Friday, September 15, 2006

Kim Campbell Redux

Remember that famous line from former Conservative PM Kim Campbell that "an election is no time to discuss serious issues". I Well it looks like history is repeating itself.

Harper said it wasn't the time to discuss government policies.
Harper, Charest don't see eye to eye on gun registry


Also See

Dawson College Shootings



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Cuddly Bobbie Rae


In response to the Dawson College shootings Liberal Leadership Candidate Bob Rae appeared with his teddy bear in hand. "It's an absolutely bewildering event. I guess we'll reflect on what it means," said Liberal leadership candidate Bob Rae, reached last night. "It just makes you want to hug everyone around you."



Also See

Dawson College Shootings

Liberal Leadership

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I Am A Star Trek Character

A little time waster.....

Your results:
You are Deanna Troi
































Deanna Troi
70%
James T. Kirk (Captain)
70%
Geordi LaForge
65%
Jean-Luc Picard
60%
Worf
60%
An Expendable Character (Redshirt)
55%
Spock
47%
Chekov
45%
Leonard McCoy (Bones)
45%
Will Riker
40%
Mr. Sulu
40%
Uhura
35%
Data
30%
Mr. Scott
20%
Beverly Crusher
15%
You are a caring and loving individual.
You understand people's emotions and
you are able to comfort and counsel them.


Click here to take the Star Trek Personality Quiz


See more of the my characters and quizzes I have taken click here.


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Thursday, September 14, 2006

Fun With Guns


The gun alleged college killer Kimveer Gill displays proudly on his blog is a restricted firearm under Canadian law but popular with the country's shooting fraternity.

“To be perfectly honest it's a lot of fun to shoot,” said Tony Bernardo, executive director of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association, who also owns a Beretta CX4 Storm. The association, lobbies against tougher gun restrictions.

“The little pistol calibre it comes in gives virtually no recoil. It's very accurate. The firearm is just one of those firearms that's just a lot of fun to spend a day at the range with.”

Gee and in college cafeterias too. Very accurate Gill shot 20 people with it, killing one.In probalby under a minute.And it gets better

“Those people who own them are a little horrified at this particular moment. Nobody envisions that this thing would be used in that manner. That's not what it was made for.”

Excuse me what the hell was it made for ...oh yeah shooting cans. Right, gimme a break.

A tip o' the blog to Cowboys For Social Responsibility for this.

See:

Car Registry Didn't Prevent This

Life Is A Video Game

Right Whing Whines About Gun Registry

Gun Control


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About Time


Now lets take the bastards to the International Court for Crimes against Humanity. Having lost his battle in court to allow for secret denetion and torture Bush is trying to get torture allowed through the backdoor. Seeking quote unquote clarification of Article 3 of the Geneva Convention for being to vague, after fifty years, and trying to add a provision in his bill that would allow CIA agents not to be charged with violations post 9/11, this is a real slap in the face.

Now it is time to add this to the long list of reasons for Impeachment. Certainly all the violations of the laws of Amercian and the acts which it is a signatory to is far more serious than moral turpitude that the Republicans used against Clinton.

After the November elections watch the Impeach Bush campaign begin in earnest.

Rebuff for Bush on terror trials in a Senate test

The Senate Armed Services Committee defied President George W. Bush on Thursday, with four Republicans joining Democrats in approving a plan for the trial and interrogation of terrorism suspects that the White House has rejected as unacceptable. The White House had said their legislation would leave the United States no option but to shut down a CIA program to interrogate high-level terrorism suspects. Bush traveled to Capitol Hill with Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday morning. The administration also released a brief letter in which the top lawyers for the military branches said they found no legal objection to the White House proposal to redefine a key provision of the Geneva Conventions.
But Colin Powell, Bush's former secretary of state, sided with the senators, saying in a letter that the president's plan to redefine the Geneva Conventions would encourage the world to "doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism," and "put our own troops at risk."
Powell's statement amounted to a rare public breach with the White House he served, but reflected his strong opposition while in office to the administration's assertions, beginning shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, that the war against Al Qaeda should not be bound by the Geneva Conventions.
The White House made clear that it would fight on despite the Republican rebellion, with Bush saying he would "resist any bill" that did not provide a legal basis for the CIA to continue to employ what he has called "alternative interrogation practices" for terrorism suspects.
The main dispute between the White House and the Senate Republicans revolves around a provision known as Common Article 3, which prohibits inhumane treatment of combatants seized in wartime. General Michael Hayden, the CIA director, has argued that the article's prohibition against "outrages upon personal dignity" must be clarified so that troops and CIA personnel know what is permissible in the interrogation of terrorism suspects.
But Senators Warner, McCain and Graham say the Bush proposal would send a signal that the United States has abandoned its commitment to human rights, and invite other nations to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions as they see fit, eliminating protections for American troops seized in future conflicts.
The senators also dismissed the letter from the military lawyers, saying they had questions about whether it amounted to an authentic endorsement of the White House proposal. They said they put more weight on extensive public testimony in which the lawyers raised doubts about the Bush plan.
Some military officials briefed on the military lawyers' position also disputed the notion that the lawyers had reversed course. They said the lawyers agreed to sign a letter at a meeting on Wednesday after discussing the language over several hours.
The lawyers would agree only to say that they could not find anything illegal about the specific issue of amending Common Article 3, the defense officials said, but still do not endorse several points in the administration's approach.
The senators say their bill will protect the CIA by refining the war crimes act, which criminalizes violations of Common Article 3, to specifically enumerate what violations constitute war crimes.
"What General Hayden wants us to do is immunize him not from liability but from criticism," McCain said after the vote, "because if one of his techniques is made public and he gets criticized, then he can say, 'Well, Congress told me to do it.' He's trying to protect his reputation at the risk of America's reputation."
The other chief dispute concerns the evidence admitted at trial. The Bush plan would allow hearsay and evidence obtained by coercion if it is considered reliable, while the Senate proposal would exclude any testimony obtained by "cruel inhuman, or degrading treatment."
The White House would bar the suspect from seeing classified evidence shown to the jury weighing his case; the senators say that this amounts to a secret trial, and that the suspect must be allowed to see anything the jury sees. They offered a compromise under which a judge would substitute a declassified summary of the evidence.
The committee vote was 15 to 9, with all Democrats joining the four Republicans. The measure now goes to the Senate floor, where Senators Warner, Graham and McCain believe they have a majority made up of Democrats and as many as a half-dozen other Republicans.
Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, warned the administration against taking on McCain, a former prisoner of war.
"They're trying to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions," Levin said, "but the best expert on that is somebody who has very personal experience with those who violate Geneva, and that's Senator McCain."
The situation in the House is very different, with that chamber on track to approve the measure backed by the White House.
"We'll do what the president wants," said Representative Duncan Hunter of California, the Republican who is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
The White House and Republicans on either side of the issue maneuvered furiously for advantage all day.
As the Senate Armed Services Committee met to vote on its alternative to the president's legislation, an anonymous Republican invoked a Senate rule to stop it from meeting, forcing Warner to go to the Senate floor to ask that the hold be lifted. He then praised the Democrats for being "totally cooperative" on the issue, a pointed rebuke to members of his own party who have been pushing the White House view. And he prevailed upon Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican leader, to persuade the senator calling for the hold to lift it.
The White House must now decide whether to press its allies in the Senate to amend the bill on the floor, or to step back and wait until the bill passes and the House and Senate work out differences in conference.
The bill may face amendment in any case. Some Democrats object to a provision that would block detainees from challenging their detention in court. More than two dozen retired federal judges sent a letter to Congress arguing that such a provision would lead to unlawful permanent detention, and defy Supreme Court precedent.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Mark Mazzetti and Carl Hulse contributed reporting.
n but to shut down a CIA program to interrogate high-level terrorism suspects.The White House had said their legislation would leave the United States no option but to shut down a CIo interrogate high-level terrorism suspects.
See

CIA

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The New Market States

I had blogged last year about an interesting article on the creation of the new market state, not a national state perse but a privatized state capable of meeting the needs of global capitalism. That state could be a return to a city state, such as Sinagpore, or it could be a wholly privatized state where-in the citizens were contracted out for services. In effect citizenship was not unlike something out of Heinleins Starship Troopers rather than Rothbards libertarian contract state.
The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History

by Philip Bobbitt


" A new form of the State — the market state – is emerging from this relationship in much the same way that earlier forms since the 15th century have emerged, as a consequence of the sixth great epochal war in modern history.

The “market-state” is the latest constitutional order, one that is just emerging in a struggle for primacy with the dominant constitutional order of the 20th century, the nation-state. Whereas the nation-state based its legitimacy on a promise to better the material well-being of the nation, the market-state promises to maximize the opportunity of each individual citizen. The current conflict is one of several possible wars of the market-states as they seek to open up societies to trade in commerce, ideas, and immigration which excite hostility in those groups that want to use law to enforce religious or ethnic orthodoxy.

A state that privatizes most of its functions will inevitably defend itself by employing its own people as mercenaries-with equally profound strategic consequences. "

In reality Privatization of the State has created a different model of Bobbits Market State. One we saw this summer in the war between Israel and Hezbollah. The former a national state the latter the creation of an asymetrical mini-state within a larger failed state. Those who refer to Hezbollah as an adjunct of Iran as if it were a poltical or military body under Irans control fail to understand this new state that is coming into being in the era of privatization and globalization. As the national States kowtow to the neo-conservative agendas of the World Bank and IMF that is reducing State owned enterprizes and increasing foreign capitals investment, they also begin to move away from providing services. Reductions in taxes and a incetives for privatization leaves the State incapable of dealing with infrastructure whether it is roads or schools, hospitals or welfare, policing or post offices.

Where the State fails new forms of governance, mini-states appear picking up the slack. While the greater State becomes more market orientated, the old state capitalist functions, welfare, construction, policing, etc. become the preview of the mini-state. In the early days of capitalism this was known as the pirate states. Areas given over to the freebooters on the high seas such as Madagascar, Jamaica, etc.

The return of these pirate states in the era of globalization shows the bankruptcy of the IMF/WB neo-con agenda. This is no less true in Bolivia today, the greatest failure of the IMF policy of privatization which has left poor provinces and one rich autonomous zone. The former now run the central government on the basis of the impoverished cocaine growers.

Drugs and narcotics, which allow for easy capitalization, are the source of monies for many of these new mini-states. In the United States in California after Proposition 13 which removed the State's tax base, the reduction in state services saw an increase in gang culture, as Real Estate brokers made money in the suburban developments and large commercial developments, leaving the heart of the cities to the poor. Here new mini-states were created by gang culture as Mike Davis has noted.

The disenfranchised who are left behind by the privatization of the capitalist state become subjects of the franchisee's of these new mini-states. Not citizens but prisoners in their neighbourhoods. Only an anarchist revolution which returns power into the hands of the masses to create and maintain their communities can counteract the continuing development of both the larger Market State and its mini-state franchises.



The New Middle Ages
John Rapley
From Foreign Affairs, May/June 2006

Summary: The Middle Ages ended when the rise of capitalism on a national scale led to powerful states with sovereignty over particular territories and populations. Now that capitalism is operating globally, those states are eroding and a new medievalism is emerging, marked by multiple and overlapping sovereignties and identities -- particularly in the developing world, where states were never strong in the first place.

GANGSTERS' PARADISE

You enter the ghetto through a warren of decrepit alleys crowded with locals seeking refuge from the hot night air of their cramped homes. Suspicious stares alert you that you have entered Kingston's gangland. But if the local don -- or "area leader," in the polite lexicon of official Jamaica -- has granted you permission to enter, you are safe. Here, news travels like dye in water.

The local gang maintains its own system of law and order, complete with a holding cell fashioned from an old chicken coop and a street-corner court. It "taxes" local businesses in return for protecting them, punishing those who refuse to pay with attacks on property and people. It provides a rudimentary welfare safety net by helping locals with school fees, lunch money, and employment -- a function that the Jamaican government used to perform. But over the last couple of decades, keen to reduce spending, it has scaled back many of its operations, leaving a vacuum. As one kind of authority has withdrawn, another has advanced.

Jamaica's gangs -- each a fluid but cohesive organization with a clearly demarcated territory -- fund their activities partly through their participation in one of the industries in the vanguard of globalization: the transshipment of illegal drugs. Although at first glance the gangs seem to be at odds with the government, the local police frequently cooperate with the dons, whose ruthlessly efficient rule can make the cops' jobs easier. The result is a tenuous quid pro quo: if the dons keep order, the police turn a blind eye to the drug trade. Besides, direct assaults on the gangs are often futile. Even when the police capture dons or their gunmen, convictions are next to impossible to obtain because potential witnesses remain silent out of loyalty or fear. Just as the rise of the modern state generated conventional symbols of loyalty -- flags, anthems, national heroes -- so does gangland culture reflect the new power structure. The dons patronize deejays who celebrate them in song, and huge crowds turn out for the gang leaders' funerals, waving flags that symbolize their rule.

Kingston's gang-controlled neighborhoods are just one result of a growing worldwide phenomenon: the rise of private "statelets" that coexist in a delicate, often symbiotic relationship with a larger state. Large sections of Colombia have gone this way, as have some of Mexico's borderlands and vast stretches of the Andes and the adjoining rain forest. Countries such as Afghanistan and Somalia are more or less governed by warlords, and Pakistan's borderlands submit to Islamabad only when the state's armed forces force them to. Private militias have carved up whole swaths of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Papua New Guinea, and at one point militias ruled the Solomon Islands. And the list is growing.

Policy debates and the academic literature on international relations have been preoccupied lately by discussions of so-called failed states. Not all cases in which private actors have assumed statelike functions, however, involve chaos or failure.

Also See:

A History of Canadian Wealth, 1914.

Free Trade; Hong Kong & Somalia

The Spectacle of War on Terror

Calgary Fraud Funds Dubai Boom

The Soviet Union Capitalism's Bulwark

Are Income Trusts Money Laundering

Plutocrats Rule


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Cumupance


The slimy trio of Liberal bloggers, Cerebeus,
Cherniak
and Kinsella, who engaged in a vindictive deliberate political smear and slander campaign against the NDP Candidate, DiNovo have gotten their cumupance.


NDP wins in Parkdale-High Park: Heads Must Roll

DiNovo 41%, Watson 33%

DiNovo Wins Parkdale-High Park

Cheri wins one for the Dippers




Live-Blogging: Parkdale-High Park By-Election

10:04pm
28457 votes in. 220 polls out of 220.
Unusually strong Conservative last poll (the advance poll).
DiNovo (NDP) 11675 (41.0%)
Watson (LIB) 9387 (33.0%)
Hutcheon (PC) 4921 (17.3%)
de Jong (GRN) 1758 (6.2%)
Gryzyma (FCP) 366 (1.3%)
McIntosh (LP) 162 (0.6%)
Ursomarzo (FP) 111 (0.4%)
Turmel (IND) 77 (0.3%)

Well, that’s all folks. DiNovo with a strong plurality of 8% and a devastating defeat for the Ontario Liberal Party.


The smear job they created was used by both Liberal Candidate Sylvia Watson and McGuinty (whom Kinsella 'advises') in the last days of the campign.

Cherniak can now explain how this is any different from Le Affair Thomas Hubert whom he and Kinsella villified and punished for far less inappropriate remarks.Time for Dion to ditch Cherniak.


And if McGuinty had any brains he would ditch Kinsella. But then again in this nasty campaign McGuinty proved he doesn't have any just like brain trust of CCK.

Cherniak and Kinsella pride themselves on being smart political operatives. Well this shows they are not.




These political scarecrows need to visit the Wizard of Oz.









SEE:


DiNovo


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Never Give Up Never Surrender

Stephen Harper speaking the day after the massacre at Dawson College states that he and his government will blunder on trying to get rid of the Gun Registry, oh pardon me the "Long Gun Registry", to differentiate it from the handgun and automatic weapons registry.

"The laws we have didn't prevent this tragedy, which is why our government will be in the future - because of this incident and many others - looking to make our laws more effective," he said in a brief, televised statement.


Wait Kimeveer Gill had a hand gun and an semi-auto along with a shot gun. Why not get rid of the whole gun registry. Heck why license guns period, cause the kid had a license too.

Yet the libertarian in Harper came out when it came to blogs, the internet, and video games;

He referred obliquely to reports that the killer played a violent computer game and posted angry messages of a dark web site.

"We as a society have trouble squaring our outrage at some of the images we see, some of the messages that are communicated to people - young people, in particular - with our belief in freedom and our desire to avoid censorship," he said.

"However bad these things may be, they do not absolve any of us from our moral responsibility as individuals to act in ways that treat our fellow human beings with decency.

"Whether there's something we can do to control it, I can't tell you that, but I can tell you that nothing excuses what the killer did yesterday."


Now of course there is something the State can do about it...since they already control child porn on the net....and there is no need for a new law even.....one actually already exists it just has to be adapted to violent web sites....Canada Censors Cartoons in particular horror/crime comics.


Offences Tending to Corrupt Morals

Corrupting morals


163. (1) Every one commits an offence who

(b) makes, prints, publishes, distributes, sells or has in his possession for the purpose of publication, distribution or circulation a crime comic.

Definition of “crime comic”

(7) In this section, “crime comic” means a magazine, periodical or book that exclusively or substantially comprises matter depicting pictorially

(a) the commission of crimes, real or fictitious; or

(b) events connected with the commission of crimes, real or fictitious, whether occurring before or after the commission of the crime


Not that I am suggesting that this be done, because the problem is not video games or website, or the internet or computers, it is the psychological problem of the emotional plague. When an individual becomes so out of touch with society they become an enemy of society, whether hiding away in their online fantasy world or in the real life fantasy world of the militias/white nationalist christian underground like Timothy McVeigh, or the world of the Jihadist.

So Harper is right there is nothing the State can do about a social problem of alienation in modern mass capitalist society.


Also See

Chris McKinstry

When AI commits suicide

Make Friends and Kill Yourself




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Car Registry Didn't Prevent This

We license drivers, we have a car registry yet it didn't prevent this....


Six children hit by car
A lunch hour hit-and-run accident in Scarborough sent six young children to hospital with minor injuries today after a vehicle jumped a curb in front of a public school.

Any more than a gun registry can prevent what happened at Dawson College yesterday.
The Gun Registry didn't save Anastacia DeSousa rants a Blogging Tory stating the obvious.

Well duh. So if I follow the logic of the blathering Rightwhingers we should get rid of driver licenses and car registration too.

See:

Right Whing Whines About Gun Registry

Gun Control


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Peter Heart Condi

Gone but not forgotten.

The day after Condi left Peter for important affairs of state and not just affairs of the heart, the media is all gossip about the romance of the Maritimes.

When has that ever happened, that reporting on a visit to Timmies and lobster dinner the night before took precidence over a terror attack in the Middle East........

Holding her Timmies coffee addressing the crisis in Syria as Peter looked longingly on, the media finally catch on to Le Affaire.

"She learned a little bit more about life in Atlantic Canada ... She learned about important things, like a double-double," MacKay said, raising laughter.

The media have finally noticed what we in the blogosphere already figured out, that after Belinda, Peter has found solace in the ocean breezes shared in his hometown with his favorite American gal. Rice warms to 'cool, Atlantic breezes'

Rice, MacKay have good 'professional relationship,' US State Dept

Rumour mill churning over the MacKay-Rice relationship

Playing 'Match Up' Diplomacy With Condi

When `stars' collide

Rice laughs off romance rumours

Rice keeps her cool as papers play matchmaker

Condi reaches accord with Canadian envoy

When Condi flies north, diplomatic gossips feel the earth move

Gossips match Rice with Canadian MP

Times has fun with Peter, Condi connection

Foreign affairs, indeed

Rice is above the clouds with Peter MacKay

Condi and the Bachelor

A DATE FOR PETER AND CONDI


To bad none of them got the obvious headline....Cougar spotted in Pictou County.

Though I think this headline says it almost as well;
Rice-MacKay romance 'good laugh'

Of course there are always spoil sports in the blogosphere that think more important issues should have been discussed such a softwood lumber, northern sovereignty, or global warming. But I say pishaw the warm relations between Peter and Condi are a lot more fun. Lighten up. Besides I am sure that Peter's mind was on wood but not the soft kind.

We Canadians are a nation that would rather make love than war, and in this case Le Affaire Peter and Condi certainly has warmed the cockles of our hearts. Especillay after the five year old belated thank you for 9/11. And this is very much different than how we see U.S. Canada relations between Bush and Harper....
Canadians Don't Like Harper's Romance with Bush

And though both of them are warmongers, this is Atlantic Canada afterall home of romance. Witness the success of gay marriage cruises in Halifax Harbour organized by Rosie O'Donnell. Indeed there may be actually something to all this since the Blogging Tories were noticeably silent abou it.

But Condi can be tough, indeed look at who Rice attacked on her visit with Peter; his arch nemisis Jack Layton....
Rice hammers NDP Plank , The cougar defends her boy. Bet it's not just the NDP she hammered. Payback for the Timmies, maybe?

GALLANT GESTURE: Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay reaches for his wallet yesterday before U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice can pay at a Tim Hortons coffee shop in Pictou, N.S. But the cashier trumped MacKay's largesse: The beverages were on the house.
. Foreign relations? (2:32)
CNN's Jeanne Moos has a romantic take on Condoleezza Rice's visit with her Canadian counterpart (September 13)


Also See:

Peter McKay



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