Appearing on Friday afternoon's CBC Politics, journalist Evan Solomon previewed what may be a major strategy change by Michael Ignatieff and the Liberal party as a result of its (and his) tanking poll numbers.
Solomon said that in an interview for CBC Radio's The House to be run on Saturday, Ignatieff told him that (paraphrasing) he has backed away from a wholesale rejection of the Conservative government to opposing them on an "issue by issue" basis.
This past week, CBC's Doc Zone presented the documentary, The U.S. vs Omar Khadr. It will rerun tonite at 10 pm ET but you can watch it in its entirety here as well.
It makes for painful and frustrating viewing because Khadr's case has been so badly handled - from the fact that he's a child soldier who shouldn't be prosecuted in the first place, to allegations of torture, evidence that just doesn't add up and a Canadian government that refuses to repatriate him.
You can check out the Doc Zone's site (linked above) for links to the relevant documents and history.
Although both US presidential candidates have promised to close Gitmo, the fact that some countries don't want to repatriate their citizens being held there creates a major stumbling block since too many Americans are unwilling to see these detainees housed on American soil where they may also acquire some actual legal rights denied to them now while they're imprisoned in a foreign land.
There's no doubt that the Bush/Cheney "military tribunal" experiment has failed and that their administration's disregard for human rights has been abominable. That, more than the failure of the economy which has put US militarism and torture on the back burner, should be enough to make sure that the Republicans and any complicit Democrats who supported such overt, inhumane fascism are thrown out of office.
(Total run time: approximately 44 minutes in 5 parts - no commercials.)
The CBC's Quirks & Quarks guy, Bob McDonald, has a post up on his blog listing some of the things he'd do with the $300 million that the last useless election cost Canadians:
Our latest federal election, which effectively changed nothing, is estimated to have cost somewhere around $300 million. After playing with my calculator, here’s a short list of what else we could have done with that money:
* Built 3 planetariums or major science museums.
* Built 4 research laboratories for alternative clean energy.
* Installed 100 wind turbines.
* Provided full university scholarships for 6, 000 students — $50,000 each. * Provided clean drinking water to northern communities.
* Built 10 high schools.
* Built three regional hospitals.
* Funded 100 13-part educational television series.
* Sent me on 10 tourist flights to the International Space Station.
This is just a partial list; I invite you to add to it. Have fun with your calculator and think hard about where some of our government spending priorities really lie.
What would you do with that enormous amount on money?
My list would start with one huge cheesecake to munch on while I tried to imagine where else to splurge.
Earlier this week, video of SPP protesters clashing with alleged "infiltrators" at the so-called Security & Prosperity Partnership summit in Montebello, Quebec was made publicly available on YouTube™. Immediate denials of police infiltration were issued by the Surete du Quebec and the RCMP.
The Mounties and the SQ, the two police forces involved in summit security, continued to refuse specific comment on three alleged undercover officers caught on camera in an apparent bid to incite a confrontation.
But they denied using agents to provoke violence.
"I confirm (to) you that there are no agents provocateurs in the Surete du Quebec. . . It doesn't exist in the Surete du Quebec," said Const. Melanie Larouche.
On Thursday, the Surete reversed course and admitted it had infiltrators at the protest:
QUEBEC - Quebec's provincial police acknowledged in a statement Thursday that their agents had infiltrated protesters demonstrating during the recent North American leaders summit in Montebello, Que., but denied that they acted as "agent provocateurs".
"They had the mandate to spot and identify violent demonstrators to avoid the situation from getting out of hand," the Surete du Quebec said in a statement. "The police officers were identified by demonstrators when they refused to throw projectiles."
That last statement is patently false.
Watch the video:
"At no time did the Surete du Quebec police officers act as agents provocateurs or commit criminal acts," the statement adds.
Wrong again.
As the article continues:
The video shows the three black-clad bandana-wearing men being singled out by union organizers and the crowd. Other protesters started pointing at them and crying "police."
One of the three men is seen shoving and swearing at Dave Coles, president of the Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers Union of Canada, who is angrily confronting the trio, demanding they put down the rocks, remove their bandanas, and identify themselves.
After being backed into a corner against a line of provincial police officers in riot gear, they try to force themselves through the police line and are arrested while the crowd cheers.
I'm sure that once the Surete realized there had been calls for a public inquiry along with escalating requests to have the arrest records of those provocateurs released, it knew the game was over.
The fact that it wasn't enough for summit security to insultingly create "free speech zones" out of the site of Bush, Calderon, and Harper and that a court decided to issue a "compromise" aka "Protest TV" which was supposed to comfort protesters by mandating that TV sets in the Chateau would broadcast video of the protests for the leaders to watch if they chose to shows just how much our speech is being stifled in this country. Our arrogant leaders even refused to allow the delivery of opposition petitions at the summit, treating citizens as mere hysterical peasants.
During the final SPP press conference, Bush joked about so-called "conspiracy theories" about the summit (and CNN's Suzanne Malveaux echoed that slur). What, exactly, is the public supposed to think when North American leaders meet behind closed doors with 30 corporate CEOs and refuse to openly inform the public about the content of those meetings? That's the issue - the secrecy - along with the fact that business and political leaders are setting policy about the future of North America without any input from the citizens.
That's not democracy.
You don't need to be a conspiracy theorist to demand transparency and to know something is wrong when it isn't provided.
Related: For more information about the history of the SPP concerns, visit the site of the Council of Canadians.
Watch the CBC news story about the Surete's admission of police infiltration:
Public Security Minister Stockwell Day continued to brush of questions about a call for a public inquiry, saying in Vancouver that those with complaints can make a formal complaint.
"The thing that was interesting in this particular incident, three people in question were spotted by protesters because [sic] were not engaging in violence," Mr. Day said.
"They were being encouraged to throw rocks and they were not throwing rocks, it was the protesters who were throwing the rocks. That's the irony of this," Mr. Day said.
Mr. Day added the actions were substantiated by the video that he has seen of the protests.
"Because they were not engaging in violence, it was noted that they were probably not protesters. I think that's a bit of an indictment against the violent protesters," Mr. Day said.
Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe vowed Thursday — in the wake of the deaths of three Quebec-based soldiers this week — to bring down the Conservative government if it does not commit to a full troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2009.
He said if Prime Minister Stephen Harper does not soon notify NATO and participating countries of Canada's withdrawal plans, the Bloc will vote against the expected autumn throne speech with the hopes of bringing the government down.
Duceppe would need the Liberals to vote with his party in order to succeed.
During a Thursday press conference on climate change, Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion would not comment about banding with the Bloc.
"I am not here to make threats about that," he said. "I don't want to play politics on the back of the victims."
Duceppe called for an emergency debate on the Afghan mission when Parliament reconvenes on Sept. 17.
Dion, jockeying for position, added:
"Why does Mr. Duceppe want to wait until October? I'm asking the prime minister to notify NATO, the government of Afghanistan that the combat mission in Afghanistan will end in February 2009," Dion said. "Let's do it today. Why wait until October?"
Look, Stephane - you and Gilles need to get together, stop the egotistical bullshit, and come up with a plan to get Canadian troops out of there. Period. The sooner they come home, the better. If you guys actually had any cajones, you'd start calling for a troop withdrawal now - not in 2009. How many more soldiers will have to die while you wait this out? That's the bottom line.
