False Advertising

As of today this blog will no longer have Google AdSense or any other advertising.

I only added it out of curiosity. I never really expected it to rake in the dough and it didn't - it only lasted as long as it did because I never got around to getting rid of it. I use FireFox at home with Ad Block - so I never even saw it usually.

But I checked out my blog from another computer on Explorer today, and on a post about BC's abortion clinic bubble law I did a few months ago that I referenced recently I noticed AdSense was referring my readers to the Calgary Crisis Pregnancy Center.

And the Calgary Crisis Pregnancy Center like other CPC's, is an evangelical anti-choice front group carefully disguised as an unbiased health resource for pregnant women. (PDF Link)

They would doubtless argue the description. They are very careful to hide what they are really about on their website and the astro-turf carpet bomb linking that is the first several pages of Google results for them. Nowhere on their website soliciting women experiencing an unplanned pregnancy (No, I won't be linking to it.) are they upfront about the fact that despite claiming to be a one stop 'non-judgemental' resource of options they will never, under any circumstance refer women to an abortion provider. That they oppose all forms of birth-control. That they promote a guilt oriented post abortion 'counseling program' designed to make women regret that they had the choice to end a pregnancy.

They certainly won't reveal that Crisis Pregnancy Centers have been credibly accused of coercive practices, adoption irregularities, links to violent extremists (Gunman James Kopp was affiliated with a CPC and was investigated for attempting to coerce and take out of state a teenage girl.) and deliberately stringing vulnerable women along until their pregnancies reach an advanced stage where abortions would be dangerous.

I absolutely refuse to have my blog associated with such unethical people. Bye bye AdSense.

The Death of Crime

In the Netherlands, the crime rate is so low they are soon going to have to either shut down some of their prisons or import felons from Belgium.

Let's hear it for a generous welfare state and decriminalizing practically all victimless crimes.

The Dutch justice ministry has announced it will close eight prisons and cut 1,200 jobs in the prison system. A decline in crime has left many cells empty.

During the 1990s the Netherlands faced a shortage of prison cells, but a decline in crime has since led to overcapacity in the prison system. The country now has capacity for 14,000 prisoners but only 12,000 detainees.

Deputy justice minister Nebahat Albayrak announced on Tuesday that eight prisons will be closed, resulting in the loss of 1,200 jobs. Natural redundancy and other measures should prevent any forced lay-offs, the minister said.

The overcapacity is a result of the declining crime rate, which the ministry's research department expects to continue for some time.

Omar Khadr repeatedly threatened with rape in Gitmo

While he was at Guantanamo, Omar Khadr was beaten to the head, nearly suffocated, threatened with having his clothes taken indefinitely, and lunged at by attack dogs while wearing a bag over his head. “Your life is in my hands,” an intelligence officer told him during an interrogation in the spring of 2003.

During the questioning, Omar gave an answer the interrogator did not like. The man spat in his face and threatened to send him to Israel, Egypt, Jordan or Syria—places where they tortured people the old-fashioned way: very slowly, analytically removing body parts. The Egyptians, the interrogator told Omar, would hand him to Askri raqm tisa—Soldier Number Nine. Soldier Number Nine, the interrogator explained, was a guard who specialized in raping prisoners.

Omar’s chair was removed. Because his hands and ankles were shackled, he fell to the floor. His interrogator told him to get up. Standing up was hard, because he could not use his hands. When he did, his interrogator told him to sit down again. When he sat, the interrogator told him to stand again. He refused. The interrogator called two guards into the room, who grabbed Omar by the neck and arms, lifted him into the air, and dropped him onto the floor. The interrogator told them to do it again. He told them to do it again, and again, and again. Then he said he was locking Omar’s case file in a safe: Omar would spend the rest of his life in a cell at Guantanamo Bay.

Several weeks later, a man who claimed to be Afghani interrogated Omar. He wore an American flag on his uniform pants. He said his name was “Izmarai”—lion—and that he was from Wardeq. He spoke in Farsi, and occasionally Pashto and English. Izmarai said a new prison was under construction in Afghanistan for uncooperative detainees. “In Afghanistan,” Izmarai said, “they like small boys.” He pulled out a photograph of Omar and wrote on it, in Pashto, “This detainee must be transferred to Bagram.”

Omar was taken from his chair and short-shackled to an eye-bolt in the floor, his hands behind his knees. He was left that way for six hours, during which time he soiled himself and guards and intelligence officers came in and laughed at him.

UPDATE: Some of the detainee abuse photos Obama is trying to suppress are reported to be of the rape of male and female detainees.

Tax-payer funded Plagiarism

Michael Geist spots and Boing Boing pounces on, the Conference Board of Canada taking $15,000 in tax-payers money - to copy and paste a US recording industry report on copyright and claim it as their own.

The Conference Board of Canada has issued a response to my posting on its Digital Economy report. The organization defends the report, arguing that there was only one case of a missed citation (which it has corrected) and acknowledging that "some of the cited paragraphs closely approximate the wording of a source document." It claims that it conducted a full review of the various arguments and included "those arguments considered most relevant to the policy under review." Since this is contract research funded by the copyright lobby groups and the Ontario government, the Conference Board refuses to disclose the terms of the contract.

Leaving aside the fact that all the most relevant arguments just happen to come from a U.S. lobby group with direct links to the funders of the Digital Economy report, the Conference Board of Canada has failed to understand the rules associated with plagiarism as a sprinkling of citations is simply not good enough. As the University of Ottawa's plagiarism guidelines (which are mirrored in academic institutions around the world) note "if you use someone else's words, data, etc., use quotation marks and give a complete reference." The Digital Economy report repeatedly used the same or very similar wording to the IIPA document and does not use quotations. Moreover, my posting cited to factual errors contained within the report and the press release. For example, the Conference Board claimed that the OECD concluded that Canada is the world's file sharing capital on a per capita basis. This is simply false as anyone who reads the OECD report will find that it did not reach that conclusion. Nevertheless, the Conference Board has chosen not to respond to this issue.

Leaving aside the irony of a stolen defense of strict copyright laws, how do you like your tax dollars paying for false statistics about Canadian file-sharing in an effort to reduce your digital rights?

UPDATE: Days after the Conference Board Report was revealed to be riddled with inaccuracies and blatant plagiarism CanWest reports on it - without ever mentioning any of this.

UPDATE 2 - May 28: The Conference Board of Canada washes their hands of the disgraced report.

Psychobilly Freakout

Reverend Horton Heat

Sunday Linkblast - May 24

• Canadian Court finds African man guilty of war crimes
  But American war criminals like George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice are welcomed with open arms and $1000 a plate dinners. They won't be attending any in Spain any time soon though.
  
  
• Turning muscle tissue into antibody factories
  The human immune system is based in the marrow inside our bones - which is why you have joint ache when it goes into overdrive when you're sick - scientists find an alternative that bypasses this system.
  
  
• Iran isn't the boogieman we're constantly told it is
  But Obama's diplomatic overtures may be designed to fail anyway.
  
  
• Imagination is built in rather than learned
  Babies are gurgling, drooling and fantasizing constantly.
  
  
• In praise of cities
  Conservative contempt for cities and those who dwell in them can be seen in their rhetoric and their efforts to marginalize them - here in Alberta a rural vote has been carefully gerrymandered to be worth more than multiple urban votes.
  
  
• Plastic lobby paid researcher finds cloth bags dangerous
  yeah, no conflict there.
  
  
• High school dealer runs clandestine operation out of his locker
  A brisk trade in banned books.
  
  
• The heartbeat of the world
  Rhythmic magma pulses from the center of the Earth discovered.

Fight the real enemy

It's been almost eighteen years since Sinéad O'Connor's infamous appearance on Saturday Night Live. That was the acapella performance of the Bob Marley song War that she capped by holding up a picture of the pope saying 'Fight the real enemy.' and carefully tearing it to pieces live on camera.

People went crazy of course. She was vilified, condemned and there were organized campaigns to burn or crush her albums.

What her critics flat out refused to do was address her reasons for dong what she did. She was trying to draw attention to a long toxic history of horrific child abuse by church institutions and representatives. Specifically to the Irish experience of the various residence schools, reformatories and orphanages run by the church. Over the years O'Connor has vacillated between ruing an act she has described as adolescent rebellion and defiantly refusing to apologize for it.

Now a report has come out in Ireland detailing the systemic abuse she was protesting.

Irish people had some knowledge before this of the obscene depravity that permeated the industrial school system that existed in Ireland until the 1980s. The commission began gathering evidence in 2000 after a series on RTE (Irish national television), called "States of Fear," provided documentary evidence of the reign of terror in institutions for homeless, abandoned and delinquent children. And some victims of abuse, like the writer and actor Mannix Flynn, who "served time" in St. Josephs Industrial School in Letterfrack after he stole a bicycle, published compelling accounts of their mistreatment more than 10 years ago.

However the revelation this week of the full extent of the "savage reality" of life in these schools has come as a profound shock, and raised disturbing questions about the kind of society that existed in Ireland for most of the 20th century.

Violence in almost all Irish schools was once the norm. (De La Salle Brothers in the high school I attended in the 1950s used a hammer handle and straps to administer punishment.) But even by the standards of the time, the treatment meted out to the nation's most defenseless children was vicious and inhumane. The report of the commission, chaired by Judge Sean Ryan, undermines any defense that ill-treatment of children was the exception, or that the industrial schools were essentially benign institutions. It detailed abuse, much of it sexual, some of it physical, in 216 institutions and implicated 800 brothers, nuns and lay people.

In a typical victim testimony, a boy recounted how "one brother kept watch while the other abused me (sexually) ... then they changed over." He added, "Every time it ended with a beating. When I told the priest about it in confession, he called me a liar."

Ireland has a long record of "running away from the appalling truth of the physical and sexual torture experienced by so many children," commented Mary Raftery, producer of the "States of Fear" television series, in Thursday's Irish Times. No one could now plead that just a few "bad apples" were responsible or that it was all in the past, she wrote, nor could anyone make "snide suggestions" that those revealing their abuse were motivated by the prospect of financial compensation.

Locking up children and treating them cruelly was not unknown in other western European countries in the 20th century, but Ireland did it on an industrial scale. The numbers of children incarcerated in Irish institutions -- for truancy, begging, running away from home, or simply because they were put there by their parents -- was higher than in England, Scotland and Wales combined. The commission was especially critical of the Irish Department of Education for its "deferential" and "submissive" attitude toward the religious orders, especially the Christian Brothers, who received taxpayers' money to house the country's most inconvenient children.

Sinéad was responding to injustice on a scale that's hard to imagine. Even now the Catholic religious orders responsible for decades of horrific abuse had enough power in Ireland to force the commission to withhold names and protect the perpetrators of multiple rapes, torture and abuse.

In the US a retired ArchBishop, himself responsible for hiding and minimizing acts of abuse by himself and others says that the church representatives responsible for these acts just didn't know they were doing anything wrong.

Said Rembert G Weakland:

We all considered sexual abuse of minors as a moral evil, but had no understanding of its criminal nature.

Weakland, who retired in 2002 after it became known that he paid $450,000 in 1998 to a man who had accused him of date rape years earlier, said he initially:

Accepted naively the common view that it was not necessary to worry about the effects on the youngsters: either they would not remember or they would ‘grow out of it’.

Calling these people and the institution that protected and enabled them 'the real enemy' seems reasonable to me.

Lots of people addressing this in the blogosphere, here's some highlights:

Damnit Janet!: They hate children don't they?

Canadian Cynic: The Catholic Problem

Telus payroll outsourcing firm sued for incompetence

As someone formerly reluctantly dependent on the soul crushing hell of red tape, open disdain and double-talk that is the Telus payroll department, this isn't even remotely surprising.

Calgary health-care workers file lawsuit over payroll and benefit errors

By Bill Graveland

CALGARY — Calgary health-care workers have filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the company that handles their payroll and benefits.

The proposed class action against Telus Sourcing Solutions alleges that years of payroll errors, over-and under-payments and pension problems have left workers in the former Calgary health region frustrated and angry. Some workers claim they are out of pocket as well.

"I want to use my energy to do a good job," said Maureen Mackrory, a social worker who deals with domestic violence prevention and works with men who are charged and convicted.

"I can't do that when I'm distracted all the time with people telling me stories about how they were underpaid or not paid and I just want something to be done," she said Thursday.

"When we had in-house workers on our pension benefits and salaries, we didn't have the hassle and now it's just chaos."

Alberta Health Services contracted out payroll and benefits to Telus Sourcing Solutions in 2003.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of more than 4,000 health-care employees. If it is certified and then successful, any money awarded will be donated to charity.

UPDATE: Internal Telus documents directly refute their claim of 99.9% payroll accuracy.

Rights aren't rights if someone can take them away

WASHINGTON — A federal judge says the United States can continue to hold some prisoners at Guantanamo Bay indefinitely without any charges.

U.S. District Judge John Bates' opinion issued Tuesday night limited the Obama administration's definition of who can be held. But he said Congress in the days after Sept. 11, 2001 gave the president the authority to hold anyone involved in planning, aiding or carrying out the terrorist attacks.

"Rights aren't rights if someone can take them away, they're privileges. That's all we've ever had in this country, a bill of temporary privileges." - George Carlin

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Ennio Morricone in Concert

And the Ukulele version:

The unreliability of torture was the point

It's becoming clearer all the time that to Dick Cheney the unreliability of torture, the tendency of people being tortured to confabulate, to tell their tormentors whatever they want to hear wasn't a bug, it was a feature.

(CNN) -- Finding a "smoking gun" linking Iraq and al Qaeda became the main purpose of the abusive interrogation program the Bush administration authorized in 2002, a former State Department official told CNN on Thursday.

Dick Cheney's office ordered use of "alternative" techniques against CIA's recommendations, aide says.

The allegation was included in an online broadside aimed at former Vice President Dick Cheney by Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff for then-Secretary of State Colin Powell. In it, Wilkerson wrote that the interrogation program began in April and May of 2002, and then-Vice President Cheney's office kept close tabs on the questioning.
"Its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at preempting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al Qaeda," Wilkerson wrote in The Washington Note, an online political journal.

Torture was never about saving lives or mythical TV ticking bomb scenarios. It was all about getting confirmation of an Iraq/al Qaeda link. Since such a link between a secular police state and fanatical opponents of all secular states in the Middle East did not exist, the unreliability of torture was necessary to get the false confirmation the Bush administration wanted.

Extending sympathies

This is a condolence post to my friends in the BC blogosphere. Some of you may know that before Calgary and a brief sojourn up north I lived in the lower mainland for over ten years. I regularly check in on more BC bloggers than from any other province besides my own and they all have my sympathies today.

Trust me folks, I know what it's like feeling like you live in occupied territory, at least you actually have an opposition big enough to be an opposition.

I'm not interested now in Monday morning quarterbacking - which will doubtless focus on the carbon tax. Of course, following the standard of the reporting on the controversy so far and taking their cue from BC's hard right Canwest corporate media domination, the focus will still be on the politics and the optics and ignore the substantive arguments about efficacy and equity of carbon tax VS cap and trade. Like most people I'm inclined to think we need both but I do believe this was a good faith policy position.

Shouting out to some of my favorite BC bloggers Rossk, Allison, Northern BC Dipper, courage, and cut the cards. The only slim consolation I can give you; I suspect governments that infuriate you produce more blogging than a government you agree more than disagree with.

An open letter to Americans from a Canadian about healthcare.

Hi folks, first, congratulations on Obama winning! That and the stunning, historic collapse of your major right wing party into the creepy muttering guy who avoids your eyes and shoves mimeographed tracks about cleansing rains under your door. Demographically, this doesn't seem like a voting block likely to return them to power while the Jonas Brothers are still touring.

In fact, what you really need to worry about is a Democratic Party that never saw a huge overwhelming victory they couldn't compromise and water down to nothing. Supporters of the single-payer, universal healthcare model - consistently the preferred choice of the majority of you - aren't even allowed in the room.

And 'Canada' has become a bad word.

There are forces working against the idea of Canadian style universal single-payer healthcare in America, even a few Canadians have joined in. A prominent one is Doctor Brian Day, the owner of a chain of private clinics. Doctor Day passionately believes that laws that protect public healthcare at the expense of his income are wrong.

The homegrown opponents of public healthcare are a mixed bag of frustrated right wingers, boardroom libertarians with well thumbed copies of the Fountainhead by their bedsides and as mentioned, by those with explicit business interests in the downfall of public healthcare. Our current extremely right wing Prime Minister used to run a 'tax-payers rights' group called the National Citizens Coalition, founded by an Insurance company owner who lost money when healthcare became a right in Canada.

When you hear people slamming Canadian healthcare, keep a few facts in mind.

• Overwhelmingly, in poll after poll Canadians support our public healthcare system, oppose further intrusion into it by the private sector and are prepared to pay higher taxes if necessary to improve and protect it.
  
• The Canadian healthcare system costs significantly less, per capita and as a percentage of GDP than the American healthcare system. We have drastically less red tape and paperwork as there's only one insurer, they have to cover you, and they don't contest any claims.
  
• While costing less than the American system, the Canadian system covers everybody and in the event of a family medical crisis, allows families to deal with pain and loss without losing their homes.

And right now, just for a little while maybe, you have the kind of political momentum that could get you a fully public, universal healthcare system like ours. But the option isn't even allowed in the discussion.

Listen, when Canadians pontificate about how much better our healthcare system is than yours I bet we come off like snide douchebags sometimes, present company included. But its basically because we hope you take our word for it and try it.

Try not worrying if you'll lose your house because somebody got sick. Try going through a day knowing you have quality guaranteed healthcare without a premium that has you stretching the leftovers. Try having a healthier population and a more competitive economy. Try getting medical care based on first come first served balanced with medical judgement, with no one able to buy their way ahead of you.

I really think if you tried it you'd like it and so do they, which is why they're trying to kill it. They want you to believe that no serious person is even considering a public single-payer model and the best solution is to subsidize the same health insurance companies that have been measuring out people's life blood right up to the edge of their profit margin and no further. The same bastards but even richer and more powerful in other words.

Hey aren't you Americans? Since when do you settle for second best?

UPDATE: A word from the Edmonton Journal:

The reason we like our system here is simple enough and certainly has nothing to do with a proclivity for collectivism or dim-witted national bravado. We fully recognize the myriad problems, such as wait times. But most of the time, it just works -- and works equally for people across the economic spectrum. Canadians live longer, are statistically more healthy and spend far less per capita on health care than our American neighbours.

Police/State?

I did a callback to a piece I did a couple months ago and it caught people's eye this time. Appearing and then disappearing in the wink of an eye and never noted in the media in English Canada, the fact that at least three of the undercover Quebec police officers at the SPP protests in Montebello were officially listed in internal police documents as 'provocateurs'.

Last month in Vancouver a newspaper photographer was assaulted and his camera seized at the scene of a shooting by a police officer.

Last year in Vancouver a Polish man was electrocuted to death by the RCMP, who then seized a witness's video camera and tried to withhold its contents while releasing statements that directly contradicted the video in their possession.

I submit that the brutality, deception, swarm attack tactical sense and aversion to oversight that ties these incidents together stems from the same malign influence from south of the border: The militarization of civilian police.

In the US police militarization stems from the drug war, more specifically from the turf war mentality of multiple branches of law enforcement all fighting for funding. Combined with draconian asset forfeiture laws, American police operate under a range of perverse incentives to engage in large scale legal robbery with violence.

Want to know what it's like to be on the receiving end of American military anti-insurgent tactics? Live in the American inner city and you have a decent chance of finding out.

From a tactical militarized perspective, viewing everyone but your brothers as potential enemies permits a range of responses that the traditional people's servant role of a civilian police force does not. Using a hand held cattle prod on the enemy is acceptable. Suppressing evidence of wrong doing, even destroying video and assaulting journalists is acceptable if the public is the enemy.

Using undercover police tasked to provoke violence to justify an overwhelming police response is acceptable - protesters are the enemy after all, get the basis established for bashing their heads now. Got to justify that tactical budget or we won't get anymore toys.

It seems to me that we're at a crisis point. A point where we decide once and for all what kind of society we will be living in. US style hyper aggressive military style policing or a police force that sees fellow citizens rather than potential targets. We have courts pushing back against this kind of behavior on the one hand, and police commissions finding that it's possible to shoot a prisoner in the back of the head in self defense on the other.

We can't hope for the courts to restrain this philosophy of policing, we need to make police reform, radical police reform nation wide at the federal, provincial and municipal level part of the political agenda.

Montebello flashback

An MP who was involved in last month's G20 protests in London is to call for an investigation into whether the police used agents provocateurs to incite the crowds.

Liberal Democrat Tom Brake says he saw what he believed to be two plain-clothes police officers go through a police cordon after presenting their ID cards.

Brake, who along with hundreds of others was corralled behind police lines near Bank tube station in the City of London on the day of the protests, says he was informed by people in the crowd that the men had been seen to throw bottles at the police and had encouraged others to do the same shortly before they passed through the cordon.

Brake, a member of the influential home affairs select committee, will raise the allegations when he gives evidence before parliament's joint committee on human rights on Tuesday.

"When I was in the middle of the crowd, two people came over to me and said, 'There are people over there who we believe are policemen and who have been encouraging the crowd to throw things at the police,'" Brake said. But when the crowd became suspicious of the men and accused them of being police officers, the pair approached the police line and passed through after showing some form of identification.

Brake has produced a draft report of his experiences for the human rights committee, having received written statements from people in the crowd. These include Tony Amos, a photographer who was standing with protesters in the Royal Exchange between 5pm and 6pm. "He [one of the alleged officers] was egging protesters on. It was very noticeable," Amos said. "Then suddenly a protester seemed to identify him as a policeman and turned on him. He ­legged it towards the police line, flashed some ID and they just let him through, no questions asked."

Amos added: "He was pretty much inciting the crowd. He could not be called an observer. I don't believe in conspiracy theories but this really struck me. Hopefully, a review of video evidence will clear this up."

Flashback: Undercover police provocateurs exposed by protesters. A year later access to information turned up Sûreté documents officially listing undercover officers as 'provocateurs'.

"You seem to be trying to write an angry rant, can I help?"

You're familiar with spell check and grammar check, are you ready for word processors with an emotional content check?

These "sentiment analysis" tools are a branch of a wider area of computer science that is trying to teach computers to understand the feelings expressed in text just as well as humans do, and the commercial applications of such technology are already starting to be realised.

The early adopters of these tools are the owners of big brand names in a world where company reputations are affected by customer blogs as much as advertising campaigns. A small but growing group of firms is developing tools that can trawl blogs and online comments, gauging the emotional responses brought about by the company or its products.

This reminds me of the cellphone apps that you can program to not let you call your ex when you're drunk.

Haunted

A tasty slice of Shock Rock from my local hometown ghoulies
Forbidden Dimension

Brian Day VS Universal Healthcare

The Canadian Medical Association has moved on from a dubious flirtation with healthcare privatization and two successive private clinic entrepreneurs as President. Incoming President Jeff Turnbull is a fierce defender of wholly public, universal care. But the ghosts of hacks for corporate care past live on.

Former CMA President Brian Day shows his true colours, doing a hit job on Canadian Care for a right wing anti-public healthcare group in the States. A group headed by the disgraced former head of a private clinic chain that paid over a billion dollars in fines for defrauding the government.

Unsurprisingly Day's factually weak context free attacks on public care are part of his ongoing pattern of 'truthiness'.

OTTAWA, May 8 /CNW Telbec/ - In a tough open letter to President Barack Obama, the Canadian Health Coalition (CHC) is taking on Dr. Brian Day, current past president of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA), and an American conservative group running TV ads against health care reform.
"We are urging President Obama to listen to the overwhelming number of Canadians who value and depend on our public health care, not to Brian Day and his for-profit friends," said Michael McBane, national coordinator of the Canadian Health Coalition. "Medicare has been good to Canadians since the 1960s when we parted from the American model."
Dr. Day, whose private surgical clinic in British Columbia is currently under investigation by the B.C. government for illegal billing practices, appears in an ad running on American TV for Conservatives for Patient's Rights (CPR). (http://www.cpractionfund.org/) The ad is part of a million dollar campaign attacking President Obama's plan to overhaul the nation's health care system. In the ad, Dr. Day - a strong proponent of privatizing Canada's public health system - sides with those who would privatize the system, sharing horror stories of government-run health care programs.

This wasn't already the law?

CALGARY - The Alberta government wants to compel medical workers to alert police about patients who've been shot or stabbed, one of several legislative changes being sought to combat growing gang problems in some communities.

The proposed bill, called the Gunshot and Stab Wound Mandatory Disclosure Act, would turn what has been a discretionary practice by health care workers into legal a requirement.

The Copyright Blacklist is a badge of honor

It means we've resisted being bullied into signing on to industry written laws like the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act designed to criminalize thousands of otherwise law abiding Canadians.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration added Canada Thursday to a notorious blacklist of countries where Internet piracy flourishes, reflecting a new, tougher line in Washington over the Harper government's chronic failure to deliver on promises of new copyright laws.

“Canada has never been put on the priority watch list before,” said Stanford McCoy, assistant U.S. trade representative for intellectual property and innovation as he released Washington's annual report or offenders.

Canada now joins a group of countries designated as being especially lax in protecting intellectual property, including Algeria, China, Russia, Pakistan, Indonesia and Venezuela. No other advanced Western democracy is on the list and Canada is regarded as a lawless hub for bootleg movies, ripped-off software and pirated chips that bypass copyright protections.

“The decision was not an easy one but we believed that high standards are appropriate in Canada,” Mr. McCoy said. It was clear that Washington's patience with Ottawa's repeatedly broken promises has run out, perhaps also a reflection of the greater status and power of the digital and entertainment sectors in the era of the net-savvy Obama administration.

In fact this is all smoke and mirrors, Canada is in fact meeting it's international copyright obligations as Michael Geist explains.

The move is not unexpected, given recent comments from Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Congressional panels as well as the demands from U.S. lobby groups. Those same groups will now dust off their press releases that lament the "embarrassment" of being included on the list (never mind that countries that represent more than 70 percent of the world's population are on the list) and the failure to introduce U.S.-style reforms (never mind that Canada enacted anti-camcording laws in 2007, introduced C-61 last year, is an original negotiating partner in the ACTA negotiations, joined the U.S. as a third party in the WTO copyright complaint against China, etc.).

Hopefully, the Canadian officials will similarly dust off their advice to the Minister, which for the past few years has stated (as obtained under Access to Information):

The Government is disappointed with the United States' decision to include Canada in its [year here] Special 301 "Watch List." Canada does not recognize the Special 301 process due to its lacking of reliable and objective analysis, and we have raised this issue regularly with the U.S. in our bilateral discussions."

So in other words, we may not be as abjectly servile to the giant media conglomerates as they believe is called for from the peons, but we are hardly the hotbed of piracy suggested by today's events. Don't forget the attitude behind this:

Sony BMG's chief of litigation, Jennifer Pariser, testified that "when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." Copying a song you bought is "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy,'" she said.

Ahem.

"War crimes will be prosecuted, war criminals will be punished and it will be no defense to say, 'I was just following orders,"- former president George W. Bush reiterating core American principles, 2003.

Private Medicine, Calgary style

Where the Alberta Advantage includes paying extra for clean medical equipment.

No, really.

The body that regulates doctors in Alberta has ordered a Calgary clinic to stop charging patients for sterilized medical instruments.

In March, the Richmond Square Medical Centre implemented a fee of $5 for fewer than five sterile instruments and $10 for five or more that are used on patients during their visits. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta ordered the practice stopped after inquiries by CBC News.

"Having sterile instruments is such a fundamental need in health care that I'm surprised. What are they going to be doing, charging us for cleaning rooms?" patient Kathie Booth said Tuesday.

UPDATE: So they got rid of the sterilized instruments fee...by renaming it a 'tray fee'.

As my friend Matt put it, what the debate about healthcare in Alberta really needs is more torch wielding mobs.

Enter Sandman - Cello Trio Style

Apocalyptica

T-Shirts designed to make teenage girls cry.

Keep an eye on this

The Mexican flu outbreak has me crossing my fingers and hoping it isn't what it really looks like.

"Most of Mexico’s dead were young, healthy adults, and none were over 60 or under 3 years old, the World Health Organization said. That alarms health officials because seasonal flus cause most of their deaths among infants and bedridden elderly people, but pandemic flus — like the 1918 Spanish flu, and the 1957 and 1968 pandemics — often strike young, healthy people the hardest."

Massive dislocation and migration caused by an ongoing economic crisis, extensive tourist activity and globalized travel, and a predatory influenza mutation that hits the human immune system the way 1918 or 1957 or 1968 did. This could potentially really, really suck.

Confirm our cherished propaganda myth...

...or we'll keep torturing you.

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration put relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.

Such information would've provided a foundation for one of former President George W. Bush's main arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. No evidence has ever been found of operational ties between Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and Saddam's regime.

The use of abusive interrogation — widely considered torture — as part of Bush's quest for a rationale to invade Iraq came to light as the Senate issued a major report tracing the origin of the abuses and President Barack Obama opened the door to prosecuting former U.S. officials for approving them.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney and others who advocated the use of sleep deprivation, isolation and stress positions and waterboarding, which simulates drowning, insist that they were legal.

A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that intelligence agencies and interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration.

"There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used," the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.

"The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."

It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly — Abu Zubeida at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Mohammed 183 times in March 2003 — according to a newly released Justice Department document.

Meme Watch Bulletin

The currently popular 'The NDP are unprincipled opportunists' meme will be seamlessly replaced with the classic standby 'The NDP are impractical woolly headed idealists' meme in time for the next election. From the same irony deficient clueless cognitive dissonence sufferers shouting the opposite right now.

For now Dippers, just practice twirling your mustache and cackling about selling orphans for soup.

This has been your meme watch bulletin.

Bush and Clinton in Toronto

To John Ibbitson, it's just another opportunity to express utter contempt for the idea that people who commit war crimes should be held accountable for doing so.

So Mr. Clinton was impeached for abasing his office after lying about an affair with an intern.

And the wild-eyed are still trying to get Mr. Bush and his vice-president, Dick Cheney, tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity for their handling of the war on terror.

The meter doesn't exist to measure the time and energy that has been wasted on all of this.

Oh yeah, those are absolutely applicable correspondences you elite fellating, living example that Canada can produce clueless beltway insiders too.

Do you think Ibbitson understands that this stuff has been proven? People tortured to the point of madness, long after anyone thought they had anything useful to disclose. People threatened with the rape and murder of their loved ones, repeatedly brought to the point of agonized death by drowning hundreds of times over the course of weeks.

People were tortured to death, like the innocent taxi driver dragged to Bagram Air Base, hung up by his wrists and savagely beaten with a stick until his leg was basically pulped bone hanging in loose skin and then left to die. By the same officer who was in charge of the interrogation of Canadian Omar Khadr. Bagram, which President Obama's administration argues should continue to be a Guantanamo Bay style legal black hole.

High officials and lawyers in the Bush administration presented written legal position memos stating that anything short of being tortured to death wasn't, in fact, torture. The response from the legal community left wing, right wing and neither has been an outpouring of contempt for legal pimping designed to work backwards from the White House committing the crimes it wanted to, to finding legal justifications for the crimes retroactively.

But John Ibbitson thinks anyone who argues that there should be legal sanctions for planning, justifying and committing crimes against humanity are tiresome time wasters.

This is why newspapers are sinking into the tar pits.

Happy 4-20

Bag o' Weed
Family Guy
(Song Only)

Alberta Healthcare: Here we go again

Yet again Albertans have a reactionary right winger eager to start cutting away at health spending in Alberta, another dull eyed incurious ideologue who mistakes casual policy sadism for political toughness.

Ron Liepert, Alberta's mince-no-words health minister, tells the Sun the province won't keep doling out dough for all the medical services it now covers and is working on what's in and what's out and what will have to be covered by private insurance.

"The reality of it is, with a six percent budget increase for Alberta Health Services, we can no longer cover everything we've been covering. You're going to see a continued movement towards publicly-funded health care not being everything for everyone," says Ron, who wants "to cover the necessary essentials."

"We, 3.5 million Albertans, can't afford to cover what we've got right now."

"We've got to have a more clear definition of what the basic health-care system covers and what it shouldn't cover. We've got to be more clear on what we're providing. You break your leg, we should be looking after you. You want to go get physiotherapy, maybe you should be on your own."

I had a sleazy manager once who loved the phrase 'The reality is,' he invariably used it when he was lying through his teeth, a verbal tick I've come to notice more and more.

Never mind if all the evidence shows that funding physiotherapy saves the system from the long term costs from injuries and aggravation of injuries that the lack of decent physiotherapy can cause. We have to justify blowing billions on phony carbon sequestration technology somehow. We all have to do our parts to ensure that the oil and gas companies can make the maximum profit with the minimum participation in the social contract possible.

The new health superboard running the medical system will also have to come up with a plan to pay down $500 million or so they're in the red. He figures keeping the board to a 6% hike in their budget will force some "real discipline" on their spending and "that's always a good thing."

A 6% hike in their budget, but a 25% in the board's salaries, now how will we pay for those huge executive raises?

Rockin' Ron says this is the "test year" to see efficiencies in the health system. He thinks the contract with nurses, up in March 2010, is a "horrible" deal and wants more nurses working full-time to cut heavy overtime costs. He doesn't mind pushing for changes even if it "creates some angst among the union leadership."

"For the last two or three nurses' contracts, it seemed as though the government was at a disadvantage. At the end of the day, we have to realize we're in a different world. I don't think there's any appetite out there for huge wage increases or even maybe the existing contract."

Got that? The various oil men and American private health corporation representatives on the Alberta Healthcare Superboard deserve their 25% raises, despite the sharp decline in healthcare since the board came online. The front line nurses holding this decaying system together with a huge percentage of them heading for retirement age took undue advantage of the poor mistreated government when they negotiated their last couple of contracts in a fiscal boom and a labour crunch.

Just because they're the backbone labour force of medicine, cleaning up messes most of us couldn't stomach doesn't mean they actually deserve to make a decent living and have some time for their families after all. How Liepert thinks he's going to force an aging workforce to work even more hours while disincentivising new nurses from joining the profession even more is unclear.

And of course, what would a conservative politician attacking Canadian healthcare be without the Fallacy of the Golden Mean:

In health care, Ron looks at the American system and the one in this country, thinking "there's got to be something between their system and our system that works."

All the extensive evidence to the contrary just being an example of what Stephen Colbert described as 'Reality's well know liberal bias.'

And, for what he's planning, he knows he'll get heat.

"One of our difficulties is nobody has had the courage to take this on. It will show what mettle we have to resist some of the pressure."

Got that? If they manage to ignore public will to protect and maintain our public healthcare system that's a sign of 'mettle' rather than contempt for the democratic will of Albertans.

Every sane economist on Earth says now is the time to increase social spending as a counter-cyclical response to an economic crisis caused in the first place by greed and the erosion of the public sector. Alberta's PC government is ideologically incapable of taking the steps necessary and try to make a virtue of blind unthinking rigidity.

Get your Friends of Medicare signs out of storage folks, you'll be needing them soon.

Spector, right after the verdict.

Manson didn't look this scary, and he had a swastika carved into his forehead.

Sunday Linkblast - April 12

• NATO's Master Narrative on Afghanistan Leaked
  Creating the manufactured plot line for public consumption.
  
  
• CanWest collapse accelerates
  Will their friends in government be there to catch them?
  
  
• Panicked, Sweat-Covered Pope Reverses Longstanding Ban On Abortion
  The divine proclamation, which contradicts prior teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, was reportedly made by Pope Benedict after a late night phone call to his Vatican residence. According to witnesses, His Holiness was seen pacing back and forth, nervously wringing his hands, and cursing at himself in a hallway mirror before coming to the sudden decision.
  
  
• Evolution of the mutant in popular fiction
  From Odd John to Wolverine
  
  
• Vancouver police seize photojournalist Jason Payne's camera at crime scene, threaten him with arrest for "obstruction of justice"
  Payne reports that the police officer's response was "I wasn't aware the press had any special privilege under the Charter of Rights."
  
  
• McQuaig: Harper was scared to face Galloway
  It was fear of Galloway galvanizing anti-war sentiment in peace-oriented Canadians that prompted Ottawa to brand him a terrorist supporter.

Teabagging

It's all fun and games, until somebody loses an eye.

And then, just to complete the circle of life irony, there's the Tea Party protesters who actually have a decent reason for protesting:

BOSTON, MA - On April 15th, thousands of same-sex couples across the United States will be reminded of their second-class status when they file their federal tax return form. Despite living in committed relationships, same-sex couples--even those married in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and California--must file as individuals, forgoing over 1,100 federal rights granted to heterosexual married couples.

Thought for the Day

You are statistically more likely to die at the hands of a police officer than a terrorist.

Above the Law

Our streets are plagued by a uniformed gang who threaten and assault witness to their actions.

The Canadian Press
April 7, 2009 at 4:53 PM EDT
VANCOUVER — The B.C. Civil Liberties Association wants Vancouver police reminded that they can't just seize photos and videos from witnesses.
The association said there have been three incidents where police have tried to seize cameras and video cameras — all three in cases of police-involved shootings.
In a complaint to board chairman Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, association executive director David Eby outlined his concerns that police officers are interfering with the rights of those taking pictures or video.
The police department doesn't have adequate policy on when police can seize cameras, so officers are making mistakes, Mr. Eby said Tuesday.
“What's particularly troubling to us is that the three high-profile allegations ... all involve police using lethal force against citizens,” he said.
The most recent of the complaints involves a newspaper photographer whose arm was twisted behind his back by an officer when he refused to give up his camera outside a police shooting on Sunday. (Emphasis added.)

Just how unaccountable are these police going to get? Threatening and assaulting witnesses to lethal force, erasing evidence and as the Braidwood Inquiry showed, blatantly lying when called to account.

It's beginning to seem like the only sane response is aiming cameras at the police at all times that they are in public view.

Just remember the mantra: "No officer, I have a right to photograph you and you do not have the right or my permission to seize my camera."

Just because he was right doesn't mean he was, you know, RIGHT

ROME (Reuters) - Earthquakes like the one that killed more than 200 people in Italy this week are still impossible to predict, and a local scientist's claims to have done so should be treated with caution, geophysicists say.
Gioacchino Giuliani is at the center of a debate about the limits of seismology after Italian officials shrugged off his warnings last month that a devastating earthquake in the central Abruzzo region was imminent.
In fact Giuliani, who works at the National Institute of Physics, was even reported to police for spreading panic.
While many Italians are now more than ready to listen to whatever Giuliani has to say, geophysicists in Europe and the United States remain skeptical of his claims to have discovered an effective early-warning system.

Mr Garrison would love it

A solution to the world's urban transportation problems could lie in two wheels not four, according to executives for General Motors and Segway.
The companies announced on Tuesday that they are working together to develop a two-wheeled, two-seat electric vehicle designed to be a fast, safe, inexpensive and clean alternative to traditional cars and trucks for cities across the world.
The Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility, or PUMA, project also would involve a vast communications network that would allow vehicles to interact with each other, regulate the flow of traffic and prevent crashes from happening.

All kidding aside, I live in the downtown core of my city, I would actually get one of these.

They killed Kumar? You bastards!

Kuttner I mean, I'm sure I was one of many House fans (Club motto: 'It's not Lupus!') who was shocked and stunned by Kal Penn's abrupt departure from the show last night via suicide. Did he ask for too much money or something?

Turns out he got a new job.

I understand it was your decision to leave House. True?

KAL PENN: Yes. I was incredibly honored a couple of months ago to get the opportunity to go work in the White House. I got to know the President and some of the staff during the campaign and had expressed interest in working there, so I'm going to be the associate director in the White House office of public liaison. They do outreach with the American public and with different organizations. They're basically the front door of the White House. They take out all of the red tape that falls between the general public and the White House. It's similar to what I was doing on the campaign.

OK, as reasons go, not a bad one, but suicide? Completely out of character. Even House doesn't buy it and for a few vertiginous moments it seems like they might apply the House format to crime solving, but no.

Here's hoping, as rewarding as his new career will doubtless be, that he feels the need to come back to acting occasionally.

NATO to Peter MacKay: We're just not that into you

Up until just a few hours ago it looked to the adoring Canadian right wing press like he still had a shot, but now NATO has invited Peter MacKay to seek other opportunities and chosen Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen to head NATO.

April 4, 2009 at 10:21 AM EDT

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish Prime Minister, was selected the next secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in a surprise reversal of an awkward political deadlock Saturday afternoon.

“We all agree and are unanimous in this nomination,” said Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the current secretary-general.

Hopefully he's used to rejection by now...

Racist Betrayal of a Canadian Citizen

Abousfian Abdelrazik has been cleared by the RCMP, CSIS and The Sudanese authorities (after months of torture) of any involvement in terrorism. He has clearly been determined by the Canadian Embassy in Sudan to not be a threat or presumably they wouldn't let him live there.

The Canadian government itself attempted unsuccessfully to have his name removed from the UN no-fly list but now use it as justification for breaking their promise to provide him with the documentation he needs to fly home. This after saying he could only get that documentation if he had a plane ticket - along with a threat of criminal charges against anyone who actually provided him with said ticket. After hundreds of ordinary Canadians defied those threats and raised the funds necessary to buy Abdelrazik a ticket home, the written promise was broken and the goal posts shifted again.

This should be front page news in every paper and the lead item every night on the news. If the Canadian government can so utterly betray this Canadian citizen they can do it to anyone, even you.

Though you are probably safe if you have white skin and don't belong to a religion that the Conservatives disapprove of. There can be little doubt anymore, that the real reason for this farrago of lies, broken promises and shifting justifications is simple racism.

Here's one of the many places where you can find the contact information for your MP. Be polite but make it clear that you are angry, and write, call and visit their constituency office repeatedly.

This can not, must not be allowed to stand.

The London Riots and the Judgement of History

Johann Hari writes:

When this hinge-point in human history is remembered, there will be far more sympathy for the people who took to the streets and rioted than for the people who stayed silently in their homes. Two global crises have collided, and we have a chance here, now, to solve them both with one mighty heave - but our leaders are letting this opportunity for greatness leach away. The protesters here in London were trying to sound an alarm now, at five minutes to ecological midnight.
Many commentators seemed bemused that the protesters focused on the climate crunch as much as the credit crunch. What's it got to do with a G20 meeting on reviving the global economy? Why wave banners saying 'Nature Doesn't Do Bail-Outs' today? Because both crises have their roots in the same ideology - and both have the same solution.

I think Hari is getting added to my regular must read list and I'll be adding him to my blogroll soon.

Inertia Creeps

Massive Attack

Justice Down Under

Apr 2nd, 2009 | SYDNEY -- Australia adopted the U.N.'s declaration of indigenous rights on Friday, reversing its earlier opposition in what officials said was an effort to "reset" relations between white Australians and Aborigines.

The support for the nonbinding declaration is a largely symbolic step, but extends a dramatic shift in policy on Aborigines since Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was elected 17 months ago.

"In supporting the declaration Australia takes another important step toward resetting relations between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians," Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin said at a ceremony in the national capital, Canberra, that was broadcast nationally.

Australia was one of just four nations that voted against the U.N. declaration when it was adopted by the General Assembly in 2007. The United States, New Zealand and Canada were the other opponents, while 143 countries voted in favor and 11 abstained.

We're now in a shameful club with only two other members.

And then there was one

As the Liberals and Greens self destruct, progressive Albertans are left with only one viable left of center party to support. Just as the NDPs financial analysis is born out by events.

Only one party has the models to explain what has happened to the world economy, and policies in place to deal with it.

Expect a big growth in support for the Alberta NDP in the next provincial election.

Also see Tiny Perfect Blog: The Future of the Left

UPDATE: See Lawrence Martin's rather condescending but basically accurate take on why the NDP have the answers ready for this crisis and have been prophetic about the economy but don't seem to be getting any polling traction anyway. Particularly surprising was the candid admission that the right has big media behind it in Canada fighting a holding action against the kind of economic policies the NDP propose and the NDP are stagnating due to our ideas being locked out of the public sphere. I agree with his central premise that the NDP needs to be more aggressive about making inroads into the fourth estate.

Sympathy for Canadians

Robert Fisk asks:

"...how did so many millions of decent Canadians come to be ruled by such a weird government?"

Yeah, don't rub it in man.

Andy Hallet RIP

Andy Hallet who played the jovial singing demon Lorne on the TV show Angel died Sunday of congestive heart failure. He stole every scene he was in, not based on the elaborate make up job but his own irrepressible joie de vivre.

Finally flushing away Rob Anders

The Calgary MP, Calgary West's invisible man who once described Nelson Mandela as a communist terrorist and churlishly refused to stand when he entered parliament may finally be losing his death grip on his riding.

Outspoken, long-serving Alberta member of Parliament Rob Anders is facing a challenge from within his own party in his Calgary West riding.
On Saturday, more than 600 card-carrying Conservative members lined up for more than an hour to get into the annual general meeting of the Calgary West Conservative Party. Among the agenda items was electing a new board of directors, which oversees nominations.
The event, at the Montgomery Community Association hall, was seen as a showdown between supporters of Anders, who has won in Calgary-West five times, and lawyer Donna Kennedy-Glans, who wants to replace him as the Conservative candidate.
Anders accused Kennedy-Glans of being a disgruntled Liberal who is trying to steal the riding. She dismissed the allegation as a fear-mongering tactic, and said people want to see change.
The federal Conservative party recently decided that the only way incumbent MPs can be pushed out in their ridings is if two-thirds of constituency members vote to hold a nomination race. In the end, supporters of Kennedy-Glans swept the board elections with 27 of them elected to fill the 30 positions. One of Anders's backers was elected, while the remaining two successful candidates were on both slates.

Despite a long history of histrionics, desperate smears and blatant suppression of any and all opposition within the riding from the party apparatus, it looks like Rob may get a chance to be a full time bloated gym queen without having to be bothered with persistent questions about what he actually does for his constituents.

Afghanistan's Western backed government legalizes rape

Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, has signed a law which "legalises" rape, women's groups and the United Nations warn. Critics claim the president helped rush the bill through parliament in a bid to appease Islamic fundamentalists ahead of elections in August.
In a massive blow for women's rights, the new Shia Family Law negates the need for sexual consent between married couples, tacitly approves child marriage and restricts a woman's right to leave the home, according to UN papers seen by The Independent.

...

Details of the law emerged after Mr Karzai was endorsed by Afghanistan's Supreme Court to stay in power until elections scheduled in August. Some MPs claimed President Karzai was under pressure from Iran, which maintains a close relationship with Afghanistan's Shias. The most controversial parts of the law deal explicitly with sexual relations. Article 132 requires women to obey their husband's sexual demands and stipulates that a man can expect to have sex with his wife at least "once every four nights" when travelling, unless they are ill. The law also gives men preferential inheritance rights, easier access to divorce, and priority in court.
A report by the United Nations Development Fund for Women, Unifem, warned: "Article 132 legalises the rape of a wife by her husband".

But isn't it great that we got rid of those awful Taliban? Can I get some more lectures from Stephen Harper about how if you oppose our Afghan adventure you are against womens rights? Can't get enough of that stuff.

Alberta's Health Board disaster

Ten months ago the government of Alberta abolished the regional Health boards and replaced them with one centralized superboard. The Calgary Herald finally notices what a complete disaster this has been.

In 10 short months, the deterioration of Calgarians' health care has been precipitous.The superboard's own statistics show a deepening crisis at Calgary hospitals.

Alberta Health Services indicates 50 per cent more local patients are waiting for placement in long-term care, while those sleeping in hospital corridors because of bed shortages is up 23 per cent. The waiting lists for surgeries have grown by 18 per cent in the past year and a half.And emergency wait times have jumped well past appropriate levels, increasing on average by 30 per cent to 16.6 hours to get admitted.

This is a far cry from the improved quality the superboard was tasked with delivering.

Of course improving healthcare was never the point, getting rid of multiple fractious boards who had a distressing tendency of publicly criticizing the government's priorities and parsimony with funding was. The current leader of the Alberta Liberals David Swann, first rose to prominence as the medical officer for the Palliser Health Region where he publically criticized the province for ignoring the health consequences of runaway development and publicly endorsed the Kyoto Accord. He was fired and then offered his job back after public outrage. Instead he went into politics to become a long term thorn in the government's side.

Alberta has a nasty little democratic deficit that the government publicly abhors and privately exults over. After 40 odd years as a one party state the Tories have concluded that everything is much nicer if Albertans just shut up and do what they are told. Centralizing many regional health boards down to one - that just gave it's board members a 25% raise - makes benign neglect that much easier.

The Herald knows all this, which makes questions like this deliberately disingenuous:

The question has to be asked:Why has the province gone down this road, reversing a system that was working? The Alberta model was a success, it's been copied by other provinces and has received international recognition. Ironically, the Calgary Health Region is the star of a new book, High Performing Healthcare Systems--Delivering Quality by Design. The CHR--now a non-entity--was one of seven organizations from around the world chosen as an example of excellence in health care, delivering quality through a mix of good incentives, clear goals and accountability. All of this is now gone.

Centralizing the regional healthboards was never about improving outcomes, it was about neutralizing noisy regional concerns with a decaying system.

Laying Charges

LONDON — A Spanish court has taken the first steps toward opening a criminal investigation into allegations that six former high-level Bush administration officials violated international law by providing the legal framework to justify the torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, an official close to the case said.

The case, against former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and others, was sent to the prosecutor’s office for review by Baltasar Garzón, the crusading investigative judge who ordered the arrest of the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. The official said that it was “highly probable” that the case would go forward and that it could lead to arrest warrants.

The move represents a step toward ascertaining the legal accountability of top Bush administration officials for allegations of torture and mistreatment of prisoners in the campaign against terrorism. But some American experts said that even if warrants were issued their significance could be more symbolic than practical, and that it was a near certainty that the warrants would not lead to arrests if the officials did not leave the United States.

So high officials of the Bush regime will never again be able to safely step outside the borders of the United States? That seems a bit more than symbolism to me.

This also helps make the case I and several hundred other people were trying to make when we protested outside the Telus Convention Center in Calgary as a war criminal our government welcomed with open arms spoke inside.

There is an overwhelming preponderance of evidence that George W. Bush ordered that crimes against humanity be committed. Torture. Kidnapping. Murder.

But at least Canadians are safe from British MPs who deliver medical supplies to victims of horrific suffering.

No Double Standard, Right?

Avi Benlolo, president and CEO of Toronto's Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center has called for two Arab religious figures to be barred from speaking in Canada.

Benlolo called on government officials to determine whether Sabri and Hanna represent a security threat to Canada.
He accused Palestine House and groups behind Israeli Apartheid Week of "bringing radicals to town to speak about divisiveness."Instead, he said, they should "bring people who are peaceful and talk about coexistence and how we can work out our differences."

Former Grand Mufti Ekrima Sabri is on record saying some pretty unambiguously hateful and bigoted things about Jews and actively promoting violence. Putting him in the same category as Atallah Hanna, the Archbishop of Sebastia from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem however seems inappropriate as the only factor Benlolo mentions in his call for Hanna being barred from speaking in Canada is that he once described Jerusalem as an 'Arab city'.

Does this mean Benlolo will be actively demanding that any Israeli figure who has ever described Jerusalem as a 'Jewish city' be barred from speaking in Canada?