End Times

The Anti-Christ, the Manchurian Candidate, that terrorist, Muslim, Jew (How did that get in here? --ed.), anti-American, Marxist, Arab, Communist, Jew-hating n----r won! Fake birth certificate and all!

The "long march through the institutions" is complete!

Who's in charge now?

We is.

Lock up yer daughters! Barricade yer doors! Or head for the hills. Who cares?

We know who you are, and where you are, and we're coming for you. Yeah, you. And you. And especially you.

Go ahead, move your blogs to offshore servers while you still have time, you knuckle-dragging, moose-killing, gun-clutching, God-bothering whackos. Good luck finding a computer where you’re going.

Bow down to the Beast. The One. Yes, that One.

Harper undermines government accountability [updated]

Governments should be accountable to Canadians all the time, not just during election time. One of the key elements of a functioning democracy between elections is transparency and on-going government accountability to Parliament and to the people of Canada. Two new watchdog positions—a Parliamentary Budget Officer and a Public Appointments Commissioner—were created recently with substantial input from my own MP, Paul Dewar. Their respective mandates would allow them to shine a bright light on government expenditures and appointments.

Unfortunately, the Conservative government has seriously undermined both functions before they have even had a chance to be put into operation.

There is at the present time no Public Appointments Commissioner. The office has been deliberately kept vacant. Prime Minister Stephen Harper abruptly made that decision this past May, after a friend of his, Gwyn Morgan, was found to be unsuitable for the position by the House of Commons Government Operations Committee. Mr. Morgan, a Calgary oilman, had made disparaging comments about immigrants, multiculturalism and unions in a speech to the Fraser Institute, a conservative think-tank. In Mr. Harper’s opinion, Morgan’s plainly intolerant views should not have disqualified him from one of the most sensitive positions in Parliament. The Committee, thankfully, disagreed.

But Mr. Harper’s decision means that it’s still business as usual—unvetted patronage appointments with no Parliamentary oversight whatsoever.

The duties of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, technically an officer of the non-partisan Library of Parliament, include carrying out independent analyses of Canada’s economy, finances and planned government expenditures. Another crucial part of the job is to provide an objective analysis of departmental and agency spending estimates, when asked to do so by parliamentary committees reviewing those estimates, such as the Senate National Finance Committee and the House of Commons Finance and Public Accounts Committees.

The first appointee to this post is Kevin Page, who appears to be very well-qualified for the position. But, in keeping with the Conservative government’s smoke-and-mirrors approach, his office has been given a paltry operating budget of $2.5 million, which will simply not permit him and his staff to do the work with any degree of thoroughness. Mr. Page himself has graciously tried to make the best of this tiny allocation, but questions have been raised about how this sum will permit him to serve all 308 MPs, and the various committees that will call on him for assistance.

An expert on the workings of government, Sharon Sutherland, puts it this way:

If MPs want to have at their service a challenge function to both the Finance Department and to the expenditure budget, and if all the political parties make full use of the function, even assuming the Budget Office uses only available data, it will find itself out of funds pretty quickly. Even to perform an interpretive function, it will need to hire experts, and it will have to work with academic economists who charge huge fees.

A responsible and responsive government should be accountable in fact, not just in theory. Two steps in the right direction have now been taken, with the establishment of a Public Appointments Commission and a Parliamentary Budget Officer. But these two steps forward have been countered by two steps right back: an unfilled office in one case, and a grossly under-budgeted one in the other. Canadians, pressed by an economic downturn and shrinking public services, have a right to know what our government is doing on a day-to-day basis. We deserve far better than this.

UPDATE: (November 4) Kevin Page's mandate, it seems, was intended to be largely ceremonial in nature. Officer of Parliament? Why, no--according to the Speakers of the House and the Senate, he simply works for the librarian. (As for the Public Appointments Commissioner, the less said, the better.) It's business as usual in our 40th Parliament. Harper--and now the Speakers--are making sure of that.

[Last sentence added at the behest of commenter Mark Collins. --DD]

I used to think Flea was a heavy hitter

But he's just another crackpot.

No, I do him a disservice: he's a platinum-plated, Oscar-winning crackpot:

Barack Obama is a Manchurian Candidate. He has been groomed for this mission since before he set foot in the United States. He cannot become President of the United States.

Wow. Just wow. When these folks start drinking their own Kool-aid, it's time for serious medical intervention.

Dog bites man

Peter Jaworski points me to this straw poll of Western Standard contributors. It seems that not a vote for Barack Obama is to be found among the Usual Suspects.

In other news, the sky turned blue today, a bear relieved himself in our northern forests, and the Pope embraced Catholicism.

UPDATE: I should have noted that there are actually two lists over at the Shotgun: "contributors" and "friends." The friends didn't cast a single vote for Obama. A plurality of the contributors went for Libertarian Bob Barr, followed closely by "wouldn't vote." There were two "spoiled ballots" (in my opinion), one vote for McCain--and, mirabile dictu, Mike Brock showed up late to throw in a solitary vote for Obama. Out of 26.

FOX News: anti-Semite is honoured guest on Hannity

I've posted about the connection between FOX News and assorted unsavoury Fourth Reich types before. Now we have more of the same: a revolting anti-Semite hosted by a fawning Sean Hannity--who else?--to slime Barack Obama.

This would be none other than Anthony Martin-Trigona, now plain "Andy Martin," a perennial litigant, political candidate and all-round nutjob, who once wrote, "I am able to understand how the Holocaust took place, and with every passing day feel less and less sorry that it did, when Jew survivors are operating as a wolf pack to steal my property." Martin was more than willing to be publicly fellated by Hannity on FOX News prime time. Obama organizer Robert Gibbs later used this to turn the tables on the FOX pseudo-journalist after hearing a few too many cracks about one-time Chicago Citizen of the Year William Ayers.

Glenn Greenwald notes that prominent conservatives who use the "anti-Semitic" label at the drop of a hat to advance their right-wing agenda were oddly silent after a real anti-Semite was featured on FOX. Indeed, several of them continued to appear on that network after the Hannity-Martin interview.

While the specious charge of "anti-Semitism" is regularly used against those of us who dare to be critical of the state of Israel, assorted neo-Nazis have been permitted to re-emerge as alleged defenders of free speech, and bottom-of-the-barrel types like Martin are feted on conservative television shows. Since the word "anti-Semitic" has now been successfully drained of all meaning by the Right (and the occasional Liberal), maybe we need a new term to describe those folks, and I can think of a few--but this is a family blog.

Turkish 'Delights' Presented as Frightful

On the weekend I read a travel item in the Ottawa Citizen about Istanbul. Like much of the writing found in the pages of papers owned by Canwest News Services, it catered to a particular readership. One can only assume that the author of this fluff piece, Loraine Whysall, wrote it and submitted it for publication with the complete assurance that readers would be sympathetic to her myopic perspective on this ancient city.

On principle, I appreciate travel essays that provide useful information that has been gleaned from observation and experience, such as timely warnings with regard to safety issues and sage advice on respecting local customs.

In this particular item, the first two paragraphs centered on the author’s recoil when she was shuttled from the airport to the old quarters of Istanbul. It read as though her life's experience of cab rides had been restricted to Victoria. Has she visited cities such as Alexandria where traffic lights are notably absent and drivers navigate narrow streets where cars and tour buses must share space with souks, pedestrians, cyclists and even horse-drawn calèche? Her slightly hysterical tone suggests that she has not.

Then, she regaled her readership with her parochial reaction upon being awakened at dawn by the vibrant call to prayer. Again, one wonders at the chauvinism waved like a flag; why should this be surprising? Had she has done her research she would have known that her choice of hotel, in proximity to one of the world’s biggest mosques, would expose her to this daily tradition.

“Jarring …. blasted from loudspeakers …” - this is the twenty first century, Ms Whysall. Digital technology amplifies even the booming of bells from church steeples, which I suspect you would not have described in such rude terms.

Next morning she and her husband visited the Blue Mosque, the Aya Sophia and Topkapi palace, cramming in her typically tourist manner all three sites into a day’s speedy visit that Whysall claims to be comfortably doable. One would certainly not want her to be sidetracked by the opportunity of approaching these stunning architectural wonders with the veneration, respect and time their history warrants.

Whysall extolled her personal bravery, as shown by the extraordinary feat of allowing herself to bathe at the Cemberlitas hamam, in spite of her distaste for the presence of female attendants, unclad from the waist up. Perhaps she should have requested a blindfold, in order to be spared this unpleasant discomfort?

Her surprising appreciation of a lovely boat excursion on the Bosphorus was happenstance; she discovered it by listening to and following around better informed English tourists. Heaven forbid she might have found this cruise by interacting with local people.

Her descriptions of actual involvement with the residents of Istanbul seemed limited to “aggressive” merchants who followed her. My experience of the vendors who attempted to interest visitors in their merchandise was that they were persistent, courteous and ever optimistic that a commonly agreeable purchase price could be negotiated.

Ethnocentricity is not a virtue, and it is particularly irritating when it is blatantly on display in a travel piece. You’d be better served by avoiding travel pieces framed by Whysall's narrow world view. With regards to Istanbul, I’d recommend the Knopf guide to Istanbul as it is not marred by provincial and inappropriate remarks.

Last few days of the campaign...

...and the GOP base is getting a tad wrangy.

Equality is "not an American value"

So said Dennis Prager, a conservative radio Sprachmeister, before an audience of 3,000 in Minneapolis.

Equality, quoth Prager, is "the primary value of the left," and it's a European value, not an American one.

In refutation, the well-meaning folks at thinkprogress.org remind us of this:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..."

But we know that "men" didn't include "women" in those days--or Blacks, valued at 3/5 of a white person in the US Constitution until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 and the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868.

Prager is right on the money. Equality is not an American value--and obviously not a conservative one. Why all the shock and surprise?

[H/t Keith Olbermann]

Not waiting for the asteroid

Bye, bye, National Post.

[H/t Big City Lib, and with apologies to KM]

Compassionate conservatism

Boo!

[H/t Creative Revolution]

Israel's war on its own citizens

I have posted about the plight of Bedouins in Israel before. Briefly, Israeli Bedouins are citizens of that country, but without the right even to live in their own villages. Since it came into being, the land-hungry Israeli state has herded these people around and taken their best land, and this warfare against a minority continues today.

From time to time I'll be putting up "guest blogposts" on the continuing oppression of Bedouins in Israel. This one is from Josh Berer.

**********************

Dear all,

Thursday in the unrecognized Bedouin village of Khashm Zanna the home of Bassam abu Gwedar, a father of three young girls, and his wife, all citizens of the State of Israel, was demolished. The reason given by the Israeli authorities was that the structure was a new structure and had been built without a permit, which for all residents of the unrecognized villages is unattainable. The home had been built a year ago replacing the tin hut in which they had lived, and the demolition order was posted almost immediately. The family took the case to the local courts, which refused to offer any respite from their predicament, and supported the demolition order. The situation is that of a catch 22: there is no method of attaining a building permit, but without a building permit the home is illegal and must therefore be destroyed, so Bassam and his family were left homeless Thursday. The bulldozers arrived at nine o'clock in the morning accompanied by 150 soldiers and 20 members of the paramilitary Green Patrol.

Bassam's neighbors gathered in front of the home in non-violent protest of the order, but under threat of violence they retreated and the bulldozers crushed his home to rubble. It was completed at 10:40 AM, taking under two hours to leave a family of five without a home. Bassam and his family's sole crime were being members of an ethnic group in a state that is severely biased against him and those like him. Bassam's family watched the demolition with utter desperation and helplessness, confronted with a faceless force of destruction.

The season chosen for the demolition was not lost on the family. The recent rains and cold make their homelessness that much harder. "We have nowhere left." He told members of the RCUV Thursday.

Khashm Zanna is an unrecognized village of more than 2000 people living roughly 15 kilometers south of Beer Sheva in the Negev desert, and has been in the same location for more than 200 years. They have no access to electricity, water, sewage, paved roads, or medical services from the Israeli government. They are constantly under the threat of home demolition, as all houses in the village have been deemed illegal. This demolition is not an isolated incident, but the latest in a series of co-ordinated operations designed to make life in the villages as unbearable as possible, so as to force the residents to abandon their lands.

Also Thursday, the village of Tweil abu Jarwal was completely destroyed for close to the 20th time. The night prior to this demolition, six young men of the village were arrested and kept overnight in the police holding cells in Beer Sheva. They were arrested in the village on charges of trespassing on their own land, held overnight and then released on the sole condition that they refrain from returning to their village for two weeks. This village is deeply in need of assistance in the form of new tents, and if you or someone you know can contribute for new tents in the village, please donate through PayPal to yallylivnat@gmail.com, or send a check payable to the RCUV at

47 Ha-Atzmaut St
PO Box 10002,
Beer Sheva, 81405
Israel

Thank you all,
Joshua Berer,
International Communications Advocate
Regional Council of Unrecognized Bedouin Villages
olomachad@gmail.com
+972 52 7500 159

The big wet slurpy kiss of death

What's that sound? Why, I do believe it's the last nail being hammered in.

[NB: thanks to commenters for noting an erroneous earlier link. Correction made. --DD]

As Canadian as...

I guess this had to happen someday.

America

The good:

Unless a successful concerted effort to steal the election in several states takes place, the US is about to have its first Black president. Maybe someday, or in a perfect alternate world, nobody would notice one way or the other. But here, now, it's significant. It's a coming of age for a country that in many ways has been fighting the Civil War since 1861. Appomattox was just an uneasy truce.

"Race" is a central element of the US psyche: the country seethes with it. It bubbles and smoulders, seen and unseen, like a lava flow under a swamp. Coded or blatant, racism—by which I mean the racialization of groups of people, with attendant assumptions of white superiority—has been ever-present, from the very birth of the United States of America.

But now a corner is about to be turned. Colin Powell was right: Barack Obama's rise to the presidency will indeed be "transformational." And this isn't because Obama is The One, or because he's a "liberal" (whose actual politics would, in the Canadian context, put him shoulder-to-shoulder with Stephen Harper on not a few issues), or because there's any depth to his "Yes we can," "Change we need" cheerleading, or because of his undoubted charisma. It's because a majority of Americans will have decided that "race" should be no barrier to the leadership of their country.

Most Obama voters will vote for him regardless of what colour he is, although some will vote for him in spite of his colour, and others because of it. But the result is what counts: a qualified Black individual will have achieved the very highest office in the land because of who he is and what he stands for.

Transformational indeed. Some years ago my stepdaughter had a birthday party in a local restaurant, attended by a large number of friends. The crowd, to borrow a phrase from a character in Broken English, looked like a UN peacekeeping force. But the very best part of all this was that my late partner and I were the only people who even noticed.

Perhaps America can reach the point where "race" is no longer a category, with its fixed boundaries and its built-in struggles and Angst. But to do that, it had to make a beginning. Never mind Obama's conventional politics, not to mention the dead certainty that any vision he might have will be shaped, chipped away at, moulded and constrained by the machine in whose toils he is trapped. What he offers is possibility—not in the anodyne "hope" and "change" political sense, but for a deep and festering lesion in the very heart of America to begin its slow, inexorable healing.

The bad:

It's always terrible news when a living legend dies. Louis "Studs" Terkel has passed away at the age of 96—a month before his latest book was due to be released. He was a brilliant journalist whose preferred method was letting ordinary folks speak for themselves, not to mention an unabashed trade union supporter (which led, of course, to his being blacklisted in the 1950s). Terkel not only had the common touch, but was that touch: a means by which people were able to tell their own often gripping stories to the world. Check out Working to get the flavour.

More here and here and here.

The ugly:

Once again our American overlords are telling us how things are going to be, and if we don't like it, too bad.

This time it's "an influential analyst on Canada-U.S. relations," one Christopher Sands of the Hudson Institute, addressing an audience of security intelligence professionals in Ottawa yesterday (Hallowe'en).

Sands is an enthusiastic advocate of North American economic integration. But he was not in Ottawa to promote this frankly imperialist agenda. Instead, it was to do yet more of that tiresome Yankee finger-wagging at Canadians, telling us that we've had a free ride for far too long, that it will be on our head if any terrorists enter the US from Canada, that information on our citizens—"people you may be looking at for reasons, but there's no indictment and there's no charge"—needs to be turned over to the US forthwith.

Sands quoted some assistant secretary of policy in Homeland Security as saying that Canadians have "had a better deal than anybody else in terms of access to the United States and for that they've paid nothing." (That about sums up the official American attitude to nearly everything, doesn't it?) Sands was indeed correct when he said that the Bush administration's desire for less access and more money "is a very difficult message to pass on to Canadians." And I suspect he is also correct in saying that the next administration (which he assumes will be that of Barack Obama) won't change much in this respect.

Sands then took the obligatory swipe at Maher Arar, saying that Canada has absolved him of nothing at all, and that he wouldn't have his name removed from the pernicious US no-fly list "in (Sand's) lifetime." To Sands and his cohorts, being an Ay-rab seems to be enough. All such people will have to prove their innocence of any and all charges that some Homeland Security munchkin can dream up (with help from incompetents in the RCMP) before they will be treated like normal people. In Europe, centuries of anti-Semitism led to some Jews changing their names, the better to fit in. Perhaps Maher Arar should have changed his to "Wayne Smith."

Canada expects to meet the US "standard" by 2011, but, says Sands, "there'll be tremendous pressure to get there faster." And then the clincher:

[W]hile we live in a world in which an independent foreign policy for Canada is as possible as ever, an independent security policy, an independent intelligence policy, becomes trickier because we need Canada to help us protect ourselves and to protect yourselves.

If a new terrorist attack is traced back to Canada, Sands said, damage to Canada-U.S. relations could last for years. The key will be the new head of Homeland Security:

There is no more important cabinet secretary to Canada today...because homeland security is the gatekeeper with its finger on the jugular affecting your ability to move back and forth across the border, the market access upon which the Canadian economy depends.

Shorter Sands: "Nice country you've got there--be a shame if anything happened to it." The Ugly American, redux.

Canada's asbestos shame continues

Once again, a dangerous and toxic substance--chrysotile asbestos--has failed to make the Rotterdam Convention watchlist. As reported yesterday, Canada found some proxies (its biggest asbestos customers) to do its dirty work for us, to use the words of critic Pat Martin.

The next opportunity will be three years hence--after who knows how many more painful deaths from lung cancer and mesothelioma. Only the National Post, for whom profit is everything, could support such an atrocity--as it did, shamefully, last week. It couldn't even get its basic facts right:

If the men in hard hats who are hauling tons of the stuff out of the earth aren't at risk, it seems rather backward for us to concern ourselves first with the much smaller risks that end users in other countries ultimately face.

Quebec, in fact, has one of the highest rates of mesothelioma in the world. The National Post's position, in any case, was demolished by three experts yesterday.

In my earlier article on the subject, I had inaccurately indicated that the Canadian Labour Congress, while passing an anti-asbestos resolution in May of this year, was delaying implementing it until a 16-page report from Health Canada, which the government has been reviewing since March (!), had been released.

In fact, that was plain wrong: the Quebec Federation of Labour had indeed asked for such a delay in February, but this was overridden by the CLC in its May resolution, which called for an outright asbestos ban, with transition measures for Quebec workers. Its position on the mining and sale of asbestos was duly conveyed to the Canadian government in advance of the Rotterdam Convention meeting in Rome.

The head of the pro-asbestos Chrysotile Institute, Clément Godbout, will be commenting at the end of the week. Godbout is a former president of the QFL (1993-1998). No doubt, with Stephen Harper and the National Post, he is pleased with the outcome. Less pleased, I suspect, will be the countless brown people in the Third World who will die in agony because of Canada's seeming inability to do the right thing.

Globe and Mail cover-up?

As we know, the names of the four RCMP officers who killed Robert Dziekanski, and who remained on active duty afterwards, have never been made public. They were captured on film, exposing an RCMP spokesperson's lies about what had happened.

The officers Tasered an unarmed man who was backing away from them, then piled on top of him, then just stood around after the man's heart stopped. No medical help arrived for twelve minutes. When it finally did, the officers refused to take their handcuffs off the dead man.

No charges have yet been laid. The RCMP, as it turns out, has been delaying the official Braidwood inquiry into Dziekanski's killing. Condolences from officialdom to Dziekanski's mother proved to be crocodile tears. She is presently beside herself.

The Vancouver Sun's Ian Mulgrew pulls no punches:

[T]he material received from RCMP investigators was deemed incomplete, with a required report on the use of deadly force missing.

The inquiry now has been put off until Jan. 19.

"To fulfil its mandate in the most ideal way, the commission needs the cooperation of the RCMP, including access to the Dziekanski case files," explained Art Vertlieb, commission counsel. "But that's unlikely to happen until a decision is made on charges."

This is another arrogant response from the RCMP, which has behaved badly throughout this tragedy.

The force initially misled the public about what happened, tried to suppress a videotape of the incident shot by a witness and now RCMP investigators have taken more than a year to provide Crown with the material needed to decide whether any or all of the four officers involved should be charged with Dziekanski's death.

As noted, the public still does not know the identity of the officers involved. But it now appears that the Globe and Mail has been holding back on us. One of the men has now been charged with impaired driving after a motorcyclist was killed in a fatal collision this past weekend. The Globe reporter, Ian Bailey, is clear: the person charged was one of the four officers involved in the Dziekanski death. Comments on the on-line article were disabled from the get-go.

If Bailey knew this, that strongly suggests that the identities of all four must be known. In their wisdom, have Globe editors been withholding this information from the public? Whatever became of the public's right to know?

If anyone has the names, drop me a line.

UPDATE: (October 29)

The officer has finally been named (h/t commenter Dr. Frink). He is Cpl. Benjamin Monty Robinson. Chris Selley at Megapundit puts this matter very well:

Kudos to the Vancouver Sun for finally naming the RCMP officer who was involved in both the ill-fated takedown of Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver Airport and, allegedly, the death of a 21-year-old motorcyclist in Delta on Saturday night. He is, by the Sun’s reckoning, Cpl. Benjamin Monty Robinson. I take no pleasure in repeating his name here. He might be innocent of all wrongdoing, and he’s entitled to all the due process he can eat. But he is not entitled to a red serge cloak of anonymity that the rest of us aren’t when we make a mess and the relevant authorities investigate us. That’s just one of many rules the RCMP made up for themselves.

And which too many of our media seem quite willing to follow.

UPPERDATE: (October 30)

Cpl. Robinson, as it turns out, was the supervisor of the other Mounties during the Dziekanski killing. According to a police psychologist, Mike Webster, Robinson is a victim too: "Not only is he worrying about the Dziekanski incident. Now he is worried about the outcome of this incident. It is the last thing he needed to have happen."

The man sounds like a real prize. After striking the motorcyclist, according to a witness, he did not bother to go check on the man he had hit. Instead he handed his licence to a bystander and walked off--with his two kids who had been in his car.

It would appear that an alibi is already being prepared for him. Here is his collegial fellow officer Paul Eisenzimmer:

Delta Const. Paul Eisenzimmer said that, in general, anyone who leaves the scene could be charged under the Criminal Code.

"Leaving the scene means avoiding responsibility," Eisenzimmer said. "If someone left their identification there it is hard to say the person is avoiding responsibility.

"But if someone leaves their identification and then leaves the scene the issue is why leave and what have they done in the interim -- have they gone and drank some more?"

I am not alone, I suspect, in reading between the lines here.

[H/t Abbink]

UPPESTDATE: (November 1) More drunken Mounties.

Another reason I hope Obama wins

To prevent knuckleheads like this from being sent up here as ambassadors.

Obama is imperiling the future economic integration of the continent, says Paul Cellucci. Adding environmental and labour standards to NAFTA is "not in [the] Canadian interest."

Thanks, Paul, but until we're under American occupation, we Canadians will decide what's in our interests. Yankee, go home.

Vancouver South: the recount that wasn't

I must admit that I sleepwalked through the reports of the recount in Vancouver South, which confirmed Liberal Ujjal Dosanjh's narrow win against Conservative candidate Wai Young, although reducing Dosanjh's plurality from 33 votes to a mere 22. But there's something just not right here.

The judge who conducted the recount on behalf of Elections Canada didn't recount all, or even most of the ballots.

Now, the Usual Suspects are piling onto Elections Canada for this--it's bias, they suggest, on the part of that arms-length agency. But I suggest they've drawn a bead on the wrong target.

The Canada Elections Act confers certain powers of discretion on judges taking part in recounts:

304. (1) The judge shall conduct the recount by adding the number of votes reported in the statements of the vote or by counting the valid ballots or all of the ballots returned by the deputy returning officers or the Chief Electoral Officer.

A judicial recount, in other words, can simply consist of a re-tallying of vote reports by Deputy Returning Officers, or it can be a recount of valid ballots, or of all ballots (rejected, spoiled, etc.). However, the law doesn't appear to allow for the mere sampling of ballots, contrary to what the Canadian Press has stated. Elections Canada's Handbook on judicial recounts reinforces this point: the judge must choose between options (see p.11), but counting some valid ballots and not others is not among those options.

A judge shall conduct the recount by any of the following procedures:
• by adding the number of votes reported in the statements of the vote;
• by counting the valid ballots; or
• by counting all of the ballots returned by the deputy returning officers or by the Chief Electoral Officer, including the envelopes set aside unopened under the Special Voting Rules. [304(1)]

In this case, even though Dosanjh's win had narrowed by 33% in the ballot-sampling process, the judge elected to pursue the matter no further. This, at least to this layperson, is somewhat suspicious. In my reading, Justice Patrick Dohm failed to conduct a recount within the meaning of the law, and I hope that his "recount" is appealed.

UPDATE: Kady O'Malley has a discussion going over at Maclean's. I think she jumped too soon, but check it out for yourselves.

UPPERDATE: YES!

Indian mass graves, revisited

A certain pint-size hater owes me an apology--but I'm not holding my breath.

From today's Globe and Mail:

The federal government is mapping burial sites at former residential schools as researchers try to identify how many of the estimated thousands of native children who went missing from the schools are buried in unmarked or anonymous graves.

The Globe quotes a recent research report:

"On July 21, 1992, workers with N.I.S. Construction Ltd. uncovered three unmarked graves," the Indian Affairs document states. "On July 22, an additional 15 graves were encountered. They were located in a row paralleling the new gravity sewer main north of residence 0210-01. The contractor indicated there was evidence of another row of graves north of the first row encountered ... All remains unearthed were placed in plastic bags and stored in a locked building."

From the Globe story:

At another school, the St. John's Indian Residential School in Alberta (also known as Wabasca Residential School), the researchers found a document from 1961 describing how the principal came across an unmarked cemetery. A second letter indicates the unidentified principal ultimately cleaned up the site and erected 110 white crosses.

It's a pretty safe bet that this is only the tip of the iceberg. It will be interesting to watch the contortions of the denialists now.

Cajuns for Obama

A shameless riposte to this. Three sad, bitter guys clinging no doubt to guns and religion, versus a joyful crowd dancing and singing in unassimilated Louisiana French. Man, that gumbo looks good!




And this one's for the wingnut paranoids:




Enjoy! You've got 10 days. :)