Monthly Archive: July 2006

Other Hollywood types have done vile things and continue to work. What about Mel?

I've always assumed that one of the jobs at a major newspaper was fact-checking. Somebody proofreads stories to ensure that the facts reported are consistent with the facts as they are known today, and as they have been generally reported before.

So when the facts being reported change, I have to wonder why, especially when the change is not called out, but simply reported as if it has always been reported that way.

The Universal Child Care Benefit came out this week. According to the left, I'll be using the money to buy iPods for my kids, being the awful parent that I am. You know, awful in that I'm conservative and I make a decent living. I'm the worst parent ever!

While I've been focusing on OPP Commissioner Gwen Boniface, Kate at small dead animals has a lively discussion on whether Justice David Marshall, the judge whose court orders and injunctions have been so airily ignored, has done all he could to call the OPP and others to account.

The discussion veers off at the end to other news, but it's worth taking the time to read.

Toronto Police have made an arrest in the case of the murder of Yasmin Ashareh. They are providing no information, except to state quite adamantly that this was not an honour killing. It is interesting to see how that is playing in the press.

As many of you now know, OPP Commissioner Gwen Boniface has stepped down from her position in order to become a member of the Garda Inspectorate in Ireland, a group that oversees the national police force. Most people believe she quit or was pressured to resign over her poor performance during the Caledonia land dispute.

Curiously, she seems to have already started her new job well ahead of schedule.

An arrest has been made in this gruesome murder:

On Friday, July 28, 2006, William Imona-Russel, 32, of Toronto, was arrested and charged with First Degree Murder.

He is scheduled to appear at Old City Hall courts, room 111, on Saturday, July 29, 2006, at 10 a.m.

We'll learn more tomorrow.

The official word on finding a replacement for OPP Commissioner Gwen Boniface is that a search will begin:

An extensive, Canada-wide search will begin shortly to fill the position.

Boniface has been feeling the heat over the handling of the Caledonia land dispute. Now a new hand will be at the wheel.

Strangely, though, I have heard that this "search" is for the benefit of the media, and for proles like you and me.

The frontrunner is Jay Hope, the deputy commissioner of the OPP.

Is he the best hope for the OPP? Or a false hope?

Continuing to do some spring cleaning. Sometimes I just enjoy moving stuff around.

With all the criticism leveled at the Ontario Provincial Police over their handling of the Caledonia land dispute, it is hard to interpret the news of OPP Commissioner Gwen Boniface taking on a new job overseas as anything but a poorly disguised firing.

Is the Ontario government dumping an embarrassing problem on Ireland?

A Canadian under UN command has died in the fighting in the Middle East. Should Canadians reconsider the relationship between the UN and their country?

Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh tried to fool a fellow Liberal MP into getting a visa for a convicted terrorist.

Just how seriously does the Liberal Party take the problem of international terrorism?

Update: It looks like a former Conservative MP has a role in this story, too.

This is probably a minor thing, but there is something strange about the registration of the leadership website of Gerard Kennedy, a leading candidate for the leadership of the federal Liberal Party.

Ken Hill has made an appearance in court.

The new Brookstreet Blog is up and running at the Blogging Tories. Check out the conservative notables who have posted.

I am planning to check back frequently to see who else is going to contribute.

The blog is named after the Brookstreet Hotel in Ottawa, by the way, which has played host to important meetings for Canadian conservatives over the years. It is not an exaggeration to say that much of the recent success of conservatism in Canada can be traced to the Brookstreet.

In World War II, people were left in war-ravaged Europe for fear of Axis spies using a flow of refugees as a means of infiltrating Allied countries. Today, people caught up in the fighting in Lebanon are coming to Canada instead of being left in that mess. History is not repeating itself. But that doesn't mean the risks are not the same, and CSIS is on the lookout for spies and terrorists amidst the flow of people being rescued.

It would be irresponsible not to be worried about the possibility, and then not to do anything about it. But do it quietly, or else the accusation of racial profiling might put an end to the effort.

The story of the blocked web site is just getting weirder.

Recall this in this posting, word came that the Ontario Provincial Police had blocked access to a web site highly critical of the force's performance during the Caledonia land dispute. A comment from another reader implied that access to the website was not barred only for police computers, but for all Ontario government employees.

Then I get another email from yet another government employee that says that he has no problems seeing the site.

One more twist, and this story might form the script for the next M. Night Shyamalan movie.

Well, get the popcorn ready, because I received that next twist via email from an employee at another Ontario government ministry:

I work for the Ontario Ministry of Finance.

Up until yesterday (July 24) access to the Caledonia Wake Up Call website was blocked.

As of today (July 25) access to the Caledonia Wake Up Call website was no longer blocked.

An interesting coincidence.

Did Big Brother blink?

After my musings on the disturbing story about how a website critical of the performance of the Ontario Provincial Police during the land dispute in Caledonia was blocked, an even more disturbing comment was posted:

Steve

I am an OPP officer who regularily surfs your site (from home). I know for a fact that the OPP has blocked the Caledonia web site from being viewed from any computer on the Ontario Government network.

The original story alleged that the site was made inaccessible to police computers only. But this comment indicates that all provincial government computers are subject to the restriction.

I'm hoping for more confirmation from other people who work for the Ontario government, in particular those who do not work for the Ontario Provincial Police.

The comment says it clearly. No one who works for the Ontario government -- from the Ministry of Health to the Ministry of Education to the Ontario Provincial Police -- can access Caledonia Wake Up Call.

Consider this carefully. A website keeps a careful record of the actions (or lack of action) of the OPP, and the OPP somehow removes the ability to access this site from all government employees. Just when did Premier Dalton McGuinty decide to hand the power to make decisions concerning the flow of information over to the OPP?

As far as I know, the Ministry of Health has not blocked access to the Freedom Party webpage that advocates private health insurance. Maybe it's just a matter of time.

Back to the OPP-related website though. Let's consider one very specific, immediate, and practical implication of this. Put aside the unsettling philosophical question of how a police force stung by criticism can dictate internet policy to the government as a whole. Recall that the questions being posed about the OPP are quite valid, and are the subject of court proceedings:

An Ontario judge is again demanding to know why his orders to police to end the aboriginal land dispute in Caledonia haven't been carried out.

Justice David Marshall today called into court representatives from provincial police, the Ministry of the Attorney General, and the aboriginal occupiers.

Marshall is hearing legal arguments about why the protesters remain at the housing development.

"This is a matter at the very heart of the administration of justice," Marshall said in court.

"If court orders can be disregarded the whole fabric of democracy falls to pieces."

Here's the practical question I want you to consider. Justice Marshall and his clerks will be considering the actions of the OPP (actions that have already deeply frustrated the court) and part of their research might include scouring the web for reports of the events in Caledonia, web surfing that will be done from Ontario government computers installed in these provincial court offices.

What if the court decides to follow a link to Caledonia Wake Up Call, then finds out the site can't be reached from the provincial government computer by order of the OPP?

I wonder how Justice Marshall will react.

I bet he won't be too happy. And maybe just a bit more worried about the fabric of democracy.

Update: Maybe it is just the OPP computers after all:

Hi Steve, I work for the Government of Ontario, in a Ministry head office. I'm not sure where "mapleleaf4ever" got his information from, but I can access the Caledonia Wake-Up Call website just fine. As a matter of fact, I'm looking at it right now from my work computer (latest updates are "Jul 24 - Internet Polls" and "Jul 25 - Four Males Arrested in Caledonia Disturbance"), which is directly hooked up to the government network, behind the Ministry's firewall and everything.

Interesting. So there is some confusion about just what is being blocked and where. I'd like to hear from more people about whether the site is indeed blocked, and whether the ability to reach the site has changed over the last few days.

Update (again): Now an email from another government employee. Before today, access was blocked. Today, access is available. Did Big Brother blink?

I am progressing on some of the improvements to the blog.

First, I've finally coded up the function to pull MT entry keywords and parse them up in order to build a Technorati tag list. Going forward, I'll be using Technorati tags for most of my posts.

Second, you'll notice that the Digg.com link functions somewhat differently. What I've been doing is selecting stories that I think are worthy to submit to Digg. Of course, you can submit a post of mine as well. The button for doing this is the greenish one that reads "Digg This Story".

But what if it has already been submitted by you or by me? Then you get an error that says that the story has already been submitted. If you've registered with Digg, and you like the story, you want to vote for it, right? This is a bit of a kludge, but what I've done is that if I know that the story has been submitted (either because I went ahead and did it myself, or because I see someone else has), I change the coding to display the Digg counter and voting button instead (it's a trick with the keywords, if you are interested).

The Digg counter tells you how many people have voted for the story. If you haven't voted for it, you have an opportunity to do so by clicking "Digg it!", but if you have voted for it, the button reads "dugg" and is disabled.

How do I know if the story has been submitted? That's a bit of a problem. Ultimately, the Digg API will provide that information (I hope), but for now I will occassionally search Digg for postings from my blog. If any have been added by you, my readers, I'll make the keyword change necessary to flip the Digg link from submission to voting. Of course, you can let me know by email or by a comment that you've submitted the post.

If any of you are Digg users, try the various links out and let me know if it works.

The Ontatio Provincial Police have been taking a public relations beating over their handling of the protests in Caledonia, where Native activists have occupied the Douglas Creek Estates housing development claiming the land as their own. The OPP has refused to execute court injunctions, have been accused of ignoring violence being committed in their presence, ignoring acts of intimidation, and generally letting the Natives run rampant.

Fingers have pointed to the top echelons of the OPP. Claims have been made that OPP officers on the scene have been directed from the highest levels to take little or no action.

A website, Caledonia Wake Up Call, that has been highly critical of the OPP reports receiving this email:

We received this quote from a confirmed source:

From XXX (An off-duty OPP Constable who has not been to Caledonia)

"I read your website at home and off-duty. I have never been to Caledonia but before it is over I might get sent there. I have learned a lot from your website about what happened there and I am surprised that native criminal activity has been overlooked apparently. The other day while at my detachment I wanted to see what was new on your web pages, but the OPP has blocked your website so none of us can read what is really happening in Caledonia except at home. No matter, we can all read it at home. And we all do."

Let's assume that this is true, that OPP staff can no longer access Caledonia Wake Up Call from OPP computers. I have to say I struggled with this.

At first, I was sympathetic with the OPP. Most organizations have rules to limit access to certain types of websites. Generally those are broad categories, of course. Adult sites, warez sites, that sort of thing.

But limiting access to one specific website?

There is the question of morale, I suppose. But as the email suggested, every OPP officer will read up on the latest at home.

So what is the point? None really.

But then leaders are not always known to act rationally. Faced with criticism, the natural reaction would be to keep the information away from the troops. Why? Because the more hapless the leadership appears to be, the danger that the troops will ignore orders increases.

And when I realized that, it struck me what had really been bothering me about this. It was the historical comparison that was on the edge of my consciousness.

It is a comparison with the crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy student demonstrators by the Chinese Communist dictatorship in 1989.

We all know that the army was sent in and probably thousands were killed. But what is often forgotten is that the units used were brought in from remote areas of China because the local Beijing units were considered unreliable. The local units had heard a great deal of criticism leveled by the demonstrators at their leaders. It could not be helped. But in Communist China, where information flow is tightly controlled, remote army units knew very little of what was happening in Beijing except that anti-revolutionary elements were agitating. Deliberately kept in the dark by a leadership extermely sensitive to criticism, these units killed hundreds, if not thousands of demonstrators (and bystanders) without compunction, having no reason to have doubts about the infallibility of their leaders.

Before anyone else says anything, I am not for a moment suggesting that the OPP is like the PLA, that Liberal government at Queen's Park is the equivalent of the Chinese Politburo, or any other literal parallel you care to draw from this.

But I am pointing out that when the senior commanders attempt to clamp down on information flow to their troops, information that is critical of those commanders, you have to wonder. Are they not confident in the quality of the leadership they provide to trust the troops to listen to the criticisms and then dismiss them? Or are they concerned that the criticisms hit too close to home? Are they concerned that the troops will start to question whether the leadership deserves their loyalty?

Do they have reason to worry?

Ironically, this ham-handed move to block the website is likely to be seen as desperate by the OPP rank-and-file. Unlike Communist China in 1989, where this sort of information control worked very well, in Ontario in 2006, it is likely to make a bad situation worse for the leadership already under pressure from within and without.

By email from CKNW Talk 980 radio:

A government official in Kandahar says two Canadian soldiers have been wounded in Afghanistan after a suicide attacker rammed an explosives-laden car into a coalition vehicle. No word yet on the extent of their injuries.

The discussion boards at rabble.ca (collectively known as babble) are typically filled with nastiness and puerile name-calling. The role of a moderator on any message board is to moderate, to try and rein in the extreme nastiness in order to keep the board from descending entirely into anarchy.

So what does it means when the moderator herself not only participates in the nastiness, but kicks it off?

Here is the opening post of a babble thread "Public displays of insincere emotion":

I was going to put this in the politics section, but I figured this probably spans a lot more than just politicians, so I thought I'd stick it here in the media section too, since usually public displays of insincere emotion are media photo ops.

The extremely annoying PDIE that inspired this thread was Laureen Teskey boo-hooing at the grave of - get this - her great uncle who died in 1917. Give me a great big frigging break.

Roll the cameras, we wanna get Stevie's wife sobbing at the grave of some distant relative who died thirty years before she was born! Okay, lights, camera, 3-2-1... (point at Laureen):

"Oh sob! Oh boo-hoo! I'm overcome with deep emotion! O, my poor dear great-uncle that I loved so well even though I wouldn't know him from any of the other people in this graveyard! O, the great sacrifice! Oh, oh, hold me, Stephen! Hold me! Sniffle, snort!"

Well, at least Harper didn't shake her hand. [emphasis added]

That inaugural post on a thread designed to cast the prime minister and his wife in the worst possible light on a very personal level was written and posted by Michelle, the chief moderator of the babble boards.

Board policy is supposed to be relatively even-handed:

While all points of view are welcome here, repeated attempts to provoke conflict, bait or taunt will not be tolerated. Offenders generally receive warnings before being suspended.

You will not post material that is inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy or otherwise violative of any law.

Continued participation on these boards is at the sole discretion of the moderator(s) and staff of this site.

Does Michelle's characterization of Laureen Teskey's true thoughts constitute inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, or hateful words?

I'm not going to answer that. Neither should you. According to the babble rules, that's solely a question for the moderator to answer.

And now you see the problem.

Common sense dictates that a moderator should not be posting except to explain and enforce the rules. Common sense dictates that a referee should not be kicking the ball around during a soccer game either.

You would think that the conflict of interest would be obvious, but based on the responses to this post, not a single person thought to mention it. I'm willing to bet not a single one them even noticed.

To help them along, I went ahead and posted this to the thread:

From the babble policy statement:

quote:

You will not post material that is inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy or otherwise violative of any law.

Continued participation on these boards is at the sole discretion of the moderator(s) and staff of this site.

So to insist that Laureen's reaction was insincere could be seen as inaccurate or even hateful -- frankly no one can really say for certain what she was feeling one way or another.

Did the original post cross the line? That's the job for the moderator to decide.

Never mind, the original post was by the moderator. So I suppose after a careful consideration, the moderator will decide that the post was entirely within the bounds of babble policy.

Does anyone else see a problem here?

Maybe moderators should focus on moderating. Like a referee, you give up the right to kick the ball around when you take on the job.

I have not hidden my identity. It'll be interesting to see what sort of mature and even-handed reaction my post generates.

Joe Volpe's campaign manager has been fired, or has resigned -- either way, he's in play, and quite possibly many of the thousands of new Liberal members he has signed up.

From the administrator:

I've found the cause of the two recent outages - and the third one, which happened just now, but which was mercifully short because I was logged in to the server while it happened.

Trackback spam.

VAST amounts of trackback spam.

So much trackback spam that Apache locked up and wouldn't restart.

So no trackbacks, sorry. Not that I've seen a legitimate trackback in ages.

Which suggests an interesting question. Should I just removed the trackback feature altogether from my blog going forward, even after they are re-enabled? How valuable are they to you?

While you ponder that, know that the MuNu community will be moving to a new hosting service in a matter of days. Expect stability to return shortly.

Can the US administration find an opportunity in the crisis in the Middle East?

These officials said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will leave Sunday night for a week of diplomacy in the region and will go with the modest goal of forming an "umbrella of Arab allies" in opposition to the militant group Hizballah that incited the conflagration by kidnapping two Israeli soldiers.

"She's not going to come home with a ceasefire, but stronger ties to the Arab world," an administration official said. "It's going to allow us to say that America isn't going to put up with this and we have Arab friends that are against you terrorists. What we want is our Arab allies standing against Hizballah and against Iran, since there is no one who doesn't think Iran is behind this. We're going to say to Hizballah and the terrorist groups, 'This will not stand.' That is the way to bring real change to the Middle East. If you just have a ceasefire, then soon or later, they go back to fighting."

Notice that the dynamic in play is Arab versus Persian, not Sunni versus Shia. Is there a subtle reason for this? Is there an attempt to redefine Middle Eastern relationships in terms of cultural groups (Arab, Persian, Azeri, Siwa, and so forth) and not in terms of religious affiliation? Secretary Rice herself says:

"What we're seeing here, in a sense, is the birth pangs of a new Middle East. "Whatever we do, we have to be certain that we are pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old one.''

That can have some interesting implications. If religion takes a back seat to cultural affiliations, the Middle East will be seen less as a monolithic threat to the West. Individual countries in the region will act in their own interests (and in the interests of their populations) rather than being compelled to act to push forward the agenda of Islam. Of course, countries generally act in their interests already, but not always, and even when they do, they represent themselves as soldiers of Islam, and that complicates diplomacy.

And finally, if people in the region, and their leaders, see cultural groups where before they only saw religion, much of the sting might disappear. This is for the future, of course, but if Israelis are seen as just one more cultural group, instead of Jews, some of the animosity might disappear, or at least, it might be throttled back.

Can it happen? It's starting to already. Hizbollah has been subjected to a lot of criticism by Arab countries in the region. Syria is seen as an outsider, the Alawite religion of its leadership considered to be an aberration by most Muslims. Fellahin Egyptians have always seen themselves as the inheritors of a rich cultural heritage from ancient (non-Muslim) Egypt, something that does not belong to descendants non-Egyptian Arabs who took control during the conquest of the 8th century.

There are other examples, some longstanding, some only beginning to take hold in the region.

The point is that if there is a shift taking place in the region, a shift that can be amplified by clever diplomacy, the result is that in the future we'll see the the region organized as nation-states instead of as a religious super-state (or attempting to move in that direction). They will deal with each other and with the West in terms we'll all understand, despite the differences in religion, simply because religion is taking a backseat.

Finally, we might see a lot less meddling by non-Arab nations pulling the strings of puppet client groups attempting to influence events in an area that, culturally and geographically speaking, should be of little interest to those non-Arab nations.

And if all this happens, the "clash of civilizations" might be over, if only because the civilizations are going to seem a lot more alike.

As Israel continues to pummel Hezbollah, the terrorists are demanding negotiations:

Israeli military officials have refused to rule out a full-scale invasion of Lebanon, while Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said two captured Israeli soldiers will only be freed through a prisoner exchange.

Nasrallah said only indirect negotiations for a prisoner exchange will work to gain the soldiers' freedom.

It'll be interesting to witness those sorts of negotiations, should they occur. I say that because Hezbollah is populated with the sort of people who can't imagine that they are wrong. There is no room for compromise. They can't even tolerate that other people don't believe in the things they do.

That attitude is displayed on the Hezbollah website.

Voice of America posted a story about the limits of free speech, discussing the issue of the Muhammad cartoons. In this piece, the author considers that Western societies have long limited free speech. Indeed, the piece is somewhat sympathetic to Muslims who wonder why free speech is not limited to protect their Prophet as it is in other contexts. Consider Holocaust denial:

According to Robert Kahn, a professor at Brooklyn Law School who has written extensively about laws governing Holocaust denial, free speech in the West is not an absolute right. It is tempered, Kahn says, by a complex system of legal and self-imposed censorship that's almost always derived from a society's history.

"The countries that tend to have the laws that specifically ban Holocaust denial -- France, Germany, and Austria --- either participated in the Holocaust or had serious problems with collaboration," he says. "Even though the United States and Canada have large Jewish communities, and have survivors and people who experienced the Holocaust, it's not the same type of thing."

This article was reprinted on the Hezbollah website, since it makes points that would please most Muslims. But here is the same excerpt:

According to Robert Kahn, a professor at Brooklyn Law School who has written extensively about laws governing Holocaust denial, free speech in the West is not an absolute right. It is tempered, Kahn says, by a complex system of legal and self-imposed censorship that`s almost always derived from a society`s history.

"The countries that tend to have the laws that specifically ban Holocaust denial -- France, Germany, and Austria --- either participated in the Holocaust or had serious problems with collaboration," he says. "Even though the United States and Canada have large Jewish communities, and have (alleged) survivors and people who (allegedly) experienced the Holocaust, it's not the same type of thing."

I checked. The article is otherwise faithfully reproduced.

Faithfully, except for the statement by Professor Kahn that the Holocaust happened, and that there were survivors. I guess you aren't free to say that in the presence of the Hezbollah.

The Holocaust allegedly happened, and there are alleged survivors. Anyone who says different is going to be corrected.

If you're lucky, you're just having the correction to your mistaken view of history added to something you have written (your words being your contribution to history). Without your permission, of course. Or even an acknowledgment that your words have been altered.

If you're not lucky, you're in the room with a Hezbollah terrorist when you make a slip of the tongue like this. One shudders to think how your mistake will be...fixed.

From Human Rights Watch via Reuters:

Hezbollah's attacks in Israel on Sunday and Monday were at best indiscriminate attacks in civilian areas, at worst the deliberate targeting of civilians. Either way, they were serious violations of international humanitarian law and probable war crimes, Human Rights Watch said today. In addition, the warheads used suggest a desire to maximize harm to civilians. Some of the rockets launched against Haifa over the past two days contained hundreds of metal ball bearings that are of limited use against military targets but cause great harm to civilians and civilian property. The ball bearings lodge in the body and cause serious harm.

On Monday, Human Rights Watch researchers inspected a three-story apartment building in Haifa's Bat Galim neighborhood after it was struck by a rocket around 3:00 p.m., causing extensive damage to the top two floors and wounding six residents, one of them seriously. They collected metal ball bearings that had pierced the walls of the apartment building across the street and car windshields up to one block away.

When you are struck dead by a weapon that landed over a city block away, and your unfortunate fate was intended by the designers of the weapon, we're talking about a weapon of mass destruction, or if not destruction, then of mass death.

I'm curious to know whether Hezbollah retrofitted these ball-bearing warheads, or they come from the factory that way. Perhaps Louise Arbour can ask the governments of Iran and Syria to answer that question.

For Canadian Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour, now the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, takes a stand, and tries to be even-handed:

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour today expressed grave concern over the continued killing and maiming of civilians in Lebanon, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory and called for accountability for any breaches of international law.

The High Commissioner recalled that parties to a conflict have the obligation to exercise precaution and respect the principle of proportionality in all military operations so as to prevent unnecessary suffering among the civilian population. "Indiscriminate shelling of cities constitutes a foreseeable and unacceptable targeting of civilians", she said. "Similarly, the bombardment of sites with alleged military significance, but resulting invariably in the killing of innocent civilians, is unjustifiable".

So if Hezbollah hides missiles in a school, mosque, or private home, Israel can't touch it for fear of hurting nearby civilians? But they are attacking those rockets in order to save civilians. Civilians who have been dying because the UN did nothing to protect them from Hezbollah.

The Israelis have been telling the enemy when and where the attacks are coming by dropping leaflets warning civilians to get out of the way.

But she thinks Israel is run by war criminals:

"International humanitarian law is clear on the supreme obligation to protect civilians during hostilities", the High Commissioner said. "This obligation is also expressed in international criminal law, which defines war crimes and crimes against humanity".

"International law demands accountability. The scale of the killings in the region, and their predictability, could engage the personal criminal responsibility of those involved, particularly those in a position of command and control".

Funny thing, putting "predictability" into the mix. Hezbollah's rockets are very inaccurate. There is little predictability about where they will land and if anyone will get hurt when they do. On the other hand, Israel's weapons are modern and precise. If there is a bombing run against a missile storage bunker under a building next to a home, the bomb will hit the bunker. The combined explosion of the bomb and the targeted ordinance will, predictably, severely damage the home. If the occupants have ignored the leaflets, they might be hurt and killed.

By Arbour's calculation, that means Israeli commanders are war criminals, because they have high confidence in hitting the intended target, and so could predictably count on people getting hurt if those people didn't heed the warnings and get out of the way.

On the other hand, a wobbly unguided Hezbollah missile might or might not hurt someone, so somehow that limits the criminal responsibility of the person who launched it. The terrorist could not predict that civilians would be hurt.

Weird.

Warren Kinsella (aka "the Netkook" in Robert McClelland's crude taxonomy of bloggers he lists as enemies) has a few words to say about Toronto Star columnist/blogger Antonia Zerbisias:

The Toronto Star's media columnist, whatsername [Antonia Zerbisias], has referred to NDP activist Robert McClelland as one of her "researchers." He is regularly quoted on the Star's media blog. He has written "f**k the Jews" on his own web log, and defended the use of the "N" word. He also, in just the past few days, referred to Israelis as "terrorists," "murderers," and practitioners of apartheid. He is scum, but he isn't actually the issue. The real issue is this: why doesn't the NDP dissociate itself from him, and denounce him? Why does the Star's official media blog rely upon him as a "researcher?" Why? You got me.

Antonia Zerbisias responds via a comment at McClelland's blog, focusing on the final sentence in Kinsella's post. She disputes Kinsella's assertion that McClelland is a researcher (perhaps in an attempt to distance herself from McClelland):

I have tried very hard to find out when I have called you [McClelland] my ''researcher'' as Kinsella claims, and in quotes yet. I never have…and Kinsella has, to my knowledge, never provided the original citation. I do my own research.

As for your providing me with research, I have hat-tipped you, as is blog etiquette, many times when I have linked to or stumbled upon items or ideas here. That's it. That's all.

Really? Just a hat tip? In 2004, the December 19 issue of the Toronto Star published a column by Zerbisias in which she provides a lot more than a mere hat tip:

I mean, there is only so much time to read the damn things. Over the past year, I have learned from and enjoyed many — too many to name here. But I would like to point to a few Canada-based blogs that deserve some attention.

LEFTIES: My Blahg (myblahg.blogspot.com) is always challenging.

In her own words, she learns from MyBlahg, so much so that she felt it needed to be called out for attention above and beyond all the blogs she has perused. She reads MyBlahg regularly (or else how would she know to characterize it as always challenging). It's so important that it earned special mention in her published print column seen by the entire readership of the Toronto Star (nearly a million a day in 2006).

Sounds like MyBlahg is a source she uses whenever she is in search of information. A principle source, in fact. One of the top five even, at least inasmuch as blogs are concerned.

Not a researcher? Maybe not in so many words, but MyBlahg is one of Zerbisias' top reads in the blogosphere, by her own admission in a Toronto Star article she penned. To me, it sure sounds like she depends on MyBlahg for her research on her stories, both online and print articles. For example, a month earlier, she used MyBlahg to provide humorous support for her print column in which she outlines how Osama bin Laden won the election for George W Bush:

Behold Osama bin Laden, star of the most effective ad all year for the Bush-Cheney ticket.

Or, if you prefer the picture worth a thousand words version, check one of my favourite Canadian sites at myblahg.blogspot.com (http://www.myblahg.blogspot.com). There, blogger Robert McClelland has a Photoshopped screen grab of bin Laden superimposed on the flight deck of USS Abraham Lincoln with that infamous "Mission Accomplished" banner behind him. [emphasis added]

Yeah, bin Laden's success at evading capture is really quite the hoot. I managed to find the picture.

These were hard quotes to find. The original articles have long since disappeared from the Toronto Star's website. They are not in the Google cache, nor in the WayBackMachine. I had to depend on reproductions preserved on other web sites. Maybe Zerbisias should cut Kinsella some slack when she points out that Kinsella doesn't have the citation handy. Kinsella was a bit off when he writes that the Star's "official media blog" claims McClelland as a researcher. The blog does not make that claim. But the blogger did -- just not on her blog.

Did Kinsella read the articles, then think he saw the glowing references to MyBlahg in Zerbisias' blog? Perhaps. So why didn't he find the original citations? Kinsella is a lawyer, not a researcher. I do research.

But then, in the spirit of honesty and full disclosure, Zerbisias could simply have recalled what she had written in these print articles instead of taunting Kinsella by focusing attention on her blog (which, as she points out, does not strongly endorse MyBlahg). It would have saved me a lot of trouble. She knows what she wrote, where she wrote it, and when. Now you do too.

You can almost smell the desperation. The postings are so mean-spirited as to be pathetic. You'd be hard pressed to find another group of people so desperate to see a good and decent act fail so that they can say "I told you so."

It actually makes me sad to see people so twisted that they can't be happy to see that over a hundred people are heading home to safety. All they want is for a person trying to help others to be rewarded with humiliation, pain, or worse.

But that's my take on it. See what you think about this collection of opinions of Stephen Harper's flight to Cyprus:

[spazito] This will be the equivalent of bush's "fake turkey" visit to Iraq, the obvious attempt to have a photo-op out of sheer desperation now that he knows he is losing votes due to his despicable words and actions.

[daleo] Speaking of photo ops, I know that I sound heartless and cruel, but Laureen crying over her great-uncle who died in 1917 seemed like an act to me. I mean, it was 90 years ago.

[glarius] I hope he gets booed when he lands. CNN is there and would probably show it if he does!

[LeftistGorilla] I hope they rip him apart...

Yeah, you keep hoping, LeftistGorilla. And if the people waiting to get on the plane are so grateful that they forget to attack the prime minister, I bet you'll step up to do the deed at the first opportunity. I'm sure the anonymity provided by the Democratic Underground message board has nothing to do with your tough talk.

There is a lot of suffering in the Middle East because of the fighting, with innocent men, women, and children on both sides of the fight being hurt and killed.

One group is raising funds to help:

Canadian and American Jewish federations are raising funds to help move children in Israel's north further south, so that they may be out of range of Hezballah's rockets.

There are local chapters all over the US and Canada taking donations. From the New York chapter:

Every dollar will help send children in the danger zone to summer camps in safer regions of Israel in the south and middle of the country.

Some might ask what help can be provided to the civilians of Lebanon. Until Hezbollah is ejected from the region, I suspect very little, which just compounds the guilt of that terrorist organization. But not being able to help everybody is not an excuse not to help somebody.

So whatever your feelings on who is responsible for the current fighting, I encourage you help relieve at least some of the suffering.

In my enthusiasm over the Prime Minister's plan to use his airplane to help get 120 Canadians home from Lebanon, I didn't consider just how dangerous this could be:

Harper’s status is that of a Head of Government. Head of Governments make tempting targets for assassination, particularly if they’ve made statements in support of Israel’s side during the current fracas.

If I were on Harper’s security detail, confronting the idea of evacuating more than a hundred total strangers from an area where the odds of terrorists being around are high … let’s just say I’m going to make it damn well clear to this politician, in words of one syllable, that he’d better not be risking his life (not to mention those of his entourage) for a lousy photo op.

No doubt the 120 people who will get on the plane will be carefully vetted, but it's also true that there are not too many places to hide when you're in an airplane over the Atlantic should someone get on the plane with designs on the prime minister.

One of the terror suspects arrested in Toronto wanted to behead Stephen Harper (at least, according to the suspect's lawyer). The prime minister joked that he would only be worried if the threat came from the Conservative caucus.

It seems a lot more serious now.

I wonder if one or more of the "four or five staff" accompanying the Prime Minister and his wife will have those telltale bulges under their jackets -- just in case.

In Afghanistan at a forward base near the fighting not for an hour but for a couple of days, then blowing off threats of decapitation, then on an airplane running the risk of a Hezbollah fighter hiding in a crowd of a hundred people pulled out of the chaos of Lebanon -- Stephen Harper is one gutsy economist!

The HARPERNATOR!

OK, that's just silly.

From June 22:

(Caledonia, ONT.) On June 21, 2006, the Ontario Provincial Police made an arrest related to an incident, which occurred in Caledonia on June 4, 2006 at approximately 9:45pm.

Charged with two counts of Assault is Ken Hill, age 47 of Ohsweken, Ontario.

The charges relate to an incident involving an alleged confrontation between the “occupiers” and Caledonia citizens near a barricade at the end of Braemar Ave. An investigation followed resulting in an arrest warrant being issued for Ken Hill. The accused was arrested at approximately 7:05am in Cayuga, Haldimand County without incident.

Ken Hill will appear in Cayuga court on July 16, 2006 to answer to the charges.

In a subsequent report, the court date was reported to July 19. n It is not clear if the earlier report was in error or if the court date was changed.

As I've estabished in earlier posts, Ken Hill owns a major international cigarette manufacturing concern as well as having a deep interest in seeing gambling (either online or a real casino or both) on the Six Nations Reserve. I've speculated on whether his business interests, especially his gambling interests, played a role in his violent participation in the Caledonia land dispute.

What is clear is that he had a date with the court. What is also clear is that on June 29, he was in Germany, participating in the opening of a cigarette factory, despite facing charges for assault.

Did Ken Hill return?

Today we have this report:

CALEDONIA (AM900 CHML) - A Cayuga judge has issued a warrant for the arrest of a Six Nations man.

The judge took the action after the man failed to appear in court this morning (Wednesday), on charges relating to an assault on two CH-TV cameramen in early June.

He [sic] accused also stands to lose a 15-hundred dollar deposit which he left previously, when he was released on bail.

One of the CH cameramen needed stitches to close a head wound as a result of last month's attack.

Though the report does not name him, it is clearly Ken Hill (same charges, same date). So Ken Hill is now wanted for failure to appear. [[Actually, the news report has confused two different defendants -- see the update below. Note that I'm leaving the next sentence unchanged.]] My questions is whether the police are going to find him being sheltered by his friends and allies on the Reserve somewhere, or if we will find Ken Hill in Germany, enjoying a bratwurst and preparing an asylum request.

Major Update: The original radio report has now been replaced by an expanded newspaper story:

Frank Burning, 37, from Ohsweken, who wasn't identified until today, was supposed to be in a Cayuga courtroom yesterday morning but didn't show up. He is charged with assaulting CH cameraman Nick Garbutt.

Burning was arrested in Brantford last month and released on bail June 28 after giving the court $1,500 in cash and after his mother, Alberta Katherine Mounture, pledged $10,000 in equity she has in a Brantford property to help secure his release.

Justice of the Peace Catherine Woron issued a bench warrant for Burning's arrest and ordered that a special hearing be held to determine how much of the $10,000 his mother will have to hand over since Burning didn't show up for court as ordered.

Woron was told Burning's mother applied to be relieved of her duty as a surety, but that application only came yesterday -- the same day her son didn't show up.

So it looks like I got Burning and Hill mixed up based on the first radio report, which seemed to atrribute Hill's charges (two counts of assault) to the Burning (the man subject of the bench warrant).

So does that means the Ken Hill made his court appearance?

Uh, no.

Prominent Six Nations businessman Ken Hill had his case come up briefly in court yesterday.

Hill didn't appear, but was represented by a lawyer.

He is charged with assaulting Steve Tong and Quinton Chausse on June 4 and has hired high-profile Hamilton lawyer Dean Paquette.

Hill will be back in court on July 26, when he's expected to apply to have the terms of his release altered -- an application that requires him to be there in person.

So no arrest warrant for Ken Hill -- sorry about that. But you can see how CHML News could have gotten confused -- Ken Hill also did not show up for court.

So we still don't know where Ken Hill is. To give him the benefit of the doubt, we can assume he returned from Germany. But he did not appear in court, and it will be a week before we know for sure.

From 1997, during the flooding in Manitoba:

When the Red River's already devastating floodwaters reached their crest in Winnipeg on May 1, few people in Manitoba's capital city were more relieved that those living on the historic waterway's banks.

No doubt, Winnipeg's Metropolitan-Archbishop Michael Bzdel assumes God was on his side during the last few weeks. The Ukrainian Catholic archeparch's office, residence and his new home, currently under construction, are all located on Scotia Street, which overlooks the Red River.

"People were setting up sandbags [in late April] around the clock," he said. They were doing that when Prime Minister Jean Chretien visited the neighborhood on April 26, the day before he called the June 2 vote.

Although the federal Liberal government later gave Manitoba a $25 million check to help the province in its post-flood clean-up, Mr. Chretien made few friends that day, said Mr. Sikorsky.

"The visit wasn't appreciated," said Mr. Sikorsky, who explained that sandbagging efforts were suspended for several hours by the prime minister's entourage and security detail that enveloped the area.

"All he did was throw one sandbag after saying to someone 'What do I do with this thing?' It was just a photo opportunity."

Jean Chretien wanted to look like he's doing the right thing, but ended up doing the wrong thing. Did that bother him? Did he even realize that precious hours that could have been spent sandbagging were lost so that he could get his pre-election photo?

Now compare:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is flying to Cyprus where he intends to take up to 120 evacuees from Lebanon home to Canada on his Canadian Forces plane.

Harper announced the surprise side trip on his week-long European diplomatic tour after a meeting with French President Jacques Chirac at the Elysee Palace on Wednesday afternoon.

"Because of the seriousness of the situation and our relative proximity to Cyrpus, we have decided to take the Canadian Forces aircraft we have been travelling on to help airlift evacuees back home," Harper said in a statement. "The aircraft will be stripped down to a skeleton staff."

Media travelling with the prime minister have been bumped to commercial flights for their return home to Canada. Only Harper's wife, Laureen, and a couple of his communications staff, will go to Cyprus with him, officials said.

A photo-op like Jean Chretien holding a sandbag?

In response to questions, Harper denied the trip was a photo opportunity.

"It's more than a symbolic trip," he said. "There's a need for air support in Cyprus. Freeing up seats, we will have a significant number of seats to help the situation.

"I think criticism in this type of situation, given all the complexities, is inevitable one way or another," Harper added. "We believe there is a real need here. . . . We believe it's the right thing to do."

Over a hundred people will really be going home. One less flight will have to come to Cyprus from Canada by diverting the Prime Minister's plane which was already in the region.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is not looking at the airplane, considering his election fortunes, and asking, "What do I do with this thing?"

He already knows what to do, and he's doing it.

[Just how much risk is the prime minister taking to do the right thing?]

Looks like comments are offline for the MuNu community. For those who might be wondering, there is a lot of work being done right now on migrating MuNu blogs to a new blogging platform. Though the end result will be better for all of us, the road is filled with potholes.

The commenting problem might be related to this. Or it could be something else entirely.

Update: Comments fixed (obviously). Turns out someone corrupted the blacklist. We all share the same blacklist, which means if someone makes a change and makes a mistake, everyone gets hosed.

From the Ottawa Citizen via NealeNews:

A debate raged yesterday over the government's decision to rescue thousands of Canadians in Lebanon who are dual citizens and likely reside there permanently.

Conservative MP Garth Turner said the Canadians with two passports are not "accidental tourists" and taxpayers might question the cost.

A Liberal MP [Toronto MP Derek Lee] agreed, saying priority should be given to Canadians who were only visiting Lebanon when Israel began air attacks.

Another Liberal MP [Toronto MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj], however, and NDP MP Bill Siksay said they were appalled by the suggestion of ranking the value of Canadian citizenship. "A Canadian citizen is a Canadian citizen, period," said Mr. Siksay. "We can't start talking about different categories of Canadian citizenship. We should be helping those folks out as best we're able."

I'm going to have to agree with NDP Bill Siksay on this one -- these are Canadians, and Canada has a responsibility to them.

There are no second-class Canadians.

But...

I would ask that those who are "appalled" to settle down. The question is a legitimate one to raise, though not in the context of the people who currently hold Canadian citizenship. Canada ought to seriously reconsider the notion of dual-citizenship. It sounds nice on paper -- citizen of the world and all that -- but it is apparent that some people are loyal to Canada only when the other country of citizenship starts falling apart at the seams. Indeed, for many, that is the only reason to have Canadian citizenship. It is an escape hatch.

Canada is not a cushion for people to fall onto when they decide to jump out of a bad situation, otherwise to be ignored. It is not a place to hide out for the few years they are eligible for compulsory military service back at home. It is not a tax dodge, or a place to be during the hurricane season.

Nor is it always in the best interests of someone to have dual citizenship. It caused all sorts of grief for Maher Arar when US officials deported him to Syria.

Obviously we have been issuing citizenship papers to people who retained their citizenship in other countries. We did so without requiring them to renounce those ties. The obligations to those people must be met without delay.

Going forward, however, I think it would do us some good to have a debate, without the dramatics, of the value of Canadian citizenship, and the value we expect people to place on that status. We should debate whether in this complex multi-polar world we are asking for trouble by allowing Canadian citizens to retain citizenship in countries that are, or have the potential to become, our enemies. Should dual-citizenship be eliminated? For all countries, or for just a few we know are going to be trouble? Should it be tied to the notion of the British Commonwealth or the Francophonie? What about the United States?

Should we consider some sort of two tier citizenship -- full Canadians and dual citizens? Let dual citizens understand that retaining citizenship and maintaining a full-time residence in another country has implications, and allow them to make the decision to retain or renounce their official ties before something like Lebanon happens.

Let's get those people out of Lebanon. When everyone is safe, then we should talk.

I'm going through a maintenance cycle on my blog.  Unlike previous times when the bug to shakes things up bit, I'm not going to dramatically change the appearance of the blog.  But I am adding a few things that you'll notice.

First, I'm bringing back Technorati tags.  I like them, but my offline editor, w.bloggar, didn't have the feature to create the tags automatically from a list of keywords I provide.  Creating the tag list became a chore I didn't want to do, so I stopped tagging my posts.  A new blog editor called Performancing does include this feature, and I'm trying it out.  Performancing is relatively new, by the way, and it runs inside Firefox, which is kind of cool.

Second, I'm including a link for people who want to add a post to their del.icio.us lists.  For those who don't use del.icio.us, it is an online facility for storing links to your favourite web pages.  I never used it before, but in recent months, I've changed computers five times.  After the fifth and final change, it occurred to me that I should have used del.icio.us to avoid losing all my favourite links, and recreating the list over and over again.  For people who a sharper than me and are already using del.icio.us, clicking the link takes you to the page for adding a link to your list, prefilled with the post title and URL.

Third, I'm adding a Digg link. Digg is a relatively recent service.  You sign on and Digg provides you with links to online content for all sorts of topics (technology, news, politics, etc).  The content is selected by the users themselves.  If you see something you like, you go to Digg and provide the particulars about where the web page is found and the category in which it belongs (the Digg link on my posts prefills that information, and selects the category "politics").  As you read links provided by other Digg users, you have an opportunity to vote for material you find particularly worthy.  Links with more votes are sorted higher into the lists presented by Digg, ensuring that quality material is widely read.  For people who like my material, you now have an option other than leaving a "Nice post!" comment (though I like those too).

The placement of the links and buttons for these new elements will migrate over the course of the next few days as I settle into a presention I like.

Update: I think I'll be going back to bloggar. I'm researching how to create my Technorati lists from the Movable Type keyword field.

I wonder if anyone has thought this one out:

Japan is planning ultra long-range 30-year weather forecasts that will predict typhoons, storms, blizzards, droughts and other inclement weather, an official said Tuesday.

The project, to start next year, will harness the powers of one of the world's fastest supercomputers and is an offshoot of ongoing research by the country's science ministry to map global warming trends for the next 300 years.

The machine tracks global sea temperatures, rainfall and crustal movement to predict natural disasters over the next centuries. As part of the project, Japan eyes forecasts for the entire planet for areas as small as 1.9 square miles.

But don't plan on locking in sunny weather for that planned family picnic in July 2036. These forecasts are only general trends.

"Just like the daily forecast, we can't give a percentage for how accurate they are," Otake said.

Imagine that after all this research and simulation work, the scientists declare that the 1.9 square miles around your house is going to get slammed by a typhoon five years from now (or within five years, or however their predictions are phrased). They aren't saying that you live in an area beset by typhoons -- you knew that already. But based on the current climactic conditions and within a five year window (presumably the closer the timeframe the higher the confidence in the prediction), the computer is predicting that a major typhoon will form and make landfall on your house.

Disaster will strike fives years ahead of schedule.  How?  Watch your property value plummet and the insurance companies cancel all coverage in the area.

Our lives are lived on the basis of not knowing the future. The more information we have of upcoming events, the more skewed our current behaviour becomes. Need an example? Scientists are predicting global warming. The reasons are murky (the "hockey stick" was recently ridiculed in a major scientific paper) but the effect today is extreme -- major political fighting over energy usage and emissions standards and population size and standard of living. No one really knows what effect, if any, all the things we're fighting about today will have on tomorrow, especially if the warming, if real, is a natural cycle. But our "knowledge" of what tomorrow will be (questionable knowledge at best) is twisting our behaviour today.

Whether it's global warming, or this weather prediction program, or your health (predictions based on genetic markers showing susceptibility to cancer and other diseases or chronic conditions you don't actually have, and may never have), we simply don't have the mental, social, and financial mechanisms in place to properly deal with foreknowledge.

I doubt we ever will. That's just a guess, by the way -- no one from the future told me that.

Technorati Tags: weather

Iranian posturing sure sounds familiar:

Iran’s Hizbollah, which claims links to the Lebanese group of the same name, said on Tuesday it stood ready to attack Israeli and U.S. interests worldwide.

"We have 2,000 volunteers who have registered since last year," said Iranian Hizbollah’s spokesman Mojtaba Bigdeli, speaking by telephone from the central seminary city of Qom.

"They have been trained and they can become fully armed. We are ready to dispatch them to every corner of the world to jeopardise Israel and America’s interests. We are only waiting for the Supreme Leader’s green light to take action. If America wants to ignite World War Three ... we welcome it," he said.

Recall the words of Taliban leader Mullah Omar Muhammad:

VOA: If you fight America with all your might - can the Taliban do that? Won’t America beat you and won’t your people suffer even more?

Omar: I’m very confident that it won’t turn out this way. Please note this: there is nothing more we can do except depend on almighty God. If a person does, then he is assured that the Almighty will help him, have mercy on him and he will succeed.

And of course, don’t forget Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the Iraqi Minister of Information, known affectionately as Baghdad Bob:

Now even the American command is under siege. We are hitting it from the north, east, south and west. We chase them here and they chase us there. But at the end we are the people who are laying siege to them. And it is not them who are besieging us.

There seems to be a fundamental inability to appreciate the power of the US military. Two thousand suicide bombers? Even if every bomber took out a hundred civilians, the pain inflicted would be as a mote of dust to what a single B-52 could do. World War III. They have no concept of the devastation that will be visited upon them if the US were to unleash the full power of its forces.

But then maybe not. It may be that they know exactly what they face and what the result will be.

Are they in such a hurry to get into paradise?

Or maybe they are just in a hurry to die. It must be hard waiting for Allah to turn the tide. The gnawing doubts must be growing almost intolerable. Death would seem welcome.

But to take everything around you down in flames...

A few people would have noticed this blog going off the air for much of the day:

I don’t think it was an attack this time, though I’m checking the logs to see if I can find anything.

Twice, roughly a week apart, the Apache server on Yuri (that is, the software, not the hardware) locked up and stopped serving web pages.

There’s an automated system in place that restarts Apache when this happens.

It didn’t work.

Manually restarting the web server didn’t work either.

I had to reboot the machine to get it back again.

The MuNu servers were subject to an attack recently, but that doesn’t seem to be the case this time. Just gremlins.

As for the amount of time we were off the air, recall that these servers are in Australia. During my afternoon in central Canada, the administrator was asleep.

Just thought you might like to know.

In considering the murder of Yasmin Ashareh, there is a detail that is constantly being misreported by some media sources:

Police are seeking the public’s help in tracing the movements of a 20-year-old Etobicoke woman before she was stabbed to death and dumped in a garbage bag last week.

This report was published today. Listen to the Toronto Police news conference that took place yesterday. There is much made about the fact that the body was found in a duffel bag and not a garbage bag, though some garbage bags were also seized as being relevant to the investigation.

Not all the newspapers are getting this wrong, I should point out.

Why should this matter?

The duffel bag suggests that the body was moved a considerable distance. A garbage bag is not strong enough to hold a body. It would stretch and split in short order. A duffel bag, on the other hand, means that the killing could have happened just about anywhere. Lugging a garbage bag is hard work. A duffle bag has strong broad straps to help carry the weight.

The contents of the other bags? Bloody sheets and towels, perhaps?

Now this gets interesting. A killer would dispose of the body as far from the scene of the crime, as well as from his own residence (assuming these are different locations) as possible. He’d want to keep police attention away from himself. So why not dispose of the body in a ravine, where it might take weeks or months for the remains to be discovered? The only thing I can think of is that the housing complex is a place where the killer felt comfortable. It is a place he is familiar with, where he felt he could carry out the disposal and not be encountered, and where his knowledge of the garbage pickup schedule meant that he was confident that the body and other evidence would be carried off within hours. As it turned out, the garbage was missed, and the decomposition of the remains drew attention.

Of course, I could be giving the killer or killers too much credit.

In any case, the police must certainly be considering tenants of the housing complex, past as well as present, looking for a name that somehow intersects with Yasmin Ashareh’s short life.

Technorati Tags: Yasmin Ashareh, Toronto, murder

I know it sounds harsh, but Bob Rae is so seems so desperate to establish his Liberal Party bona fides (jumping into the leadership race from the New Democratic Party) that he will try to impress everyone around him with his knowledge of Liberal Party history.

The problem is that his knowledge is not all that impressive.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Lebanon, Hezbollah, Bob Rae, Liberal Party

When I wrote about the murder of Yasmin Ashareh, I discussed how this crime has the fingerprints of an honour killing all over it.

I took some heat for that:

Wow how about you wait until we know what happened in this case before you start blaming religion and speculating about honour killings? You are going into a whole tirade about "da Canadian values" already in relation to muslim extremism, but if she was born in Canada it is just as likely (if not more) that she was killed in a typical Canadian domestic dispute (which, by the way, happen 1000 times more often then "honour killings").

Well, I did say I was being speculative.

Still, here is some more information from the print edition of the National Post:

A 20-year-old Toronto woman whose decomposing body was found in a duffle bag in the city’s west end on Friday was known to neighnours as a quiet girl, believed to be pregnant and living alone.

Reports that Ms. Ashareh was pregnant could not be confirmed.

A neighbour living beside the housing complex suggested Ms. Ashareh, who is believed to have been Muslim, might have been ill-regarded if she was pregnant out of wedlock.

I know I’m way ahead of the facts as they are known (at least to the public), but the bells keep going off in my head on this one.

I hope I’m wrong, because the implications of this sort of subculture at work inside Canada are scary. But I can’t shake the feeling that we’re going to have to face those implications as a result of this tragedy.

Technorati Tags: Yasmin Ashareh, Toronto, murder

The member of parliament for Halifax, Alexa McDonough of the NDP, sent a letter to Foreign Minister Peter MacKay, explaining in detail what he is doing wrong, and how Israel is the bad guy:

I write to express outrage at your government’s response to the destruction levelled by Israel on the innocent civilians in Gaza and Lebanon.

The world has rightly condemned the killings and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers, however Israel’s response has been illegal, brutal and disproportionate.

Of course, a quick side-trip into Bush-bashing is seen to be helpful:

It is more apparent than ever that your government’s desire to appease George Bush is so all-consuming, that you are prepared to turn a blind eye to the massive destruction in Gaza and in Lebanon, going so far as to deem these Israeli government assaults as ‘measured’.

Come now, isn’t it possible that Stephen Harper is evil all on his own?

In any case, McDonough insists her outrage is aimed at both sides in this war, though only Israel’s offenses are enumerated in a list:

Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah must all assume responsibility for their actions. However, it is impossible to ignore Israel’s disproportionate response:

• Bombing of the Palestinian Interior Ministry and other government offices:
• Arrest of duly elected Palestinian parliamentarians;
• Bombings of Palestinian infrastructure including a power station that was the sole generator of electricity and running water for hundreds of thousands of Gazans;
• Destruction of the Lebanese airport;
• Air and sea blockade of Lebanon preventing Lebanese as well as Canadian citizens, including many of my constituents, from returning to or leaving Lebanon; and
• Killing of scores of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, including children.

The last point is the most gratuitous. Israel is not targeting children. It has no interest in seeing children hurt. Indeed, every child that is hurt is a public relations bonanza for the terrorists, amplified by letters like these from infantile liberals.

This despite the fact that the terrorists have no problem making children into targets.

McDonough goes on to speak on behalf of all Canadians, even though the NDP came in third in the election (and dead last in Quebec, with less than one third of the vote garnered by the Conservatives):

Canadians expect their government to reflect our strongly held values of fairness, and justice and to uphold our obligations to international law.

Actually, some Canadians expect politicians to speak when they have something useful to add to the conversation, and not just to use up precious oxygen. For example, McDonough says that the Israeli attack on Hamas and on Hizbollah is illegal and disproportionate. Perhaps Alexa McDonough can provide a list of legal and proportionate responses. Remember, the goal is to do the following:

• force the terrorists to return the captured soldiers unharmed
• force the terrorists to stop firing rockets and artillery shells over international borders into Israel
• force the Lebanese government to establish its sovereignty over its territory against the wishes of terrorists armed and controlled by Iran and Syria
• force the Lebanese government to eject Syrian and Iranian military and intelligence personnel illegally in the country for the purpose of managing terrorist organizations, against the wishes of heavily armed Syria (which borders on Lebanon) and Iran
• force the Palestinian Authority to establish its sovereignty over its territory against the wishes of terrorists armed by Iran and Syria
• force Iran to see the provision of financial, military, and diplomatic aid to terrorists as counter to its national interests
• force Syria to see the provision of financial, military, and diplomatic aid to terrorists as counter to its national interests
• force the Palestinian Authority to see the provision of financial, military, and diplomatic aid to terrorists as counter to its national interests
• compel Iran and Syria to behave in a responsible manner over the long term, even though they are not democracies and as such are far more likely to alter their foreign policy quickly and capriciously, since their governments can ignore popular and international opinion
• compel the terrorists to abandon their stated objective to destroy Israel

McDonough would no doubt suggest a conference. Catered, of course. But I doubt she could provide a single compelling reason to believe that even the simplest goals on the list above would be reached in such a way.

For instance, what can McDonough say to Hizbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah to make him stop firing rockets he gets from Iran and Syria into Israel from bases in Lebanon? What would he get out of it, besides a dagger in the back from his compatriots once he is seen to show weakness and a willingness to compromise? What does McDonough think she can offer, or force Israel to offer, that will convince him and the people around him to change their ways?

Nevertheless, a conference is just what she recommends:

I urge you...to call on Israel to halt its assault on Lebanon and to negotiate in good faith a resolution to this latest crisis which has already cost too many innocent lives.

Right. Because Nasrallah is eagerly waiting for his chance to negotiate. All that is missing is "good faith" on the part of conniving and faithless Israel. McDonough has no advice to offer Peter MacKay on what to say to Nasrallah. Just a demand that Canada begin to criticize Israel. Note that Hamas and Hizbollah must "assume all responsibility for their actions", but McDonough is satisfied to leave it there, with no demands for Canadian action on that point, or demands that the terrorists actually stop doing those things she holds them responsible for. For McDonough, "fairness and justice" means telling Israel, and only Israel, to stop, then have Israel set up the hors d’oeuvres for the NDP-sponsored gabfest that will fix all that ails the region. Then everything will be just fine. Well, "legal and proportionate" anyways.

[Add Alexa McDonough to this cartoon depicting those concerned about properly proportioned violence.]

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, Hizbollah, Lebanon, NDP, Alexa McDonough

I’m going to state the obvious. That has gotten people in trouble in the past. It might be my turn. We’ll see.

Remember how interim Liberal leader Bill Graham was so worried that Prime Minister Stephen Harper seemed to hit it off with President George W Bush?

"A change in attitude which creates a closer, cozier relationship with the American administration has never in the long run been good for Canada," Mr. Graham said today.

At the time I pointed out that Graham, as foreign minister, was once very happy to report that his former boss, Paul Martin, enjoyed a close relationship with the same president:

To begin, there's a new relaxed tone in the relationship between the leaders of our two countries. At their first meeting in Monterrey, the Prime Minister and President Bush had an excellent rapport, which produced a very clear articulation of their desire to work together in complementary ways on common foreign policy goals.

I wonder if President Bush was even at the meeting where Paul Martin enjoyed that great rapport:

Two of Bush's least favorite foreign leaders have recently lost their jobs: Merkel's predecessor in Germany, Gerhard Schröder, and Prime Minister Paul Martin of Canada.

Bush is drawn to iconoclastic, plainspoken leaders who don't reflexively follow the party line in their countries.

Paul Martin was the definition of the reflexive follower, so it's no surprise that the President would not have been impressed.

But I find it amazing that Bill Graham would have spoken such a bald-faced lie. It's unlikely there was any relaxed feeling in any way, tone or otherwise, when it came to these two leaders. I'm not saying Graham should have been painfully honest, but there are ways of telling the truth. Paul Martin and George W Bush had a "businesslike" relationship, for example.

It's important on two counts. First, Canadians deserve to be told the truth by their politicians. Or at least not to be lied to.

And second, imagine the howls of laughter in the office of the person in the US State Department whose job it was to stay on top of Canadian politics when he read this speech by the foreign minister of Canada on the topic of Canada-US relations. A lack of credibility impairs the ability to get business done. So much for even a "businesslike" relationship. With Bush, credibility is paramount:

For his part, Bush likes leaders who keep their word. No surprise there. "You don't make promises idly," the aide says.

Is it a surprise that the softwood lumber problem languished for years under Chretien and Martin, then was potentially solved in the first few weeks of Harper taking over as prime minister?

Bill Graham is lucky to end his political career as interim leader of a moribund opposition party. As a minister who contrinuted so much to the deterioration of Canada's relationship with the US, he deserves a harsher end.

Most of the day I don't eat. Like most people, I eat a light breakfast, a quick lunch, supper, and a couple of snacks. How would you know I was fasting? At most any random moment of my day, I am not likely to be eating.

The only way, really, is for me to tell you. Especially if I was fasting for only one day. Without intending it, there are days when I don't eat until the afternoon. Sometimes life is just too busy. All the more reason to tell people what you are doing and why.

So when Code Pink started the Troops Home Fast, they made a point to list the names of all the people who would fast for a day. Of course, because otherwise you would blink and miss it. Long fasts you can't miss after a while. But a one-day fast?

With the need to publicize these micro-fasts, why are some fasters so reluctant to say anything?

Consider two examples from the list, British MP George Galloway and our own Canadian MP Libby Davies (misspelled "Davis" by Code Pink).

I've wandered around their websites, and I haven't found a mention of the fast. Why sign up if you didn't plan to carry the message back to your people? Galloway and Davies have never hesitated throwing their support behind radical causes.

Did they even fast? How would we know? And if they did, what did they accomplish, given that no one even knows they skipped lunch that day?

OK, I'm going to do something here that some people won't like.

I'm going to give Cindy Sheehan a huge boost.

How?

By linking to her blog.

Why should it matter? From her Sitemeter:

Total: 332
Average Per Day: 5
Average Visit Length: 1:13
Last Hour: 0
Today: 20
This Week: 34

Five a day? Has she become so irrelevant that you can count the number of people who come to read her writings using the fingers on one hand?

Over the last 30 days, her peak traffic was 44 hits on the June 18. At the time I write this, her day's traffic is 20. I suppose that will change given my Saturday and Sunday traffic runs at over a thousand each day.

Where is her traffic coming from? Mostly Google hits. Besides Google, the most recent hits are coming from this article at AlterNet, a left-wing online independent media outlet.

Her website was created by Theron Parlin, a part-time web designer, so I would doubt this is technical problem.

I just expected something else. A couple of thousand hits a day from adoring fans at Code Pink and elsewhere. But a couple of dozen?

Maybe this is an example of the difference between the media and the people they serve. Cindy Sheehan still makes it in the papers and on TV with her fasts and her foreign trips to visit the likes of Hugo Chavez. But in the blogosphere, where you choose what news you want to read, people are going elsewhere.

Interesting.

Update: Some people have wondered if the blog is, in fact, a parody, or otherwise not legitimate. That might be the case. However, the registration information looked right (including an address in Berkeley where Cindy Sheehan now resides). The email address provided checked out with a comment left on Tim Blair's blog that also seemed right. The link from AlterNet certainly adds credibility. I've scratched my head on why the blog of such an anti-war celebrity seems to be so dead, and I've considered that maybe this isn't her blog at all. But I can't find any reason not to think it is her blog, and several reasons to think it is. If it is a parody, I don't get the joke. But then an unfunny parody is not likely to get a lot of traffic, now is it.

If anyone can confirm this one way or the other, let me know.

Here is something interesting to consider. I just went through every subpage of Michael Moore's recommended links (Alternative Media, Community, etc), and I found no mention of Cindy Sheehan on any page under any category. Daily Kos does not have her on the Blogroll. In fact, Google can't find any pages that link to her blog (too soon for my link to show).

Regrets: I have to say that I am starting to regret highlighting Cindy Sheehan's blog (if indeed it is hers, or run by someone close to her). People have been visiting the blog and leaving some very crude and vicious comments. Obviously I'm not responsible for what someone else does with their online time, but to know that they used my link in order to spew their bile makes me hope that most of my readers are made of better stuff than that. If you are one of those posters and you are reading this, please consider other blogs and websites than mine where you might be welcome. You aren't welcome here.

A lot of hay has been made over what a spokesperson said with regards to the cheque-swapping the Conservative Party of Canada did as part of the Montreal Convention in 2005:

The Vancouver Sun reported on July 1 that the Conservatives engaged in "cheque-swapping" at its 2005 convention, a scheme in which the party pays delegate fees and expenses for party delegates, who then make a donation to the party in the same amount to receive a tax credit for the event.

But Elections Canada spokesman Dan Kingsbury said last week that the scheme may be a violation of federal law.

"The situation that you described may be contrary to section 405.3 of the Canada Elections Act, which is making a contribution using money, property or services given to one by another for that purpose," Mr. Kingsbury said. "It may also be contrary to the provisions of the Income Tax Act, respecting income tax credits, including the anti-avoidance provisions of that act."

Was Kingsbury just talk off the top of his head about a situation described by a reporter while the two were hanging out by the vending machine? Or does this represent the learned opinion of Elections Canada based on a detailed analysis of what actually happened?

But let's give Kingsbury the benefit of the doubt and say that he's got it right. What does the law say, what is the spirit of the law, and what sorts of situations does it cover?

From the Seattle Times:

South Korea on Thursday suspended humanitarian aid to North Korea until it agrees to return to international nuclear-disarmament talks.

The action infuriated visiting North Korean officials, who immediately cut off high-level talks in South Korea and returned home.

The decision to postpone consideration of a North Korean request for 500,000 tons of rice marked the South's first punitive action against its impoverished communist neighbor since it defied the international community and test-fired seven missiles, including a long-range Taepodong-2, on July 4.

The North Koreans responded in typically bombastic style:

The south side rendered the 19th north-south ministerial talks fruitless by toeing the U.S. hostile policy towards the DPRK in contravention of the spirit of the June 15 joint declaration despite the north side's sincerity and good faith. In this connection the delegation of the north side to the talks Thursday took the initiative of proposing the close of the talks and issued a statement clarifying its stand. The statement said:

At the talks the north side made every sincere effort to make the talks fruitful on the basis of mutual understanding and confidence, guided by the idea of "By our nation itself" clarified in the June 15 joint declaration.

The south side, however, deliberately threw difficulties in the way of the talks, echoing what others claim quite contrary to the interests of the nation at the talks between compatriots.

The "difficulties" thrown by the South are never clearly articulated. Of course not. To tell the truth would put the regime at risk on two counts.

First, though it is an open secret, the North Korean government would be admitting to being massively dependent on foreign food aid, including from the hated South Koreans (the second largest donor next to China).

Second, the people would suddenly realize that more severe rationing was likely in the coming weeks and months, all so Kim Jong Il could drop a missile into the drink. If the people understand how closely their meagre food rations are tied to the actions of their Beloved Leader, Kim could be in for some trouble. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but someday.

Hence the "difficulties".

Clearly the need for food aid is a weak point in the North Korean armour. One shipment is held back, and they scream.

On the next edition of The Right Side (posted no later than Monday AM) Gary Rosenfeldt, who's son Darryn was slaughtered by mass killer Clifford Robert Olson. Olson (who has become a married man in prison) has a parole hearing this week in Quebec. MP Pierre Polievre, the parliamentary secretary to Treasury Board President John Baird, will talk about the upcoming review of Federal Grant programs. Upwards of 15 Billion is chucked off the back of the government truck every year. Polievre wants to stop the bleeding. We'll hear from a feminist leader who talks about political favouritism and the Grants system. And a "report card" on the first months of the Harper government.

Missile defence passed a major milestone (despite the learned predictions of naysayers).