Another Morton flip flop.
SUNDAY
Reporters: Is Ed Stelmach in this race?
Morton: “He has a long way to come.”
Reporters : What does that mean? Is it a two-way or a three-way race?
Morton “I think it’s basically Jim or me.”
NOW
Morton: “The real race is between Ed and myself.”
So which is it Ted?
A tip o' the blog to Renewing the One Party State
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Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Smoke And Mirrors
The way the Canadian media is playing up the NATO story one would think that Harper, O'Connor and MacKay had actually gotten some kind of commitment from the organization to help out in Kandahar. The truth is of course they didn't get anything of the kind. As the Financial Times reports;Nato officials said that five to eight of the 50 specific restrictions on national troops had been eliminated, making it easier to move soldiers and equipment across different sectors in Afghanistan.
Five to eight of fifty, that still leaves 45 to 42 conditions that can be applied by NATO members NOT to help out. Not much of a commitment. And just to make that point....José Luis RodrÃguez Zapatero, Spain’s prime minister, and Romano Prodi, his Italian counterpart, insisted that their countries retained the right to decide when troops should be deployed. Mr Prodi said the position of Italy, France, Germany and Spain, none of which station or intend to deploy troops in the turbulent south of Afghanistan, was the same. At a separate press conference, President Jacques Chirac said France could consider sending its troops outside Kabul case by case.
And all those extra troops that NATO committed,making Harper happy, well like the Polish troops, its old news, they were already committed to Afghanistan before this meeting.A UK official also emphasised that Bulgaria, Spain and Macedonia were sending reinforcements to the Afghanistan mission. But Nato diplomats acknowledged that the contributions were relatively small and had been decided beforehand.
And don't count on Germany as Der Spiegel reports;
So Canadian troops are stuck on the frontlines again, taking the most casualities,not because NATO asked them but because Macho Harper and Macho Hillier wanted to play soldier.
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Five to eight of fifty, that still leaves 45 to 42 conditions that can be applied by NATO members NOT to help out. Not much of a commitment. And just to make that point....José Luis RodrÃguez Zapatero, Spain’s prime minister, and Romano Prodi, his Italian counterpart, insisted that their countries retained the right to decide when troops should be deployed. Mr Prodi said the position of Italy, France, Germany and Spain, none of which station or intend to deploy troops in the turbulent south of Afghanistan, was the same. At a separate press conference, President Jacques Chirac said France could consider sending its troops outside Kabul case by case.
And all those extra troops that NATO committed,making Harper happy, well like the Polish troops, its old news, they were already committed to Afghanistan before this meeting.A UK official also emphasised that Bulgaria, Spain and Macedonia were sending reinforcements to the Afghanistan mission. But Nato diplomats acknowledged that the contributions were relatively small and had been decided beforehand.
And don't count on Germany as Der Spiegel reports;
This account of the meeting is surprising, at least at first sight. For weeks, a number of NATO partners -- led by the US, Great Britain, Canada and Denmark -- have conducted a genuine anti-German campaign. Germany has been repeatedly criticized for stationing its troops in the country's north, where they are accused of enjoying a kind of extended vacation, while others are risking their lives in the military skirmishes of the south. But Angela Merkel stood firm in the face of calls for sending German troops to the south. She refered again and again to the good work Germans are doing in the north.
Merkel's position didn't change fundamentally during the NATO summit in Riga. She was the third speaker at the dinner, after British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Canadian counterpart Stephen Harper. Merkel made it more than clear "that we are well positioned with our mandate and that there is no reason to change that mandate," according to government sources. Merkel had already told NATO's Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer that Germany will not send additional troops to Afghanistan.
So Canadian troops are stuck on the frontlines again, taking the most casualities,not because NATO asked them but because Macho Harper and Macho Hillier wanted to play soldier.
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Pakistan Speaks For the Taliban
On Wednesday night, however, a senior Pakistani official insisted that Nato needed to reach an accommodation with the insurgency. “Instead of fighting Taliban militants, foreign troops should reconcile themselves to this reality,” he said. “If the western world makes the mistake of prolonging this war, we would only see a never-ending conflict”. Nato discord mars Afghan headway
Pakistan is once again defending its allies the Taliban. In order to maintain power in oil rich Balochistan (sometimes called Baluchistan) the province which has been fighting for autonomy, the Musharraf regime assassinated the leading spokesman for Baluchistan Autonomy this summer. Along with Pakistani regular army troops occupying the region Pakistan also has used its Secret Service, the notorious pro-Islamist ISI to negotiate a deal with the Taliban in the region to act as shock troops against the Balochistan peoples. It is this province that borders Afghanistan and the Pashtun region of Kandahar.
President Pervez Musharraf and the military are responsible for the worsening of the conflict in Balochistan. Tensions between the government and its Baloch opposition have grown because of Islamabad’s heavy-handed armed response to Baloch militancy and its refusal to negotiate demands for political and economic autonomy. The killing of Baloch leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti in August 2006 sparked riots and will likely lead to more confrontation. The conflict could escalate if the government insists on seeking a military solution to what is a political problem and the international community, especially the U.S., fails to recognise the price that is involved for security in neighbouring Afghanistan.International Crisis Group - Pakistan: the Worsening Conflict in Balochistan
While the Canadian government attempts to negotiate with Pakistan and share joint operations information to protect our troops from Taliban attacks from Pakistan, a better approach would be to support the Balochistan autonomy movement, demanding that the region be recognized for what it is a Nation. After all they did it for Quebec.
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Alberta Business Back PC Candidates
Two interesting Edmonton Journal articles on which Alberta companies back PC leadership candidates. Dinning of course has the backing of the majority of big corporations in the province. But Mark Norris, had the backing of his bosses and their corporation, The Edmoton Oilers.
One of the articles is by the Journals Business reporter the other by the Journals Sports reporter. Not the usual political reporting. But then again in Alberta politics is both, big business and a professional sport.
Yep I said that too.
One of the articles is by the Journals Business reporter the other by the Journals Sports reporter. Not the usual political reporting. But then again in Alberta politics is both, big business and a professional sport.
No secret who backs Dinning businessAs detailed in a 2005 Journal profile, Dinning's corporate ties are far broader than those of any other candidate.
Besides a lengthy stint as a senior exec at TransAlta, the widely perceived front-runner served on the boards of Shaw Communications, Finning International, Parkland Income Fund and Western Financial, among many others.
What's more, as chairman of the Canadian Clean Power Coalition, Dinning rubbed elbows with the brass at Atco, Epcor, Luscar and TransAlta.
His backers include such powerful execs as Finning CEO Doug Whitehead, Shaw founder J.R. Shaw, TransAlta boss Steve Snyder, PCL boss Ross Grieve, Stantec CEO Tony Franceschini, and Parkland founder Jack Donald.
Not only did The Globe and Mail -- the preferred daily read of the nation's corporate elite -- endorse Dinning in a recent editorial, its Calgary-based business columnist, Deborah Yedlin, also gave the ex-Alberta treasurer two thumbs up.
While Edmonton's Mark Norris, Alberta's former economic development minister, also boasts some key corporate backers -- including Calgary tycoon Murray Edwards -- the buzz on the street indicates that most of the big-money crowd backs Dinning.
In fact, only one company -- Agrium -- offered any specifics, noting that its chairman, longtime Dinning acquaintance Frank Proto, has contributed $250 to the candidate's campaign.
Two firms -- Telus and EnCana -- said they coughed up $5,000 apiece for each of the eight candidates. Meanwhile, 14 other firms, including Imperial Oil, Agrium, Epcor, Syncrude and ATB Financial, said their own in-house policies forbid any financial contributions to individual politicians.
Only three firms -- WestJet, Agrium and PCL -- specifically confirmed who their CEOs are personally supporting (Dinning, in each case). But it's well-known that other senior execs whose firms were polled are also in the Dinning camp.
Mark Norris and the Edmonton Oilers
The chair of the Oilers ownership group, Cal Nichols, was also the driving force behind GLG Consulting Ltd. Formed in Dec., 2004, it was a unique corporate mechanism that essentially morphed into the financial backing and campaign team for Mark Norris, who went down in flames as a first ballot also-ran Saturday. GLG employed Norris, a former MLA who lost his seat in the 2004 election, as its president at $10,000 per month until last May when he resigned. GLG's 130-odd shareholders included Nichols and at least nine other members of the Oilers ownership group, as well as Edmonton Rush lacrosse team owners Craig Anstead and Bruce Urban.
On Saturday, Nichols had a team of about 20 people manning the phones at his west-end Gasland offices, urging people to brave the chill and vote for Norris. But he was a distant sixth, well behind Calgarians Jim Dinning and Ted Morton and Edmonton-area MLA Ed Stelmach, who will duke it out on a second ballot next weekend.
So the line between Norris and Oilers owners like Nichols, Ron Hodgson, Gary Gregg and Ed Bean is indeed a straight one.
And if a sports fan wants to discern the value of friends in high places, he need only ask the Eskimos, who have always enjoyed a cozy relationship with the Conservative party, owing to the fact former premiers Peter Lougheed and Don Getty are Eskimo alumni. So too is current lieutenant-governor Norman Kwong.
Do you think it's a coincidence that Eskimos CEO Rick LeLacheur mused aloud about new seats for Commonwealth Stadium mere weeks before the provincial government announced a commitment of $9.5 million to do the job? Me neither. The Eskimos are connected the way the Oilers can only dream about.
But in their quest to increase Edmonton's political voice in the provincial arena, Nichols and the rest of GLG's shareholders simply backed the wrong horse.
Yep I said that too.
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