Friday Fun: cHarmony

 

Bonus video: the now infamous Little Miss 'Larry, you're being inappropriate' tantrum


 

Natynczyk: Canadian Troops Are Coming Home in 2011

General Walt Natynczyk's message to the Canadian government is clear: Canada's troops in Afghanistan are coming home in 2011.

Amid speculation over a future role for Canadian forces in Kandahar, Canada's top commander says he will withdraw all of the country's soldiers from the region by 2011.

"The parliamentary motion directs that it will be the end of the military mission in July of 2011. I mean those are the words that are there," Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Walt Natynczyk told CBC News in an exclusive interview. "And for me it's pretty clear. What we do for the Canadian Forces are military missions."

CBC News had previously reported that Natynczyk ordered his commanders to start preparing military plans to pull out of Afghanistan and return thousands of soldiers and billions of dollars' worth of equipment to Canada.

The government has insisted Canada's military mission will end in 2011. But its ministers and staff — including Defence Minister Peter MacKay — have suggested Canadian soldiers could remain in Afghanistan beyond that deadline, though perhaps not in combat.

The Cons have tried to dress up our presence in Afghanistan in the cloak of peacekeeping and nation-building for years now in an attempt to justify a less than complete pull out. Canadians aren't buying it and don't trust this government to abide by parliament's wishes.

...the prime minister's spokesman Dimitri Soudas told CBC News last month that Canadian soldiers would remain in Afghanistan. He suggested a force much smaller than the 2,800-troop mission currently in Kandahar.

But Natynczyk said he couldn't see a role for any soldiers in Kandahar that would respect parliament's declaration.

"We provide protection, we provide security, we enable governance, we enable development, we enable training. But our function is security and protection. That's the military mission."

Why Kucinich Voted "No"

Dennis Kucinich [D-MI] on the Ed Schultz Show, Monday (following George Miller [D-CA] who's also included in this segment).

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The response by one so-called progressive American blogger: Bite me.

The health insurance bill that passed in the house on Saturday nite was a watered-down, corporate-sponsored farce that included an amendment meant to set back womens' rights 30 years.

Kucinich was right to vote against it. And so-called progressive bloggers who have a problem with a politician actually standing up for his constituents and voting on principle need to ask themselves where their loyalties really lie - with Big Insurance and Big Religion or with the greater good of America.
 

Why won't Obama rule out jail time?

Witness the following exchange between Jake Tapper and Obama and tell me that Americans can be sure they won't go to jail if they don't pay mandated health insurance premiums - because I'm not seeing any kind of reassurance whatsoever:

TAPPER: The -- under the House bill, those who can afford to buy insurance but don't -- can afford to do it but don't -- pay a fine. And if they refuse to pay a fine, there's a threat, as there is with lots of tax fines, there's a threat of jail time. And the Senate removed that provision in the Senate Finance Committee. Do you think it's appropriate to have a threat of jail time for those who refuse to buy insurance?

OBAMA: You know, what I think is appropriate is that in the same way that everybody has to get auto insurance and if you don't, you're subject to some penalty, that in this situation, if you have the ability to buy insurance, it's affordable and you choose not to do so, forcing you and me and everybody else to subsidize you, you know, there's a thousand dollar hidden tax that families all across America are -- are burdened by because of the fact that people don't have health insurance, you know, there's nothing wrong with a penalty.

Now, what those penalties are, I think they have to be high enough that people don't game the system. On the other hand, I think it's important for us not to be so punitive that people who are having a hard time suddenly find themselves worse off because of health care reform. And that's why there have been built in some hardship exemptions. There may be situations, relatively rare, where, even after the subsidies that are provided, it's still very hard for people to afford to get the health insurance that they need. And we should at this point and build in those -- those hardship exemptions.

But I -- but I think the general broad principle is simply that people who are paying for their health insurance aren't subsidizing folks who simply choose not to until they get sick and then suddenly they expect free health insurance. That's -- that's basic concept of responsibility that I think most Americans abide by.

TAPPER: But as the Senate puts its bill -- its final bill together and as a House and Senate prepare to vote on a -- on a -- after the conference committee, they should know, does the president think jail time is inappropriate...

OBAMA: Well, I'm -- I'm not sure that's the biggest question that they're asking right now...

TAPPER: No, but the question...

OBAMA: Well, the...

TAPPER: (INAUDIBLE).

OBAMA: I think I put out the principle that penalties are appropriate for people who try to free ride the system and force others to pay for their health insurance.

Apparently, the word "no" is just too difficult to utter.
 

Stelmach Survives Leadership Review

No surprise here, although the number is higher than expected since rumours of his impending demise were rampant following the recent upsurge in poll numbers for the neocon-like Wildrose Alliance party.

Stelmach wins 77% support for leadership while the party faithful were confronted by some 700 protesters.

Apropos.

Photo credit (for Balloon Boy Stelmach): Gavin Young, Calgary Herald
 

Quote du Jour: Alberta's Clueless Energy Minister

From Thursday's Just Answer the Damn Question! Period:

Mr. Taylor: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Geez, this is funny. Not every stakeholder is spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars advertising on radio, on television, and in the newspaper. The minister dodged my question yesterday when he would not state in this Assembly how much this propaganda campaign is costing. To the minister: how many taxpayer dollars are you spending on advertising on this pro Bill 50 campaign? Simple enough for you?

Mr. Knight: Well, Mr. Speaker, again, I don’t know what constitutes advertising. Apparently, he’s an expert in the field. So if he would like to send me a letter that indicates which pieces of this stuff he considers to be information for consumers and which pieces he considers to be advertising, perhaps what we could do for him then – you know, he’s the expert on advertising. He told me that yesterday. That’s fine. If he’s the expert, let him tell me which pieces are advertising and which pieces are distributing information that Albertans want.

Related debauchery:

Alberta [Government] private plane tab $383K

Is it any wonder the Cons' poll numbers are taking a nose dive?

Will Steady Eddy survive his leadership review this weekend? Highly doubtful but Cons are known to stick with losers til the bitter end so stay tuned.
 

Shooting Rampage at Fort Hood, Texas

The latest from Lt General Bob Cone at Fort Hood:

12 dead
31 injured
3 gunmen ("soldiers") - 1 dead (see update - he's not dead), 2 in custody (see update below)

Cone said the shootings occurred in the "soldier readiness" area.

It was not immediately known whether the victims were all soldiers or civilians, but Cone said at least one of those killed was a civilian police officer and NBC affiliate KCEN-TV of Waco reported that at least four SWAT officers were among those wounded.

It's too early to know what the possible motive may have been.

Update:

CNN has named the slain gunman: "Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan, according to a law enforcement source. The source believes he is 39 or 40 years old."

Video from the Associated Press:



Update:

The gunman was an army psychiatrist.

Hasan "was scheduled to be deployed and was upset about that," Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) said on CNN after receiving a briefing from Army officials.

...

Two other soldiers were initially apprehended on suspicion of involvement in the attack, but they were later released after questioning, and another soldier was picked up as a suspect, military officials said.

UPDATE:

Officials: 12 killed in Fort Hood shootings; suspect alive

(CNN) -- At least one soldier opened fire on a military processing center at Fort Hood in Texas on Thursday, killing 12 and wounding 31 others, officials at the Army base said.

The gunman, who officials initially said was killed, is wounded but alive, Lt. Gen. Bob Cone said.

Cone said that man is believed to be the only shooter.

Italy Convicts CIA Agents of Kidnapping and Rendition

Well, at least there's justice for 'extraordinary rendition' victims in one jurisdiction in this world.

In the case of Abu Omar who was snatched from the streets of Milan in 2003 and rendered to Egypt to be tortured (known as the 'Imam rapito affair' in Italy), Human Rights Watch weighs in:

(Milan) - An Italian court's conviction of 23 agents of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for kidnapping is an historic repudiation of the CIA's crimes, Human Rights Watch said today. The Milan court also found that two Italian officials illegally collaborated in CIA abuses.

The judge said he could not pronounce any verdict against five of the seven Italians on trial for the 2003 abduction of an Egyptian imam because they were protected by the state secrecy doctrine. Of the 26 Americans who were on trial, all of them in absentia, the court found that three were protected by diplomatic immunity guarantees.

Robert Seldon Lady, alleged to be the CIA station chief in Milan at the time of the kidnapping, received an eight-year sentence, the most serious penalty that the court handed down in the case. [See his 'I was only following orders' defense here. -catnip]

"The Milan court sent a powerful message: the CIA can't just abduct people off the streets. It's illegal, unacceptable, and unjustified," said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism program director at Human Rights Watch. "Both the Italian and US governments should now be on notice that justice authorities will not ignore crimes committed under the guise of fighting terrorism."

...

The verdicts today also stand in stark contrast to a disappointing decision issued on November 2 by a US federal appellate court in New York, which dismissed the suit brought by Canadian rendition victim Maher Arar. Arar was detained while in transit at John F. Kennedy airport in September 2002, then rendered by the CIA to Jordan and Syria, where he was brutally tortured for nearly a year.

Arar won't find justice in the United States - not when Obama has decided to continue the rendition program while providing legal cover for CIA agents who flagrantly break the law. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss... His administration may have walked away from the 'Global War on Terror" moniker of Bushco but it's obviously still very much in play.

And, if you followed the Niger/yellowcake forgery story closely, you'll remember this name:

The Italian defendants included Gen. Nicolò Pollari, the former head of SISMI, Italy's military intelligence service, who was forced to resign over Abu Omar's abduction and rendition, and Pollari's former deputy, Marco Mancini.

in 2005, the Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported, as translated by The American Prospect, that in the 2002 run up to the Iraq war, Pollari had a suspicious meeting with then deputy National Security adviser Stephen Hadley.

The paper goes on to note the significance of that date, highlighting the appearance of a little-noticed story in Panorama a weekly magazine owned by Italian Prime Minister and Bush ally Silvio Berlusconi, that was published three days after Pollari's meeting with Hadley. The magazine's September 12, 2002, issue claimed that Iraq's intelligence agency, the Mukhabarat, had acquired 500 tons of uranium from Nigeria through a Jordanian intermediary. (While this September 2002 Panorama report mentioned Nigeria, the forgeries another Panorama reporter would be proferred less than a month later purportedly concerned Niger.)

The Sismi chief's previously undisclosed meeting with Hadley, who was promoted earlier this year to national security adviser, occurred one month before a murky series of events culminated in the U.S. government obtaining copies of the Niger forgeries.

Thick as thieves (and forgers and kidnappers and torturers and murderers) - the lot of them.

Crocodile tears from one of those found guilty:

EXCLUSIVE: Convicted CIA Spy Says "We Broke the Law"

One of the 23 Americans convicted today by an Italian court says the United States "broke the law" in the CIA kidnapping of a Muslim cleric Abu Omar in Milan in 2003.

"And we are paying for the mistakes right now, whoever authorized and approved this," said former CIA officer Sabrina deSousa in an interview to be broadcast tonight on ABC's World News with Charles Gibson.

DeSousa says the U.S. "abandoned and betrayed" her and the others who were put on trial for the kidnapping. She was sentenced in absentia to five years in prison.

Representative Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), a member of the House Intelligence Committee told ABC News that the trial was a disaster for CIA officers like DeSousa on the frontline.

"I think these people have been put out there. They've been hung out to dry. They're taking the fall potentially for a decision that was made by their superiors in our agencies. It's the wrong place to go."

Just which part of kidnapping is illegal and is punishable under the law didn't DeSousa understand? The Nuremberg defense rears its ugly head once again. And exactly how is she "paying" for anything? She's free, obviously. No one rendered her to Italy to actually stand trial.

And having Hoekstra as your number one defender? What a joke. The minute he calls for prosecutions of Bush administration officials - those "superiors", let me know.

Related:

Scott Horton: Judgment in Milan
 
 

On Vaccinations, the Soviet Union, and Chickens

Don Braid writes in the Calgary Herald:

Only Alberta has been forced to close all vaccination clinics for four full days. It's still a mystery why our authorities decided to go for mass immunization rather than the more controlled approach adopted by most other provinces.

But there is a clue in Health Minister Ron Liepert's comment last week about avoiding "Soviet mode."

He was talking about his distaste for asking people to prove they're high risk in order to get a shot. But the minister soon got exactly what he dreads--a classic Soviet-mode breakdown.

The symptoms are familiar to anyone who spent time in the old Soviet Union.

First, you line up to get something the government controls by monopoly.

Everyone shuffles along in perfect communal equality --the healthy along with the sick, the pregnant, the very young and the very old.

Hours or days later you finally reach the front of the line, only to learn that somebody else got your chicken.

Then they close the line until some undisclosed date when distant central authorities can produce and deliver more chickens.

The swine flu lines went through all those stages last week. Toward the end, parts of Calgary looked like some dreary Moscow street corner in 1975.

As Liberal MLA Dave Taylor put it, Liepert is "sucking and blowing" at the same time.

Meanwhile, the chickens have not come home to roost yet since no one's been fired for the mishandling of this colossal mess.

The Alberta government is set to announce a revised plan for restarting its vaccination program this week after suspending it over the weekend.

Related:

Don Martin asks where those 6 million doses are.

MPs held an emergency H1N1 debate on Monday nite. I'd wager that people interested in medical drama tuned into House on the teevee instead.

Speaking of mass confusion:

Children from 6 months to 9 years old should still get two doses, about a month apart, Dr. Fauci said. But the first dose usually provides partial protection, meaning a child might still catch the flu but would be more likely to have a mild case.

The World Health Organization last week recommended one dose of vaccine for all children, but the United States is ignoring that advice. The organization’s primary goal is to make sure that the world’s vaccine supplies stretch as far as possible among the world’s children. It endorses vaccine-stretching adjuvants and favors one dose per child so more children can get one.

Federal health officials, by contrast, are trying to make sure that American children are fully protected first. They have also decided not to use adjuvants, even though they think they are safe, because anti-vaccine lobbyists have campaigned against them, calling them dangerous, and officials feared that some Americans would be scared away from being vaccinated.

One dose? Two doses? What's right for kids when it comes to H1N1 vaccine?

Update:

Alberta's Vaccinations Will Resume on Thursday, Nov 5

H1N1 High Risk Targeted Immunization

Due to the unexpected national shortage of the H1N1 vaccine, Alberta Health Services and Alberta Health and Wellness announced plans to begin targeted immunization of Albertans at high risk.

* Starting on Thursday, November 5, children aged 6 months to under five years as of November 1st will be targeted. Proof of age (Health Care card, birth certificate or other valid identification) must be provided.
* On Friday, November 6, the program will expand to include pregnant women.

At this time, the vaccine will not be available to other Albertans. When more vaccine becomes available from the manufacturer, the targeted immunization program will be further expanded to include people under 65 with chronic health conditions. Details will be announced as more information becomes available on the vaccine supply.

Alrighty. Well, I still have lupus and I'm still high-risk with no available vaccination in sight. Great.
 

Pick a Hill to Die On, Iggy

I find it amusing, that when the opposition party is in opposition, that the media are constantly pressing us to lay out our wares - constantly 'put your big ideas in front of the public'. The reality is the government has been elected to govern and we will come out with a platform when Canadians are ready to make their choice because we're into a general election. Mr Ignatieff has been very forthright in speeches on foreign policy, on energy and the environment and on a range of areas, including most recently issues affecting women - the general principles of which he's following. Now, the big bold ideas that you want to see, the brilliant strokes that the media are looking for - why would we lay those out? Why would we telegraph those to a government that has, in its unbelievably cynical, partisan way, taken everything that's said, twisted it out of context, perverted the meaning, perverted the message? Why would we do that in advance when we haven't got a level playing field to lay those out?

- Alfred Apps, President of the Liberal Party on CTV's Question Period responding to a question by Craig Oliver about the lack of a Liberal Party platform

Flashback: Ignatieff wants campaign platform by June [2009]

Newly confirmed Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff wants his party to have a campaign platform ready for June, but says that doesn't mean he's looking for a spring election.

"I've told my people I want a platform in June," he said at a news conference Sunday.

"And don't derive electoral timetables from that," he added. "You asked me a question, I'm giving you an answer. I'm not playing games with you."

It's clear that the Liberal party has become gun-shy after Stephane Dion was trounced last year by the Cons over his carbon tax plan.

What Mr Apps fails to grasp is that the release of a Liberal party platform is a necessity if he wants the public to distinguish between his party, the Cons and the NDP. This isn't about what's good for the media or the Harper government. His reason for the party withholding its platform simply makes him - and Iggy - look weak - especially since Ignatieff had promised a platform by a June deadline that has long come and gone. And if he'd been paying attention, Apps would know that Ignatieff's speeches, which he seems to think provide the public with a clear view of his policies, are about as popular as his sagging poll numbers. (19%? Even Dick Cheney has better numbers than that).

Apps may find it "amusing" but I doubt he'll be laughing when the Liberals lose yet another election thanks to the party disarray that has ensued since Ignatieff was crowned.