A Sneering Tribute

The stench of unexamined privilege and elite condescension has always hung over our great paper of record like week old fish, but I have trouble imagining how the sneering, unbelievably pompous 'tribute' to Michaëlle Jean in today's Globe and Mail could be any more dismissively contemptuous.

The announcement that Michaëlle Jean, the Governor-General, will take up duties as an UNESCO special envoy for Haiti in September, represents the near-end of an imperfect tenure.

The UNESCO role is well suited to the strengths Ms. Jean has brought to the role of Queen’s representative. Her charisma, spontaneity and skill at, in her own words, “people-to-people diplomacy” will be put to good use in a cause that is important to Canada and the international community. But her departure will also allow the appointment of a truly meritorious individual as the new Governor-General, someone with the intellectual rigour required of that office.

The UNESCO job, while limited by the relative ineffectiveness of that UN entity, is well tailored to Ms. Jean, and is probably a wiser use of her talents than, say, an appointment as Canadian ambassador to Haiti.

...

It was, however, an unusual appointment. Ms. Jean was a television journalist, with a limited profile and few obvious distinctions, when elevated to viceregal office. She was not – then – a distinguished Canadian, and this perceived lack of accomplishment hampered her effectiveness.
Despite efforts to mask it, such as the Harper government’s generous role in the UNESCO appointment, relations were sometimes strained. This was plain for all to see when Ms. Jean was publicly rebuked by Mr. Harper for having referred to herself as Canada’s “head of state,” at an UNESCO meeting, as it happens. That role is fulfilled by the Queen. For all her populist appeal, Ms. Jean did not command the respect among the political elites that the office requires. And despite its symbolic importance, the position does call for more than a national bauble. The Governor-General wields important constitutional powers.

This was most at evidence during the 2008 crisis over Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s request for prorogation when it became clear his government would lose a confidence vote in the House of Commons. Some constitutional experts believe the Governor-General had a responsibility to exercise the reserve powers of the Crown and refuse the Prime Minister’s advice to prorogue. Others argue that the Governor-General should do as little as possible to interfere with politics, and Ms. Jean made the correct decision to accede to Mr. Harper’s request.

Canadians should welcome Ms. Jean’s appointment as UNESCO special envoy, and thank her for her service. Mr. Harper should aim higher than his predecessor in advising the Queen on her successor.

No, you didn't imagine it, they referred to the Governor General as a 'bauble', pretty and decorative but ultimately nothing more.

This is old boy's club contemptuous dismissal of a breathtaking scope and blatancy.

The Language of Exclusion

First: Demonize political opposition.

Next: Criminalize protest.

Finally: Use the language of criminalization not just for protesters but any political opposition.

Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore delivered a keynote address at a conference sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce's IP Council today and according to media reports warned against "radical extremists" seeking to oppose Bill C-32. It should be obvious to virtually everyone that labeling those that seek reforms to a copyright bill as "radical extremists" is an embarrassing slander that should be promptly retracted. While there are undoubtedly some that oppose the bill altogether (just as there are some that want tougher reforms including three strikes), characterizing those concerned with a copyright bill in this manner is wholly inappropriate for a cabinet minister.

It is for one in this government, a government that is steadily normalizing language that delegitimizes any opposition to its actions and dehumanizes its opponents.

This is eliminationism 101 and the time to start getting worried is now.

Alberta Government Scientific Slander

An Alberta Government scientist upholds the fine traditions of Trofim Denisovich Lysenko:

Alberta researcher Peter Lee couldn’t believe his ears as a senior provincial government scientist publicly accused him and a colleague of deliberately manipulating and even lying about data in a critical report on the oil sands.

“To put it bluntly, I was gob-smacked,” said Mr. Lee, of Edmonton-based Global Forest Watch Canada. “I was actually speechless. It was quite shocking.”

Now, under threat of a lawsuit, the government scientist has apologized, retracted the statements and coughed up $1,000 to cover legal fees.

...

“It was completely over the line of what is considered scientific criticism,” Dr. Timoney said. “… This sort of thing was not science. It’s just defamation.”

They asked Dr. McEachern for clarification, but in the meantime, his presentation was published on the website of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, as well as the sites of two other industry groups. This spring, CAPP unveiled a massive public-relations campaign to defend Alberta’s energy sector. (Premier Ed Stelmach has said the government is trying to improve its communications around the oil sands.)

When Dr. McEachern didn’t respond, according to the researchers, they turned to lawyers and threatened to sue, dispatching a letter last month that also went to Alberta Environment Minister Rob Renner. They accused Dr. McEachern of making “false and defamatory statements” through his stated or implied comments, which suggested their figures amounted to a “lie” and that they “chose to remove data” from their study.

A lawsuit could be avoided, the letter said, if Dr. McEachern provided a letter “unequivocally retracting and apologizing,” the slides were removed from CAPP’s website and elsewhere, legal expenses were paid and Dr. McEachern refrained from repeating the allegations.

Dr. Timoney and Mr. Lee received a letter of apology on June 11 – the deadline set by their lawyers – and it was released by Greenpeace and the Pembina Institute on Monday.

“The statements in my presentation … were false and I regret very much that I made these statements. I unequivocally retract them,” Dr. McEachern wrote.

"Later, when he regained consciousness..."

Just to get in the proper state of mind for the upcoming G-20 festivities in Toronto.

This was from a protest in San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina over the death of a 15 year old boy at the hands of the police. To be clear, the post title is for humorous effect, I'm sure the nice officers wished the young man with the incontinence problem a good day and waved him on his way...

The Trade-off

It's messy and ugly and cynical but it will also improve the lives of the Palestinians living in Gaza. This is Realpolitik at it's most frustratingly pragmatic.

The contours of the response to the Gaza flotilla fiasco are now coming into sharper public view: the Israeli government will significantly ease the blockade of Gaza in exchange for American support for a whitewash of the investigation of the flotilla incident. As I've said many times on Twitter, this is a good deal. No investigation was ever going to produce anything of any particular value, but easing the blockade of Gaza could have significant positive effects for the people of Gaza, the prospects of Palestinian reconciliation, the peace process, and American credibility in the region. None of those will happen on their own, of course. And nobody is likely to be fully satisfied with the new measures. I've been quite critical of how the Obama team has handled the Israeli-Palestinian track, and particularly the Gaza situation -- and if they had moved strongly to resolve the Gaza blockade a year ago, the issue wouldn't have been there now to exploit. But now, I think they deserve some real credit for nudging Israel towards finally making a move which could over time open up some real new possibilities for progress.

It brings measurable improvements to the lives of the citizens of Gaza in return for a careful averting of the eyes from the bloody, body strewn decks of the Mavi Marama, much as the price of getting a wind down of the worst excesses of the War on Terror appears to have been a careful avoidance of any legal consequences for the architects of the torture chambers and dungeons of the Bush regime.

At what point to we calmly and pragmatically make the purely practical decision to just wipe out the concept of the rule of law at all?

Glenn beck ruined the metaphor...

...but the frog sitting in the water as it slowly heats to boiling point sure applies.

Imagine a country where Parliament is padlocked twice in 13 months to frustrate the democratic will of the elected majority. That country is now this country.

Imagine a country that slyly relaxes environmental regulations even as its neighbour reels from a catastrophic oil leak blamed on slack controls. That country is now this country.

Imagine a country that boasts about prudent financial management while blowing through a $13-billion surplus on the way to a $47-billion deficit. That country is now this country.

Imagine a country where a political operative puts fork-tongued words in a top general’s mouth. That country is now this country.

Imagine a country that refuses to fund the same safe abortions to poor women abroad as it provides at home. That country is now this country.

Imagine a country where the national police commissioner skews a federal election and is never forced to explain. That country is now this country.

Imagine a country that writes a covert manual on sabotaging Commons committees. That country is now this country.

It goes on, and so do we, hand in hand into our country's sunset.

Quote of the Day

So, yes, Dems take lots of oil money too. But while Dems have one night stands with the oil industry or relationships, with Republicans like Barton it's a committed and loving relationship. Even when it's not even helpful. - Josh Marshall

"You ain't got no pancake mix!"

The only reasonable response to tea-baggers, fanatics and assorted haters:

Provocative Plea

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - June 17, 2010) - The President of the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) stands by his call for assurance that police and other private security personnel contracted to provide security during the G20 summit will not use agents-provocateurs during the G20 protests planned for next week, including the labour-led rally and march on June 26.

"These concerns are far from 'groundless,' as suggested by Toronto Police Association President Mike McCormack," said Sid Ryan, President of the OFL. "The fact is there have been numerous documented cases of police infiltration of demonstrations at protests around the world, including Canada."

"We are planning a peaceful, family-friendly demonstration. Our job would be much easier if we knew that we won't be dealing with agents-provocateurs as we saw during the Montebello protest against the Security and Prosperity Partnership," said Ryan. "We call on the Prime Minister of Canada to assure us that such tactics will not be used during the G20."

"I am very concerned that there could be political pressure from the federal Conservative government to use police to provoke a situation that will lead to arrests—purely to justify the enormous security costs of the G20 Summit," said Ryan. "And frankly, that should be a concern for the police union as well."

Flashback: Montebello 2007

Flashback Quebec 2009: Quebec civil rights activist uses access to information request to see internal Sûreté documents directly referring to 'provocateurs'.

Quote of the Day

Joe Barton was plain stupid to apologize to BP. His masters would have forgiven a little attack, to maintain his cover. - Roger Ebert

'Lynch Mob'

Peace flotilla member (in the orange life jacket) viciously 'lynching' an Israeli paratrooper... or possibly providing him with medical care...

New Comment policy

I wanted to keep commenting open and easy, alas the comment spammers - mostly in Chinese oddly enough - have made that impossible. Almost anything but libel, calls for criminal action or repetitive and unimaginative abuse will get though, it just may take awhile depending on whether I'm online or not.

Support Libby Davies

The Israel right or wrong crowd are in full gotcha mode, screaming for Libby Davies' head on a platter.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper called on NDP MP Libby Davies to resign as her party's deputy leader after she suggested Israel has been occupying territory since the country came into existence.

"Mr. Speaker, this is a fundamental denial of Israel's right to exist," Harper said in the House of Commons on Tuesday. "It repeats the kind of comments that were made by Helen Thomas on which she was forced to resign and the member of the NDP who said those should be forced to resign as well."

Thomas was the veteran White House correspondent who resigned after saying Jews in Israel should "get the hell out of Palestine" and "go back to Poland, Germany, America and everywhere else."

Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae also denounced Davies' comments.

"To deny the state of Israel's right to exist and to propose an international campaign of boycotts, divestments and sanctions against a legitimate member of the world community for over 60 years is to reveal a level of hostility and ignorance that is truly breathtaking," Rae said in a written statement.

In a media scrum later, Rae argued that Davies' comments were not simply a slip of the tongue and called for her to step down as deputy leader.

Earlier this month, Davies was interviewed at a rally in Vancouver and asked if she believes the occupation in Israel began in 1948 or 1967. After hesitating, she answered:

"Forty-eight. I mean, it's the longest occupation in the world. But I mean, I'm not going to argue numbers. It's too long, right?" She went on to say, "I mean, this is the longest occupation in the world. People are suffering. I've been to the West Bank in Gaza twice so I've seen for myself what's going on."

The state of Israel was established in 1948.

In the video, Davies is also asked if she supports the international campaign of boycotts, divestments and sanctions against Israel (known as the BDS movement).

"I haven't even actually gone that far. You gotta understand, I'm probably the strongest supporter in Parliament. There is virtually no information in the political arena or understanding about the BDS movement. People are actually afraid to speak out on this issue.… Elected people who are sympathetic are actually afraid to speak out," Davies answers.

Later in the video, Davies says she personally supports the BDS movement, adding, however, that she's not "someone who's there" but is instead a Canadian politician demanding the Canadian government speak out more on the issues.

The interview was posted on YouTube.

Since her comments were made public, Davies has posted on her website a letter she sent to the editor of The Ottawa Citizen.

"My reference to the year 1948 as the beginning of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory was a serious and completely inadvertent error," she wrote. "I apologize for this and regret any confusion it has caused. I have always supported a two-state solution to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict and have never questioned Israel's right to exist and the Palestinians' right to a viable state."

Sorry for the length of the quoted material - I just thought it was worth demonstrating that its only finally at paragraph 15 that the story mentions that Libby Davies apologized for saying 1948 when she meant 1967, that she doesn't question Israel's right to exist and that she supports a two state solution.

For that matter, as Murray Dobbin writes, ask an Arab villager driven out of his home in 1948 if he thinks his land is occupied. Ask an Arab Israeli whose family have lived in the same house in Jerusalem for decades...until they were forcibly evicted last summer to give their home to a Jewish family.

Many historians in and out of Israel consider it a settled issue that Israel engaged in large scale ethnic cleansing in 1948, complete with massacres - there's actually a whole academic movement based around it in Israel scholarship.

All or nothing, black or white, support Israel unreservedly and uncritically and condemn anyone who criticizes her or you hate Israel and deny it's right to exist. These are false choices. Libby Davies should not be sacrificed to these deliberate, simplistic Manichean distortions.

Not fitting into their creepy rescue fantasies

Will white, right wing males who get all broody and weird over anti-Islamist women show the same concern for brave Muslim women fighting for justice like Malala Joya or Hanin Zoaby?

Hanin Zoaby, an attractive, modernist, non-observant Muslim woman who wears western clothing and goes out in public with her head uncovered is a female politician fighting for the rights of her minority group in her country against fierce opposition. She has been vilified, slandered and physically attacked in the legislature. Legislators from the majority ethnic group (Many of whom have openly called for ethnic cleansing) have started proceedings to strip her of her parliamentary privileges for the crime of criticizing the state, and along with other members of her ethnic group, of her citizenship entirely.

She seems like the perfect candidate for the sweaty rescue fantasies of anti-Islam polemicists like Eric Steyn or Christopher Hitchens. You might expect lots of rapturous coverage and fierce attacks on those not offering her their full support.

Except Joya is a feminist leftist who opposes the West's involvement in propping up warlords in her native Afghanistan and Zoaby is an Israeli Arab MK advocating for the rights of Palestinians inside Israel and in the occupied territories. She was on the peace flotilla and is credited for the command of Hebrew and the Knesset ID that made the Israeli paratroopers attend to the medical needs of the brutalized passengers sooner than they might have otherwise.

I'm sure Mark Steyn will be showing the same concern for these brave Muslim women fighting oppression as he does for those who he thinks help further his anti-Islam message.

Any time now.

Your Country

your country raised you
your country fed you
And just like any other country
It will break you
On front line send you
Tax the hell out of you
And just like any other country
It will lock you up you!

The Hunt for Wikileaks

The Pentagon caught the soldier who leaked the Collateral Murder video to Wikileaks and government officials are now terrified that he also gave them thousands of diplomatic cables.

American officials are searching for Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks in an attempt to pressure him not to publish thousands of confidential and potentially hugely embarrassing diplomatic cables that offer unfiltered assessments of Middle East governments and leaders.
The Daily Beast, a US news reporting and opinion website, reported that Pentagon investigators are trying to track down Julian Assange – an Australian citizen who moves frequently between countries – after the arrest of a US soldier last week who is alleged to have given the whistleblower website a classified video of American troops killing civilians in Baghdad.
The soldier, Bradley Manning, also claimed to have given WikiLeaks 260,000 pages of confidential diplomatic cables and intelligence assessments.
The US authorities fear their release could "do serious damage to national security", said the Daily Beast, which is published by Tina Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair and New Yorker magazines.

If you haven't seen The New Yorker's fascinating profile of Assange yet, here it is.

Manning became disenchanted with the military after they ignored evidence that a group of imprisoned Iraqis were good government activists exposing corruption not terrorists. Wikileaks denies that he gave them the diplomatic cables that the US government is panicking about but that hasn't allayed their fear.

'Unfiltered assessments of Middle East governments and leaders' sounds absolutely fascinating and possibly a game changer for perceptions of America's cynical realpolitik approach to dictators, thugs, torturers and assorted despots.

I'll be haunting Wikileaks for updates for the foreseeable future.

Kory Teneycke wants to be Canada's Roger Ailes

You can't blame the Canadian Right for looking wistfully at the sheer ideological domination their fellow travellers enjoy in the American media, not least due to the zeitgeist deforming presence of Fox News. After last week's sudden departure of Kory Teneycke from his newly minted commentary job at CBC the other shoe has now dropped.

The former chief spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper is spearheading a bid by Quebecor Inc. to set up a Fox News-style TV station in Canada with an unabashedly right-of-centre perspective.
Quebecor has filed an application with the CRTC, Canada's broadcast regulator, to operate an English-language news channel. The application has not yet been made public but a source says an announcement on the venture is “imminent.”
Kory Teneycke served as director of communications to Mr. Harper in 2008 and 2009 and this week was appointed vice-president of business development at Quebecor Media Inc.
He's been working since last summer on contract for Quebecor, investigating the feasibility of creating a more unconventional news outlet that speaks to conservative-minded Canadians.
The venture appears to be driven by the potential for profit rather than a desire to advance big-C Conservative fortunes in Canada.
It’s an attempt to mine what Mr. Teneycke believes is a largely untapped market for more right-of-centre TV offerings in Canada, acquaintances and people familiar with the plans say. Sources say Mr. Tenecyke pitched the proposal to Quebecor last year and has been trying to prove the business case for the station ever since.
Mirroring the format of both Fox TV and MSNBC in the U.S., the envisioned Canadian station would offer straightforward reporting but also conservative-minded opinion shows – a mix of programming that would be clearly separated rather than blended.
Ezra Levant, a conservative author and activist, is being seriously considered as a host for one of the new station's anchor opinion shows, sources say. Mr. Levant and Mr. Tenecyke have worked together as far back as the 1996 Winds of Change conference, a precursor to the unite-the-right movement that merged the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative parties.

Levant has had a lower profile of late since his gig as a columnist at the Calgary Sun was terminated after he shamelessly used the tragic death of a child in a grotesque display of anti-Muslim racial pandering. Along with the almost simultaneous death of his rag the Western Standard and the tottering death throes of the National Post and the whole CanWest empire, make work jobs programs are the priority of the season for the professional right wing in Canada.

But it would be a mistake to dismiss this as a harmless vanity project and welfare scheme for the barely employable Canadian professional conservative class, Fox News has provided stellar service to the forces of reaction in the US by systematically and comprehensively dumbing down their audience to a pack of easily led rage junkies. Studies have shown conclusively that viewers of comedy programs the Daily Show and Colbert Report are much better informed than Fox News Viewers.

Conservatives support dumbing down and adding ideological bias to the news for the same reason they always slash education funding - the smarter and better informed the public is the worse right wing political parties do.

Quote of the day

"When your heart is hardened against the corpses of children buried in rubble, it is hardened too much. And the job of a real friend is to point this out, not to enable it."

-Andrew Sullivan

The rest of the piece is a thoughtful consideration of issues of justice, history and morality attendant on the establishment of the state of Israel.

Rise of the Theocrats

Alarmist? Shrill? An extreme interpretation of a cultural movement and its plans?

You could make any of those arguments about Chris Hedges impassioned treatise on the dangers of the religious right, The Christian Fascists Are Growing Stronger. What we shouldn't do is ignore him.

Tens of millions of Americans, lumped into a diffuse and fractious movement known as the Christian right, have begun to dismantle the intellectual and scientific rigor of the Enlightenment. They are creating a theocratic state based on “biblical law,” and shutting out all those they define as the enemy. This movement, veering closer and closer to traditional fascism, seeks to force a recalcitrant world to submit before an imperial America. It champions the eradication of social deviants, beginning with homosexuals, and moving on to immigrants, secular humanists, feminists, Jews, Muslims and those they dismiss as “nominal Christians”—meaning Christians who do not embrace their perverted and heretical interpretation of the Bible. Those who defy the mass movement are condemned as posing a threat to the health and hygiene of the country and the family. All will be purged.

“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.”

-Sinclair Lewis, 1935

Settlement

Before the U.S. election one of the popular pieces of race-baiting and scare mongering on the right was the idea that President Obama would support the Reparations movement seeking compensation for all African Americans for the crime of slavery.

Not so far, but a new settlement offered by the Obama Justice Department after decades of stonewalling by the government (including both Bushes and the Clinton administration) does something very close to that for Native Americans. As per this article from The Atlantic which is excellent right up to a rather patronizing last paragraph.

The government's chief nemesis has been Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana, the accountant-turned-banker who in 1987 started Blackfeet National Bank, the first national bank on a reservation. With a very small team of attorneys led by a Washington banking specialist, Dennis Gingold, her suit has inspired 3,600 court filings and 80 published decisions. Not even the antirust action against Microsoft was as heavily litigated by the government.

The historic resistance melded with an unsympathetic appeals court often overruling the dispute's two trial judges. It ordered removal of Lamberth, now the district court's chief judge, due to harsh language toward the government. Last year, it threw out a ruling by District Judge James Robertson, Lamberth's successor, that the Indians were owed $476 million, a pittance compared to the reduced, $48 billion they were seeking by then. Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain both urged settlement during the 2008 campaign.

A resolute Judge Robertson then hauled Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and plaintiffs into his chambers last year. He made clear to one and all that, in light of the latest appeals court ruling, both sides had the choice between spending maybe another 10 years in court or trying to finally settle. The initial atmosphere was not necessarily conducive to harmony. Career government employees in the Interior, Justice and Treasury departments felt burned after years of being belittled by both the plaintiffs and Judge Lamberth. Meanwhile, the plaintiffs had minimal trust in the government. But political appointees in the Obama administration, including Salazar and Attorney General Eric Holder, took their cue from President Obama's own support of a settlement. Dozens of meetings ensued, with the many prickly issues including how far back in time one would go to try to determine who should benefit.

Ultimately, Judge Robertson prodded what, given all the legal setbacks, is an impressive $3.4 billion deal announced in December. Ironically, before the recent congressional recess, the House approved the deal and Robertson announced his retirement, meaning District Judge Thomas Hogan becomes the third, and hopefully final, arbiter in the case. He would oversee a so-called "fairness hearing" in which objections can be raised.

$3.4 billion could make fundamental changes to the lives of First Nation Americans. I've been as frustrated with how slow and incrementalist Obama has been as anyone, but this is a huge thing that will probably get very little notice. And all it took was a President to indicate he wanted a fair solution to stop the Justice Department from waging a war of legal attrition and come to a resolution.

Are We Not Brothers?

Gaza Flotilla activist Ken O'Keefe is a former US Marine, Gulf War vet, and now Irish and Palestinian citizen. He describes his treatment at Israeli hands here:

While in Israeli custody I, along with everyone else was subjected to endless abuse and flagrant acts of disrespect. Women and elderly were physically and mentally assaulted. Access to food and water and toilets was denied. Dogs were used against us, we ourselves were treated like dogs. We were exposed to direct sun in stress positions while hand cuffed to the point of losing circulation of blood in our hands. We were lied to incessantly, in fact I am awed at the routineness and comfort in their ability to lie, it is remarkable really. We were abused in just about every way imaginable and I myself was beaten and choked to the point of blacking out… and I was beaten again while in my cell.
In all this what I saw more than anything else were cowards… and yet I also see my brothers. Because no matter how vile and wrong the Israeli agents and government are, they are still my brothers and sisters and for now I only have pity for them. Because they are relinquishing the most precious thing a human being has, their humanity.

Unfuckingbelievable

The students at Miller Valley Elementary in Prescott Arizona were given the chance to vote on their schools new mural and picked one featuring their own faces. The school is a diverse one with African Americans, Latinos and white children attending.

Since the painting began the artists, including children helping with the painting have been subjected to a campaign of drive by racists howling abuse over the non-white faces going up on the wall. The mural was condemned by local talk radio host and city councilman Steve Blair who spear-headed a campaign to take down the mural as it was clearly pro-Obama propaganda that was trying to 'create controversy.'

For portraying some of the non-white kids who actually go to the school.

Read the reader comments on the local Prescott paper's articles about the scandal. Most of the citizens express shame that this has even become an issue. Some stand up for Blair, arguing basically, that its bad enough some people insist on choosing the dark skinned lifestyle without rubbing everybody else's nose in it.

Most discouragingly of all, the school administrators responded to the controversy by asking the artists to lighten the children's faces.

UPDATE: A Happy Ending.

UPDATE 2: Roger Ebert's brilliant, enormously touching take.

That brings me back around to the story of the school mural. I began up above by imagining I was a student in Prescott, Arizona, with my face being painted over. That was easy for me. What I cannot imagine is what it would be like to be one of those people driving past in their cars day after day and screaming hateful things out of the window. How do you get to that place in your life? Were you raised as a racist, or become one on your own? Yes, there was racism involved as my mother let the driver wait outside in the car, but my mother had not evolved past that point at that time. The hard-won social struggles of the 1960s and before have fundamentally altered the feelings most of us breathe, and we have evolved, and that is how America will survive. We are all in this together.

Seeing Both Sides

This blog and many others have been harshly critical of Israel of late. Expect this to continue.

But to those who argue Israel is unfairly singled out and Hamas is not criticized enough, let me be clear:

Hamas is a deeply unpleasant, extremist organization. Religious fanatics with ugly rhetoric, ugly behaviour and ugly allies. Their tactics have been criminal and counter-productive to the interests of the Palestinian people, which is very clearly shown by how much pressure has come to bear on Israel over the last few years from more peaceful tactics. Sanctions, criticism, divestment campaigns and international condemnation. More sympathy has been generated for the Palestinians from one obstructed blockade run than missiles and suicide bombs ever could. On both tactical and moral grounds the Palestinian struggle benefits from non-violent resistance.

Hamas should release Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held prisoner these last four years. They should do so immediately despite the - entirely valid - argument that Israel should also release many of it's Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners some held just as incommunicado and without charge. Those criticizing Israel and advocating for the Palestinians should join the chorus calling for this young man's release on both humanitarian and strategic grounds.
Doing so would return a young man to his family and his nation and remove a major rhetorical arrow in Israel's rhetorical arsenal.

Context is important and the context is that Hamas is very much the creation of Israel itself in a past short-sighted strategy of promoting religious groups that Israel thought would be less of a threat than secular groups like the PLO. The context is that the argument that Hamas is forever beyond the pale, can never be dealt with, never compromised with, never even acknowledged as any kind of legitimate representative of the Palestinian people are an exact repeat of the same arguments made about Fatah - which is now promoted as the legitimate leadership of the Palestinian people.

Hamas leaders have made ugly eliminationist statements about Jews and refused to recognize the State of Israel. Israeli leaders have made ugly eliminationist statements about the Palestinians and all Arabs and refused to acknowledge the right of an independent Palestinian state to exist. Both sides have said and done exceedingly ugly things.

One side has all the power, the other has none.

Israel's defenders trot out the 'only real democracy in the Middle East' line repeatedly. The price of claiming that your nation has higher standards than your neighbours is that you are held to higher standards than your neighbours. That's the way it works.

The leaders of both sides are appalling, the citizens underneath them are the ones who suffer.

Look Good in Leather

Cody Chesnutt struts

The Seductive appeal of Victimhood

Greenwald pours out a barn-burner on the subject and Anshel Pfeffer explores it as well in Haaretz.

Thus, nuclear-armed Israel is bullied and victimized by starving Gazans with stones. The Israel Navy is threatened by a flotilla filled with wheelchairs and medicine. And the greatest superpower the Earth has ever known faces a grave and existential threat from a handful of religious fanatics hiding in caves.

Execution on the High Seas

ISTANBUL — One of the nine people killed in an Israeli commando raid on a flotilla of ships heading for Gaza this week was a United States citizen of Turkish descent, officials in Turkey and Washington said Thursday.
...
The Cihan news agency reported that Mr. Dogan had one bullet in the chest and four bullets fired into his head from close range.

Forbidden Items

Lots of apologists asking why, if the flotilla activists really cared about getting their humanitarian supplies to the citizens of Gaza, they didn't they just politely hand them to the Israeli authorities to pass on to the Palestinians. This graphic sourced from Andrew Sullivan reveals why the activists could have serious doubts about whether those supplies would in fact reach who they were intended for:Among the banned items: construction equipment - concrete or even wood is banned for a population still living in the rubble of Operation Cast Lead, canned or dried fruit, fishing rods and poultry are forbidden to a population the UN says faces severe food insecurity. Like prisoners in a totalitarian regime, they are also denied newspapers - don't want the prisoners being disturbed by news from the outside world.

How exactly does denying a population the right to have musical instruments stop rocket attacks? The answer of course, is it has nothing to do with security and is just mean spirited collective punishment for a population that voted in a way that displeased Israel.

Collective punishment is forbidden by international law.

If you hate Israel...

...and you pray for its destruction, you should:

• Support the blockade of Gaza and the methods used to sustain it unreservedly and uncritically.
  
• Support Netanyahu and his far right coalition of Likudniks, racist supporters of ethnic cleansing and petty grafters.
  
• Denounce anyone offering even the mildest criticism as antisemites.
  
• Describe those who attack foreign flagged vessels in international waters as victims when those on those vessels resist.
  
• Oppose any compromise on settlements, Jerusalem or water rights.
  
• Support and sustain the current government of Israel and any tactics it uses to maintain the current status quo.

If your goal is the isolation, abandonment and ultimate destruction of the state of Israel, these tactics will drastically accelerate your goals.

UPDATE: See M J Rosenberg

Exodus 2010

Noam Sheizaf, an Israeli journalist who is rounding up reports and commentary on the attack on his blog, “Promised Land,” points to a post in Hebrew by Rafi Man of the Israel Democracy Institute which asks: “Will This Be the Palestinian Exodus?”

Mr. Man was referring to the story of the “Exodus 1947,” a ship filled with Jewish Holocaust survivors who wanted to immigrate to Palestine in July 1947. That month, the British Navy intercepted the ship to enforce a ban on Jewish immigration to the territory, which was then under British control.

As my colleague Margalit Fox wrote in December — in an obituary for Yitzhak Ahronovitch, the captain of the Exodus 1947 — the violent way the British Navy seized that ship and deported the refugees backfired, creating global sympathy for the plight of stateless Jews. Ms. Fox explained:

The refugees had no legal authority to enter Palestine, and the British were determined to block the ship. In the battle that ensued, three Jews aboard the Exodus were killed. The ship’s passengers — more than 4,500 men, women and children — were ultimately deported to Germany.

The attack and its aftermath, which focused attention on the plight of many European Jews after the war, made headlines worldwide and helped marshal support for an Israeli state. [...]

Captain Ahronovitch was 23 when he took the helm of the Exodus. On July 11, 1947, he picked up the refugees at Sète, in southern France. On July 18, as the ship neared the coast of Palestine, the British Navy intercepted it. Captain Ahronovitch tried to break through, but two British destroyers rammed the ship.

Several hours of fighting followed, with the ship’s passengers spraying fuel oil and throwing smoke bombs, life rafts and whatever else came to hand, down on the British sailors trying to board, The Times reported at the time. Soon the British opened fire. Two immigrants and a crewman on the Exodus were killed; scores more were wounded, many seriously. The ship was towed to Haifa, and from there its passengers were deported, first to France and eventually to Germany, where they were placed in camps near Lübeck.


According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, when refugees from the Exodus 1947 were forced into displaced persons camps in Germany by the British military:

Large protests erupted on both sides of the Atlantic. The ensuing public embarrassment for Britain played a significant role in the diplomatic swing of sympathy toward the Jews and the eventual recognition of a Jewish state in 1948.

Quote of the Day

Yesterday's fiasco could and should have been prevented. This flotilla should have been allowed to pass and the blockade should be brought to an end.

This should have happened a long time ago. In four years Hamas has not weakened and Gilad Shalit was not released. There was not even a sign of a gain.

And what have we instead? A country that is quickly becoming completely isolated. This is a place that turns away intellectuals, shoots peace activists, cuts off Gaza and now finds itself in an international blockade. Once more yesterday it seemed, and not for the first time, that Israel is increasingly breaking away from the mother ship, and losing touch with the world - which does not accept its actions and does not understand its motives. - Gideon Levy in Haaretz

First they came for Healthcare...

...now it's the education system's turn.

The government is giving Alberta's education system a dose of health-care medicine; fiscal starvation now, to be followed at some distant point by a gush of relief funding.

This destructive pattern laid waste to health care and could be every bit as dangerous for education. The emerging parallels are eerie and unmistakable.

Health care was deliberately underfunded for years. Most of the old health regions (seven of nine in the later stages of the provincial strategy) were forced to run deficits.

The Tories then demonized the regions, softening up the public for their replacement by the single superboard.

By then, of course, health care was truly in crisis, with ever more crowding, waiting and cursing.

Finally the government supplied a mammoth dose of funding to wipe off the deficit while happily taking the credit for solving the very problems it created.

Which brings us, with trembling heart, to education.

Look out, education. Exactly the same thing is happening to you -- except relief funding is a long way off.

The malign incompetence of this government would mean their end in any other province. In heavily gerrymandered, terminally complacent Alberta, they are betting they can get away with it forever.

The Poster Child for Outing

Roy Ashburn, the California legislator who came out in March after years of operating as a "family values" Republican, is now speaking out in favor of gay rights.

Ashburn spoke on the state senate floor yesterday about a bill that could affect gay marriage, should it become legal in the state again.

"On a personal note, before I speak to the bill, I would not have been speaking on a measure dealing with sexual orientation ever, prior to the events that have transpired in my life over the last three months," Ashburn said, according to the Sacramento Bee.

"However, I am no longer willing or able to remain silent on issues that affect sexual orientation, the rights of individuals and so I'm doing something that is quite different and foreign to me."

In March, Ashburn was arrested for drunken driving. After a torrent of rumors that Ashburn -- a staunch family-values Republican who never voted in favor of gay rights -- had been at a gay club before his arrest, he came out as a gay man.

"I'm finding my way," he told a local news station after yesterday's vote.

He said he voted against gay rights in the past in order to keep his sexuality under wraps.

"I'm not proud of it," he said. He even spoke out in favor of repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

If some scared celebrity wants to stay in the closet that should be respected, but politicians or religious leaders who hide in the closet and throw rocks at those out of it should be fair game. Ashburn is the perfect example of why.

Israel offered nukes to Apartheid South Africa

Secret South African documents reveal that Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime, providing the first official documentary evidence of the state's possession of nuclear weapons.

The "top secret" minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries in 1975 show that South Africa's defence minister, PW Botha, asked for the warheads and Shimon Peres, then Israel's defence minister and now its president, responded by offering them "in three sizes". The two men also signed a broad-ranging agreement governing military ties between the two countries that included a clause declaring that "the very existence of this agreement" was to remain secret.

So today 'Apartheid' is a word so foul, so condemnatory that it is never acceptable to use it in relation to Israel's treatment of Palestinians no matter how increasingly applicable it becomes, but at the height - or the depths - of the South African Apartheid government, Israel was offering them nuclear weapons and a military pact.

Certainly sounds like a sympathy born from shared approaches to living side by side with a dispossessed and rigidly controlled 'other'.

Plus, yet another nail in the strictly unofficial policy of deliberate ambiguity about Israel's nuclear arsenal, an open secret that makes attacks on Iran for allegedly seeking nuclear weapons intensely hypocritical.

We are abjured to treat such a possibility with - preferably unreasoning - horror, but could they be any more irresponsible than the state that offered them to the white supremacist government of Apartheid era South Africa?

How you Like Me Now?

Tasty, funky Soul from The Heavy. Playing Calgary on June 18th.

Muzzling Pride

Facing threats against their funding, the Toronto Gay Pride Parade banned Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, seven year veterans of the Parade from attending.

Participants in Toronto’s Gay Pride parade this year won’t be able to march under the banner Queers Against Israeli Apartheid.

Pride Toronto’s Board of Directors voted Friday to ban the term from all Pride-related events, Councillor Kyle Rae confirmed.

No one from Pride Toronto would comment Friday, although they said a news conference will be held Tuesday.

The group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, which has marched in Toronto’s annual Pride parade for the past several years, has angered people who feel the name is discriminatory, anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli.

The group, for its part, insists it’s none of those things, but merely critical of the policies of the state of Israel. Pride Toronto’s move is essentially censorship, they say.

Mr. Rae, a long-time champion of gay rights in the city and an opponent of the group’s participation in the parade, said he got an e-mail Friday afternoon from one of Pride Toronto’s board members, telling him “the Pride committee has voted to ban the use of the term Israeli apartheid at all Pride-related events.”

The city has expressed concern over the apartheid name and the consternation it has caused; a motion put forward by councillor and mayoral candidate Giorgio Mammoliti – going before executive committee June 14 – would pull Pride Toronto’s funding if the group didn’t “invoke the City of Toronto’s anti-discrimination policies” and reject Queers Against Israeli Apartheid’s application to participate in this year’s parade.

So a term used commonly in the discourse within Israel, used just recently by their current Defense Minister and former Prime Minister Ehud Barak is now essentially forbidden in Canada.

UPDATE: See Dawg. Those justifying this blatant censorship of criticism of a state's actions argue that Ehud Barak was saying Apartheid may be the future of Israel if things don't change from their current trend line, not the condition currently. That is a matter of legitimate debate, but as an argument for why Barak could use the word but it's still illegitimate for critics of Israel's actions to use it.... pathetic.

Liberty in the UK

Regular readers can probably guess that were I a citizen of the UK I would identify as a Labour supporter. I am, essentially a Social Democrat after all. But that's on the economic/social safety net axis of the political compass. On the political axis I'm basically a lefty libertarian and that part of my political make up stood up and cheered at some of the reforms proposed by the Tory/Lib Dem coalition yesterday:

The Britain of today is watched constantly by CCTV cameras, is preparing for a national ID card, slaps a "crown copyright" on most government data, and can now censor websites and eventually boot people off the Internet.

According to the new Liberal Democrat/Tory coalition government, that's all about to change. The coalition today released its unified policy statement (PDF), and for techies and privacy advocates, there's lots to like.

• We will scrap the ID card scheme, the National Identity register and the ContactPoint database, and halt the next generation of biometric passports.
• We will outlaw the fingerprinting of children at school without parental permission.
• We will adopt the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database.
• We will review libel laws to protect freedom of speech.
• We will further regulate CCTV.
• We will end the storage of internet and e-mail records without good reason.
• We will create a level playing field for open-source software and will enable large ICT projects to be split into smaller components.
• We will create a new "right to data" so that government-held datasets can be requested and used by the public, and then published on a regular basis.
• We will introduce measures to ensure the rapid roll-out of superfast broadband across the country. We will ensure that BT and other infrastructure providers allow the use of their assets to deliver such broadband, and we will seek to introduce superfast broadband in remote areas at the same time as in more populated areas. If necessary, we will consider using the part of the TV license fee that is supporting the digital switchover to fund broadband in areas that the market alone will not reach.

In the few hundred yards around the home of 1984 author George Orwell, there are literally hundreds of CCTV cameras both public and private. Private citizens in the UK can be compelled to provide DNA samples without criminal charges brought against them, teens who get into any kind of trouble can be slapped with ASBOs, antisocial behavior orders, basically a juvenile equivalent of dangerous offender status and lose big chunks of their civil rights.

The authoritarian, borderline totalitarian impulses in New Labour, combined with calculated, pandering appeals to people's worst fears, class suspicions and harsh reactionary criminal justice views have led to some seriously disturbing excesses. I'll applaud anybody, even the mixed bag of neoliberals in the Lib Dem/Tory coalition, who reverse some of them.

Rand Paul...

...just thinks we don't understand the subtle philosophical point he's trying to make and doesn't get that we understand perfectly his theory that it is illegitimate for the state to tell a business that they can't refuse to serve black people and our response is "Yeah, we get it, fuck you."

Quote of the day

Laura Bush coming out for gay marriage! I guess if ur married to W for 30 yrs u know u don't have to be gay to have sex with an asshole. -

Posted from twitter Bill Maher

Another Vicious Antisemite

I really believe that if Israel becomes more and more callous toward the right and dignity of non-Jews, it is naive to believe it will not become more callous to the rights and dignity of certain Jews. I think the two cannot be separated. Whether it’s the rights of gays and lesbians, or the rights of women who want to pray at the Kotel, or soldiers who want to speak out.
When we protect the right of Arab Israelis, we’re also protecting the rights of Jews against the government, and a Haredi population that I think at times is willing to use violence.

Sunday Linkblast - May 16

• A Nursing Diploma in Alberta offers a great future!
  ...somewhere else.
  
  
• 2010: The year the Republican Party came unglued
  A party captive to the craziest elements of its base.
  
  
• Conservatives catering to the theo-cons
  If they're this blatant in a minority what would a majority be like?
  
  
• Greece considering filing suit against Wall Street
  Like Iceland, at least part of their troubles came from deliberate economic warfare by short-selling hedge funds.
  
  
• Meanwhile activists in Ecuador suing Toronto Stock exchange over violence linked to Canadian mining companies
  Denied by the court but plaintiffs appeal.
  
  
• Beautiful reunion
  This is surprisingly touching - I almost teared up.
  
  
• Infants make moral judgments
  Concepts of right and wrong may be hard-wired into our brains from birth
  
  
• Sarah Palin wants terrorists to be able to buy guns
  Does that seem unfair? Tough.
  
  
• Israelis: Boycotts are illegitimate!
  ...except our brutal and total boycott on the citizens of Gaza.
  UPDATE: Academic boycotts are always illegitimate... unless they are by us on academics like Noam Chomsky who say things we don't like.
  
  

No Sympathy

Being forced to treat all people equally if you represent the government? The horror... the horror.

REGINA — A Saskatchewan lawyer told the province's highest court Thursday that marriage commissioners who refuse to marry gay couples are the ones who are being "unfairly discriminated against."

The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal is set to rule on whether commissioners can be forced to perform same-sex marriages against their religious beliefs.

The provincial government referred the question to the court after a marriage commissioner refused to marry a gay couple in 2008, igniting a storm of controversy.

Dale Blenner-Hassett, the lawyer representing the Canadian Fellowship of Churches and Ministers, said same-sex couples have the right to get married, but commissioners should also have rights.

"We're dealing with some marriage commissioners that we believe have been unfairly discriminated against," he told the five appeal court judges.

The Saskatchewan Party government is asking the court to consider two versions of the proposed legislation — one exempting all marriage commissioners, and another exempting only those who were commissioners when gay marriage was legalized in 2004.

"It's up to the court to decide," said Justice Minister Don Morgan.

But if the court finds there are constitutional issues with both draft bills, the province would force all marriage commissioners to perform same-sex marriages, Morgan said.

NDP justice critic Frank Quennell said the proposed legislation would allow marriage commissioners to discriminate against other couples.

"Clearly, if the legislation was approved by the Court of Appeal and passed by the Government of Saskatchewan, marriage commissioners could refuse to provide marriages to interracial couples or couples whose religions are different . . . as long as they claimed a religious motivation," he told reporters. "I don't believe it's constitutional."(Emphasis added.)

Mr Quennell's argument is unassailable. To those shaking their heads and saying 'Nope, nope nope, not the same thing...' screw you, it's exactly the same thing.

This is an attempt at legalized bigotry, it is doomed to fail in the courts, again, and so represents the government of Saskatchewan spending hundreds of thousands of their taxpayer's dollars on a legal battle they know will fail, in order to cater to the most reactionary and intolerant elements of their own base.

Bottom Line: Marriage Commissioners are licensed representatives of the state. If you don't want to treat all couples equally and perform legal marriages get a different goddamn job!

For Profit Medicine Stifles Innovation

"Patient 5” was part of the first official experiment to see if DCA could fight cancer in humans. She took the compound in combination with conventional treatment – surgery, radiation and chemotherapy – and after 15 months her tumour had disappeared. She had no symptoms. Three others who took the drug also had their tumours shrink significantly or stop growing. In all, five patients with glioblastoma were given the drug – one man died three months into the trial.

Those results, released Wednesday, seem likely to fuel an increase in demand for DCA, despite the pleas of researchers and other experts that patients not take it until more studies are done. The DCA phenomenon is a sign of the Internet’s growing power to help patients circumvent traditional medical research on drugs, to run their own, unofficial clinical trials. This trend can lead to an increase in online scams, as well: On Tuesday, 22-year-old Hazim Gaber of Edmonton pleaded guilty in a Phoenix courtroom of selling a white powder he claimed was DCA to 65 people in the United States, Canada and several other countries. It was little more than corn starch.

One of the reasons some patients have turned to the Internet for DCA is that the drug has been around for years and can’t be patented. No pharmaceutical company was willing to invest the money required to bring it to market as a cancer treatment.

The University of Alberta researchers raised more than $200,000 for their experiment, resulting in the small sample size of five patients. As another facet of the experiment, lead scientist Evangelos Michelakis and his colleagues also injected the drug into pieces of brain tumour taken from 49 patients during surgery. They found the drug worked the same way in those human tumour cells as it had in earlier experiments on cancerous animal cells.

I've addressed this subject before, but it bears revisiting; proponents of private medicine and the profit motive as the best driver of innovation in medical science have a lousy case.

The biggest driver of real innovation in medical science isn't big pharm. Drug companies spend most of their budget chasing new erection or baldness pills, promoting the drugs they already produce and laboring to make tiny, meaningless molecular changes to existing compounds to make old drugs patentable again. The biggest financial backer for real medical research, not just in North America but in the whole world is the public sector via the National Institute of Health in the US which spends in the range of 30 billion dollars a year on pure research.

Meanwhile, drug companies refuse to research drugs that have been around long enough to lose patent protection no matter how promising new research shows they can be, in fact they will even suppress research into cheap drugs that would compete with their own expensive alternatives that don't work as well. When a cancer drug in incredibly small and cheap quantities was found to be an extremely effective macular degeneration treatment - in effect a cure for blindness - the drug company sought to outlaw its use for that treatment so they could split off the active compound, slap a new label on it and increase its price a hundred times.

How many people will die of brain tumors that could have been effectively treated, possibly even cured if drug companies didn't put profits before lives?

Jeffrey Simpson's Contempt for Democracy

Jeffrey Simpson's remarkably pompous and disingenuous column in the Mop and Pail today has already been overtaken by events, but it's still worth a quick severe beating about the face and neck anyway.

Simpson is DEEPLY OFFENDED by the spectacle of the Lib Dems, who won only 9% of the seats in Britain's parliament having the major role they've had in selecting the UKs new government.

To be clear, he's not offended by the fact that the party that got 23% of the vote got only 9% of the seats - he's absolutely fine with that, and only gets around to a throwaway reference to that fact in paragraph 8. No, he's incensed that after narrowly winning the most seats in parliament there could possibly be any obstruction to the Conservatives triumphant victory march into office. That they will have to horse-trade and negotiate and at least present the opportunity for a more representative voting system in the UK in order to take office is to Simpson a disgrace.

Never mind that the Conservatives won the most seats with barely 36% of the vote and everybody else voted center left to socialist - sound familiar? - giving that overwhelming majority of voters a center left to socialist coalition government would be deeply undemocratic... somehow, and would increase the odds that a more representative democracy would become a permanent fixture of UK politics.

As this would mean that a largely center left population would probably never vote in another unrepresentative Conservative majority it is a very bad thing in Simpson's eyes. Actually making the British political system, and the Canadian one for that matter as he drags us into his hissy fit about halfway through, more representative and responsive to the views of the majority is in Simpson's view, sleazy, undemocratic, distasteful deal-making.

A more perfect example of elitist disdain for the common herd would be hard to find.

UK Labour/Lib-Dem coalition increasingly likely

Gordon Brown presented a timetable for his own departure from the stage today, acknowledging that whatever coalition or minority government emerges he won't be heading it - at least for very long. Labour has offered the Lib-Dems the adoption of alternate vote PR without any more consultation, study or even a referendum. The Tories in response offer to hold a referendum on PR, but note that they will campaign against it - while holding office.

Today Nick Clegg said:

Over the past four days we have been working flat-out to deliver an agreement that can provide stable government that can last. The talks with the Conservatives have been very constructive and I am grateful to David Cameron and his team for the effort they have put in. But so far we have been unable to agree a comprehensive partnership agreement for a full parliament.
We need a government that lasts, which is why we believe, in the light of the state of talks with the Conservative party, the only responsible thing to do is to open discussions with the Labour party to secure a stable partnership agreement. We will of course continue our discussions with the Conservative party to see if we can find a way to a full agreement.
Gordon Brown has taken a difficult personal decision in the national interest. And I think without prejudice to the talks that will now happen between Labour and the Liberal Democrats, Gordon Brown's decision is an important element which could help ensure a smooth transition to the stable government that everyone deserves.

Which can be read as a fairly broad hint that the pro-forma negotiations with the Tories are drawing to a close and the UK is heading for a Labour/Lib Dem coalition.

The only factor left that might make things come out differently is whether Labour calculates that government is a poisoned chalice with hard spending cut decisions looming on the near horizon and they'd be better off letting the Conservatives stick their hand in the meat-grinder and wait for the inevitable opportunities that will arise to topple an unstable Conservative government and swoop in to 'save the day'.

Labour held their losses to a lower number then most observers expected and may be thinking that with Gordon Brown out of the way a rematch in a year or so might come out differently.

UPDATE: Yup. Enough Labour MPs prefer going into opposition to making the necessary compromises to make a Labour/Lib Dem alliance work. On the plus side, Cameron, an already moderate Tory leader will be forced to hew closely to the center to keep the Lib Dems onside and in a year or two the Tories and Lib Dems will be stained by events while Labour will be waiting.

Even with an extremely unpopular leader, a public enraged by an expenses scandal and a left wing base still furious over Iraq, Labour held more seats then observers expected and after a dose of the Tories, the British public will remember why they loath them and Labour with a new leader will start looking good again. A coalition could have been good for both Labour and the Lib Dems and the Libs willingness to get into bed with the Tories will cost them a chunk of their base.

More human than human

So the next time some sub-literate blowhard starts dribbling to you about racial purity, white superiority and the evils of race mixing, you might want to mention to him that it turns out that the only pure members of the species homo sapiens sapiens on Earth are Africans.

Early humans mated with Neanderthals, and modern human DNA was changed forever by it. New genetic evidence, announced today, proves that most humans share 1-4% of their DNA with Neanderthals. Unless you're from Africa, in which case you're Neanderthal-free. A massive, multiyear study at the Max Planck Institute compared the genomes of three Neanderthal women (reconstructed from 38,000-year-old bones) with five humans from across the world - two from Africa, one from Europe, one from China, and one from Papua, New Guinea. The results show that humans and Neanderthals did interbreed, possibly as early as 100 thousand years ago when early humans were immigrating out of Africa into Europe and Asia. This immigration pattern also helps to explain why the two human genomes from Africa have no traces of Neanderthal in them. The African population never interbred with our hominid cousins.

All those Star Trek episodes that assume that we'll cheerfully start breeding with aliens as soon as we meet them might not have been too off the mark. We've already shacked up with the only other species we ever met.

UK: On hating Tories and voting strategically

So many elements of the British election are applicable to the Canadian experience it's astounding.

Oh sure, the NDP and the Liberals positions are somewhat reversed, both in power, perceived electability and some of the policies in the UK's Labour government and the Lib-Dem third Party, but otherwise, in angst about potential coalition government, in a dominant progressive party that has come adrift from progressive ideals and a right wing party that puts a kinder, gentler face on the same old class-war conservatism the parallels are positively eerie.

And Tories everywhere seem to generate the same kind of loathing.

I hate Tories. Not the people who vote for them. But the people they vote for. I make no great claims for that as a political position. But as an electoral category it is crucial. For I'm sure I'm not alone and it's pretty much the only thing keeping Labour going right now. It's certainly the only thing that could get me to the polls on Thursday.

I don't have a phobia about Tories. That would suggest an irrational response. I hate them for a reason. For lots of reasons, actually. For the miners, apartheid, Bobby Sands, Greenham Common, selling council houses, Section 28, lining the pockets of the rich and hammering the poor – to name but a few. I hate them because they hate people I care about. As a young man Cameron looked out on the social carnage of pit closures and mass unemployment, looked at Margaret Thatcher's government and thought, these are my people. When all the debating is done, that is really all I need to know.

But it's not rationality that drives my disdain, it's a negative tribalism. Tories, like Labour, exist only as a political and electoral category. I was raised in the Labour tribe. But over the last 15 years that tribe left me, or rather showed such disdain for me that I felt I had to leave. They did terrible things I did not want to be associated with. I grew to loathe them, too. But there was lament in my loathing. I wanted them to be better. I thought they could be better. I never had much time for the Liberals. By which I mean I never gave them much thought. I didn't want a new tribe, and somehow they never seemed tribal enough. I wanted my old tribe back. This isolation came with regret. Labour left me tribeless. The only way I could define myself electorally was by what I was not. And I am not a Tory.

I don't hate them because they're rich. I grew up among working-class people and now know a fair number of rich ones, too. I see no more inherent moral quality among those who have little money than those who have lots. The fact that Cameron went to Eton is irrelevant. He had no choice in the matter. I hate him because he supports the rich and wants people who go to Eton to enjoy even more breaks than they already have.

Philosophically this is an impotent rage. I also hate them because for a long time they kept winning, and were able to convince more people than we could by appealing to their most base instincts. Because they managed to change the country in a terrible way and reconfigure the political conversation so that some of the more outrageous things they did are now orthodox. The memory of them and the prospect of them make me want to retch.