August 2007
Monthly Archive
August 6, 2007
Oh great. Apparently the US Defense Department has lost track of 190,000 weapons in Iraq issued to the country’s security services including 110,000 AK-47s. Due to missing and incomplete records the department also cannot confirm it actually delivered 135,000 pieces of body armor and 115,000 helmets to the Iraqis.
As for those pesky AK-47s, they might ask this guy if he knows where they went:
August 6, 2007
That’s how the Montreal Gazette depicts the sad state that we call Stephen Harper.
It’s as if he hasn’t noticed yet that the recipe he follows almost religiously remains unpalatable to a majority of Canadians. This week’s summer retreat with his caucus in Charlottetown confirmed that he still doesn’t get it.
There, in all its glory, he displayed again his obsessive control of his caucus and of short, simple and sometimes simplistic messages – something that helped him get elected, but that has started to put off more and more voters.
When reporters were “escorted” by RCMP officers from the hotel where the Tory caucus was meeting, allegedly because the families felt intimidated, it was just another embarrassing episode of Harper’s continued paranoia about the media.
Still keeping his MPs and his ministers on a painfully short leash, Harper seems to feel that even after 18 months in office, most members of his government can’t be trusted, or aren’t smart enough, to have a conversation with a reporter without risking derailing his tightly controlled messages.
But even if the PM keeps repeating his tired recipe, he could still pull off another minority if Liberal leader Stphane Dion doesn’t get his own act together in a more serious fashion.
August 5, 2007
What Would NATO Do?
I think this is a timely question that we, as Canadians, need to ponder. Can we rely on NATO to defend Canada’s sovereignty in the Arctic?
Canada has been a NATO partner from the outset – half a century. We’ve maintained land, sea and air forces at home and abroad as part of that obligation.
Now the question becomes does that really mean anything or are we just another Czechoslovakia waiting for the wolves to show up at our door?
While ostensibly a mutual defence alliance, NATO’s real role in the second half of the last century was to ensure the territorial integrity of Western Europe. That’s why we put all those tanks and airplanes over there and why we had all those ships and planes prowling the North Atlantic to protect our sea lanes between Europe and North America.
Your Dad’s NATO ain’t the NATO of today. It’s supposed to be, but the reality of that is unclear. From a Canadian perspective, there’s no better time than now to test those waters.
NATO has gone to war twice – in Yugoslavia (Kosovo) and in Afghanistan. Neither of these wars has actually involved an existential threat to any NATO member nation. Self-defence really wasn’t a factor unless you’re willing to believe that the crimes committed by a bunch of religious nutbars on 11 September, 2001 truly threatened the most powerful nation on our planet.
Now, we’re in Afghanistan for only one reason. Osama bin Laden. But for bin Laden and al-Qaeda, Afghanistan today would be just another dustbowl, languishing in an interminable civil war and ruled by religious nutbars who cruelly oppressed their country’s opium traffickers. In supposed defence of the United States we dutifully stepped in to keep those nutbars at bay and all those opium traffickers have to be enormously grateful for our help.
What’s not been tested is whether post-Soviet NATO would actually rally to defend the territorial integrity of one of its member states, particularly if that member state was – oh, say, Canada.
At the moment, Russia is asserting sovereignty over the resource-rich high Arctic, turf that we were brought up believing was our own. Peter MacKay may scoff at Russia’s claims but that doesn’t give me a lot of comfort coming from a guy who sold out the Progressive Conservatives and, more recently, Atlantic Canada. If he can’t stand up to Stephen Harper, how can we trust him to stand up to Russia?
Russia’s challenge to Canadian sovereignty is the most immediate but, when it comes to our northern front, we face a number of potential challengers. The NATO partner we went to Afghanistan to help is one of them and there are others.
NATO deterred Soviet aggression against Western Europe by openly declaring the alliance would not tolerate any infringement of its territorial integrity and we placed an enormous amount of ordinance and manpower there to prove it. We, that is the NATO nations, didn’t wait for Soviet tanks to roll across the central German plain. At a cost of many, many billions of dollars we invested in the territorial integrity of Western Europe.
Now it’s fair to ask just what NATO is prepared to do for us. If NATO doesn’t recognize our territorial integrity, what earthly good is it to us? We’ve given and given and given to NATO, half a century’s worth of giving. We’ve fought for NATO and paid a blood price.
I think the time has come for Ottawa to get in touch with Brussels and seek a little clarification. If NATO is willing to commit to defending Canada’s territorial integrity – to draw a line in the sand in the same way we did for Europe – then we should back NATO wholeheartedly, even in that impossible fiasco called Afghanistan. Then we would be defending Canada by defending Kabul.
If, however, NATO is going to throw us to the wolves the way the West threw the Sudetenland to the Nazis, surely we’ve got better uses for our soldiers and tanks.
August 4, 2007
An Ontario judge has set aside Karlheinz Schreiber’s $470,000 default judgment against Brian Mulroney – and sent the file to “case management” – a polite term for litigation rehab.
The appellate briefs were fascinating in but one respect – completely absent was the slightest mention of the $300,000 in cash-stuffed envelopes Muldoon pocketed from Schreiber (and I mean “pocketed”) and just what he did, if anything, to deserve it.
C’mon people. Mulroney needs to answer just a few, simple questions:
1. Why did he state, under oath, in his defamation action that he never had any business dealings with Schreiber?
2. What was the money for?
3. If, as Mulroney has said, it was cash received as a retainer, where are the records showing it was received and disbursed in accordance with the Quebec Law Society’s rules governing trust funds?
4. When did Mulroney declare the income he earned from this tidy sum for income tax purposes?
Everything else, including Mulroney’s reputation, rides on the answers to those four questions. They’re simple questions and easily corroborated by predictable paper trails. Let’s get the answers and see the documents.
Stephen Harper ought to be demanding these answers on behalf of the Canadian public. Any guesses why Harpo has gone dumb and mute on this one?
August 3, 2007
Repuglican presidential candidates want to appear tough on terrorism and Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo is no exception.
Tancredo’s secret for deterring terrorism – bomb Muslim holy sites. Seriously, that’s what he said he thinks would work. His advisor, Bay Buchanan, wife of Pat, said her guy is open minded and willing to consider other options.
“This shows that we mean business,” Buchanan said. “There’s no more effective deterrent than that.”
Well, if you’re looking for business, an airstrike on Mecca should get you all the business you can handle. A State Department spokesman called Tancredo’s statements “reprehensible” and “absolutely crazy”
August 3, 2007
Nobody’s perfect. Stuff happens. We all make mistakes. This, however, isn’t about mistakes. It’s about sabotage.
The United States has sabotaged, perhaps irrevocably, the viability of the Iraq state and the future of the Iraqi peoples.
It happened partly through arrogance, partly through sheer stupidity and partly out of self-interest – taken together, a lethal combination.
Arrogance and stupidity are the very hallmark of Dick Cheney. He’s the fool who believes that America’s military prowess is enough to imbue it with diplomatic invincibility. That’s the nonsense all these neocons spin. The world has had six years to observe how this “what we say, goes” attitude works in practice and, stripped bare by an unbroken succession of failures, the mantra looks just plain stupid.
It was arrogance that led Cheney’s boys to believe they could fix their own intelligence and stupidity that led them to believe no one would catch on.
It was arrogance to believe they could conquer Iraq in short order and stupidity that led them to send a third of the soldiers they needed for the job.
It was arrogance that caused them to believe Iraq’s Kurds would lick the boots of their American saviors and stupidity that led them to let the Kurds incorporate their own constitution, the very articles of their secession, into the constitution of Iraq.
It was arrogance that made them believe they would be able to institute a secular government of their choosing to replace the secular government of the man they would send to the gallows. It was the stupidity of this that led them to ignore the reality of Iran and Iraq’s Shiite majority.
It was arrogance that led them to declare “Mission Accomplished” and their profound stupidity that left their military exhausted, nearly broken and firmly stuck in the Mesopotamian quagmire.
Their arrogance and stupidity has left a country in ruins and its peoples in desperate straits. And now, having brought these gifts to Iraq, the White House wants to ensure civil strife for decades to come thanks to an oil law, drafted by Americans to serve America, that, if enacted, will eventually lead to revolt when Iraqis come to realize they have been deceived and cheated.
America’s oil law for Iraq is an act of sabotage. For the sake of Iraq and any slim hopes of peace that remain for that region, let’s hope that Iraqi legislators recognize the trap that has been laid for them before it’s too late.
August 3, 2007
Russia plans to establish a permanent, naval presence in the Mediterranean.
“The Mediterranean Sea is very important strategically for the Black Sea fleet,” Admiral Vladimir Masorin said during a visit to the base of the fleet in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol, RIA news agency reported. “I propose that, with the involvement of the Northern and Baltic fleets, the Russian Navy should restore its permanent presence there.”
Russia is in the process of rebuilding its fleet after decades of neglect and deterioration. The Russian navy still has a base at Tartus in Syria which it could use to re-establish its presence and influence even as American influence in the Middle East wanes.
Russia, India and China are all moving to create world class navies.
August 3, 2007
I’m a motorcyclist so this is something that’s been bugging me for a long, long time.
Despite the loonie’s rise to near parity with the US dollar, Canadian prices for some products are often disproportionately higher than what you would pay “south of the line.”
Take BMW’s F650GS motorcycle as a typical example. In the US, manufacturer’s suggested retail price is $7,100 (USD). In Canada, the MSRP is $9,500 (Cdn) which works out to $9,015 (USD). Why the difference? Don’t ask BMW North America, the company that imports all bikes for both countries. They won’t even respond if you ask.
When I bought a beemer two years ago, I went down to Oregon to get it. Oregon has no sales tax so I wouldn’t get dinged twice. I saved thousands. I still had to pay the GST and PST when I brought the bike back to British Columbia but, even then, the sales taxes were on the lower American price. I even saved hundreds in sales tax.
Now I realize we kicked their ass at Vimy and Falaise and beat them senseless all the way up the Scheldt estuary but is that any way to treat Canadian customers?
CBC offers more examples. A Nissan Altima on the block for $24,000 in the States, $30,200 up here. GAP jeans – $49.50 US, $79.50 Cdn. Walmart’s price for a type of Baush & Lomb contacts – $44.72 US in Buffalo, $89.97 Cdn. in Toronto. Walmart? That outfit?
BMW, Walmart, GAP, Nissan and all the rest of you who want to gouge Canadians – Get Stuffed! If you have examples, add them below.
August 3, 2007
This is a danger to the Republic.
For when a people is divided
within itself about the conduct of its foreign relations, it is unable to agree
on the determination of its true interest. It is unable to prepare adequately for war
or to safeguard successfully its peace….
The spectacle of this great nation which does not know its own mind
is as humiliating as it is dangerous.
– Walter Lippman on pre-WWII American partisanship
August 3, 2007
I don’t get it. You’ve been found guilty of conspiring to commit murder. That means you and at least one other person get into a conspiracy to murder someone, presumably before the event, which may or may not even follow. Then you are your conspirator(s) do murder someone. It’s an Iraqi you suspect of being an insurgent because he’s been arrested and released several times before. Then you take this Iraqi out on the street and – bingo – you murder him, kill him dead.
At trial you’re convicted of murder but acquitted of premeditated murder.
I don’t get it. If you conspired to murder this guy and then took him out on the street and murdered him, what’s not premeditated about that? Pre- meditated. Thought out beforehand.
Oh I know. It wasn’t “premeditated” because that carries a life sentence. And, after all, the murderer was a US Marine and the unfortunate loser he toasted, who probably deserved what he got anyway, was an Iraqi. That explains it.
The verdict in the case of Marine Sergeant Lawrence Hutchins means he could even be released without serving any additional time.
« Previous Page — Next Page »
The Mound of Sound 