» Archive: January 2006
Osama's Book Club
From Rahul Mahajan's Empire Notes:
Osama's Book Club
Osama bin Laden's latest statement has been translated and transcribed. As often happens, different translations differ substantially (AP version BBC version).
The statement mentions Bill Blum's book, "Rogue State," by name and quotes from it. On the strength of that, he tells me, has was invited on to CNN tonight, the kind of thing that doesn't happen very often. I just checked his Amazon sales rank. On January 18, it was 205,763rd in sales; on January 19, it was 86th.
That kind of boost is up there in Oprah territory. And unlike James Frey in his so-called memoir, "A Million Little Pieces," Bill doesn't indulge in fabrication. His writing style is a lot better, too.
The Filter
TheFilter.ca aims to "filter through the polluted media landscape, and present to you only fresh breaking news and opinions from Canada, the United States, and around the world."
Looks like their off to a good start. Check 'em out.
Impossible to parody
George W. Bush, June 18, 2002:
"I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace."
Mirror, Mirror
The Montreal Mirror's cover story (and a full spread inside) this week were dedicated to Canada's role in overthrowing democracy in Haiti.
Can you spell 'climate change?'
Weather is wacked but no one wants to say the words 'climate change' too loud.
2005 was the warmest year on recordPeople in shorts in Edmonton this week due to record highs.Winnipeg set to smash 60 year old weather record for January
Dozens die in Europe due to record setting cold snap.
Draft Dion
There seems to be an incipient campaign to draft Stéphane Dion for the Liberal leadership on the move.
Haiti Groups Declare Victory Over Pettigrew
Haiti Action Montreal and Le Comité Haïtien Pour Les Élections Fédérales 2006: Pettigrew defeat a warning
The [anti-Pettigrew] campaign was covered by the CBC, Radio-Canada, CTV, the Ottawa Citizen, La Presse, Le Devoir, TVA, Global News, le Journal de Montréal, the Montréal Gazette, Agence-France Presse, and the National Post.Full disclosure: I helped out on this campaign."I think we had a significant impact in the riding, and more Canadians than ever are now aware of Canada's disastrous role in Haiti," said Serge Bouchereau from Le Comité.
"There is more awareness of the massacres committed by the UN and the Canadian-trained and -funded Haitian police force, and people have heard the names of political prisoners like Gerard Jean-Juste, and Sò Anne Auguste," said Bouchereau.
"Pettigrew's defeat is a warning to any politician who wants to play fast and loose with the lives of millions of people to please the U.S.," said Yves Engler from Haiti Action Montreal.
"Canadians have little tolerance for human rights abuses being committed in their names," said Engler, "and when they're informed, they won't stand for it."
Despite reports in the international press and human rights investigations pointing to a campaign of murderous repression, Pettigrew has denied the existence of any abuses. "I am proud, very proud," said Pettigrew recently of Canada's intervention in Haiti.
"His denials cost many lives, and they will be his political epitaph," said Bouchereau.
Hearings to begin on $7B pipeline
Hearingsbegin on Wednesday in the Northwest Territories to examine the impact of a proposed natural gas pipeline through the Mackenzie Valley.
In 1977, an inquiry led by Justice Thomas Berger killed plans for a similar pipeline. His report recommended a 10-year moratorium on pipeline construction while native land claims are settled, and a permanent ban on any pipeline from Alaska across the northern Yukon
The current proposal includes three of the four aboriginal groups in the Mackenzie Valley as part-owners of the pipeline with oil giant Imperial Oil.
One Depressing Outcome
Justin Podur: "One depressing outcome: Michael Ignatieff got elected. Bright spot: maybe he'll be too busy to write?"
Colby Cosh reckons Stephane Dion might be a decent leadership candidate. Someone asked me a while ago who I'd like to see as Liberal Party leader. Since the candidates that have their hats in (Manley, Iggy, McKenna) are right wing imperialists of one variety or another (Carlyle Group or Harvard? Take your pick.), I couldn't think of an answer. So I settled on Dion, though I know very little about him, because the scuttlebutt is that he's a smart, hard-working, vaguely ethical and pretty moderate. But a Liberal or Conservative majority would seem to be a recipe for damage for the forseeable future.
An Election Day Call To Action
All joking about Erections Canada aside, I solemnly swear that the following statement is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.
And the Queen.
I mentioned the Queen because it’s better to leave no stone unturned, as my stone grandfather who guides me in my work as a stone sculptor always says. After standing staring at this great boulder flung from Europe’s shore on the catapult of colonialism, the boulder some call Canada, I’ve decided it’s time to get out my carving tools, and to set to work on trying to make something decent out of it.
Harper Hasta
This comment by Warren Kinsella seems true, though it may be wishful thinking:
What does it mean? It means that, for Harper, running a perfect campaign isn't enough. Having his opponent run a terrible, terrible campaign isn't enough. It means Harper has to run a perfect government. No mistakes. He has to ensure there are no backbench bimbo eruptions whatsoever. No fumbles, no flubs.
The counterpoint to that is the line that Harper just has to put his Quebec machine into high gear, and he's in majority territory the next time around.
The corollary to that is that the Liberals might want to think twice about putting McKenna up front if they want Quebec back. They're not very popular there right now.
Anyway, we now return to your non-electoral coverage of issues that won't be affected by an election any time soon.
That could have been worse.
The anticipated hangover will be a little less painful.
Now, will the NDP have the balance of power? The statistically improbable has happened again: an independent holds the balance of power (or likely will).
Seems to be...
...a big night for the NDP so far.
But the real winner is the united right.
The late night ridings: Outremont, Trinity-Spadina, Vancouver Centre.
Post your live links in the comments.
On the Fence
"Liveblogging" tends to favour the quick and the pithy. Not exactly my strong suit. But On the Fence can provide all the pith and quickness you desire between compulsively reloading riding results.
The Pettigrew Plunge
It's 10:18 pm, and fiftysome odd people (well, they're not that odd, as they are booing the United Right candidates) have begun the intoxication that will make a Harper regime tolerable. More importantly, we just discovered that our dear fiend Pierre Pettigrew is down by a 59-26 percent margin on his Bloquist foe.
Hallelujah.
Election Night at the Bishop St.
The blurry crowd here at the Bishop St. Pub in Montreal. The MC opened the event by announcing that "we're against the Liberals and Conservatives, and indifferent to everyone else." It's going to be a long night.
überculture's Ezra Winton at the live-weblogging laptop extravaganza.
Predictions
Here are my last-minute predictions:
Due to a massive, systemic printing snafu at Elections Canada, all Conservative, Liberal, and NDP candidates will be left off of the ballots.
Projecting seat counts is a bit tricky given the lack of poll data, but as far as I can tell, it'll look like this:
Bloc: 75
Green Party: 65
Marijuana Party: 42
Libertarian: 39
Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist): 31
Canadian Action Party: 20
Progressive Canadian Party: 18
Christian Heritage: 12
Communist Party of Canada: 3
Independent: 3
The prognosis: Prime Minister Gilles Duceppe, heading a duct-tape coalition of the Green Party and the Marijuana Party. Hopes for the potential Communist-CAP-Green Coalition will be dashed after bitter divisions caused by lost gains due to vote-splitting between the Communist Party and the Marxist-Leninists culminated in the further division of both parties into smaller factions. The last hope of wooing the Marijuana party to support the coalition will be dashed after an internal audio recording of some undiplomatic remarks by Marxist-Leninist Party officials were leaked to the media. The Green Party, spurred by a sudden influx of unemployed Liberal Party operatives, will attempt to keep the Bloc in check and keep Canada from becoming the EU until it can prove that it can be a viable governing party. Proportional representation will be said to be high on the agenda of the new Parliament. PM Gilles Duceppe will say that he will do whatever is in the interests of Quebec.
Election Night
Tonight, the Dominion and UniteTheRight.ca will be live-weblogging the election from überculture's election night party at the Bishop Street Pub (1222 Bishop St.) in Montreal.
If you're in town, come on down.
Stop the presses...
I haven't consulted the other staff here at the Dominion (we're a far-flung bunch), but I'll endorse the view that backing Paul Martin, implicitly or otherwise, is tragically misguided.
The Left that's left
Chantal Hebert says what I said here a little while ago, but more diplomatically, in Left's missed opportunity.
Is the New Democratic Party a flag of convenience to be waved only when nothing stands in the way of a Liberal parade? In the dying days of the campaign, it certainly seems that way.If Jack Layton wins more seats on Monday, it will be in spite of the best efforts of a vocal section of the Canadian left. In the lead-up to the vote, many of his party's natural allies are joining their voices with that of Paul Martin to beg NDP sympathizers to abandon Layton for the Liberals for the second election in a row.
Maude Barlow responds:
The reason we chose to speak out this election was our collective concern about the past policies and statements of both Stephen Harper and many of his candidates. After extensively researching Harper's past, we came to the conclusion that a Harper government would dramatically set back the cause of social equality, workers rights and environmental stewardship in Canada. We shared these concerns from a variety of perspectives at the press conference and continue to share them with the Canadian public. We did not tell anyone how to vote. We simply reminded Canadians of our shared values and asked them to think twice before letting their desire for change result in a government that would destroy decades of social progress.
I may be wrong, but I simply don't remember there ever being a lefty fear campaign about Martin, who sliced and diced social programs at twice the rate of Brian Mulroney. I'm certainly not noticing one now.
Either it's about policy, in which case the Think Twicers should be going after Paul Martin, or it's about their collective preference for Paul Martin for reasons independent of policy, in which case they should come out and be honest about what those are.
That, and looking at the Liberal train wreck, one is left to wonder under what conditions, exactly, progressives are willing to support a progressive party?
Hebert says it better:
When the Canadian left does its post-election soul-searching, it should ponder whether some of its leading voices allowed their fears to make them lose sight of an unprecedented opportunity to advance their values.
Bin Laden and Blum
Thoughts on the Eve of Apocalypse: "Holy shit. That's Bill Blum's book. Osama's reading Blum. Poor Bill. He's already in enough trouble with the FBI, no doubt. This can't help."
Update: I dunno, but commenters reckon that it's not a real Bin Laden statement, as it's missing the highfalutin' intelleckshuall stuff that is characteristic of Bin Laden.
Polling
Pilon: "For instance, as Simon Fraser University political scientist Andrew Heard points out on his elections website, a number of the polling firms are rolling decided voters in with what pollsters call 'leaners,' people who don't actually have strong views about the parties. People in this group only give an opinion because they are pressed by interviewers to do so. Heard argues that such leaners are 'quite volatile and [can] either change their party preference or even decide not to vote at all.'"
Conservatives to 'mericans: Ssh.
This email that was apparently sent to American conservatives is pretty funny.
Canadian voters have been led to believe that American conservatives are scary and if the Conservative party can be linked with us, they perhaps can diminish a Conservative victory. Chipeur asks that if Canadian media calls, please do not be interviewed until Monday evening at which point hopefully there will be reason to celebrate.
Partisanship anon
When advocacy groups (*ahem*councilofcanadiansierraclubcanadianautoworkers*ahem*) say they're non-partisan, the word non-partisan is a stand-in for the following more nuanced position:
"We agree with the NDP on some issues, but we won't support them. The Liberals seem willing to buy us off with career advancements and rhetoric, and gosh, Paul Martin says he agrees with us, and he's so enthusiastic. The conservatives must be feared. FEARED! BOO! Are you scared?? BOOOOO! We're against the Conservatives because they're scarrrryyyyyy! (Not because we're cozy with the Liberals... we just think that lying between two sheets on a mattress with the Liberal party is the best thing for our cause.)"
I'm not really exagerrating all that much. Listening to, say, the Think Twice coalition, you wouldn't know that Paul Martin had implemented the deepest cuts and the most retrograde privatization agenda in 30 years. The fact that he did this with a smile and while patting the lefties on the head doesn't change the effects on actual people.
The fact that Harper would probably make more cuts doesn't really change the fact that Martin bragged about cutting social spending back to 1953 levels. Because he did. Fait accompli.
Now, the excuse (most recently heard from a Sierra Club rep) that's used is that you "have to work with the people who are in power". (Apparently "work with" means "laud uncritically," but that's another story.) If that is the case, I wonder why the Sierra Club and Maude Barlow are spending so much time slamming Harper?
Let's take a moment to look at Paul Martin's Liberals' record on cutting emissions, or privatizing health care. What? You say privatization is continuing apace and emissions are increasing, making it almost entirely unlikely that we're going to meet reduction goals?
Funny, you don't hear the professional left saying that much. To her credit, Barlow has criticized Martin in the past, but where is that criticism now?
With the Conservatives likely to take a minority (thanks to a completely inept Liberal campaign and infighting in that party), where is the "you have to work with the people in power" principle now?
There's a choice: they're either partisan, or they're not. If you're not calling the Liberals on their destructive history in housing, health care, environment and so on, you're either blind or partisan. Neither one seems appealing, but you can't behave the way the think twicers are behaving and avoid being at least one of those two. Or both.
So, assuming it's one, which is it?
Harper's Aboriginal Policy
StageLeft has a good article on Conservatives and Aboriginal Policy.
Dr. Flanagan believes that Aboriginal cultures were inherently inferior to European cultures; that Aboriginal people should be made to assimilate into the mainstream of the Canadian population; that Canada’s treaties should be abrogated; and that self-government, to the extent that it should be allowed, should be limited to granting self governments the powers, functions and authorities of a municipal government.
Con Cab
CTV has the scuttlebutt about who's going to be in the Conservative cabinet that the media is so certain is going to be convening in the coming months.
Judging Paul Martin
[There couldn't be a stronger rebuttal to those nitwits who are saying either that a) the NDP should lay off the Liberals or b) are campaigning with the Liberals. It's also an excellent backgrounder on what Paul Martin has been up to in his 12 years at the centre of a Liberal government. -- dru]
Forget the hype. Forget the hysteria. Here are the facts.
by Murray Dobbin (Planet 'S' - Saskatoon)
How do you judge a politician’s promises?
It depends, in part, on whether or not they have a record to go by. Of course, that’s not absolutely necessary - you can judge Stephen Harper by what he has said for nearly twenty years about what his core beliefs are. Many of his policies this time around fundamentally contradict everything he has ever said. Score zero for the credibility of his promises.
But Paul Martin is even easier. He has a real and very extensive record – which the media, to their shame, is not interested in any more. If you want to know what a prime minister would really like to do, take a look at what they did when they had no restrictions on their power. Judging Martin on the recent minority government doesn’t count - he was trying to stay in power and had to please the NDP (and the public) with at least some progressive policies.
No, much better to look at what he did as finance minister from 1993 - 2002. Martin was for those nine long years the de facto prime minister of the country. Jean Chretien wasn’t interested in policy or governing. He was a politician who saw his job as maintaining the Liberals in power. He gave virtual carte blanche to Martin to determine the direction of the government. While this was disastrous for the country, it does give us a crystal clear view of what the man is really all about.
From South African News About Canada...
Staff at an Ontario brewery believe they have an insight into who will be elected prime minister when Canadians vote on Monday after launching new beers with the effigy of party leaders on the labels and counting sales of each to predict the outcome.
Most surreal moment. In our cities.
Paul Wells: "Now Paul Martin's wearing a Buzz Hargrove union jacket while he complains about Jack Layton's 'political expediency' while he campaigns for Liberal candidate Gary Carr, a former Mike Harris Scary Ontario Conservative."
That's got to be the high water mark for the massive internal contradictions of Martin's Liberal Party. All they need is a guest appearance from Jean Lapierre.
Rourke on Elections
Toronto's Tim Rourke has a thoughtful piece about the election, from the point of view of Toronto's poor. He wrote an earlier piece that goes after Michael Shapcott in a pretty intense but somewhat vague way. I don't know what to think about that, but Tim has a fresh, on-the-ground long term perspective that's pleasant to read. Worth a look.
Think Twice about Think Twice
Here's a summary of the following: The progressive coalition is more loyal to Paul Martin than his own staff is.
* * *
I sent the following note to Paul Wells (who is a productivity-is-more-important-than-people right winger), but has been thwapping people with NDP interests who keep getting scared into voting Liberal. And now, getting scared into scaring other people into voting Liberal.
...I agree that the Think Twicers are being completely pathetic. In the last election, maybe. In this one, they should be calling loudly for the NDP to take every Liberal seat as the only credible party that represents the interests they're supposedly standing up for. I'm curious as to when, exactly, their plan calls for actually voting in their own interest.I honestly don't get these people. There's a basic lack of understanding of how power works. You get concessions from those in power by threatening their electoral viability, forcing them to rely on your support. Not by following them around giving them awards (as the Sierra Club just did for Stephane Dion, whose government has done, oh, nothing to curb Canada's carbon emissions, though they sure talk alot about Kyoto).Bizarre. Cowardly. Typical.
Let's look at the situation: the Liberal campaign has fallen apart, the Conservatives are entering majority territory. Top Liberals are abandoning their leader in mid-campaign. Jack Layton is working at presenting the NDP as the credible alternative to the Conservatives because the Liberals are headed to Kim Campbell land. The NDP is picking up points in polls. You're the leader of a (pick one) trade union, antipoverty organization, human rights organization, citizens' coalition.
What do you do?
Is it just me, or would the obvious thing to do not be to throw everything behind the NDP, given that this is a fricking golden opportunity to make huge electoral gains and actually have a serious progressive presence in Parliament?
No!
Instead, you try to prop up the corpse of the Liberal party loyal to the end to a party that did all of nothing for you while in power.
When, exactly, do you have an opportunity to take a serious dent out of the Liberals and forcing them to earn back every bit of the support they had before? When do you have the opportunity to position a party that actually has shown a willingness to implement policy that you like for being a credible competitor to form a government the next time around?
So when one comes along, the first thing you'll want to do is urge everyone to vote for the party that's imploding, and which has done nothing to earn your support.
I know that the conventional wisdom says that the Liberal Party is the "natural ruling party", but do we have to act like it all the time? Apparently even the suggestion that it might not be the case is just too insane to contemplate.
Disclaimer: Yeah, they're actually just saying "don't vote Conservative", but no matter who the audience is, there's a pretty obvious way that one can expect that to be interpreted.
CBC's true colours?
Andrew Coyne traces the colours of the CBC logo over the years and finds a striking correlation with the party currently in power. I mean, it's undeniable that the CBC is pro government, often moreso than other media. But this is just weird.
Strategy: Ok, so the election is decided...
...the Conservatives are going to win a majority or near-majority minority. But there's a week to go, and though my sensibilities are along the lines of those of Mr. Podur, my politics-as-pure-strategy side tends towards speculation, with a small but potent dose of I-don't-want-a-right-wing-government.
Speculation about what, say, Martin or Layton could do to turn everything on its head and redefine the game during the last week. Any stunt that could pull this off would involve, by definition, a) insane risks and b) enough sincerity that it wouldn't look like a desperate move to win an election, which it would be. I honestly don't have any great ideas (add yours in comments) what the move would be, but here's my best try too late on a Sunday night:
Martin:
His main problem seems to be that he's seen as being willing to say, promise, or pledge support to anything or anyone to stay in power. And rightfully so; any attempt to figure out what the guy is really about reveals an incoherent mess: layers upon layers of convenient lies over a core of your basic multimillionaire who hangs out with CEOs.
So the point would be to win peoples' attention without further confirming this will-say-anything image.
My first suggestion is "come clean". Which is to say, quit trying to cover up your mistakes and get back to what you're about. Unfortunately, the Liberals are almost solely about getting and holding power, so the trick is to do this in moderation, but still make a dramatic splash that will put all eyes on PM the PM.
The upside is that Paul Martin does the "sincere agent of change" thing pretty well (ignoring all substance, for the moment), as we saw with the post-scandal mad-as-hell tour.
So, how to be desperate without appearing desperate? Bulworth or West-Wing style candor seems out of the question, at least as an abrupt 180. The trick would be to have a decisive moment that stopped the say-anything narrative, and then run a consistently good campaign after that. (Probably not possible with Martin's current staff, but let's give ourselves a bit of room.)
[time goes by...]
After considering a number of possibilities, it occurs to me that Martin et alia have backed themselves into a total corner here. Basically, the only way out is to find religion at the last minute. Run on the record and be serious about something that matters. But what? Democratic reform? Oops. Health care? Same thing. And so on down the list.
My final conclusion ends up being pretty boring.
The Liberals have done a piss-poor job of communicating their current record, and they appear corrupt because they are. So the plan would be to do some very straightforward ads and PR events that explain, in a visually memorable, straightforward way, what the Liberals have "accomplished" over the last 12 years. None of this "Reussir le Canada" bullshit. Take some pages from Mike Harris (via John Doyle) and name an imaginary city in each province and give it a population of the number more people that are employed compared to the Mulroney years. Hire a huge crane to lift the some symbol of the weight of the debt that Martin is so proud of having paid off. Or variations on this theme. As for corruption, I think that the basic answer is to run on the record of what the Liberals have accomplished in terms of addressing this issue, and communicate that in similarly simple, straightforward, and TV-friendly ways.
That said, the Liberal record is crap, and has increased human misery in Canada and abroad, but elections about a lot of things before they're about reality.
Layton:
If I knew what made people react with such visceral distancing from the NDP (much less those with a more radical understanding of things), I'd be, well, at least a little less frustrated by my lack of understanding.
My solution for the NDP, assuming they want to get more than a maximum of thirty seats, is to s#^t or get off the pot (no marijuana pun intended). That is to say: be left wing, or position yourselves as the successor to the Liberal party, but don't try to hover between the two.
Option 1, be left wing:
This would involve Jack Layton pushing the envelope in ways that he got slapped down for doing before. Like accusing Paul Martin of being responsible for the deaths of homeless people. That got him tonnes of flak, despite the fact that it is, well, a fact. Martin cut the housing budget down to zero and cut transfer payments, and that had an effect. No matter to the media, who had a field day.
Instead of hitting superficial stuff like that, though, the NDP could grab headlines with Pierre-Ducasse-esque statements like "there is no reason for banks to be privately owned", and then come up with a plan for serious regulation and outline how much money people would save. Spend a few days selling the idea, and put the war room to work on some clever, snappy explanation that is equal to their skills at dissing the Liberals.
Or choose another topic that matters that the Liberals and Conservatives violently agree on, and take it apart. Canada's role in Haiti might be one. Inequality might be one. Whatever it is, the problem is getting the media on board. Never easy when you're the NDP, which I guess is why Jack occasionally talks about the party buying a newspaper.
Admittedly, this is more of a long term strategy, but if he hit the right note with the right amount of media punch and the right timing, it's not impossible for Jack Layton to set the agenda for the last week of the campaign.
Option two: become Liberal-lite:
The long term version of this involves Jack heading to Bay street and selling NDP policy as good for the economy and good for corporate profits. Whichever ones aren't substantially compatible with agenda of a workable subset of corporations, he sidelines or makes appear marginal, at least for the moment. Newly funded, the NDP positions itself as the only party that can legitimately represent Canadian values. Tough sell, but easier while the Liberals are down and out, and the Conservatives are bickering about whether to work with everyone or opportunistically use power to push through retrograde social policy or send troops to Syria, Iran or Venezuela, it would be easier. Once in power, if you have any lefty ideals left, use your clout to strengthen your base, and hand them a few policies to social movements to get them fired up, and then let them push you in the direction you need to go.
This scenario is not bloody well likely, but Bay Street backing is the one proven way to take power in Canada.
The last-week-of-campaign version of this is a little more simple: stop "picking at the Liberal carcass" (as Coyne put it), and toss it out of the way. Through shear self-confidence or hubris. Say it loud: the Liberal Party is down for the count, collapsing from massive internal contradiction, ethically and financially bankrupt, and the NDP is the only party that can keep the Cons in check. Push hard for a total shift to the NDP. See if it catches on. (I actually don't see a lot of downside to this last version. The Dippers could use a bit more self-confidence. And the key question is: why is someone with Harper's far-right associates and track record the one who's the heir apparent to the centrist government?)
There's an option three (no one-week version), but that being my life's work--though not necessarily about the NDP--I'll save it for a future discussion.
That said, the above reflects very few of my political beliefs, but strategy is fun to think about.
Now... your thoughts, please?
Thoughts on Sudan, Congo and other difficult cases
Interesting and urgent injunction from Rahul Mahajan:
Part of the reason activists haven't really talked about Congo is that there are no easy solutions to offer. With the sanctions on Iraq, the remedy was very simple – remove the sanctions and allow Iraqis to use their oil revenues to rebuild the country--but here it's hard to know what to say.The West has benefited from the plunder carried out by Uganda and Rwanda in eastern Congo. The mining of coltan, an ore that provides tantalum, a key element in so-called "inhead capacitors" used in cell phones, was a major source of profits to those armies and a major reason for their continued operations -- of course, they received mere pennies for every dollar the cell-phone makers made.
Human Rights Watch has chronicled and denounced the links between the international mining conglomerate Anglo American and the brutal Nationalist and Integrationist Front, an armed group that controls much of the gold mining in the Ituri district.
The West is, of course, also responsible for the brutal history of Congo that led up to this. Belgium essentially turned the entire country into a massive slavery and forced labor plantation, killing an estimated 10 million in the process. After independence, Belgium and the United States collaborated in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, a leader who held out genuine hope to the people of Congo, and his replacement by the tyrannical and corrupt Mobutu.
After doing so much to create Congo's problems, the West has no interest in trying to fix them. There is no imperialist imperative to control the country; why should there be when resources flow freely without requiring any trouble on the part of the West? The UN peacekeeping force was recently increased to 16,700, or one person per 60 square miles, but in 2004 the UN was only able to raise half of the funds allocated for them. Nobody is pushing to get control there any more than they were in Liberia or than they are in Darfur.
The left has been very reticent to try to address such questions, out of fear that any call for humanitarian intervention will serve imperialist ends. This abdication is not only morally questionable, it is strategically unsound; indeed, the absence of a sensible way to deal with such problems helps to feed the kind of human rights imperialism that the left is (rightly) so afraid of.
The international community must devise a way of dealing with such problems, and the left must be involved in that devising. Any such method must in turn obey the twin principles of not increasing Western influence and holding the West at least financially if not morally accountable for what it has done. Easier said than done, but right now nobody is even saying it.
This Election
Blog This: "And the winner is... already determined, if you look at any of Canada's major newspapers and TV newscasts more than a week before election day. The story of Conservative momentum and Liberal downfall is dominating the headlines, to the point where features about might-as-well-be-prime-minister Stephen Harper seem like preparation for the populace. "Hey, we already know the outcome of the race, so get used to your new government," the nation's editors and producers seem to be saying."
Bachelet wins
Nominal socialist Michelle Bachelet was elected President of Chile today. She'll be Chile's first female president.
Podur on the Election
Justin Podur: "I didn't pay much attention at first because I figured I'd already seen the episode: a report comes out, it turns out that the liberals are corrupt because they were in power, the conservatives want a chance to be in power so they can be corrupt, someone wins, there's corruption, meanwhile Canada does large-scale dirty corrupt stuff (Haiti) and no one notices or cares."
Liberal Leadership Race: Over
It seems that the coming Liberal leadership race is over before it started.
Meet the new leader of the Liberal Party, Frank McKenna. That is, if the Martinites still have an iron grip on the Liberals' riding associations.
Because you wouldn't want the membership of the Liberal party to decide who their leader is.
The Knoll
The Knoll is a new student activist magazine out of UBC.
Haiti's Deadly Class Divide
Class war takes on a new meaning in Cite Soley
by Leslie Bagg and Aaron Lakoff
Port-au-Prince, January 10/06 - Driving into Cite Soley on January 8th, the day Haitians were supposed to go to the polls in a presidential election, there is no mistaking the fact that we are entering an occupied zone. The streets are almost deserted, the atmosphere tense, and UN armored personnel carriers patrol the streets.
Cite Soley, one of Port-au-Prince's poorest neighborhoods, is home to around 500,000 people living in abject poverty. According to Jean-Joseph Joel, the Secretary General of the local branch of Fanmi Lavalas, the area's residents are virtual prisoners, and their movements restricted by armed police at checkpoints. Vilified as bandits or chimeres by the elite-run press, he says they face persecution if they do manage to escape the neighborhood. There is no work and signs of malnutrition are obvious in the children.
read more...Ignatieff's progress
Simon Pole has been covering Michael Ignatieff's run at Etobicoke-Lakeshore, which doesn't seem to be going so well.
Battle of Vancouver
Reluctant political junky that I am, I've been waiting for a report that gets into the palpable tension that seems to emanate from Vancouver Centre, where long time Liberal Hedy Fry is being challenged for the seat by Svend Robinson.
But the media stuff has been pretty dry; either all out smears on Robinson, or repetition of the fact that it's going to be "closely watched". The first account to deliver the goods, though, has been from Hollywood North Report, a weblog run by Sarah "part granola, part urban princess" Marchildon.
Green Party on Haiti
The Green Party has come out with a very strong position on Canada in Haiti.
Green Party calls for emergency review of Haiti policy
Paul Martin's Liberals have been sinking deeper into this human rights debacle since their cooperation with France and the United States to depose Haiti's democratically elected President on February 29, 2004 and install an interim government that has since been responsible for brutal repression and gross violations of human rights.I'm pretty well surprised.The Green Party believes that Canada's disgraceful involvement must be reversed, and Canada must halt all aid, as well as training being provided by the RCMP to the Haitian National Police, who have been responsible for massacres and assassinations of civilians since the coup in 2004. The detention of political prisoners in Haiti must also be condemned.
As the political and human rights situation in Haiti worsens, the Green Party of Canada is calling for an immediate independent review and re-orientation of Canadian foreign policy activity towards that troubled nation. "A full and independent review will prove that Canada's recent Haiti policy was and is a stunning series of miscalculations and mistakes," said Green Party Foreign Affairs Critic Eric Walton.
Dear Colby, take II
I somehow managed to miss that Colby Cosh responded to my "admonition" for saying that "one may be certain" Chavez's government is headed the route of Stalin. A few words in response to his response to my response to his post. (Wow, that sort of sounds like sustained dialogue.)
- Without engaging in a debate about basic political principles (which would be pointless unless we were seriously dedicated to that as an end in itself, which we aren't), I think I can summarize the difference of opinion thus:
Mr. Cosh believes that a leftist government being in power is sufficient evidence that "Venezuela is going to hell", and is a short ways away from a Stalinist worst-case scenario. I think that evidence of repressive measures like shutting down newspapers and jailing dissidents is sufficient evidence that things are going awry. (But I don't see any such evidence.)
- The debate about "state owns everything" seems to be getting into basic-philosophical difference territory, and thus unfruitful, so I'm going to avoid it.
- It's worth noting that sadly, Andy Grove's maxim "only the paranoid survive" applies to leftist states. The ones that are willing to take the necessary measures to survive an attack by much more powerful states seem to be the ones that continue to exists. For state to repel terrorist or military threats, they have to (or at least tend to) take unsavory measures. This seems to be the case in Canada and the US, though the threats to these have been far less serious than their lefty counterparts.
Cuba, for example, has a central government that enforces laws against taking money from the US by imprisoning people, and executes terrorists. Furthermore, there is a surveillance culture there and there is centralized control over the media. That said, the people of Cuba are materially better off collectively than their oligarchic third world counterparts. The question for Cubans, unfortunately, is whether they would be better off as a US colony. So far, the answer seems to be no, and evidence points to the vast majority supporting the government. If the US hadn't spent the last 50 years trying to overthrow the government, there would be no way to justify the measures employed. The only thing keeping Castro and the commies in power is popular support.
- Venezuela is different in that they control a lot of oil, and seem to be able to get a lot done despite the fact that the newspapers and TV stations are broadcasting all anti-Chavez propaganda, all the time.
- What, exactly, are the measures that Chavez has taken to date to "criminalize dissent"? I keep hearing about them, but I don't know what they actually consist of.
- It's interesting, by which I mean hypocritical, that the right tends to hold lefties to leftist standards, while reverting to capitalist standards for Pinochet, giving Indonesia the go-ahead in East Timor, Iraq, and so on.
- If Venezuela started funneling millions of dollars to left-wing groups within the NDP (under the guise of "building democracy", of course) and, say, the Dominion, Rabble.ca, Seven Oaks and Indymedia, how would the Canadian government react? Assuming the lefties didn't implode into infighting about how the money should be used, whether it should be accepted, etc., and assuming that it was used somewhat effectively, I don't doubt that attempts would be made to shut them down. Historically, this is certainly the case with Canadian commies who were seen as a threat. But maybe everything is different now? (Not really; political activists are systematically harassed by the justice system, and jailed for five days (for example) for things like heckling Paul Martin.
- I submit the obvious point that lefty governments that last more than a few years end up taking repressive measures because powerful capitalist "democracies" find them to be threatening and tend to attack, rather than because leftists are inherently authoritarian. I also submit that this is getting way, way too long.
In conclusion, Chavez is far better than Stalin in many ways. Hmm. That's not exactly progress, and Colby Cosh still seems to disagree, choosing to not differentiate between left governments that use state power.
Also, I'm not sure what the objection (by right-wingers or anyone else) would be to defending the right of a democratically elected government not to be overthrown by US-backed thugs. If that's "support for Chavez", then sign me up.
Conventional Wisdom
Paul Wells writes that "The conventional wisdom is almost always wildly wrong." It's an obvious but somehow elusive reminder.
So here's a list of conventional wisdom (or oft-repeated bits) about the 2006 election (leave additions under the new, exciting comments link below).
- The Bloc is untouchable in Quebec unless they screw up
- Significant numbers of NDP supporters will switch to the Liberals on voting day
- The Liberals are falling apart, but don't count them out
- Harper is gaining because people are more comfortable with him, and he got the hidden agenda stuff out of the way early
- The media is behind Harper (in the last week and a bit)
Firing the Supreme Court
So there's this country with a non-elected government that's backed by Canada, right? The one where the Canadian government has specifically taken a major role in "rebuilding" the police and justice systems?
Does anyone remember that time that Globe and Mail and CBC and other leading media sources had big headlines about the fact that the "interim" Haitian government fired five Supreme Court justices?
Neither do I.
Some brief election commentary
It would be unfortunate if people who have values closer to the NDP vote Liberal because they can't count. Does the fine city of Toronto really want to have a reputation of being numerically challenged?
If one is planning on strategically voting, one may wish to do so based on information, rather than what one imagines to be the case (e.g. that every riding is a race between Liberals and Conservatives).
Update: The Toronto Star also can't count, or at least, can't differentiate between ridings:
Now Canadians should ask Layton why they ought to vote for the New Democrats instead of the Liberals, when any split of the centre-left vote will increase the likelihood of a Conservative victory.
Also, Murray Dobbin makes the case for strategic voting that follows a strategy that, y'know, actually works.
Chavez in Chicago
Indymedia.us: "In an October meeting with representatives from the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), the city's Department of Energy and other city officials, Citgo unveiled a plan to provide the Chicago with low-cost diesel fuel. The company's stipulation, at the bidding of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, was that the CTA, in turn, pass those savings on to poor residents in the form of free or discounted fare cards."
NED and Sex in Iraq
Anthony Fenton: "A by-lined freelancer for the Associated Press, who is also a stringer for the New York Times in Haiti, is moonlighting as a consultant for the US Government funded National Endowment for Democracy, according to an official at the NED, and several of the agency's grantees."
Stephen Soldz: "Well over a hundred thousand American men and women, most younger than 30, spend a year or more at a time in a foreign country where they are almost totally isolated from the indigenous population. Are all these troops really chaste for those long periods, as called for by military regulations?"
Gulf of Tonkin
National Security Archive: "the American people have long deserved to know the full truth about the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The National Security Agency is to be commended for releasing this piece of the puzzle. The parallels between the faulty intelligence on Tonkin Gulf and the manipulated intelligence used to justify the Iraq War make it all the more worthwhile to re-examine the events of August 1964 in light of new evidence."
The Nat'l Security Archive also has good recent stuff on US support for the invasion of East Timour, the decades-old quest for useable nuclear weapons, and the history of the other NSA.
Bil'in
There are many reasons why suicide bombings happen in the Middle East. One of those -- one could speculate -- might be that peaceful protests don't get covered by the international press, no matter how peaceful, well-supported or brave.
Ha'aretz: "Settlers aren't the only ones building outposts in the West Bank: Palestinians from the village of Bil'in, near Ramallah, on Wednesday set up a caravan on land isolated from the village by the separation fence. Israel Defense Forces troops are gearing up to evacuate the caravan, military sources say."
Dear Colby
I wrote the following note to Colby Cosh in response to a post on his weblog about Venezuela. I didn't receive the usual dismissive reply. [I'm told a reply is on the way. --d] And I thought it to be worth sharing.
On another note, happy new year.
* * *
Colby,
Regarding your recent post about Venezuela:
Chavez's backers are a diverse bunch, including old-school communists, social democrats, anarchists, social movements, poor people, etc. etc. I could go to Venezuela tomorrow and "circulate a paper in pro-government circles" advocating the mandatory wearing of pink hats. That doesn't make it government policy. Given the number of blatantly inaccurate hitpieces that have been written about Chavez and co., one might be wise to wait for more substantial evidence than "some people who support Chavez support X" before whipping out the Mao and Stalin comparisons. Few others get held to that standard.
I have no doubt that some of Chavez's supporters want to follow the Cuban path, but there is little evidence that Chavez himself, or the folks ultimately making the decisions, are interested in a state-owns-everything approach. They seem to be more in the workers-own-the-means-of-production school, providing a lot of funding to cooperatives, backing worker takeovers of factories, etc. See, for example, Michael Albert's account.
If they were to implement a system outside of "currency relations", I doubt it would be government controlled or government-centred.
While it's possible that a government like Chavez's could take a turn for the worse at any point (especially if the US bombs, or keeps trying to overthrow the elected government), it seems a little premature to conclude that "one may be certain" that a massive Stalinist infrastructure of oppression will be put in place. Such things are very difficult to justify without some kind of external threat. And if Chavez was going to shut down newspapers or tv stations (much less create massive forced labour camps), he could have done so by now. In fact, it would have made his life a lot easier. But he didn't, choosing, as usual, to create alternatives that are more compelling.
To say with certainty (your word) that he's going to reverse course on that and his government's entire MO seems, to me, to be lacking in evidence and justification. At least at this point.
dru