John Yoo: Ass Clown

Shorter John Yoo:

"America will never be safe again unless our enemies believe we are prepared to drown them, bury them alive or torture their children by crushing their testicles."

Where's it all going? Part D'oh!

Two years ago I asked Albertans to think about where exactly all the huge wealth generated by 'the Alberta advantage' was actually going. Bill Kauffman at the Calgary Sun (!) lays out the numbers from Stats Can and the Parkland Institute to answer that question as the fevered haze of the boom lifts and we all blearily stagger around post wild party Alberta trying not to step on any bottles.

From 2002 to 2006, Alberta's GDP fairly exploded, with energy construction expenditures ballooning from $13.3 billion to $33.1 billion. Alberta's labour productivity in 2005 was tops in Canada.

Yet 57% of those workers said their wages weren't keeping pace with living costs spiked by the boom, with the stats bearing that out.

We've been sweating harder to simply tread water.

With things better than ever, Alberta in 2007 hosted the largest per capita population of working homeless in Canada, and 27.7% of those using food banks were employed.

While the energy industry was ascendent and the province was rolling out its biggest budget to date in 2007, say the Parklanders, our grade schools weren't even allocated a cost of living increase and post-secondary tuition fees increased.

Boomtime Alberta had the lowest rate of social assistance for single employables.

Alberta still hasn't replaced the hospital beds it lost during the 1990s cutbacks and with the province hitting a fiscal brick wall, doing it will be that much harder.

Where'd all the money go?

Predictably, not so much trickled down. Instead, it geysered up to the top executive suites in the form of spiralling multi-million dollar salaries and stock options -- or left the country.

Petroleum sector revenue under foreign control in Alberta was 56% in 2003. From just 10 large corporations surveyed, the study determined 55.9% of dividends, or $1.3 billion, left the country in 2005.

The Big Three Killed My Baby

OTTAWA — The Canadian Auto Workers union, which has long resisted offering concessions, said Thursday that it would begin special contract talks with the automakers based in Detroit.

The union’s change of heart is related to the Canadian government’s offer of bailout money to those companies’ subsidiaries in Canada. Tony Clement, the minister of industry, has said the government would give money only if Canadian wages and benefits matched those paid by Honda and Toyota in Canada.

The federal and Ontario governments have pledged about 4 billion Canadian dollars ($3.3 billion) in emergency loans to the industry.

“Labor costs clearly did not cause this worldwide crisis in the auto industry, and labor concessions cannot possibly solve that crisis,” Ken Lewenza, the union’s president, said in a statement. “But we can’t ignore the precarious financial state of these companies, the extraordinary government offers of aid and our need to remain fully competitive for future investment.”

The union’s members are in the first year of three-year contracts with the Canadian units of Chrysler, Ford Motor and General Motors.

The Canadian labor agreements provide wages of 34 Canadian dollars an hour.

Toyota’s main Canadian plant in Cambridge, Ontario, pays a median wage of 33.25 Canadian dollars an hour.

In other words, like their Republican counterparts south of the border the Conservatives view the crisis facing the auto industry - almost entirely due to executive incompetence - as just another opportunity to attack workers based on insultingly spurious arguments.

I still remember visiting MPs on the hill when I was lobbying for my then union the TWU. Liberals were gushingly polite but their hearty handshakes and empty smiles promised nothing. The NDP invited us to a full caucus meeting, gave us a standing ovation and brought our issues to the house. The Conservatives... well I still remember sitting open-mouthed across the desk from a Conservative MP as he ranted about 'union mischief' until the spittle flew.

After the fiscal update's declaration of their desire to strip rights from public sector workers and their all but unanimous support for the Liberal's betrayal of labour on anti-scab and now this sleazy attempt to lay all the auto industry's troubles at the doors of their workers because of a 75 cent labour cost difference it should be clear to everyone that the Conservatives just hate any workers who band together to protect their interests.

Alberta's surprising health choice

It's the kind of thing that just makes you rub your eyes in wonder: Alberta's Conservative government just hired Stephen Duckett, a fiercely articulate critic of private and two-tier health care systems... to run Alberta's health care system.

Yeah, that's what I said, but read this:

...in Australia, a prominent private system exists alongside the public system. In 2003/04 about 40% of all hospital admissions were to private hospitals. About 43% of the people residing in Australia have private health insurance. This dual system has deleterious implications for the equity and efficiency of the health care system, and similar ill effects could occur if Canada were to follow the Australian path of health care organization.

Mr Duckett is harshly critical of the huge increase in costs and the inequitable results of expanded private sector involvement in the health sector and alarmed by the growing political power of the private health lobby in Australia.

After the overwhelmingly negative reaction to the government's musings about 90's style cuts earlier this month this appointment may just represent Stelmach's eagerness to avoid any more fights about health care and of course Mr Duckett will be administrating policy, not making it, but regardless its a surprising and welcome reminder that Ralph Klein is gone.

Playing chicken?

So without the NDP's support either the Conservatives accept, indeed vote for, the Liberal's humiliating probation amendment or they refuse it and Iggy's choice is to swallow his pride and vote for the budget anyway or... not.

Even two months ago I would have had no doubt about Harper's response to the Liberals dictating terms to him, now...

I guess we'll see won't we.

UPDATE: Well that settles that.

OTTAWA - The Conservatives are expected to support a Liberal amendment that would require the government to provide regular updates on the implementation and cost of the budget, Canwest News has learned.
"The budget already required reporting, so we see no reason to oppose this," a government official close to Prime Minister Stephen Harper told Canwest News on Wednesday

In other words, the Tories have every reason to believe that their probation officer won't be a strict one and will be doing the equivalent of moving in across the street from the elementary school and missing their appointments with impunity.

Iggy's tight leash on Stevie

Sigh. Well there goes the coalition for now. The Liberals will support the budget, but only after including an amendment that puts Harper in a dog collar.

11:20:02 AM Alright, so we’ve got the statement - which is short if not particularly sweet, and the upshot of which is that the Liberals will introduce an amendment to ensure that the government is “held accountable for its promises” - and adds, “We are putting this government on probation.” Yes, your guess is as good as mine as far as what that means, but here’s the nugget of ooh, that may actually be clever: regular reports to Parliament - in March, June and December - any of which will be a confidence motion.

It's designed to put the political timetable for the rest of the year in the hands of the Liberals and not incidentally, to utterly humiliate Harper - I don't see him doing anything but biting his lip and accepting it though. Might be worth tuning into CPAC to see that little vein pulse in his forehead.

I think its a mistake. I agree with Scott Reid's argument from a month and a half ago, that given an opportunity to remove Harper from Canadian politics permanently it's folly to pass it up and tax cuts still make lousy stimulus, so that's 20 billion wasted with the added downside of restricting future progressive governance when interest rates and deficits start rising in tandem again.

But Liberals got a honeymoon poll bounce from their leadership change - the prospect of a leader who can out-bastard Harper appeals to some - and have acquired some beer muscles. Ignatieff still talks about the coalition as if it were one more weapon in his arsenal of threats to be kept on standby as long its useful to the Liberal Party - it's up to Layton now to make it clear that isn't the case.

The only question now is if Harper will accept the humiliation of being forced to behave like he has...horrors!...a minority rather than a defacto majority.

UPDATE: Jack won't support the amendment and it can't pass without the NDP. Will Ignatieff accept the budget without the leash?

12:09:13 PM Okay, so the upshot is: No, he won’t support this amendment, and it is a ’sad day’ what with Ignatieff providing a ‘fig leaf’ to the government.

His Kung Fu is stronger than yours

Old Man Potter leaves the White House

Heh.

It's Obama's inauguration day and TCM, the classic movie channel is playing Guess Who's Coming to Dinner tonight.

Too bad...

...that you had to get caught,
That's not like you to lose face.
So sad that you're not as smart,
As you thought you were in the first place.

Conrad Black has lost a bid for clemency from outgoing U.S. President George W. Bush.

In his final acts of clemency Monday, Mr. Bush commuted the prison sentence of two former U.S. Border Patrol agents whose convictions for shooting a Mexican drug dealer ignited fierce debate about illegal immigration.

Mr. Black didn't make the list, and although Mr. Bush technically has until noon Tuesday, when president-elect Barack Obama is sworn into office, to exercise his executive pardon authority, presidential advisers said no more were forthcoming.

And so it goes

The Israeli cabinet is set to back an end to offensive military activities in the Gaza Strip, three weeks after attacks began, the BBC understands.

Israel's leaders are expected to approve a ceasefire at a meeting later on Saturday, after which PM Ehud Olmert will address the nation, sources said.

The sources said the ceasefire deal did not involve Hamas.

The images that have been going through my head uncontrollably the last few weeks, are the assault on the ghetto sequence from Schindler's List.

There's no possible correlation of course, no heavy artillery and white phosphorous shells for one thing.

Gaza has been a war, conducted in the context of shadowy and contradictory movements from a political leadership who are simultaneously in the process of running against each other in elections. Okay critics of coalition governments may have a point, at least as it applies to the conduct of a war of aggression.

This is the future as Israel sees it: 'We say there's no one to negotiate with, so no attempt will be made. The West Bank will become an Israeli suburb, one settlement block at a time. Gaza will continue to be a huge fenced in outdoor prison and there will be the occasional punitive assault to crush any resistance from the prisoners. Forever.'

And political and media elites in the West will continue the full-throated support for Israel that has one inescapable underlying premise: White lives are worth more than brown lives.

Stelmach's PCs dare Albertans to stop them.

EDMONTON — Economic storm clouds are forming over Alberta, forcing one of Canada’s wealthiest provinces to look at trimming spending and possibly cutting jobs.

“You cannot just blindly go on spending if your revenue streams continue to drop,” Treasury Board President Lloyd Snelgrove said in an interview. “Our only other realistic opportunity is to cut spending.”

Snelgrove says once Albertans signal that they’ve had enough of spending cuts, then tax increases may be considered.

“We have to get to the point where Albertans will say to us, `We want this level of service and we are prepared to pay more,”’ said the minister.

The ideologues of the Progressive Conservative government of Alberta know better. Forget that we've all just watched the free market absolutism of Movement Conservatism burn the world financial system to the ground and we can all see the chickens of Reaganism coming home to roost.

Forget that Finance Ministers, CEOs and Nobel laureate economists are arguing that the old conservative one note monetarism stops working when interest rates are already zero and people are too scared to do anything with tax cuts but hide them under their mattresses.

Alberta has a severe infrastructure deficit, crying need for lower income housing for its cities, increased support for the rural poor and yes, more funding for a healthcare system that hasn't even come close to keeping up with the surging population that has been driving Alberta's wealth.

Deficits are bad and to be avoided when possible. Worrying about deficits in the current economic environment is like worrying about a sprained ankle when you have a pumping head wound. Conservative economics got us into this mess, and the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

We can spend the kind of stimulus necessary to keep our economy afloat and yes build a deficit - essentially at zero percent interest - or we can go into a self induced death spiral because Stelmach and the PCs have the vapors when anyone says the 'D' word.

They've just told us that a massive negative response from Albertans is the only thing that will stop them from throwing Alberta's economy and citizens under the bus to save their campaign slogans.

Still have your Friends of Medicare signs in storage folks? You had to know you were going to need them again.

UPDATE: Alberta NDP Leader Brian Mason calls out Premier Stelmach for 'Hooverism'.

Make You Feel My Love

Adele

Great voice, great song, cool video and a young female singer who isn't built like a severe malnutrition victim. Love it.

Canada's next great completely apolitical Prime Minister

The leading contestant in CBC's Next Great Prime Minister game show has been disqualified for being the kind of person who would actually want to be Canada's Next Great Prime Minister.

A P.E.I. woman is considering legal action after she was cut from the CBC game show Canada's Next Great Prime Minister because she has previously run for Parliament.
Camille Labchuk ran for the Green Party in New Brunswick in 2006, which is against the rules of the contest. Labchuk said she knew about the rule, but after receiving an email from the CBC encouraging her to apply, she decided to inquire further.
The show producers told her the run for Parliament would not disqualify her, so she went to work doing what she could to win the contest. She took two months to do research and create a video. She also held a public event, but now she has been told she is disqualified because of her 2006 campaign.

So wait, to qualify as a contestant to be 'Canada's Next Great Prime Minister' an essential characteristic is never having actually been engaged in Canadian politics before?

As one commentator points out, its like the Dragon's Den requiring that you have never tried to start a business before or Survivor that you've never visited anywhere tropical.

Are Canadians really looking for a Great Prime Minister...who's never shown an interest in politics before until there was $50,000 on the line?

Daddy's Girls

Think you already know just what depths of emotional manipulation and sickening, saccharine sentiment Madison Avenue will sink to in order to get you to buy their wretched things? You really don't.

Just saw it on TV. I can't be the only one suffering like this. Sorry about that.

Now I have to go wash out my eyes with Listerine.

New Rule

Any time anyone connected to the Cheney Bush administration says that something was completely impossible to predict and no one could have reasonably seen it coming - it was something that practically everyone saw coming.

As ThinkProgress detailed, Cheney deflected blame for the calamity on Wall Street and the deepening recession by declaring, "nobody anywhere was smart enough to figure that out" and "I don’t know that anybody did." Then, Cheney magically converted failure into a virtue and ignorance into a shield in explaining away the Bush presidency:

"No, obviously, I wouldn’t have predicted that. On the other hand I wouldn’t have predicted 9/11, the global war on terror, the need to simultaneous run military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq or the near collapse of the financial system on a global basis, not just the U.S."

At every turn, of course, voices both inside and outside the government warned a Bush administration asleep at the switch.

Everybody knows

Check out this Howard Schweber piece that effectively demolishes some of the more pernicious 'everybody knows' about the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians:

Claim 1:
Israel disengaged from Gaza and removed its settlements. In response, the people of Gaza elected a Hamas government and since then rockets have been continually launched into Israel. By the same token, when Israel left Lebanon, Hezbollah moved in. This proves that Israel had no choice but to attempt to destroy or substantially weaken Hamas on the ground in Gaza, and demonstrates the futility of trading land for peace.

Response:
The assertion that Israel has ended its occupation is extremely debatable; among others, it is debated by Human Rights Watch. Israel controls Gaza's northern and eastern border crossings, its access to the sea, and its airspace. Israel has shut down Gaza's port and destroyed its airport, ended its fishing industry, and controls the flow of electricity and oil, food and medicine, and even money into the territory. With the cooperation of Egypt, Israel continues to control who enters and exits Gaza; since the election of Hamas Israel has used that power to place Gaza under a state of siege resulting in dire humanitarian conditions in an already impoverished territory that has struggled for decades under the burden of absorbing huge numbers of refugees from Israel. Even prior to the siege, the Israeli Air Force demonstrated its continued ownership of the skies over Gaza by sending jets to produce sonic booms over Gazan cities, a gesture apparently with no purpose other than to harass the local population (also used in Southern Lebanon following Israel's "withdrawal"), a gentle reminder to people on the ground that they sleep at night only if Israel chooses to let them do so. People say that Israel "withdrew" from Gaza as though Gaza had been left autonomous and independent and free from Israeli control and interference; nothing could be further from the truth.

Moreover, to describe a "withdrawal from Gaza" is to artificially divide the Palestinian territories. The withdrawal of the settlements from inside Gaza was accompanied by massive acceleration of settlement construction in the West Bank; most observers have concluded that Sharon's motivation was precisely to free up resources for that purpose. Israel has been absolutely relentless in the expansion of those settlements, along with everything that goes with them; the checkpoints, "whites only" roads, the military incursion in 2002, and the separation wall.

From the Palestinian perspective, the statement that Israel withdrew from Gaza and was not rewarded with peace is almost incomprehensibly dishonest; Palestinians and Arabs in other countries I have spoken with assume that people making that argument are speaking with utter self-awareness of the cynicism of their argument. If you stick a knife in my chest and another one in my foot, then you pull out the one from my foot but drive the one in my chest even deeper, do not expect me not to kick you with my foot that is still bleeding from the wounds you have inflicted. Peace between Israel and Palestine may indeed come through a series of steps, but the framework of understanding cannot be one that separates Gaza from the West Bank, as though being allowed free access to Khan Younis somehow makes up for being cut off from Jerusalem.

Claim 2:
Israel has been subject to constant rocket attacks. What would you (addressed to an American) do if rockets were falling on your city? And what about Gilad Shalit, who has not even been allowed to be seen by visitors? What would you do if this had happened to America?

Response:
A fair point, to be sure; rocket attacks are an act of war, and Israel has a right to defend itself. The problem is that Israel's blockade of Gaza is also an act of war, and Palestinians have the same right of self-defense. To focus only on the rockets coming into Israel is like describing the Battle of Britain as "British planes attacking German planes"; it's not technically inaccurate, but as a description it is incomplete to the point of complete distortion. When we are asked "what would you do if rockets from Canada were landing in Minnesota" we should also ask "what would you do if a foreign power - or two foreign powers, acting in cooperation -- had cut off all access to your country and was slowly starving your population in order to compel you to get rid of your elected government?"

Ending the siege has been Hamas' main and constant demand. When the truce began on June 19th Israel permitted increased importation of food, but still only to about 20% of normal levels. The UN's Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Robert Falk, has reported levels of hunger inside Gaza that rival those of the poorest sub-Saharan nations and has called the Israeli siege a "crime against humanity." In November, Israel launched two military attacks that effectively ended the truce and led to the resumption of rocket attacks; nonetheless in December Hamas offered to extend the truce if Israel would only lift the siege. Israel was not interested; thereafter Hamas increased the intensity of the attacks, culminating in a barrage the week of Christmas that prompted the initiation of Operation Cast Lead (although, as I have pointed out in an earlier post, that operation had been planned for months).

The point of the siege all along was to inflict misery on Gaza in order to turn them against their government, an act of collective punishment designed to turn Gazans against their government. In 2006 Dov Weisglass, an adviser to Ehud Olmert, was quoted in The Guardian explaining the plan: "the idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet." The technical name for a strategy of imposing fear and misery on a people until they turn against their government is "terrorism"; to repeat myself, Palestinians have the same right of self-defense as Israelis. Nor is the blockade Israel's only act of aggression in Gaza. Throughout the period since the supposed withdrawal, Israel has launched thousands of artillery and rocket attacks into Gaza, along with periodic military operations. In the four years prior to Operation Cast Lead, those attacks resulted in 1,339 deaths among Gaza's people. How would we Americans react to those figures, or their proportional equivalents?

But it is probably the appeal to the case of Gilad Shalit that rings the most hollow, and sounds most completely cynical to Palestinians. According to B'Tselem, Israel currently holds more than 8,200 Palestinian prisoners, many of them arrested and held without charge, others tried in military courts on the basis of secret evidence that the "defense" is not allowed to see in "trials" that may last five minutes. According to Defense of Children International, in 2007 alone, Israel imprisoned some 700 children, in violation of international law. And Israel frequently denies visiting privileges to its prisoners.

Ten years ago Ehud Barak, the most decorated soldier in Israel's history, famously observed that if he had been born a Palestinian he would have been a terrorist. That was long before the siege of Gaza; for a Gaza resident who has lived through the past year, taking up arms against Israel and supporting violent resistance is not only entirely understandable, it appears positively reasonable. Would Americans really overthrow our own government -- even a government we might initially have opposed -- to end a siege or the threat of attack by a more powerful enemy? Is that how Americans, and Israelis, have responded in the past?

There's more and it's all worth reading.

Hamas offered to renew the ceasefire in December

WASHINGTON, Jan 9 (IPS) - Contrary to Israel's argument that it was forced to launch its air and ground offensive against Gaza in order to stop the firing of rockets into its territory, Hamas proposed in mid-December to return to the original Hamas-Israel ceasefire arrangement, according to a U.S.-based source who has been briefed on the proposal.

Serving Notice

I've resisted. I've bit my tongue - for the most part - and kept my powder dry about the arrogant, aristocratic neocon now running the Liberal Party because of the faint and fading hope that the Coalition will still happen. As the courtesy due to an - at least theoretical - coalition partner I would prefer to leave criticising their leader to Liberals themselves for now - Far and Wide has stepped up to fill that roll nicely:

I guess this will be my first critical post of Ignatieff, since he took the helm, but I think he blew it with his comments on Gaza today. Nothing Ignatieff said wasn't true, or didn't accurately present some core Liberal tenets regarding Israel. But, on a day where we've seen outrageous actions that seriously challenge international law and basic human rights, I found the lack of balance very disappointing.What Ignatieff completely missed in stating the case for Israel, it really isn't about Hamas anymore, it's a human tragedy that's completely morphed into something else, well beyond positions, policy or ideology. The fact that Ignatieff, who has championed human rights, an impressive pedigree, can't articulate some nuance here and argue a forceful case for the immediate concern, is simply not good enough. All the comments read like a robotic script, borne of misguided political correctness. In trying to put of the message that Liberals support Israel, Ignatieff ends up sounding as rigid as Harper. And yes, when we finally get a whiff, that the new American administration will return to a more balanced perspective, to hear Ignatieff is even more bothersome.

But here's the bottom line: If Stephen Harper and the Conservatives are still in power the day after the budget is released and it's obvious that the coalition is really dead, then the ceasefire is over. I will be back to harping on the difference between Liberal rhetoric and Liberal action, reminding my readers of the miserable record and suggesting that progressive Canadians should support an actually progressive party.

Here's hoping that instead I'm watching a mix of Liberal and NDP MPs getting sworn into cabinet.

Neo-Nazis for Israel

No, really.

While much of the neo-Nazi fringe remains opposed to the existence of Israel, the whites-only British National Party recently declared its full-throated support for Israel's attack on Gaza. The shelling of Gaza City by Israeli forces has brought joy to the heart of BNP head of legal affairs Lee Barnes: "This sort of 'disinfecting' process whereby Israel is required to sterilise areas of radical Islamist support ... is what all nations have to do in order to eradicate Islamist cells who have managed to take over territory either within or on the edges of their borders," Barnes wrote on his blog on January 4. He continued, "Get used to the casualties -- for without them any nation so infected with Islamism will surrender, rot away into liberal apathy and then dies as it is taken over."