Truthdig – Ear to the Ground – Obama Keeps Renditions In the Toolbox
I wish I could say that I’m surprised by the fact that Obama is electing to keep ‘renditions’ as an option. I guess it fits in with escalating the war in Afghanistan and linking that conflict with Pakistan (a nuclear power in a permanent state of tension with India). I feel ever so much more secure. I’m thinking that Blowback should be added to the presidential reading list.
Trite but true, that the first casualty of war is the truth. Tragically, it is not the last casualty:
CD’s Best of the Web / Gaza: The Lies of War
Non-observant Muslims, Christians and other minorities have more religious freedom under Hamas rule than they would have in Saudi Arabia
Here is an area where the budget of next week could make a real difference in lifting people out of poverty, and provide real stimulus:
If there is hope…: What the media won’t say about Ontario’s universities
Ontario’s per capita post-secondary education funding is now the lowest in North America, except for Alabama. Ontario students who are paying a hefty sum for their education, as well as those who do the teaching and research at our universities, would be better served by a post-secondary education system that was adequately funded and accessible to all.
At least one voice not on the Obama bandwagon:
Canadian Dimension Blog / An Obama Nightmare by Saul Landau?
Obama has repeatedly pledged to expand the U.S. role in Afghanistan after more than eight years of failure
From Guy Gavriel Kay in the Globe and Mail today:
globeandmail.com: The greatest Russians of all time?
Denying, suppressing, falsifying the past, however savage it might have been (perhaps especially when it was savage) exposes a society to the raw power of history when it isn’t dealt with. And that is a power strong as glaciers grinding everything in their path, shaping a landscape. It is critical to realize that this isn’t some abstract, intellectual issue. It defines the world today, from Moscow to the Middle East, Kosovo to Kenya.
An opinion piece on TheStar.com includes the following, “Canada strips welfare recipients of so much – their pride, their privacy, their savings, their ability to provide basic necessities for their children – that many will never escape poverty.” By stripping privacy and dignity away with food and shelter, we are effectively removing fundamental civil liberties. While the immediate privacy impact is on the homeless and the poor, this degrades all of our liberties.
I haven’t read the report underlying this comment but I suspect that the article may actually be softening the message. Canada is introducing it’s own ‘untouchable’ and invisible caste. Do you make eye contact with the homeless and the panhandlers on Canada’s streets?
PS. Why is that we think that Third World countries have beggars, but we have homeless people and panhandlers. Just how big is our level of self delusion and unjustified self satisfaction at the prosperity of Canadian society?
PPS. Check out the comments following the article, and see the outrage directed against the welfare recipients.
Here’s one view of Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the show throwing journalist now facing charges in Iraq. What does it say about the so called ‘successful surge’ (and isn’t than an offensive euphemism?) when normal working journalist are so caught up by events that they apparently snap. If this is at all representative of the mood of the ‘moderates’ in the country, then the trajectory of Iraq is not towards stability, as posited by the mouthpieces of the occupying forces, but towards perhaps even more fundamental change.
Family: Shoe thrower hates both US, Iran role
“He hates the American physical occupation as much as he hates the Iranian moral occupation”
globeandmail.com: Fanning the fires of national disunity
According to the Globe “…we have a power-hungry man who will be recorded as the first prime minister in Canada’s history to deliberately create a political crisis and set the fire of national disunity.”
In case it wasn’t clear from the types of links that I’ve posted about this lately, I’m incensed about what Harper has done. Not because I disagree with his politics, although I surely do, but because this is yet another in the long line of attempts that he has made to restructure the Canadian state – and not in a healthy way. He acts and speaks as if he truly does not understand the nature and history of parliamentary democracy. Harper has consistently worked to centralize power in the hands of the Prime Minister and to keep anything meaningful out of the hands not just of parliament – our actually elected members – but even from his own cabinet. The PMO, in this formulation acts as a kind of appointed politburo acting on the whims of the man at the centre.
Enough is enough. This man, with ambitions to be the President for Life of the Oil Republic of Canada, should no longer be the Prime Minister of Canada. Coalition or not, his own party should take him out behind the wood shed and come back without him.