February 2008
Monthly Archive
February 29, 2008
Forget the budget or the nonsensical mission to Afghanistan or even climate change. Stephen Harper’s government deserves to be toppled for the pure sake of the Canadian people.
Read the accounts, Dana Cadman’s claims, Jodi Cadman’s claims, the taped voice of Harper himself – these people are morally unfit to control our government.
Stand up Stephane and do what’s right – defeat Harper. Oh, and by the way, while you’re at it come up with some clear, workable policies that Canadian voters can understand and support.
February 29, 2008
Your Choice:
– Taliban Justice
– Warlord Justice
February 29, 2008
Canadian forces in Afghanistan are back to handing detainees over to Afghan authorities for – why, for detention of course.
Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security has assured us that they won’t torture or otherwise abuse detainees never, ever, ever again. Really, they mean it. No, really.
From the Globe & Mail:
“The Afghan government has been lobbying Canada to resume its transfers, in part because the cutoff indicated Canada’s belief that detainees face torture in the Afghan system — a propaganda victory for the Taliban, Afghan officials argued, and a source of friction with other NATO allies in southern Afghanistan who are also bound by legal conventions that forbid sending detainees into the hands of known torturers.”
Interesting, it was the Canadian belief, not the actual torturing itself that was a propaganda victory for the Taliban. Curious place, Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, Prince Harry is winging his way home, plucked out of Afghanistan after that vermin, Matt Drudge, got the enormous journalistic non-scoop and ran the story of Harry’s service with his regiment in the combat zone. Brit journalists had known about it for, well forever, but kept the secret to ensure Harry’s and his comrades’ safety.
February 29, 2008
Harper must hate it when his creepy underlings come up for air and that includes evangelist Charles McVety of the Canada Family Action Committee.
McVety, who looks like a Tony Soprano Capo, has lurked behind Harper for years and the more you look into the guy, the less there is to like.
Now McVety is claiming that he’s behind SHarper’s “social conservative” move to deny tax credits to TV and film productions that contain graphic sex and violence or other “offensive” content.
Memo to Harper: I don’t want you or those “the world is 6,000 years old” freaks, whether within your cabinet or not, deciding what will and won’t be sufficiently decent to qualify for tax credits. Take your “social conservative” agenda and ram it right up your Born Again ass.
February 29, 2008
I genuinely hope Conrad Black has a good weekend if only because it may be the last one he spends as a free man for several years.
Lord Crossharbour of Wastewater has been ordered to the GreyBar Hotel no later than Monday.
I don’t know what it says about me but I can’t find any joy or mirth or satisfaction in his imprisonment. It’s like a Greek tragedy. He had so much but always demanded more.
February 29, 2008
It was one thing for the Harpies to maintain, even without having the guts to come out and say it, that Chuck Cadman’s widow, Dona, was wrong about her claim that her husband was offered a million-dollar insurance policy bribe to vote against the Martin government. Now Chuck’s daughter has confirmed her mother’s account.
From the Toronto Star:
“Independent MP Chuck Cadman confided on his deathbed to his daughter days after the 2005 budget vote that he had been offered an insurance policy for a million dollars by the Conservatives.
Jodi Cadman said this morning she burst into tears when her father revealed that news to her.
“My first reaction was I was hurt, very hurt and I started crying,” she said in an interview. “If there was an Achilles heel for him, it was complete selflessness. It would have benefited myself and my mom.”
That despicable, greasy, lying pr__k of a prime minister isn’t going to talk his way out of this one. The author of the Cadman bio has a tape of Harper making it clear he knew the offer was going to be made and did nothing to stop it. He claims he told them not to bother because Cadman wouldn’t accept but he didn’t order them not to do it.
You can listen to the tape itself, Harper’s own admissions, here:
http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/308224
February 29, 2008
A revealing study released by the
Brookings Institution yesterday. It was a survey of what happens to democracy when superpowers instal a new head of state. The study went back through the Cold War years and examined “regime change” American-style and the Soviet-variety.
The remarkable finding was that, democratic American or totalitarian Soviet, the result was pretty much the same – a significant loss in democratic freedom for the people after regime change. The numbers were close enough you could almost say they were a match between the US and the USSR.
The paper, entitled “Superpower Interventions and Their Consequences for Democracy,” explained why the installation of a new leader to bring democracy to a people actually does just the opposite. To be overly simplistic, it’s because the installing superpower doesn’t pick the new leader to bring democracy but to put down a group or groups of unwanted types in that country. To fulfil his mandate, the new leader has to crack down and that often entails ignoring laws that interfere with doing just that.
To make it seem as though democracy is the real agenda, the superpower often ensures that safe elections are held. Good for public consumption at home. Sound familiar?
For the first five years, on average, there is a marked decline in political and human rights in the wake of regime change. After that, it seems to depend on how much success the new boy has had in wiping out the bad guys.
And that kiddies explains why Afghanistan and Iraq remain such horrible failures and why their innocent civilians will continue to suffer so.
http://www.brookings.edu/
February 29, 2008
Outrageous blasphemer and, worse, journalism student, Pervez Kambakhsh still languishes in an Afghan prison cell and still has a date with the hangman.
Balk Province Attorney-General Qazi Hafizullah Khaliqyar told The Independent:
“Of course we didn’t intend to violate any rights of journalists. The media law clearly prohibits insulting religious values and beliefs. [Journalists] can’t violate the values of Islam and they have to keep that in mind,” Khaliqyar says. Kambakhsh “has been referred to an Islamic court and would be dealt with according to Shari’a law.”
As long as we’ve got the planes and the bombs over there anyway, how ’bout we send a few Khaliqyar’s way where they could really do some good.
February 29, 2008
If you listen to Harper and Hillier and Scheffer, the US and NATO are making real progress in Afghanistan.
If you listen to Afghanis, you get a different story. To see how Afghan women see Afghanistan, stop by every now and then at www.rawa.org. Here are the top headlines for the past week:
– 70 Percent of Afghanistan still lawless
– Husband cuts toes off his wife, pours hot water on her (with photos)
– Afghanistan – women’s lives worse than ever
– Bashira, gang-raped in Sar-e-Pul province, calls for justice
– Wanted for empty prison, some convicted Afghan drug barons
– The masscre in Shagay, Bakwa district of Fara Province
– Afghanistan sitting on a gold mine
– Gang-rape of young girls in northern Afghanistan.
A warning: this site has photographs of abused Afghan women that are, to say the least, disturbing.
Six years after we drove out the Taliban, this is what we’ve allowed the place to become? The people of Afghanistan will never be free or safe until we destroy the warlords’ iron grip on that country.
We need to realize that we have delivered the people of Afghanistan into the hands of a gang of butchers that is almost indistinguishable from the bunch we drove out. If we’re there to liberate the people of Afghanistan, let’s do it – starting in Kabul.
February 29, 2008
Boyd Coddington, the maestro of custom car production, has died at 63 of complications from surgery. Coddington suffered from diabetes. His custom hot rods are the stuff of legend, genuine rolling works of art like the 1957 Chevrolet Belair above called CheZoom.
Next Page »
The Mound of Sound 