicitors to take legal advice. I could
not do so over the weekend as this is not a criminal matter, and
copyright lawyers do not run 24 hour call out services. Unfortunately I
must spend much of today at St Thomas' Hospital for treatment of serious
medical conditions. The Foreign & Commonwealth Office's treatment of
me, as detailed in the documents you are trying to suppress, was the
direct cause of those medical conditions, a fact I would welcome the
chance to discuss in court.

You have been free to advise me what I "Must" do. You must bear in mind
what the content of the story is, that I am seeking to tell and the
government is seeking to suppress.

I accept your renewed deadline as reasonable, but will not be removing
the documents in the interim - until I get advice, I shall go by what I
know of the law, and all I know in this matter is the Da Vinci Code
precedent.

In the meantime, I should be grateful if, entirely without prejudice,
you could furnish me with some practical advice. If the documents are,
as you allege, Crown Copyright, where and how do I go about making a
formal application for permission to reproduce them?

Also, I am copying your letters to my website. Do you allege that to be
also a breach of Crown Copyright? If I remove the documents but not
your letters, would you still go for an injunction? If I am served an
injunction and remove the documents, but put the injunction on my
website to explain why, do you allege I am breaching Crown Copyright by
publishing the injunction?

Do you allege it to be a breach of Crown Copyright to reproduce on a
weblog any document at all produced by government? The definition given
in your letter of 7 July would plainly cover speeches given by Ministers
and written by civil servants. Is it a breach of Crown Copyright to
reproduce such ministerial speeches on a weblog? How long a quote could
you make from a ministerial speech before breaching copyright? Does this
cover, for example, letters from local authorities and health trusts, or
just from central government? Does it cover parking tickets? What
about quotes from the King James Bible?

If all or any of these are, in your view, matters of discretion where
the government can exercise Crown Copyright if it so chooses, then the
following is perhaps the most important question of all. Are there any
criteria of reasonable action which the government is obliged to
consider when deciding whether to enforce claimed copyright or not, or
is the Crown claiming a power which is solely arbitrary?

I apologise for my confusion. You can see why I need to take legal
advice. I will revert to you.

Craig Murray

Another wolf sighting

This time the hairy beast has been seen in New York. A plot to blow up the Holland Tunnel and flood Lower Manhattan! The bombers are being hunted around the world! The late al-Zarqawi was involved!

New York Senator Charles E. Schumer is on top of it. Whoops, wrong tunnel, for a start. It's the Lincoln Tunnel! (Visions of armoured vehicles racing across town for a second time, sirens wailing....)

But no, the plot, it seems, was caught in its early stages. It never got past the initial brainstorming phase, if it can be called that. "There's no evidence that anything was ever done, no purchase of explosives or even the sending of money," said Schumer.

As far as flooding Manhattan is concerned, Schumer said that the plot was doomed at the start, because the tunnels lie too far underground. "It makes no sense whatsoever," he said. "They don't seem to be the brightest bulbs in the terrorist lot." According to the New York Times article, "[S]ecurity experts...said it was unlikely that even a large bomb could flood the Holland Tunnel [I thought it was the Lincoln Tunnel? --Ed.], which burrows through bedrock below the Hudson River between New York City and Jersey City."

But maybe we can glean a clue from this?

Both Mr. Schumer and Mr. King [New York Congressional Representative and Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security] said that the investigation showed the need for New York City to receive more federal aid, and undermined the argument by Michael Chertoff, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, that federal financing should be directed toward infrastructure improvements and not paying for personnel involved in anti-terrorism efforts.

"This is very draining on New York City's treasury," Mr. King said in a televised interview, referring to the investigation. "Without going into detail, an extraordinary amount of money has been spent by the New York City Police Department on this particular plot."

Anyhow, move on over, Toronto-Miami Axis of Evil. You've got company.

War Memorial idiocy

Canada Day in downtown Ottawa has traditionally been an excuse for one hell of a party. Thousands of people crowd Parliament Hill and the surrounding area, including Wellington Street and the largest nearby open space, which just happens to be the National War Memorial. The build-up to the fireworks at 10:00 p.m. includes busker acts and the sales of vast quantities of sausages and ice-cream, not to mention every Canadian-flag-stamped knick-knack and gew-gaw you can imagine. People with painted faces hoot by, everyone sports red-and-white clothing, and the mood of the crowd is, to put it mildly, celebratory.

Do people imbibe alcohol at this event? Does a bear defecate in the woods?

By late evening, after the fireworks, signs of wear and tear are more than evident. Too much sun and booze are taking their toll. Some people, not to put too fine a point upon it, are starting to behave like idiots. Yesterday's Ottawa Citizen featured one of these on its front page, with a huge headline--"A National Disgrace." Below the fold, a short article about the imperilled 1.3 million people of Gaza appeared. I'm amazed it made the front page at all.

Today, we are informed that the Ottawa Police have made cracking this case "a priority." David McGuinty, Liberal MP for Ottawa South, described the miscreants as "the worst of the worst society has to offer," right up there, one supposes, with Paul Bernardo and Clifford Olsen. Stephen Harper, for his part, phones a local yak-radio station to express his personal concern, although he did so, I must say, in a calm and understated manner. Needless to mention, the vets are, well, up in arms. They want guards and a fence at the Memorial. And then there's the folks at Small Dead Animals.

Here's the inimitable Kate McMillan, kicking off the discussion:

There was a time when a public assault on the memory of war dead would have been quickly addressed by witnesses taking the offender into the street for a discussion with closed fists.

Today they take digital photos. Mark up another victory for the left.

Whoa...come again? "The left?" How did that get in there?

But, typically, her winged monkeys take up the refrain. A sample from her overflowing combox, excluding the predictable calls for various forms of street justice, caning, shooting and drafting:

[T]he social engineering leftists excuse it all with the great mantra 'they wuz drunks at the times sose they arentsk responsibles for dere actshuns.

Be clear, this kind of behaviour is the perfectly predictable result of decades of liberalism which tried to substitute self esteem on a platter for high expectations and self discipline.

This type of outrageous behavior is the legacy of your friends in the Liberal Party, who brought in the "Hug a Thug" principles into our criminal justice system.

AS for the punk. What do folks expect after Trudeau turned education from learning centers into self esteem camps. This is the logical result.

Kate's not the only one to understand it to be a leftist action. I do, too. Only an imbecile leftist would deny that it has nothing to do with their dogmatic ideologies, namely to be anti-war, to expose their gonads in public (like in "pride" parades), and to piss anywhere they so desire as if it's an inalienable natural human right. No genuine conservative would do such a thing.

Enough. That last piece of free association is particularly ripe. Since when do leftists wear bowling shoes, ferchrissake?

I write this as a person whose father was at the Falaise Gap, and as someone who has laid wreaths at the National War Memorial. I am disgusted, not only with a bunch of yahoos with full bladders who desecrate a monument endowed with tremendous national significance, but with those who seize yet another opportunity to try to score cheap political points. Frankly, I can't tell who are the bigger idiots. There do seem to be more of the latter.

Want to stop public urination after a Canada Day party where there is, in the packed downtown area, literally no place for most people to go, in both senses of the word? Post Port-o-Potties, not police, as I said over at SDA. Voilà, problem solved. Except some don't want the problem solved: they simply want to punish offenders, as responses to this suggestion indicated. It's the typical sado-politics of the Right.

On the public stage, the thoughtless action of some young drunks will continue to assume the dimensions of a national tragedy. But there's nothing wrong in that. What the yahoos did was outrageous, they will be found out, they will be charged, and a lecture will be read to them from the bench, not to mention in countless newspaper editorials and blogosphere postings. Their behaviour was the catalyst for another national reaffirmation of those who actually went to war instead of partying, and who died on foreign soil.

The idiots cracked that one open with their drunken carelessness, all right, and emotions of all kinds have come to the fore, expressed perhaps theatrically, in various over-the-top chest-beating commentaries, but nonetheless, for the most part, sincerely felt. People can't be blamed for having largely conventional forms of expression available to them when they feel deeply about something, and there is no doubt at all that many, probably most, Canadians feel deeply about the National War Memorial and what it stands for.

But to use this occasion to engage in Left-bashing is impossibly narrow, petty and spiteful. These commentators don't even have drunkenness as an excuse. They are engaging in their own insulting behaviour to veterans, and abusing the memory of the fallen, for their own partisan purposes. And for that they deserve exactly the same public pillorying that those other yahoos are now in the process of getting.

Gaza--the Final Solution?

When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle. --Rafael Eitan

One million Arab lives are not worth a Jewish fingernail. --Rabbi Yaacov Perin

I said, and I repeat, no one will be exempt. --Ehud Olmert

In 1994, a crazed American-born doctor named Baruch Goldstein walked into a mosque and machine-gunned twenty-nine Palestinians to death, wounding 125 others. He was beaten to death by some of the survivors. His tombstone reads:

Here lies the saint, Dr. Baruch Kappel Goldstein, blessed be the memory of the righteous and holy man, may the Lord avenge his blood, who devoted his soul to the Jews, Jewish religion and Jewish land. His hands are innocent and his heart is pure. He was killed as a martyr of God on the 14th of Adar, Purim, in the year 5754 (1994).

Rabbi Perin officiated at Goldstein's funeral. It must be said that he displayed a certain prescience. His "million Arab lives" (actually 1.3 million, the captive population of Gaza) are now on the line, not for a fingernail, but for one kidnapped Israeli soldier.

No one should imagine that the three extreme views cited above are typical. Goldstein's murderous acts, for example, were roundly denounced by the Israeli government at the time, and a poll showed that 78.8% of the Israeli population opposed the massacre--if rather less than one might have hoped, still a large majority. But there has always been a black thread of racism, vengeance and triumphalism running through the history of this settler state, and over the past few days in Gaza it appears to have surfaced again.

James Wolcott details the excesses here, and provides links well worth following. Counterpunch's Virginia Tilley sums up:

It is not the immediate human conditions created by this strike that are monumental. Those conditions are, of course, bad enough. No lights, no refrigerators, no fans through the suffocating Gaza summer heat. No going outside for air, due to ongoing bombing and Israel's impending military assault. In the hot darkness, massive explosions shake the cities, close and far, while repeated sonic booms are doubtless wreaking the havoc they have wrought before: smashing windows, sending children screaming into the arms of terrified adults, old people collapsing with heart failure, pregnant women collapsing with spontaneous abortions. Mass terror, despair, desperate hoarding of food and water. And no radios, television, cell phones, or laptops (for the few who have them), and so no way to get news of how long this nightmare might go on.

But this time, the situation is worse than that. As food in the refrigerators spoils, the only remaining food is grains. Most people cook with gas, but with the borders sealed, soon there will be no gas. When family-kitchen propane tanks run out, there will be no cooking. No cooked lentils or beans, no humus, no bread ­ the staples Palestinian foods, the only food for the poor. (And there is no firewood or coal in dry, overcrowded Gaza.)

And yet, even all this misery is overshadowed by a grimmer fact: no water. Gaza's public water supply is pumped by electricity. The taps, too, are dry. No sewage system. And again, word is that the electricity is out for at least six months.

The Gaza aquifer is already contaminated with sea water and sewage, due to over-pumping (partly by those now-abandoned Israeli settlements) and the grossly inadequate sewage system. To be drinkable, well water is purified through machinery run by electricity. Otherwise, the brackish water must at least be boiled before it can be consumed, but this requires electricity or gas. And people will soon have neither.

Drinking unpurified water means sickness, even cholera. If cholera breaks out, it will spread like wildfire in a population so densely packed and lacking fuel or water for sanitation. And the hospitals and clinics aren't functioning, either, because there is no electricity.

Finally, people can't leave. None of the neighboring countries have resources to absorb a million desperate and impoverished refugees: logistically and politically, the flood would entirely destabilize Egypt, for example. But Palestinians in Gaza can't seek sanctuary with their relatives in the West Bank, either, because they can't get out of Gaza to get there. They can't even go over the border into Egypt and around through Jordan, because Israel will no longer allow people with Gaza identification cards to enter the West Bank. In any case, a cordon of Palestinian police are blocking people from trying to scramble over the Egyptian border--and war refugees have tried, through a hole blown open by militants, clutching packages and children.

In short, over a million civilians are now trapped, hunkered in their homes listening to Israeli shells, while facing the awful prospect, within days or weeks, of having to give toxic water to their children that may consign them to quick but agonizing deaths.

One woman near the Rafah border, taking care of her nephews, spoke to BBC: "If I am frightened in front of them I think they will die of fear." If the international community does nothing, her children may soon die anyway.

But back in Canada, Israel's cheering squad blathers on. There's nothing but silence from our government--and from that so-called international "community." Our "national newspaper" is still taking shots at Sid Ryan, and the United Church of Canada for good measure, for daring to be critical of Israel, while the helpless population of Gaza is facing extermination.

Baruch Goldstein must be smiling from his grave.

UPDATE: (July 2) Some supplies, including fuel, cooking gas and medicine, have been permitted into Gaza. An Israeli army spokesman has denied that Israel is engaged in collective punishment, outlawed in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Israeli aircraft bombed a school in Gaza City earlier today: so far, no claims that this was accidental.

UPPERDATE: (July 7) 29 Palestinians killed to date, including six civilians. Among the latter was a 19-year-old handicapped man.

UPPESTDATE: (July 9) The United Nations has blasted Israel for causing "mass violations of human rights in Gaza," denouncing the current attacks "which have seen innocent civilians, including children, killed, brought increased misery to hundreds of thousands of people and which will wreak far-reaching harm on Palestinian society."

Oh, Canada

I started Canada Day in a bad mood. I'd been mulling this news over in my mind:

Item: Canada joins Russia in opposing indigenous rights. By "Canada," we mean functionaries on the newly-constituted UN Human Rights Council, taking their orders from Stephen Harper's PMO. By "Russia," we mean functionaries from a country that has waged genocidal war on the Chechen people for years.

The two were cheered on by Australia, whose genocide of the Tasmanian aborigines, pace the revisionist historian Keith Windschuttle, is well-established in the historical record. New Zealand, with its two centuries of depredation against the Maori (which continues to this day), joined them on the sidelines as well, and--who else?--the United States, with its frankly dreadful history of extermination and dispossession, and I'm talking home front here. Well, I think cynically, maybe the extinction of the Beothuks in Newfoundland entitles Canada to move in these circles.

But of course "Canada" is not a Harper functionary, nor is it one thing, one point of view, one action, one homogenized culture, one history or one community. Many of us writhe at the position on the world stage that the minority Conservative regime has recently chosen for us, and we're none too pleased about the goings-on at home either. We're Canadians, too, and Harper and his don't speak for me and mine.

As I get a little older, I realize how plain lucky I am to have been adopted by Canadian parents after the war and brought to this country to live. I love the place, without getting all nationalist and patriotic about it. It's home, never mind the too-cold winters, the too-hot summers, the mosquitoes, the blackflies, the current government. (Through an immigration officer's mistake, I didn't actually become a citizen until I was 23, but that's a whole nother story.) I like the fact that Canadians tend to get on, at least for the moment, with all sorts of other Canadians, without allowing the well-intentioned but ossifying process of official multiculturalism to divide us in any fundamental way. My stepson has two school friends he pals around with: one's Jewish, the other is Sunni Muslim. That's the wave of the future, folks. Brings tears to my eyes. Seriously.

Yes, we have differences among us, differences that can cause hatred to bubble to the surface rather too quickly. Read the comboxes at various conservative blogs, and anything that a bunch of Islamist comères have burbled to each other on a chat-line somewhere pales into near-insignificance. Yet this sort of thing doesn't usually end in more than raised voices. I feel proud that, even with our profound disagreements, I have conservatives on my blogroll and that my blog appears on some of theirs. We Canadians like to talk about our differences, while bemoaning the fact that we aren't all the same. In the blogosphere and beyond, we're all dissidents.

Today, I'll be celebrating Canada Day at home with my partner (kids took off for the Yukon yesterday), my brother, my sister-in-law, my precocious nephew, a cousin, and her spouse. Who knows? We might have some loud discussions--the latter got us into free trade, and he's a ferocious debater. The question of security certificates might come up, and Mo Harkat's release on bail, and the fact that his chief accuser turns out to be clinically insane. Maybe we'll all agree. Maybe we won't.

But we'll be eating at the same table. And each one of us will raise a glass this evening to whatever Canada is.

Have a good one, folks.

Animal Gulag

Let me note upfront that I am a meat-eater. I love barbecue season. Furthermore, I wear a leather jacket in the wintertime, I have been known to go fishing, and I recently dispatched four live lobsters by the time-honoured boiling-water method (although for the last time).

I have been dimly aware of the goings-on of PETA (People for the Ethical Treament of Animals), and the Pamela Anderson connection. Some have taken exception to their in-your-face advertising tactics. Animal liberation hasn't really been, however, one of "my issues." Until I read this, now hidden behind a subscriber wall. Here are some highlights:

Mice can feel each other's pain, say Canadian researchers who have been injecting the rodents with acid to make them writhe while their cagemates look on.

The experiments, reported in the journal Science today along with another study that involved amputating ants' legs to see how they would walk, sound macabre. But the researchers say such unpleasantries are needed to understand the creatures' behaviour.
...

[T]he Montreal mouse experiments indicate mice are capable of empathy, long considered an attribute exclusive to higher primates, such as humans.
...

The McGill University teams injected weak acetic acid into the bellies of mice for the "writhing test," which makes them twist and squirm for half an hour. They also injected formalin into the rodent's paws to bring on temporary swelling and pain.

It sounds nasty, but Jeffrey Mogil, team leader and pain psychologist, says the tests have been used for years, inflict pain for no more than an hour and mice suffer no long-term harm.

"It hurts them a little bit," says Mr. Mogil. "You can't study pain without inflicting pain. But I guarantee you'd be greatly underwhelmed by the pain depth."

This article really speaks for itself. It reads like bad satire. If empathy up to now was thought to be an essentially human trait, someone obviously forgot to test Mr. Mogil and his team. Perhaps that wouldn't be a half-bad idea, if it were only legal. Take off your shirt and show me your hands, you son-of-a-bitch.

One can hear, Godwin aside, the voice of Dr. Mengele in the background as he performed his experiments on twins. This is science utterly detached from values and morality, the apotheosis, alas, of what science at its best has traditionally been considered to be. Moderate post-modernists like me have argued against the very possibility of value-free science, but this comes perilously close to proving us wrong.

Uncomfortable memories began to surface when I read the article. I did a course in bacteriology at McGill about a million years ago, and one experiment (which I missed) was to inject a guinea pig with tetanus and take note of its symptoms as it died. I Googled "cruelty to monkeys in labs," remembering reading about an experiment in which a female monkey's new babies were removed from her and kept behind glass in her sight for months, while scientists took notes about her frantic anxiety. I found too many citations (250,000) of gut-churning, grisly experiments to find that particular one. Google for yourself, if you have the stomach for it.

But now that it appears that even goldfish share "human" traits, some people are taking a second, if contradictory look. Whole Foods Market will no longer sell live lobsters or crabs, but frozen, pre-cooked crustaceans are still a go. Personally, having watched lobsters writhe as they are boiled alive, that's it for me. "Die instantly?" Uh-huh. But will I eat a cooked one someday? Probably.

Indeed, the contradictions are obvious, and those of us who get these stirrings of concern are clearly vulnerable to serious criticism, not to mention the florid rhetoric of Rex Murphy. In this binary culture, no half-way measures are permitted. You're either a vegan or a carnivore.

But there is middle ground, and I don't mean Peter Singer. Michael Pollan, in an excellent survey of the ethical questions in the New York Times Magazine, begins with a disturbing question:

[C]ould it be... that we will someday come to regard speciesism as an evil comparable to racism? Will history someday judge us as harshly as it judges the Germans who went about their ordinary lives in the shadow of Treblinka? Precisely that question was recently posed by J.M. Coetzee, the South African novelist, in a lecture delivered at Princeton; he answered it in the affirmative. If animal rightists are right, ''a crime of stupefying proportions'' (in Coetzee's words) is going on all around us every day, just beneath our notice.

Pollan shows, conclusively, I believe, that the inherent contradictions that riddle the notion of animal rights cannot be resolved. Indeed, anyone with an interest in ethics knows that purely "good vs. bad" choices are not often available in situations that call for ethical judgements to be made. The universe--including the moral one--is simply not built so conveniently.

Pollan believes that the deliberate infliction of suffering on animals is what is unconscionable, not the quick kill. He considers modern factory farms abominable, for example, but offers alternatives. He concludes:

The industrialization -- and dehumanization -- of American animal farming is a relatively new, evitable and local phenomenon: no other country raises and slaughters its food animals quite as intensively or as brutally as we do. Were the walls of our meat industry to become transparent, literally or even figuratively, we would not long continue to do it this way. Tail-docking and sow crates and beak-clipping would disappear overnight, and the days of slaughtering 400 head of cattle an hour would come to an end. For who could stand the sight? Yes, meat would get more expensive. We'd probably eat less of it, too, but maybe when we did eat animals, we'd eat them with the consciousness, ceremony and respect they deserve.

I've been discussing, so far, the issue of eating animals. But there are also the fields of science, not to mention cosmetology, to consider. Once again, suffering, not death, is the issue before us. But even that is not a clear-cut distinction: many might argue, for example, that some suffering might occasionally be inflicted on an animal to save the lives of humans. Let's set aside that discussion for now: surely we can agree in the meantime that the deliberate infliction of suffering on an animal simply to satisfy curiosity or vanity is way, way out of bounds.

Come to think of it, Margaret Somerville, the "ethicist" who has been in the news recently for her vocal opposition to same-sex marriage, hails from McGill. Not all of her work has centred on the human: she's already done a little thinking on the animal rights issue. So I have a suggestion, Margo: if you can stop publicly insulting gays and lesbians for a minute, why not take a short walk over to Mr. Mogil's research lab?

Grow up, Warren

The ageing punker and tireless self-promoter is at it again. After Warren Kinsella's latest "look at me, look at me" shtick--the risible "I am not afraid" campaign that morphed into something else, leaving him in the dust--he's after Mark Bourrie again. Round Two. Geeze.

A few years ago I was walking near Metcalfe and Sparks in downtown Ottawa, and I saw two middle-aged cabbies going at it. Both were breathing hard, and neither could land a punch. They might as well have been playing extreme checkers. When all is said and done, there's not much difference in what Kinsella would no doubt call "the instant case."

Last time there was a settlement that didn't really have a lot of substance. There was a confidentiality clause, but that one's busted wide open now: I'm not a lawyer, so I have no idea whether that means anything, legally speaking. Maybe the Law Society of Upper Canada can figure it out. In any case, the whole world now knows that $1000 and an apology were the ridiculous mouse that emerged from the labouring mountains at the time.

Needless to say, these two have little love lost between them. They've been at it for years, in fact, and it was really only a matter of time before the two of them, locked in what appears to be an almost erotic long-term embrace, would be mud-wrestling again.

As I say, I'm no lawyer, although my previous work acquainted me with some of the essentials. So I'm a little baffled by the facts of the case. It seems that Bourrie obtained from a Library of Parliament clipping service a somewhat unflattering column about Kinsella by that master of anthropophagy, Jan Wong. He reprinted the thing gleefully at his place. (Nope, I'm not going to link to it, modified or no. I'm not having that rabid chihuahua hump my leg, thanks.) Next he knows, the writ is served. It seems that Kinsella was displeased with the piece, and the Globe printed a short note of clarification subsequently--it doesn't look much like a retraction, but thereby hangs this tale.

What confuses me--and admittedly I get confused on occasion--is this. A clipping service makes a column available to the wide general public on demand: not a peep. Then a blog with considerably less public circulation than the Library of Parliament (sorry, Mark) reprints this freely available piece--and it's "Gotcha!" If there is defamation, why is it ignored in one big public venue and pounced on in a relatively tiny one?

Anyway, not content with this latest salient, Kinsella is also farting in the general direction of a blog called Canadian Observer, which has taken it upon itself to poke the beast with a sharp stick. So far as I know, papers have not been served, nor (at least in this layman's opinion) are they likely to be. He's done this kind of huffing and puffing before.

So the brat is getting what he wants--more attention. Am I, for one, just helping to feed his voracious appetite for it? Oh, probably. But nobody really cares any more, other than suckers like me who keep rising to the bait. And I suspect that we are not really the audience of his dreams.

UPDATE: (June 29) Mark is counter-suing.

You go, Boo!

Wittgenstein once famously remarked "If a lion could talk, we could not understand him." Nonsense, I say. Animals talk to us all the time. Our dog, for example, has a whole series of whimpers, growls, bodily postures and gestures, each of which means something specific, as we have managed to learn--not very quickly, though, much to his evident frustration.

If he wants to go out, he will jump on the bed and stare out the window. If he wants more food, he will slump by his bowl, nose pointed toward it. He even lies: having had his early evening walk, he will howl and whimper if one of us arrives at the house just after he's returned, as though he'd been forgotten. This used to get him a second walk, until we twigged.

Of course we can understand animals, if we care to. But more important, perhaps, they understand us. Animals, from goldfish on up, are bright, know what's going on, and probably have some useful ideas to contribute about security certificates. We underestimate them, and I am beginning to believe that this gives them an evolutionary advantage. Which brings me to the saga of Boo, the young grizzly bear who had been living an uneventful life in the Kicking Horse Mountain Resort near Golden, B.C., until a few weeks ago.

It seems that a female grizzly in heat was wandering around outside the enclosure, and Boo--well, he wasn't "seeking love," as the media kept reporting, he just wanted to get laid, like any teenage male--tunnelled his way out under a fence. He appears to have been successful in his quest, and after three joyous weeks on the prowl was tracked down, tranquillized with a dart and brought home, a course of action that many a worried parent likely considers when the clock strikes one. Boo, you are so grounded.

But matters, alas, did not stop there. The keepers, in their infinite wisdom, decided that his urge to roam could be curbed by--castration. I can hear him now, Wittgenstein be damned. "Hey, what's up with that? That's extreme. Can't you just give me, like, a curfew?" This time, Boo didn't waste time digging a tunnel. Screw that. He went through a 180 kilogram steel door, smashed through two 4-metre-high electric fences, and then climbed over a final 1.2-metre reinforced fence to freedom.

Hey, wouldn't you?

Stephen Harper's paranoia

First, two definitions of paranoia, which I think bracket the issue:

A disorder characterized by a continuing and unwarranted suspiciousness, mistrust of people, and hypersensitivity. It is not a psychosis but those affected have great difficulty with interpersonal relations. They are quite critical of others but virtually unable to accept criticism.

A mental state that includes unreasonable suspicions of people and situations. A person who is paranoid may be suspicious, hostile, feel very important, or may become extremely sensitive to rejection by others.

Up until this morning, I had thought that our Prime Minister's odd and obsessive behaviour could only loosely and popularly be called paranoid--even arch-conservative Robert Fulford has used the p-word to describe it, not to mention disgraced former Alliance MP Larry Spencer. Like "terrorism," the word can mean everything and nothing at the same time. Harper's well-known snits, his "hub-and-spoke" management style with its accompanying micromanagement, and his over-all control freakiness, are all symptoms to be observed in a person who, shall we say, is rather too tightly wrapped. But clinically paranoid?

Then (h/t Jane Taber, "Ottawa Notebook," Globe and Mail print edition), I happened upon this frankly bizarre interview in the Western Standard. With his well-known media savvy, Harper might have imagined that he was only chatting with friends, but he's managed to give the whole world more than a glimpse of his dark side. Some highlights:

• "They say if I don't do it their way, I'll somehow gain more control over my media relations. Well, I've got more control now."
  
  
• "But of course, the problem was that we were getting our message out and a small number of ideologues didn't like that. So they've now basically forbidden all of their colleagues to ask questions, which I think is a fascinating use of press freedom when a small number of journalists can tell others they can't ask questions at a press conference. But that's the position of the left-wing ideologues who are apparently running the show."
  
  
• "The key journalists causing the problem are from CBC, but strictly the ones in Ottawa."

This is precisely the sort of stuff that right-wing, um, ideologues lap up and regurgitate, of course, delusional though it clearly is. The frenzied claim in those quarters is that the evil "MSM" (mainstream media) are in the grip of the Left. It's completely pointless to raise the obvious objections: the Sun chain? CanWest? Quebecor? The talk-show circuit? CTV? Who but the Toronto Star on a good day is left, no pun intended? Fingers in ears, the response is usually some version of, "Nyaah, nyaah, nyaah, I can't hear you, I can't hear you!" As for the hapless CBC, currently being run into the ground by a combination of government strangulation and top-level incompetence, the notion of their reporters controlling all of those other hard-bitten folks up on the Hill is frankly hallucinatory.

What is happening, of course, is a reaction on the part of the Parliamentary Press Gallery to the PM's insistence that only a favoured few will be placed on a list and permitted to ask questions. Their struggle against this obvious attack on freedom of the press is being portrayed by the usual suspects as the very opposite.

Our Prime Minister, not to put too fine a point upon it, is beginning to sound a bit like Captain Queeg. Or Al "I'm in control here" Haig. The insecurity, sense of persecution and simultaneous feelings of self-importance glare from the text. This is exactly the kind of thing you see in psychiatrists' notebooks.

Scary.

Meanwhile, the PM continues to dodge the hardball questions. Somehow those who want to pose them don't find themselves on The List. The latest example was his refusal to account for his disgraceful snub of the 16th annual International AIDS Conference in Toronto.

This is the man who's bucking for a majority government. Oh, Canada. At least insist on a clinical evaluation first.

Root causes redux

It's official: terrorism is not a motiveless evil that erupts without warning or reason.

In a story that hasn't exactly shrieked down the greased rails of the blogosphere, James Gordon of the Ottawa Citizen reports:

Staying out of the war in Iraq and the absence of a "colonialist" history have reduced the threat of terrorism in Canada, the country's spy service says.

Internal Canadian Security Intelligence Service reports point out extremist Islamic groups and "homegrown terrorists" are still a danger, but apparently it isn't all gloom and doom.

"Some factors have mitigated this threat: the lack of colonialist history, our non-participation in the Iraq conflict, a generally moderate foreign foreign policy and our relative success in accommodating new immigrants to Canada," the document says.

The briefing letter--marked "secret" but obtained under the Access to Information Act--was prepared by CSIS director Jim Judd for new Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day in February.

The article goes on to state:

This isn't the first time CSIS has waded into the controversial debate over Iraq and its ultimate contribution to the fight against terrorism. Documents obtained last summer first revealed--and Mr. Judd subsequently confirmed--that the service believes the conflict is, in fact, creating more terrorists.

But all is not quiet on the Western front:

While Canada may benefit from avoiding Iraq, CSIS has also argued the country's activities in Afghanistan have made it a "high profile" extremist target.

Mr. Judd was somewhat less detailed more recently, giving the impression that the reduced threat was the result of better cooperation with other agencies:

CSIS, the RCMP, other police forces, the Department of National Defence and other national security agencies are working together effectively in contrast to some other countries that have seen turf battles, he said. "My impression is we are doing a better job than other jurisdictions in working together."

But his bottom line was the same:

In his first appearance before a parliamentary committee since the arrest of 17 terrorist suspects in Southern Ontario three weeks ago, the soft-spoken Mr. Judd delivered a calm, reassuring message, saying Canadians generally need to be more aware of the risks of a major terrorist attack, but "I do not recommend that they toss and turn at night."

Mr. Judd said it's possible Canada will be spared major terrorist attacks like those that have hit other Western countries in recent years....

[I]t's unlikely that the underlying causes of global terrorism are going to disappear quickly, Mr. Judd added.

Will Mr. Judd and his agency be denounced by right-wing caricatures like David Warren as "terrorist stooges" and "bed-wetters of the left?" We await with anticipation. In the meantime, for that hardy band who continue to insist that terrorism is an effect with observable geopolitical causes, not a satanic plot against all that Christians hold dear--what a friend we have in CSIS. We'll take our strange bedfellows where we can find them, thanks: it's legal, at least until the Fall.

Sleep tight.

Anniversary

This one sort of snuck up on me. It's been just over a whole year (first post: June 18, 2005; first combox contributor: Kathy Shaidle) since I began this Dawg's Blawg project. As the frog says, "Time's fun when you're having flies."

I don't want to talk about the flies, but I'll say a few words about the project.

I'm a returning student at the moment, exploring the field of anthropology, and my studies so far have robbed me of the last vestiges of orthodoxy. Attentive readers, and I have been blessed with a few of those, might see a progression in my thinking, a growing uncertainty. It's the postmodern condition. I'm on the Left, make no mistake, comrades, although some days I'm not sure what that means. The notion of "progress" itself is a huge, contested one, so when I call myself a "progressive," I'm referring these days to that constellation of values and principles that has been historically associated with the Left. I think I'll leave that one vague for now. Precision in these things leads to countless false trails and metaphysical divagations. I really have very little idea, at the moment, of What Is To Be Done, at least in the long term. Putting Harper back in the bottle, though, strikes me as a good short-term goal.

My blog gives me a chance to explore ideas, and to write: it's much-needed discipline. I have little patience with the kind of blogging that consists essentially of getting up early, scouring Google News and other blogsites, and posting links to articles with brief bolded quotes from them. Well, let me be entirely honest: sometimes such bloggers do provide interesting paths to follow. It's like having research assistants, only cheaper. Thank you. You know who you are.

I'm a proud member, and now a moderator, of Progressive Bloggers, a huge tent that extends from the right (Nav Purewal, who calls Margaret Wente "Sister") to, well, my trusty benchmark leftist over at La Revue Gauche, Eugene Plawiuk. The place is chock-full of Liberals, but that's just the way it is, and I've learned to accept it, if not always graciously. I'm a card-carrying NDP member (sometimes I have no idea why), but consider myself non-aligned enough to join James Bow's blogroll with a clear conscience. I've managed to annoy that dreadful brat Warren Kinsella, and I've chatted with both Antonia Zerbisias and Rondi Adamson about our mutual love of dogs. I whistle along with the Dust My Broom folks when Darcey puts up his Friday night blues set. Sometimes, at least, "there is no right wing or left wing... there is only up wing an' down wing."

So I'm well-anchored in the blogosphere, if that isn't too mixed a metaphor, and I'm liable to stick around. I should probably be spending much more time on Useful Pursuits, but, like "losing a few pounds," this may be a fond and foolish dream. I hope the next year will be as much fun as this last one has been, and thanks to everyone who helped to make it that way.

Your afternoon smile

Liberal principles in action. Are these tears in my eyes due to a sense of betrayal, or from helpless laughter?

OTTAWA (CP) - The Liberals won't support an NDP motion before the Commons environment committee calling for the resignation of Environment Minister Rona Ambrose.

The decision will avoid the risk of a fall election, since Prime Minister Stephen Harper has indicated he would consider the motion a matter of confidence. Liberal environment critic John Godfrey said the Liberals on the committee will abstain, ensuring that the motion will die when it voted on later today.

Godfrey denied that the Liberals are abstaining because they fear an early election.

He agrees with the NDP that Ambrose is incompetent, but said he wants to give her time to demonstrate her incompetence more fully.