Sympathy for Paris

I swore I wasn't going to do this.

Paris Hilton is a foolish pampered young woman with arrested development, half lidded, medicated eyes, the best cosmetic surgery that money can buy and a grotesque and entirely unearned sense of entitlement.

The latter explains what some have decried as unseemly schadenfreude over her recent travails, justly I think. This silly spoiled little girl doesn't deserve the reputedly hellish conditions of LA's horrific jail system.

Nobody deserves them, but thousands of people spend time there every year, the overwhelming majority of them permanently trapped at the opposite end of the socioeconomic spectrum from Ms Hilton.

The case of the aristocratic Ms Hilton is instructive as an object lesson, both that the rich think that they are above the law and that they currently still aren't. There as been a surprisingly thin sliver of human history where this has been the case, it shows every sign of drawing to a close again but I would argue it's worth preserving.

Remember the root of the word privilege is simply 'private law'. Law for the rich and law for the rest of us.

That a spoiled, heavily medicated young heiress should suffer an unspeakably traumatic experience in order that the message be delivered that the law applies to everybody may be just the price you pay so that the blind equality of justice and the rule of law itself continue.

I'm feeling far more schadenfreude about the jailing of Scooter Libby and the hopefully impending conviction of Conrad Black than I am over the perils of Paris, but she makes an effectively populist symbol of the very concept of privileged immunity.

The American public appears to have gone into one of their soured vengeful moods towards privilege. Other celebrities may want to consider the benefits of a low profile or the expatriate life.

This is the mood that sent Marie Antoinette to the guillotine.

Republican candidate for forced birth

Senator Sam Brownback would make abortions illegal for rape victims.

Tory youth abandon the Tories

Holy crap.

Dissatisfaction within the party is starting to spill into the public. The entire nine-member executive of the Tories' youth wing recently resigned over Mr. Stelmach's policies. "PC Alberta will continue its slow death march, to the beat of a rural drum and tired, stale policies," outgoing president David McColl wrote in a letter to a Calgary newspaper.

The signs of a Tory apocalypse coming continue to mount up as the Alberta Progressive Conservatives are abandoned by their own youth wing. The Alberta Social Credit Party youth wing was probably looking a little anemic by 1969 too.

Back from Saskatchewan

I'm back from my weekend away - it was the 65th wedding anniversary of my girlfriend's Baba and Gedo. We were in the small but quite charming town of Ituna Saskatchewan, which had about 30 yard sales going the day we arrived and is holding their first annual polka festival at the end of the month. I'm sorry we missed it, I can't get enough oom pah pah.

A great time was had by all, with lovely people, some of whom I had met some that I was meeting for the first time. There was a lot of great food and drink, sun, conversation and fireside late night singing from the family's pro quality songstress Samara Yung. You'll hear the name again, she's going to be big.

We're back in Calgary now, we've spent almost 24 hours since Friday on Greyhound buses and are still a little fragile. Back to work tomorrow.

While I was gone, the world kept turning. The courts stepped into the void left by government irresponsibility both in Canada and the States. Harper's rigid control over the Canadian conservative coalition and the Conservative caucus continued to unravel and self described economic right winger Stephane Dion continued to tap dance away from the previously sacrosanct 2009 deadline in Afghanistan that the Lieberals piously beat Dippers over the head with.

Oh and there may be standing puddles of water out in the open on Mars. Holy crap.

Mid-week Link Blast - June 7

I'm off to my girlfriend's family reunion for the weekend and back Monday so you lot are getting your linkblast early this week. Keep the interweb tubes flowing while I'm gone.

• Wanking while the world burns
  G8 cosmetic climate deal worth precisely dick
  
  
• Peter Mackay: sniveling little shit
  Really why would anyone believe a Mackay promise either verbal or written anymore?
  
  
• A disconcerting enemy
  Peter Hitchens confronts the cognitive dissonance between propaganda and reality.
  
  
• There was a class war and we lost
  Linda Mcquaig explores the bleak truth - why did we get so scared of being accused of engaging in class war that we let the rich win it?
  
  
• Comic book politics
  What if a super powered masked hero decided fighting for justice meant a President who lied his way into the White House and America into an unjust war had to die for his crimes?
  
  
• 'Getting drunk and pregnant is my unique story.'
  Canadian writer with delusional case.

Fraser Institute planning immigrant bashing conference

With a line up of speakers seemingly picked from Canada's biggest islamophobes and what looks like an agenda of fear-mongering and gross over simplification, the right wing Fraser Institute is holding a 'Conference on Immigration Policy, Border Controls and the Terrorist Threat in Canada and the United States' in Toronto at the end of June.

By 'the Terrorist Threat', they make it clear in their press release that they mean Islamic terrorism specifically and perhaps even solely. They seem to show no interest in state sponsored terrorism, home grown terrorism, white racist terrorism, anti-abortion terrorism - any terrorism that isn't brown in other words.

Among the featured speakers are the Globe and Mail's Margaret Wente and Ezra Levant - Ezra, did I miss the Western Standard's apology to Maher Arar and his family for the vicious campaign of vilification and innuendo your magazine subjected them to? Somehow I don't think so.

The conference will be held June 28 - 29, 2007 at the Sheraton Centre Hotel in Toronto. Mark it on your calendars. I think if I lived in the area I might be politely and peacefully picketing such a racially charged conference featuring so many of the Canadian right wing's usual suspects.

Maybe not entirely politely.

Telus uses You Tube takedown notice to suppress worker criticism

Claiming ownership of news reports about 2005's lockout and even personal videos filmed by union members on the picket line, Telus has apparently tried to wipe any and all criticism of the company from YouTube.

This is the same company that blocked it's internet customers from accessing a pro union website during the lockout. No, I'm not kidding.

Among the clips included in the current Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notices filed by Telus were worker filmed videos of Telus hired security goons assaulting picketers and this 2005 CTV news report featuring picketing workers expressing disappointment about being lied to about outsourcing and a Telus executive promising the outsourcing of customer service to the Philippines would end with the lockout.

Telus customer service calls are still being transfered to the Philippines today.

Update: Telus can get into serious trouble for this kind of thing.

Hat tip to Chironboy

Did I say that out loud?

"I can tell the member opposite what we will not do. We will not do what the Liberal leader did to the member for Thunder Bay—Superior North.We will not throw a member out of caucus for voting his conscience. There will be no whipping, flipping, hiring or firing on budget votes as we saw with the Liberal government."

-Peter Mackay, Tuesday, May 15, 2007

"He (Bill Casey) knew the consequences of his action."
-Government Whip Jay Hill, June 5, 2007.

Hat tip to Apply Liberally

A worker owned Dow Jones and Wall Street Journal???

snrk...heh...BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

The bidding for Dow Jones has become a lot more interesting.

Billionaire investor Ron Burkle is interested in exploring a bid for Dow Jones (nyse: DJ - news - people ) in conjunction with the company's in-house union, the Independent Association of Publisher’s Employees, the union said Tuesday.

...

On Monday, the union, which represents more than 2,000 Dow Jones employees, or about a quarter of the staff, announced it was searching “for alternatives to the News Corp. bid” and was working with two other unions, the Newspaper Guild and the Communications Workers of America.

This much irony should be illegal...

Iraq parliament takes another step towards kicking out Americans

Following a surprise vote for a legislative petition calling for the Americans to leave last month, the Iraq parliament has now taken yet another step towards making America's decision for them.

The parliament today passed a binding resolution that will guarantee lawmakers an opportunity to block the extension of the UN mandate under which coalition troops now remain in Iraq when it comes up for renewal in December. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose cabinet is dominated by Iraqi separatists, may veto the measure.

The law requires that any future extensions of the mandate, which have previously been made by Iraq's Prime Minister, be approved by the parliament. It is an enormous development; lawmakers reached in Baghdad today said that they do in fact plan on blocking the extension of the coalition's mandate when it comes up for renewal six months from now.

The American people don't want American troops there, the Iraqi people don't want American troops there - Hell, at this point the troops certainly don't want to be there... Who besides Bush and Cheney, who are now talking openly about a long-term occupation measured in decades, still want to be there?

Will the Americans allow their puppet government vote away the occupation? Will they actually leave if told to?

Bob Geldof: Stephen Harper is blocking Africa Aid

Apparently our aid pledges are now just as vague, long term and open to interpretation as our climate promises. Rocker and African aid campaigner Bob Geldof accuses Canada of stinting on aid dollars and blocking an international funding commitment.

Geldof said Canada's aid contribution of $160 million falls far short of the $623 million it needs to contribute this year in order to fulfill that pledge.

He also said Harper promised in January 2006 that Canada would maintain the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average for international aid -- which is 0.46 per cent of gross national income.

"The OECD is the overarching body that everyone agrees should monitor their economies, all the governments agree on that. Point in fact, Canada is way behind the OECD average which is 0.46. Canada is about 0.3," said Geldof.

"So you have one of the richest nations on the planet deliberately breaking their word and thereby killing the poorest."

Harper said the allegations are "false." Without elaborating, he said Canada is on the right track to honour a pledge to double aid to Africa by 2010.

I still remember watching Geldof on TV around the time he was knighted, when he happened to run into then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at a public awards meeting.

With reporters clustered around them and cameras whirring, Geldof grilled Thatcher on why the UK government was dumping tons of butter into the sea in a market support scheme while people were starving in Africa. Thatcher responded snippily while searching for an exit 'They can hardly eat butter Mr Geldof.' In fact as Sir Bob quickly pointed out, people can survive on butter oil alone for quite a long time when there's nothing else to live on.

Thatcher shot him a look of pure hatred, mumbled that it wasn't that simple and dashed for an exit.

Khadr's case thrown out

The Military Commissions Act was written and enacted in a rush by Republican lawmakers well aware they were about to get their asses kicked to the curb by the American people.

That it was a rush job can be seen by the fact that even a hand picked team of military judges didn't feel able to ignore the fact that the Act covers unlawful enemy combatants only - and not a single Guantanamo prisoner including Khadr has yet to be so designated.

Of course this means that Khadr's time in Gitmo will simply be longer - although the Americans have made it clear that even if anyone at Camp X Ray is actually found not guilty they are still subject to detention without appeal 'for the duration of hostilities' in the war on terror - IE: forever.

Australia actually stood up for their citizen David Hicks, but the Khadrs are brown and unsympathetic and the Harper government has been too busy accusing political foes of being 'pro-Taliban' to protect a child soldier who was fifteen when he was captured.

The gulag continues.

The sickening truth about the American healthcare system

Many more stories are collected in a newly published book called Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis, by Jonathan Cohn. A woman in California called Nelene Fox died of breast cancer after she, too, was turned down for a bone marrow transplant by her insurance company. In Georgia, a family whose infant son went into cardiac arrest were forced to take him to a hospital 45 miles away on their insurance carrier's orders. He survived, but suffered permanent disabilities that more prompt treatment might have averted. In New York, an infant called Bryan Jones - whose case was trumpeted all over the local media at the time - died of a heart defect that went undetected because his insurance company kicked him and his mother out of hospital 24 hours after his birth, too soon to carry out the tests that might have spotted the problem.

America's health system offers a tremendous paradox. In medical technology and in the scientific understanding of disease, it is second-to-none. Since doctors are better paid than anywhere else in the world, the country attracts the best of the best. And yet many, if not most, Americans are unable to reap the advantages of this. In fact, as The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has argued, the very proliferation of research and high-tech equipment is part of the reason for the imbalance in coverage between the privileged few and the increasingly underserved masses. "[The system] compensates for higher spending on insiders, in party, by consigning more people to outsider status --robbing Peter of basic care in order to pay for Paul's state-of-the-art treatment," Krugman wrote recently. "Thus we have the cruel paradox that medical progress is bad for many Americans' health."

Having the system run by for-profit insurance companies turns out to be inefficient and expensive as well as dehumanising. America spends more than twice as much per capita on health care as France, and almost two and a half times as much as Britain. And yet it falls down in almost every key indicator of public health, starting, perhaps, most shockingly, with infant mortality, which is 36 per cent higher than in Britain.

Meanwhile the insurance industry and big pharma, gird themselves for battle with Michael Moore's new film.

Larry Flynt hunting hypocrites in DC again

Larry Flynt is hunting hypocrites in DC again, just as the famous DC madam is threatening to reveal her whole client book if charges against her don't get dropped. Somebody somewhere is aready counting Larry's money - it should be an entertaining summer.

The Real Terminator

There are very few inherently evil technologies. Terminator seeds would have to qualify on an ethical basis as well as one of simple species survival.

This is commerce as crime against humanity.

And so far only one Canadian party - with members sitting in parliament - seems to have come to terms with that simple fact.

NDP tables ban on Terminator seeds and technology

OTTAWA – Today the NDP’s agriculture critic, Alex Atamanenko (British Columbia Southern Interior), announced the tabling of a Private Member’s Bill to ban “terminator technology,” making a commitment to sustaining Canadian farmers and the farming industry.

“It is time to make a commitment to our farmers and to the international community that terminator seeds will not be allowed to take root in Canada,” said Atamanenko. “We all share the conviction that Canada should join the ranks of countries like India and Brazil, whose governments have already legislated bans on this technology in order to protect their farmers.”

The Terminator Seed Ban Act is designed to protect the right of Canadian farmers to save seeds by banning the release, sale, importation and use of Variety Genetic Use Restriction Technologies (V-GURTs), more commonly known as Terminators, which genetically engineer seeds to be sterile after the first harvest. The promoters of this technology do not make the claim that there will be any agronomic benefits to farmers.

“The only goal of those who promote the use of Terminator technologies is to prevent farmers from saving and re-using seeds, thereby forcing them to buy seeds on the market each season,” said Atamanenko.

Since 2005, the federal government has been working against global consensus on banning Terminator seeds. It does not recognize the current moratorium and says it will assess the technology on a case-by-case basis – a position which has been rejected by the UN Convention on Biodiversity.

“The international community would rejoice if Canada were to pass this law. We have an opportunity to bring the world a major step closer to eliminating this detestable technology,” concluded Atamanenko. “Judging by the 1,400 letters that my office has received, and which continue to arrive daily, Canadians are spelling it out loud and clear to this government – BAN TERMINATOR!”

Hat Tip to Vive le Canada

End of an Era?

Back in November, when it seemed like the Alberta Progressive Conservative leadership race was down to a choice between Jim Dinning or Ted Morton, I opined that the only choice the Tories really had was 'where to take the bullet, urban or rural.' When Stelmach came up the middle the PCs chose urban.

When Dinning lost, the Calgary Conservative MLAs, who had backed him to a man, showed every sign of panic. My riding's MLA, then solicitor general Harvey Cenaiko made a hasty decision to promote the new Premier's son within the Sheriff's department. It didn't go well for him and he's no longer solicitor general. With no hope of ever leaving the back-benches in a Stelmach government Cenaiko has jumped on the angry Calgary bandwagon.

Full disclosure, I ran against Harvey in the last provicial election, an election which he won by about 600 votes - I got considerably less if you're wondering.

I've lived in Calgary during boom and bust. I vastly prefer bust. Like most people who actually live here and aren't working in an executive office, my standard of living has dropped like a rock - my paycheck gets pinched by rent and other cost of living prices more and more every month and the straining infrastructure and big city population pressure in a mid sized city environment is beginning to erode the city's very real charms. No wonder that many respond to indications the boom may be slowing with a sigh of relief.

People are angry and getting angrier. The Alberta Advantage always a slightly more exclusive promise than as advertised on the bottle, is cited now with a bitter ironic undertone. People in Calgary who wonder if their landlord plans to double their rent next month listened to Premier Ed and his country bear cabinet sneering at the idea of rent control and scowled.

When the Strom - sorry the Stelmach administration - blandly broke their promise of no strings funding for the cities, they expected no fall out. They were used to mayors who knew their place in the big blue machine and when to say 'thank you sir, may I have another.' Instead Mayor Dave 'Bronco' Bronconnier publicly and repeatedly ripped into the provincial government and the media joined him. And now according to the polls, so has the urban Alberta public.

Now the PCs stare into the starkly real possibility of losing Ralph Klein's old riding in Calgary Elbow.

Strange times in the one party state.

See: Ralph Klein's old riding

Sunday Link Blast - June 3

• McGuinty hints at Ipperwash transfer -
  Only sixty-some years after it was promised.
  
  
• Water Wars -
  Alison keeps an eye on the sellouts.
  
  
• Torture -
  Planned from the top from the start - and where did they get the term 'Enhanced Interrogations' from?
  
  
• Only criminals use WiFi -
  Facing five years for checking his e-mail.
  
  
• Weekly American editorial cartoon roundup -
  From Bob Geiger of course.
  
  
• Giuliani would be worse than Bush -
  Paranoid, authoritarian and contemptuous of civil rights. Don't go there America.
  

Girl in the War

Josh Ritter

What the hell does Rob have on Steve?

Keeping the most wing-nut elements of the base happy only goes so far to explain the grotesque and herculean efforts, going against every scintilla of the old Reform Party grass-roots rhetoric, that the Conservatives have gone to in an effort to save Rob Anders.

Considering how rigidly Harper has muzzled the Tory caucus's lunatic fringe, why the public display of crazed authoritarian vote rigging to save their king? Does Anders have Polaroids of Harper tongue kissing a bust of Pierre Trudeau?

Hat tip to Buckdog

Taco Day

Jean Grae lays down four minutes of raw pain.