Babbling Brooks

Anti-democratic

2008-12-05T10:34:00.002-05:00

Babble on.

When it comes to this parliamentary mess we're in, everyone needs to stop throwing around the phrase "anti-democratic," like it's a clearly defined term that we can all agree upon. We can't.

The coalition parties are playing by the rules - they're working within the parliamentary system to bring a non-confidence vote to the floor of the House of Commons, defeat the government, and provide the Crown with an alternative government that could command the confidence of the House without resorting to another election.

So, as far as it goes, this article is substantively correct.

My problem is that it doesn't go far enough. Specifically, it doesn't address the fact that Harper's move is also playing by the rules. Until his government is defeated on the floor of the House of Commons, he's PM. And as PM, he gets to advise the GG. And his advice to the GG was to prorogue Parliament for a number of weeks. All within the rules.

One of the hallmarks of our democracy is that we play within the rules. Everyone's doing that, although no one wants to admit the other side is too. None of it is "anti-democratic" in the context of how our political system actually works.

Whether or not any of it should be off limits in our democracy is a different matter entirely. Our system of government doesn't match up with our democratic expectations - as I discovered during the Emerson affair. It was set up in a far different time, in a far different societal context, and it hasn't really evolved much over the decades. Maybe it should - maybe it will, now that many of us have seen its flaws exposed by politicians of all stripes pushing the rules to serve their own agendas.

Of course, maybe it will all just blow over as well. I know I'm a lot more sanguine about things this time around, since it's my side that seems to be making out best in all of this ("Yay! We're cream of the crap!"), than I was last time we went through a government not wanting to recognize they'd lost the confidence of the House.

What? You don't remember that? It was only three and a half years ago, people, with many of the same cast of rogues, but with some of the roles reversed. Here's what I had to say at the time:

I think the Liberals are being duplicitous here - surprise, surprise. The votes so far may not have technically been confidence votes, but anyone who's been watching this knows Martin doesn't have the confidence of the House. In a Westminster parliamentary system, tradition plays a big part - there's all sorts of gray areas because a lot of the rules aren't written down, they're just kind of followed by feel. A specific confidence motion is just a way of measuring that feel. But in this case, the government is really pushing the limits, both in terms of time, and in terms of what they will recognize as a confidence vote, and what they won't. And with the gray areas in our system, they can do that.

I think the idiots should have resigned last week when they lost the first vote. The wording may not have been the best, but a committee vote was all the opposition was left with, since the Liberals decided to push back opposition days. The intent was clear - anyone watching the news or reading a paper would have known that. Martin should have either resigned or scheduled an explicit confidence motion immediately. The fact that he didn't shows just what a weasel he really is. There's zero respect for parliamentary tradition - for anything other than staying in power right now. I hope nobody forgets all the tricks Martin pulled to postpone the inevitable as long as he possibly could. I hope they remember it when the candidates start knocking on doors and talking about the 'democratic deficit'. This guy has given up any credibility he might have had.

And if you'll remember, Martin then seduced Belinda Stronach to bail him out. If you'll recall, I talked at that time about the precedent that set, and how it would come back to bite all involved in the ass.

Welcome to the next level of the slippery slope down, folks.

"Anti-democratic?" Things have been getting more and more anti-democratic in Canadian politics for years now, and you and I don't have enough fingers on both hands to point at all those in every single political party who bear some responsibility for that state of affairs.

A pox on them all.

Babble off.

Leafs win the Cup! And I win the lottery!

2008-12-03T16:25:00.007-05:00

Babble on.

This just arrived in my e-mail inbox:

Canada was stunned Monday when it was announced that The Stanley Cup will be awarded to the Toronto Maple Leafs, possibly as early as December 6th. The cup will be stripped from from 2008 playoff champions the Detroit Red Wings and be awarded to the Leafs, who didn't even make the playoffs.

How is this possible, Canadians ask?

Well, the Leafs have formed a coalition with eastern conference semifinalists the Montreal Canadians, and conference quarter finalists the Ottawa Senators, whose total season points now outnumber the Red Wings. According to current Leaf coach Ron Wilson "the Red Wings have lost the confidence of the league and should hand the cup over immediately to our coalition".

Personally, I'm looking forward to making a coalition with other losing lottery-ticket holders and seeing if we can ~~scam~~ convince the OLG that we have a better claim to a 6/49 win than the schmuck who took the cheque home. I mean, between all our tickets we have not only the six winning numbers, but the bonus as well!

The more I think about this, the more I like the precedent...

Babble off.

Update: Turns out it was a blog post by Canadian Jedi before it started making the e-mail rounds!

From the horse's mouth

2008-10-29T16:19:00.005-04:00

Babble on.

Note to the "Support our troops, bring them home!" crowd: ordinary Afghans still feel security is their biggest issue:

The security situation is both the main reason respondents give for saying the country is moving in the right direction and the main concern for those who say the country is moving in the wrong direction. The proportion of respondents who cite insecurity as a reason for pessimism has increased by one-fourth in the past year.

The biggest problems faced by Afghanistan as a whole are identified as security (36%), economic issues including unemployment (31%), high prices (22%), poor economy (17%), and corruption (14%).

Who provides security? ISAF troops and Afghan troops, until the Afghans are trained up to do it all themselves. Who trains the Afghans? Our troops.

So tell me again how bringing Canadian troops home yesterday, if not sooner, helps the Afghans, you numpties?

More at The Torch, where I note that while the raw percentages are encouraging, the trends aren't. Our people are working hard, but this thing isn't won yet.

Babble off.

Walk a mile in the other guy's shoes

2008-10-15T13:59:00.002-04:00

Babble on.

To all my Liberal friends: now you understand a fraction of what it was like to support Preston Manning during the Chretien years.

Babble off.

"We are all in mortal peril of disappearing up our own backsides."

2008-09-30T15:34:00.003-04:00

Babble on.

Perhaps I'm late to the party; perhaps this has already been knocked around the blogosphere ad infinitum, and the few readers stumbling across this mostly dormant site are already rolling their eyes.

But Andrew Coyne's scathing indictment of political reporting in this country is devastatingly on point:

But here's the thing: in his secret heart of hearts, that's who the journalist wishes he was — one of the players, the guys in the room, and not one of those legions of drudges who must forever stand and wait outside the door. We write about the horse race, the polls and the strategy, not because it matters to our readers, but because it matters to the pros, the people we cover, the people we idolize. We parrot their language, even as we absorb their values: the latest campaign ad is analyzed from any number of angles — Will it work? Is it on-message? — except the most obvious: is it true?

My only quibble with his piece is the lack of context. I fear he neglected to measure political reporting against any other type of reporting in Canada, because the analysis would have only become more depressing.

The truth is that, bad as it is - and every criticism he levels is fair and true - political reporting is one of the things journalists do best. I'd say sports reporting is the only other category of journalism where the paid media have as much knowledge of the game, the players, the inside scoop, as they do in the political arena.

Put another way: if you think political reporting in Canada is poor, try critiquing military reporting, as we do over at The Torch.

As a journalist said to me the other day, "Journalism isn't a profession - there are no standards, or bodies enforcing those standards; nothing like a College of Physicians or Law Society. No, journalism is a craft."

He was right. Unfortunately for us, it's all too often a poorly practiced craft these days.

Babble off.

A lightbulb moment?

2008-09-08T11:37:00.002-04:00

Babble on.

From the New York Times, comes this unexpectedly insightful comment on Governor Palin's appeal:

Senator Clinton is a politician who also happens to be a wife and mother. Ms. Palin is a wife and mother who also happens to be a politician.

Bingo.

Babble off.

Rudy vs. Hillary! Or not! Who cares!

2008-08-28T15:31:00.004-04:00

Babble on.

OK, so I got it wrong. Not the first time, and it certainly won't be the last.

In an effort to regain my lost political prognostication credibility, I give you my prediction for the upcoming McCain vs. Obama race: who the hell knows? 6 to 5 and pick 'em. Flip a flippin' coin.

I have just as little confidence in my ability to predict the next Canadian election. Dion's a wet noodle, and Harper is giving himself a Grade III concussion pounding into that electoral glass ceiling right above him.

The thing is, I'm hard pressed to get my Give A F**k Factor above "comatose" about any of it. McCain's solid, but uninspiring from a political standpoint. Obama is all sizzle, no steak. The Liberals didn't ruin Canada under Chretien and Martin, and the Conservatives haven't "saved" it.

Nobody actually wants to steer the ship of state, they just want to be the ones with their grasping mitts on the controls. Which is a bloody shame, since I'm naturally inclined to care a lot more than I do right now.

Babble off.

Chuckles from Dion

2008-07-25T12:36:00.002-04:00

Babble on.

Stéphane Dion didn't even get one paragraph into Paul Wells' latest Macleans piece before he made me laugh:

"Lots of people have been in this office," Stéphane Dion told me. "Not all have managed to get downstairs."

No, Steffi, not all have managed that. Just every single Liberal leader since Edward Blake (leader from 1880-1887), who remains the only federal Liberal leader in history not to become Prime Minister at some point in his tenure.

But hey, play the low-expectations game if it floats your boat.

Babble off.

Make-work

2008-07-21T10:36:00.002-04:00

Babble on.

If I were a machiavellian executive at CTV or Global, I'd look into hiring a couple of dozen work-from-home staff to file ATI requests at the CBC. Pay them, say, $36,000 per year to file 50 or 100 requests each and every month - whatever's a reasonable workload.

Same thing for UPS and FEDEX with Canada Post.

I suspect it would be money well spent to completely screw up a direct competitor like that in a way that they couldn't reciprocate. Of course, you'd have to get a bean-counter to crunch the numbers, but from a hassle perspective alone, it might well be worth it.

Babble off.

What he said....

2008-06-10T10:58:00.002-04:00

Babble on.

Environmentalists. What is their deal? They managed to take an issue that everyone is on board with --a clean place to live-- and turn it into the most divise issue since abortion.
- John at OPFOR

I find myself saying words to that effect every single time I get into a 'climate change' discussion: I'm all for reducing pollutants in our environment, for preserving wild spaces and biodiversity, and for reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. I'm just upset at how the 'climate change' crowd has hijacked the environmental movement.

Nice to see I'm not alone.

Babble off.

A not-so-modest proposal

2008-05-23T13:37:00.002-04:00

Babble on.

Here's an idea for the marketing gurus at the airlines to consider: charge based on the total weight hauled - whether human or cargo or a combination of both. If the real issue is fuel consumption, that's directly tied to the payload carried, not to the number of passengers or the number of checked bags.

Charging fares based upon the combined weight of each passenger and their baggage is much more easily justifiable than charging a flat fee per bag and per person. Why should a 130 lb woman with two fifty-pound checked bags be charged more than a 225 lb man with a 15 lb carry-on? He's responsible for 240 lbs of payload, and she's responsible for only 230 lbs.

Fare's fair? (couldn't resist)

Babble off.

Missing bones: not only in the back, but in the right hand

2008-04-11T12:47:00.002-04:00

Babble on.

Steffi introduced himself to me last night.

Remember how your dad told you early on in your life to look people in the eye and shake hands firmly? Someone still needs to learn that lesson.

Babble off.

Wells, nail, head

2008-03-13T12:18:00.002-04:00

Babble on.

Paul Wells has hit a particularly irksome nail squarely on the head, and I suspect Joe Clark is taking an Advil:

"There's not a lot of reconciliation in Mr. Harper's makeup," Clark says. "...By and large, instead of being a leader who has tried to find common ground among Canadians, he has too often followed policies that can be divisive."

Well. It's just a fact that Harper managed to reconcile the Progressive Conservative and Canadian Alliance memberships where Clark had been trying, with exceedingly modest results, for years. It's just a fact that Harper could have done so earlier and that the main obstacle to his success was Joe Clark. It's just a fact that when the two parties did replace themselves with a new unified party, the only ones who didn't join the spirit of reconciliation were the Clark faction of the Progressive Conservatives: Clark, Scott Brison, John Herron. And that only Clark was unwilling to reconcile with... the Liberals by joining them. The great conciliator of High River spent his last months in Parliament sitting alone as an independent. He did not wish it so and it's sad that it happened, but it did.

And he's just warming up with that passage. You should really read the whole thing. It's about time somebody said it, and I'm glad it was Wells, since he said it so very well.

Babble off.

If you're not going to shoot the bear, you'd better have a damned good plan

2008-02-29T11:08:00.002-05:00

Babble on.

This guy almost had a Darwin Award nomination captured on film. Follow the sequence of events in the pictorial.

This line from the comments quite literally had me choking on my coffee:

The Idaho Fish and Game Department has more pickup trucks than employees. And the pickup trucks are smarter, too.

Tip of the toque to Darcey.

Babble off.

Six unimportant things

2008-02-27T15:56:00.002-05:00

Babble on.

Taylor's tagged me with this meme, and I figured better to post about it here than at The Torch. Ruin my serious blogging cred and all. Stop laughing.

Okeydokey, here goes:

I absolutely cannot handle watching people embarrass themselves. It's like getting hit in the funny-bone, or nails on blackboard for me. Drives my lovely wife batty. I leave the room when she's watching the auditions for American Idol. If I had to pick one single character on television that has made my flesh crawl more than any other, it would be Ross on Friends. I squirmed in my seat through entire scenes of There's Something About Mary. And my discomfort is getting more pronounced with age, not less.

If I'm eating coloured candies like Smarties or Skittles, I'll often arrange them in repeating patterns, or bar graphs by colour. Then I'll deplete them according to another pattern, like keeping each colour in equal supply, or eating two colours at a time, alternating between them, or any one of a number of other options. I try not to do it too much at work, as it's always awkward explaining to a co-worker why you're arranging your M&M's into lines on your desk.

I love meat, but dislike eating it off the bone. I used to think it was just that a quarter-chicken dinner at Swiss Chalet was just too much work - why de-bone your own meal when you can pay to have it done before it hits the table? - but my mom thinks it goes deeper than that. She remembers me being horrified as a wee boy when I found out how hamburger was made, and thinks it may have affected my meat-eating habits into adulthood. The thing is, I love meat - chicken breasts, steaks, roast beef, turkey dinner, ham, bacon, and hamburgers. Just don't give me wings or ribs.

I'm one of the few men alive who doesn't have to be forced at gunpoint to watch figure skating on TV.

If a genie popped out of a lamp and told me I could be world-class at one sport, I'd pick basketball. Which, if you've met me and seen my short arms, stocky body, and inability to jump much, is kind of funny. To this day, I have dreams in which I'm playing pickup hoops with my brothers or friends, and all of a sudden in the middle of a layup I'm high enough to dunk the ball. Love those dreams.

I pride myself on a fairly decent vocabulary, but I get my clock cleaned by my wife in word-games like Scrabble or Boggle. Consistently. By, like, a hundred points. On a positive note, it's great for keeping the old ego in check.

Now, who can I tag who hasn't already been nailed with this one?

Nicholas at Quotulatiousness

Bruce at Flit

Mark at Daimnation

Chris at Tart Cider

Paul at Celestial Junk

John Piedmont at OPFOR

Who will trump my weirdness?

Babble off.

Fifteen Days

2007-11-13T13:17:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

I'm a big fan of Christie Blatchford, so it wasn't surprising to me that I enjoyed her new book about soldiers in Afghanistan, Fifteen Days, so very much.

I've posted a review at The Torch for those who would like a glimpse into the character of the book before laying down their hard-earned money for a copy.

Babble off.

The Wheel of Time creaks to a halt for a moment

2007-09-18T13:32:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

Decorated U.S. military veteran James Oliver Rigney Jr., better known as bestselling author Robert Jordan, has died at the age of 58.

His works have brought me hours upon hours of fascinated immersion in a fantastic world, and so never having met the man, I will miss him.

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose.... The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time.

But it was a beginning.

Rest in peace, sir.

Babble off.

Update: What an interesting quote this man gave in an interview:

There are things I am saying, things I am talking about, but I try not to make them obtrusive. The necessity to struggle against evil, the difficulty of identifying evil, how easy it is to go astray, are very simple questions. In modern mainstream fiction, if you discuss good and evil, you're castigated for being judgmental or for being old-fashioned. Originally this was a way of deciding which was the greater wrong - 'It is wrong to steal, but my child is starving to death. Obviously, in that situation it is better to steal than to let my child die of hunger.' But today that has been transmogrified into a belief that anything goes, it's what you can get by with, and there is no real morality, no right, no wrong� It's simply what produces the Platonic definition of evil: 'a temporary disadvantage for the one perceiving evil.'

In fantasy, we can talk about right and wrong, and good and evil, and do it with a straight face. We can discuss morality or ethics, and believe that these things are important, where you cannot in mainstream fiction. It's part of the reason why I believe fantasy is perhaps the oldest form of literature in the world, at least in the western canon. You go back not simply to Beowulf but The Epic of Gilgamesh. [Babbler's highlight]

By the way, if anyone can help me track down the citations for his Distinguished Flying Cross awards (two of them, if I've got it right), won as a helicopter gunner in Vietnam, I'd like to read it.

Steyn gets it wrong

2007-08-17T11:25:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

I was involved in a comments-section argument over at John Donovan's place, regarding a Mark Steyn post at The Corner:

Canada's ghastly human rights commissions are an an ersatz-judicial abomination to enforce PC bullying. In recent years, they've ordered a Catholic school in Alberta to employ a practising homosexual, fined a Christian printer in Toronto for refusing to print a gay activist group's publicity material, used their powers to support the suspension without pay of a evangelical Christian school teacher who had written to his local paper expressing concern over pro-gay education programs. In all case, the human rights commissions operated on the more or less consistent principle that "religious belief" was fine as long as you kept it furtive and walled up inside your private home but it did not have the right to impact on who you employed, what clients you accepted*, or even what views you expressed in the newspaper.

Apparently, it's different for Islam.

Steyn may well be right, but the case he's chosen to highlight doesn't make his point.

Why? Because it was a settlement, not a ruling. That's right: the B.C. Human Rights Commission didn't rule on the case, the parties involved settled it before the tribunal could hear the arguments.

The tribunal was to hear Mr. Gilmour's case on Monday; however, a settlement was reached last week with Mr. Saidy and his taxi company. "The parties have agreed ? to resolve Mr. Gilmour's complaint by balancing the rights of persons with seeing-eye dogs to obtain taxi service with the rights of Muslims to follow their religion," the settlement reads.

If you don't like the way this particular human rights complaint worked out, don't blame the Commission, blame the parties who agreed to the settlement.

My thanks to the confusing, but entertaining Alan of Gen X at 40 for pointing that out to me...eventually...after making me dig through his convoluted rhetoric at length.

Babble off.

Update: Blazing Cat Fur seems to want to twist the discussion around without proper deference to the realities of this particular case.

Scrolling through BCF's comments to his own post, you'll discover a gross misrepresentation of the case and its scope. It was a settlement, not a decision, and so set no legal precedent. It is binding upon no-one but the parties to the agreement, and restricts no other person's right to file a discrimination complaint.

I have that perspective separately from two different Canadian lawyer friends.

That is to say, if another blind patron is refused service by a Muslim driver because of a guide-dog, the blind patron can file a discrimination complaint with the BCHRC - even if the driver abides by the rules laid out in the Gilmour settlement by ordering another cab and waiting with the blind patron until that other cab arrives. This settlement doesn't restrict any future complaint in the slightest, or reliably predict its outcome.

I'd love to see the BCHRC forced to actually make a decision in a case like that, because I think this settlement stinks. I have little confidence the BCHRC would make the right decision.

But, unlike Steyn and BCF, I'm not willing to condemn the BCHRC for a decision they haven't yet made.

Don't worry about those long-term plans

2007-08-17T10:08:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

It's in the Book of Revelations, if you know where to look: when I agree with something Rick Salutin wrote, the end is nigh. Can you hear the hoofbeats of the Four Horsemen?

Babble off.

Damon, your ass is Greengrass

2007-07-24T16:55:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

There's a certain amount of pleasure to be derived from a discussion of which fictional character is better than another. Superman vs. Captain Marvel. X-Men vs. Avengers. Heck, they even made a movie out of one hypothetical: Alien vs. Predator.

So I'm not offended by the question posed to actor Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass, asking them to compare and contrast James Bond and their own big-screen effort, Jason Bourne. I am, however, offended by their answer:

Bond is "an imperialist and he's a misogynist. He kills people and laughs and sips martinis and wisecracks about it," Damon, 36, told The Associated Press in an interview.

Damon's new film, "The Bourne Ultimatum," opens Aug. 3.

"Bourne is this paranoid guy. He's on the run. He's not the government. The government is after him. He's a serial monogamist who's in love with his dead girlfriend and can't stop thinking about her," Damon said. "He's the opposite of James Bond."

...

Paul Greengrass, Damon's director on Universal's "Bourne Ultimatum" and its 2004 predecessor, "The Bourne Supremacy," agreed that Bond is a relic from a different era.

"He's an insider. He likes being a secret agent. He worships at the altar of technology. He loves his gadgets. And he embodies this whole set of misogynistic values," Greengrass said. "He likes violence. That's part of the appeal of the character. He has no guilt. He's essentially an imperial adventurer of a particularly English sort.

"Personally, I spit on those values. I think we've moved on a little bit from all that, the martini shaken, not stirred."

This is where the discussion of the comparative merits of one fictional character over another step outside the realm of the fan-boy, and take on some significance: where the characters stand for a set of real-world beliefs. So let's take a look at those values that Greengrass and Damon "spit on."

James Bond is derided for his misogyny, his violence, and his supposed lack of guilt. Boiled down to its essence, the criticism of Bond is that he's not sensitive enough - towards women, towards his opponents, and towards himself. Apparently even worse, Bond "likes being a secret agent" and an "imperialist."

Bourne, on the other hand, is lauded as a "paranoid guy" who is "not the government."

Let's get past the fact that Ludlum's Bourne was just as much a tool of his government as Bond is until Bourne lost his memory. Let's put aside the fascinating backstory that the producers created for their updated Bond (hit the "Enter Site" button, and look in his "Dossier"), one that explains a great deal of his own weaknesses and strengths.

No, let's simply look at the morality of the two characters: one uses his unique talents to benefit his country, and the other uses them to help himself. The distinction is important: Bond is to Bourne what the taxman is to the thief, what the policeman is to the vigilante, what the soldier is to the insurgent. Of course, if you don't subscribe to the idea that governments should have a monopoly on violence, that point won't sway you. But I'd guess that Greengrass and Damon aren't the Second-Amendment-libertarian types, which makes their case somewhat problematic.

Of course, it's only a problem if you're interested in intellectual consistency, rather than lurching about with each indoctrinated emotional wave that sloshes over your decks. I suspect, though, that the sixties-child Greengrass and the Hollywood-poisoned Damon are simply so enthralled with their romantic notions of Bourne's supposed fight against The Man that reason doesn't enter into their position at all.

Until recently, James Bond films have been nothing more than a visual roller-coaster, junk food for the soul. Other than for Casino Royale, I'm not much interested in defending them as anything other than a distracting romp.

But what Greengrass and Damon fail to realize is that much the same can be said for Bourne. At least Bond, viewed in his best light, is ridding the world of threats to Britain and the west. All of Bourne's violence, all the knife fights and the shootings and the car chases and the bombs are just to benefit him. If you worship at the altar of me, myself, and I, if you regard patriotism and duty as dangerous anachronisms, if your personal considerations outweigh the needs of a society far greater than you, then I guess Bourne should be your action hero of choice. But give me Bond any day of the week.

Oh, and speaking of fantasy match-ups, Daniel Craig could wipe his ass with Matt Damon and not even break a sweat doing it. What's more, I'd take Barbara Broccoli in a cage match against Paul Greengrass any day of the week. And my dad can beat up your dad too. Afterwards, he'd laugh and wisecrack as he drank his martini: shaken, not stirred.

Babble off.

"You give good clip"

2007-07-05T10:45:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

The post's title is the best line I've seen about Jack! in a very long time. It's taken from the comments section at The Torch, where frequent commenter Cam Campbell shows once again that Canada still has a few leftists that I'd be happy to share a pint with. He reproduces a letter he wrote to Layton:

Mr. Jack Layton,

On your biography page it says that you believe in practical solutions for problems. And yet you keep saying things like "The strategy being followed by NATO right now is producing the precise opposite effect to the one that the promoters of this mission are suggesting should be the goal," Layton said. "In other words, growth of support for the Taliban because of these air strikes."

Only a comprehensive peace process — not armed conflict — can resolve the crisis in Afghanistan, he argued, noting that "students of history will know that all major conflicts are resolved ultimately through peace-oriented discussions.""

Actually history shows us that peace happens when several conditions exist, not the least of which being that one side feels like they've lost, so your argument, respectfully, is utter crap.

I'm being quite serious, "peace-oriented discussions" (also known as peace negotiations or talks - who writes for you? They should be fired.) require that 1) everyone wants peace 2) there is a central authority to negotiate with 3) that the end of conflict will not immediately be replaced with some new, different kind of conflict (like, say, a series of genocidal massacres based on, say, supporting democracy and western style ideals of same).

So your thesis fails on point one horribly, on point two it's laughable, and on point three you're displaying a callousness towards human life that makes me want to vomit.

The reality is that there is no peace to keep, no peace to negotiate for, no one to negotiate with and no secure area to negotiate within. Pretending that these conditions exist is a fantasy.

Once the left was populated by people like my Uncles who fought in WW2, by people like Orwell and Trumbo, who could tell wrong from right and could figure out that something had to be done about it.

Now it's populated by people like you who believe in a pacifist unilateralism that appears to me to be suicidal. Certainly we don't get to negotiate peace with allies, but suggesting that the way forward in Afghanistan is via a policy of unidimensional " peace-oriented discussions" (still thinking that someone should loose their job over that..) ignores the reality and the complexity of the situation. This knee jerk reaction towards anything involving the US (and increasingly, NATO) is, frankly, childish and simplistic.

I think the current regime in the US are a pack of corrupt, right wing demagogues, most of whom need a good sending to bed without dinner (and/or jail time) but in my read, that has bugger all to do with the fact that the Canadian Forces presence in the reconstruction and (horrors) combat operations in Afghanistan is accomplishing good.

Additionally sir, the tying of Canadian troops, even tangentially, to what you seem to believe is a NATO policy of bombing civilians for sport is disgusting. It does your position utterly no good at all. It's wrong.

I know that journalists seek you out every time a Canadian is killed in Afghanistan and why not? You give good clip. But the constant sight of you scoring cheap political points with the deaths of our military personal? It wears sir. A suggestion, one that would ratchet up many peoples respect for you by something like 100%, would be to tell the journalists a variation on "There will be time to discuss the mission later, today our thoughts are with our brave soldiers and their families." Trite? Maybe. Lacking in the fun oomph of scoring cheap shots? Oh yes. Respectful and classy? Indeed.

I come from a family who's political views range from red Tory all the way to charter members of the CCF (my Great Aunt and Uncle were XXXX and XXXX), with stops along the way in trade unionism, full on communists and just about every other colour of the socially progressive rainbow. I've voted for your party in the past (and in the absence of your party running a viable candidate in my riding, for M. Duceppe), so it pains me to say this: I will never vote for the NDP while you are at it's helm.

Never.

I'll vote for a fringe party, the Monarchists, the Communist party, whatever local looney has managed to get together the deposit by borrowing the money from his friend, but never ever again the NDP.

I expect no response to this letter, I expect that you won't even see it or have it read to you (Hello, by the way, to the intern reading this. I hope you're having a great summer, my jobs always sucked and involved lifting boxes or digging holes, good on you for scoring a good one. Enjoy it, and good luck next semester. Stay in school.), I know that democracy no longer works that way but it felt like the least I could do.

With great regret,

Cameron Campbell

If we must have a socialist element in this country, let it be of the calibre of Orwell, of Hitchens, of those who value western ideals of freedom and democracy and are willing to defend them, with force when absolutely necessary.

The self-loathing and delusional sheep who would have us bare our throats to the wolves of the world in the name of peace are a disgrace, and a dangerous one at that.

I salute those like Cam Campbell and Terry Glavin who are willing to stand up to the majority within their own political faction, and decry the moral rot that has infected the Canadian left on this issue.

Babble off.

"Journalism as a public service, my ass."

2007-07-04T09:45:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

Bruce Rolston at Flit thoroughly exposes some sensationalist reporting this week:

The latest CP 'dirty bomb' scare story isn't just bad because the original study it's based on is not linked to by either the newspaper or the DRDC's own website, allowing people to make up their own minds from the source.

It's not just irresponsible because the report seems basically a rehash of the Federation of American Scientists' previous effort in this genre.

The real problem is that in covering a report that will undoubtedly have said that the disruption and injury will be the real cause of damage, it does nothing to alleviate that same panic. Journalism as a public service, my ass. [Babbler's emphasis]

That journalists so often refuse to acknowledge that they not only observe circumstances, but that their observations often change those circumstances, is willful blindness. That many of them refuse to consider the consequences of those changes in determining what they report and how they report it verges on negligence.

Down the rabbit hole and into an Arab jail

2007-06-19T15:42:00.001-04:00

Babble on.

I guarantee you that every single drug dealer in the entire world who read this story laughed his ass off.

Bert Tatham, 35, who advised the Afghan government on eradicating opium poppy crops, was arrested in April during a layover at Dubai International Airport while en route to Canada from Afghanistan.

The Vancouver resident was caught with 0.6 grams of hashish and two poppy bulbs, and pleaded not guilty during an arraignment last week. His lawyer is expected to appeal the sentence handed down Tuesday.

The prison sentence is a "cruel reward" for the dangerous work his son did in Kandahar, his father said.

Bert Tatham worked as a consultant for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and as an adviser to the Afghan government's poppy elimination program.

...

The poppy bulbs his son was carrying could not be used for opium production, as they had been harvested several years ago, he said.

"He was bringing those home for show-and-tell, basically," Tatham added.

As for the hashish, Tatham says his son is "mystified" as to how such a tiny amount became lodged in the seam of his pants.

"It is ubiquitous in Kandahar area and he was involved occasionally in the burning of drugs, and it was passed around socially as far as we know," he said.

Most stories I read where someone says "it wasn't my stuff!" make the needle on my Cynic-O-Meter redline in an instant. How can you have drugs on you by accident?

Except in this guy's case, where it's completely plausible. He was involved with both the United Nations and the Afghan government in confiscating and burning poppies and hashish. I'll make you a bet that if you had tested Canadian soldiers for trace amounts of marijuana in their system after their adventures last fall, they might have run into problems with the Dubai judiciary as well.

If evidence surfaces next week that Tatham was masterminding an international drug-smuggling cartel and using his official position as cover, I'll revise my position, but given the information we see in the public domain right now, I'd say this is a terrible miscarriage of justice.

Time for Canadian diplomats, Afghan officials who were employing him, and the United Nations bureaucrats who contracted him to intervene on his behalf with the government in Dubai.

Babble off.

Reluctant lumberjack

2007-06-09T13:11:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

That was a pretty freaky storm that went through the GTA yesterday. When I arrived home, I found I was short half a cherry tree.

It was leaning on the back fence, so I borrowed a chain-saw from my Dad and started cutting the downed half up into firewood. Looking at the trunk, I'm not sure the other half can even be saved. I guess there was rot in there to begin with, which is probably what weakened it enough to split like that.

Luckily none of the other trees on the property were damaged. We have another six large trees, one of which is a bit too close to the power lines for my comfort, but they were all OK.

But the cherry coming down is a real bummer. We've only been in this house a year now, and I was looking forward to another delicious crop this year. The blossoms this past spring were spectacular...I'm going to really miss that.

It could be worse, I know.

But what a damned shame.

Babble off.

Cultivated fantasy

2007-06-05T09:42:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

It sucks when the numbers get in the way of a "good idea."

Is it time we started calling this supposed solution an opiate for the opium problem?

(It should be noted that Bruce Rolston covered this argument even more comprehensively on his blog almost six months ago.)

Babble off.

Gunning for the truth

2007-06-04T14:24:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

Y'know, when the people paid to inform the public do anything but, it's no wonder we can't seem to have a reasoned debate about anything substantive anymore.

Babble off.

Fowl language in the House

2007-05-24T11:31:00.001-04:00

Babble on.

Shorter Jay Hill: even though it walks and talks like a duck, I shouldn't have cast aspersions on all waterfowl like I did.

Me? I just think Coderre is a complete ducking idiot.

Babble off.

A Canadian soldier speaks out

2007-05-24T10:14:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

He's shortly to be posted away from the Afghan mission. And he said to me "I don't need a break, I need for people to do the right thing."

He also said a lot more that you, and every Canadian needs to read.

Babble off.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen

2007-05-07T12:48:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

Buzz Hargrove, call your PR department:

After working 23 years for General Motors, Paul Harrison sought a job Saturday with the domestic automaker's chief rival -- Toyota.

***

Harrison, a 47-year-old licensed industrial mechanic, was one of hundreds of job seekers Saturday who converged on the Toyota job fair at the Holiday Inn.

***

None of the job applicants were bothered by Toyota being a non-union environment.

"If I can't hold onto my job without a union backing me, then I have no business working," Harrison said.

I seem to recall saying something the other day about the necessity of adding value...if your union members don't figure you're bringing them much, you have to wonder how long they'll continue to pay the dues.

Babble off.

And there goes the point, gents

2007-05-03T13:20:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

David Akin has put up a post on his blog in which he excerpts without comment from a couple of pieces that discuss media and blogging. Note to David: it's a blog, you're supposed to tell us what it means to you.

Here's a chunk of what he cut and pasted:

I'm all for blogs and blogging. But I'm not blind to the limitations and the flaws of the blogosphere - its superficiality, its emphasis on opinion over reporting, its echolalia, its tendency to reinforce rather than challenge ideological extremism and segregation. Now, all the same criticisms can (and should) be hurled at segments of the mainstream media. And yet, at its best, the mainstream media is able to do things that are different from - and, yes, more important than - what bloggers can do. Those despised "people in a back room" can fund in-depth reporting and research. They can underwrite projects that can take months or years to reach fruition - or that may fail altogether. They can hire and pay talented people who would not be able to survive as sole proprietors on the Internet. They can employ editors and proofreaders and other unsung protectors of quality work. They can place, with equal weight, opposing ideologies on the same page. Forced to choose between reading blogs and subscribing to, say, the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Atlantic, and the Economist, I will choose the latter. I will take the professionals over the amateurs.

But I don't want to be forced to make that choice.

Holy missing the point, Batman.

Let's start with the whole idea of "opinion over reporting." Journalists are weaned on the idea of objective, impartial reporting as a separate beast altogether from editorializing. One of the most interesting aspects of my little neighbourhood within the blogosphere is that the bloggers I interact with understand there's no such separation. "Objective reporting" is like a unicorn: a pleasant myth, but you'll never find it in real life. Journalism would be a lot more relevant if it would give up the ghost on that front and join the rest of us in acknowledging that everyone, everyone involved in the flow of information cherry-picks from the almost infinite supply of facts available for reporting each and every day. Just like David did by even choosing the articles he so lamely posts without throwing in his two cents (OK, I'll stop ragging him on this now).

Let's also address the idea that placing opposing viewpoints on the same page with equal weight is somehow valuable. This has got to be the biggest single scam in all of journalism. And I'll tell you why.

Let's say you've got a pain in your side. You go to the doctor, and the doctor tells you it's appendicitis. But in the interests of "balance," you also ask your six-year-old son for his diagnosis. He says it's God punishing you for not letting him have a second helping of chocolate cake at Billy's birthday party on the weekend. Giving those two opinions equal weight is what journalists hide behind every day, in order to mask their own illiteracy in the subjects they cover.

I see it all the time in military reporting. You query MGen (Ret) Lewis MacKenzie on combat operations, a subject he spent the majority of his adult life studying and applying, a subject he mastered to the point where he was promoted nearly to the top of his profession. And then, in the interests of "balance," you quote Dawn Black, a politician whose entire body of knowledge of things martial would fit comfortably on the back of a cocktail napkin. That's not balance, it's professional malpractice - and although I've picked on Akin here, I will point out that it's standard practice across the trade.

The rest of the argument in Akin's quoted article revolves around money, pure and simple: media outlets have the coin to fund better stories. Fair enough, as far as it goes - I don't have the time or resources to do half the research I want to do each blogging day. But that line of reasoning assumes that more time and money will attract better writers, producers, and on-air talent. I say that's garbage. Wretchard is far more insightful than Siddiqui, and he doesn't make TorStar money, or have a TorStar expense account. Heck, I started writing at The Torch in order to combat the abysmal standard of media coverage on the Canadian Forces, and it's now read by journalists who actually cover the CF for a living, MP's and their staffers, consultants, lobbyists, and defence contractors - not to mention soldiers and other officials at DND.

If folks like that who rely on good information about the CF choose to come to a site like mine to supplement their media diet, what does that tell you about the substance - or rather the lack thereof - of the journalism within my little area of interest? I'll spell it out for you: if the paid media was that much superior to the blogosphere, as the article Akin quotes suggests, there would be no audience for an amateur like me who writes for free in his limited spare time.

This isn't to say that blogging is perfect or that traditional journalism is useless. The echo-chamber criticism is quite valid, for example. And more often than not, bloggers rely on the MSM as secondary-source fodder for tertiary-source blogging.

But as more and more bloggers witness newsworthy events first-hand and post about them online, that chain of information will break down. It's already happening in more technical fields, where the experts (the scientists, the researchers, the analysts) are taking their message directly from raw data to public consumption in one step. Who needs a reporter on the "science beat" for the Globe and Mail these days, when you can read the scientist's own words without the filter of a less technically-competent journalist in the way?

It's fascinating to watch journalists try to justify their diminishing contribution in the value chain. I'm an insurance broker by trade, a middleman - much like a journalist. I act as a buffer between the insurance companies and the insurance consumers, in the same way that a journalists acts between the creators of news and the consumers of news.

But here's the big difference: I add value. I get paid for my specific expertise. I make sure my clients' needs are being met by the products they buy, and I make sure they understand the limitations of those products. I'm their professional guide through a technically challenging insurance and risk management minefield.

Tell me what value most reporters add to their stories? Do they know their subject inside and out? Can they knowledgeably separate the wheat from the chaff for their audience? Or do they actually distort the truth by forcing it through their mostly uninformed filter?

I'd argue there's actually an advantage to part-time, volunteer blogging over paid media: we don't have to make money on the stories we tell. We're not slaves to ratings or advertising dollars, so we can communicate a boring story without sensationalizing it. We can delve into the complexities of a subject without fear of our audience changing the channel. We can follow our heart on what's important and what's not without having to pitch our ideas to a producer or editor. We can tell it straight - and I don't mean "tell it like it is," but rather "tell it like we see it" and let our readers make up their own minds.

It's a real shame that journalists commenting about the blogosphere so often resemble the astronomers of the day who opposed Galileo. Instead of trying to justify their shortcomings, their mistakes, their flawed status quo, they should be embracing the compelling evidence that indicates why their model hasn't been working. Because only at that point can they begin the difficult process of fixing it.

Instead of focusing on why blogging is inferior, journalists need to look at how they can add value to the information distribution chain. Without that epiphany, and the hard work that comes after, I'm afraid the mainstream media will eventually collapse under the weight of their own arrogance and sense of privilege. What a shame that would be.

Babble off.

Close your eyes and cover your ears, Rosie!

2007-04-30T09:31:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

The Armorer at Castle Argghhh!!! has made a SHOCKING DISCOVERY:

This just in - for only the SECOND TIME IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND, steel has melted even though it wasn't contained in a crucible in a blast furnace.

The first time, as we all know, was when Chimpy McBushitler, in order to have the REICHSTAG FIRE he needed to ADVANCE HIS PLAN to create a STRAW MAN FOREIGN ENEMY to UNITE THE SHEEPLE to advance his agenda to make the United States an illiberal CHRISTO-FASCIST STATE suitable for making war on peaceful Islamists tending their poppy fields in Afghanistan and to avenge the planned attempt on his father's life by Saddam Hussein so he sent in the Ninja Building Burners to bring down the World Trade Center, because, as we all know, it's impossible to melt steel except in a Bessemer Converter! It can't be done with only a PETROLEUM FUELED FIRE! Can't!

Rosie sez so!

***

(04-29) 18:03 PDT OAKLAND -- Huge leaping flames from an exploding gasoline tanker melted the steel underbelly of a highway overpass in the East Bay's MacArthur Maze early this morning, causing it to collapse onto the roadway below and virtually ensuring major traffic problems for weeks to come.

I wonder just how the JOOOS warned each other to stay off the bridge yesterday morning?

Babble off.

I recognize one of them, but who's the guy on the right?

2007-04-28T18:46:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

I had the opportunity to hear General Rick Hillier speak at that fixture of central-Canadian conservatism, The Albany Club, yesterday. What a special afternoon it turned out to be.

Babble off.

Time to pull out the wiffle-bat

2007-04-17T17:22:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

Most of the time, I'm able to ignore James Travers. Of course, most of the time, he stays away from my one real area of interest and modest expertise...

Babble off.

With no concern for anyone but himself

2007-04-12T09:03:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

Shorter Bob Fife at CTV yesterday: "To hell with your families. My scoop trumps your emotional health."

Babble off.

Does the phrase "separate but equal" mean anything to you?

2007-04-11T16:32:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

Leading-edge stupid, brought to you by the Liberal defence critic, Denis Coderre:

Liberal defence critic Denis Coderre is calling on the federal government to build a Canadian Forces base for native soldiers.

A separate unit, on a separate base. Perhaps we should include a separate quarantine area on that base for such monumentally idiotic brain-farts as this one, and set up a permanent residence for Coderre.

How is it even possible to serve as a defence critic without a rudimentary understanding of unit cohesion?

Babble off.

Kidnapped Europeans?

2007-03-29T10:46:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

Many continental Europeans, if they have registered that there is a crisis at all, will probably think of it as yet another consequence of a foolish, illegitimate Anglo-American military action in Iraq. They will see it as a problem for "them" (Brits and Americans) rather than for "us" (right-thinking, peace-loving Europeans). Some may suspect the British sailors and marines did in fact stray into Iranian territorial waters, as the Iranians claim. A few may even privately mutter, "Well, you had it coming to you."

***

But I would bet my bottom euro that none of these continental Europeans' synapses will have fired spontaneously with this thought: "Our fellow Europeans have been kidnapped, so what can we, as Europe, do in response?" [Babbler's bold]

What, indeed. Between NATO and the EU, I'm wondering if the defining characteristic of European solidarity is convenience.

Babble off.

8 Platoon

2007-03-27T11:02:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

You won't hear me calling for folks to sit down and watch anything other than a hockey game on the CBC that often.

But you should make the time to watch this documentary about Canadian soldiers this Thursday.

Babble off.

Some things you just don't do...

2007-03-11T12:57:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

...and this is one of them. I'm completely disgusted.

Babble off.

Forget spin, how about getting the facts right?

2007-03-02T10:27:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

The Ottawa Citizen isn't presenting "slanted" journalism, or "biased" journalism, it's basing an entire editorial on information that is factually, irrefutably wrong.

Babble off.

Reading from the Kerry playbook

2007-02-23T09:56:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

So they were for the mission before they were against the mission before they were for the mission before they'll be against the mission.

Winner of a platform you got there, Stephi.

Babble off.

Ten percent?

2007-02-23T09:41:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

Anyone else wondering how making, at best, just over 10% of Afghanistan's poppy crop legitimate will turn the country around?

This is not the panacea we're being led to believe. Bruce Rolston goes through the hard numbers in detail here. Anyone toying with the idea of legalizing the Afghan poppy crop should read it.

Babble off.

Picking precisely one nit

2007-02-14T08:34:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

Paul Wells, on his newly refurbished blog (glad to see the Rogers techies finally pulled their thumbs out), looks at the new Tory french-language attack ads aimed at Stephane Dion. I have but one thing to add to Wells' analysis:

But they don't say a single word about the Clarity Act.

In passing, this also helps explain why the ads weren't rolled out by Micahel Fortier, who rushed on Dec. 3 to pin the Clarity Act on Dion (as though it were the worst thing that could be said about him) and who has publicly called the patriation of Canada's constitution "le gâchis de 1982." Here, I am persuaded, we see the hand of the Prime Minister. Nobody badmouths the Clarity Act. Nobody goes after Dion for being mean to Quebec separatists qua separatists.

Personally, I wonder if it goes further than the practicality of keeping that arrow in the federalist quiver. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that Harper put the ideas enshrined in the Clarity Act to paper four years earlier with Bill C-341?

I wonder if Harper sees the Clarity Act as his baby, not Dion's. Maybe this is about more than just politics: maybe Harper and Dion actually agree on this one point.

Babble off.

Uncommon Newfoundlander sense

2007-02-09T11:38:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

Bono is at a U2 concert in Halifax, Nova Scotia, when he asks the audience for some quiet. Then, in the silence, he starts to slowly clap his hands. He says into the microphone, in a deep solemn voice...

"Just for a moment, think outside yourself...Outside this arena. Every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies."

A loud Newfy voice from near the front punctures the moment...

"Well, Lard tunderin jasus, ya stupid arse, stop yer fockin' clappin', then!"

Babble off.

"Security and development are two sides of the same coin"

2007-02-08T13:57:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

"We should not be looking for the exit."

- Nigel Fisher, President and Chief Executive of UNICEF Canada on our national commitment to Afghanistan

Babble off.

Deja vu

2007-02-02T09:24:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

For the first time in fourteen long years, I can point you to a Liberal promise that you can take to the bank.

Babble off.

It's such a small gesture

2007-01-25T10:40:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

Yes, you do have time to do this. He's a seven year-old child with leukemia sitting in isolation at a hospital right now. You'll make the time.

Right?

Babble off.

Turnabout and all that

2007-01-24T21:50:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

I just listened to Stephane Dion in a Newsnet clip saying that Stephen Harper is simply copying Liberal environmental policies and that the Canadian public won't be fooled by such a tactic.

I have two words for Mr. Dion: Clarity Act.

Babble off.

All the tactical finesse of the Maginot Line

2007-01-24T14:27:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

What are you, new , Gordo?

Babble off.

Bring on the attack ads

2007-01-22T12:32:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

Soldiers.

With guns.

In their cities.

We're not making this up.

Babble off.

Standing, cheering

2007-01-22T12:23:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

"Listen to me very carefully, my community is the Canadian community; I am not the ambassador of some country to Canada; I am an MP representing Canadians and my primary interest is Canada's welfare. I am not in politics to represent some overseas group or government. Yes, I am a Muslim, but I cannot be held hostage by self-appointed community leaders who have their own hidden agendas."

- Wajid Khan, Member of Parliament for Mississauga-Streetsville

Well said, sir. Damned well said.

Babble off.

"A more robust Canada"

2007-01-22T10:40:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

I gave up my place in the Red Ensign Brigade awhile back for reasons that will remain my own. I still fly the flag itself on this site because a good many brave and true men fought and died under it for Canada, and I don't think we should forget that. Or forget them, for that matter.

But John Donovan put a smile on my face when I checked his blog this morning, and found a Canadian Red Ensign flying. Not virtually, mind you, but a real cloth flag snapping and crackling in a snowy wind above his personal abode.

Above a retired U.S. Army officer's house.

In Kansas.

BZ John! Huzzah!

Babble off.

Recognizing recce

2007-01-18T10:36:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

Say these two words out loud, one right after the other: "reconnaissance" and "recognizance." Pretty similar, especially if you say them quickly, aren't they? The real distinction, given their similarity to the ear, should be the context.

Poor Melissa Leong at CanWest missed that entirely:

"They were going to come up here for refuge and what we were going to do was provide a safe house for them and we even scoped the area out, did a little recognizance," Mr. Shaikh said. [Babbler's bold]

Maybe he should have just said "recce" and waited for the journalists to ask him to spell it so they could look it up.

Babble off.

Agent Zigzag

2007-01-09T14:27:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

A story about suicide bombing, British style. (ht:BT)

Babble off.

A closer look

2007-01-05T09:31:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

David Akin at CTV takes a look at the Cabinet shuffle from a different perspective: committee appointments. I'll spoil the ending for you, but it's certainly worth the read to follow how he arrives at his conclusion and to find out who else he fingers as influential.

So, if you wanted to read the entrails here: Who in cabinet has the most juice? That would be Jim Prentice. Prentice is the only one who chairs two commiteess [sic]— Ops and EESy – and sits on Social Affairs and is an alternate to Treasury Board.

How novel: a PPG journalist finding his own way instead of mooing along with the crowd. Refreshing, Mr. Akin.

Babble off.

The opposition is unbalanced

2006-12-21T10:06:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

“The Liberals and the Bloc tell me: rebalance the mission. What does that mean? I mean, what the hell does that mean?”
- The Right Honourable Stephen Joseph Harper

Well said, sir. Removing the military from our Afghan mission wouldn't rebalance it, it would unbalance it.

Babble off.

Back. The. *$&!@. Off.

2006-12-12T15:16:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

My new bumper sticker:

What? If you ran up and down the 401 into Toronto, aka The Heart of Automotive Stupidity, for over two hours each day, you'd want one too.

And the firepower to back it up, of course.

Which reminds me: anyone know how to mount a turret on a '97 Lumina?

Babble off.

Another step closer...

2006-12-11T16:30:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

According to Lockheed Martin's PR firm here in Canada, the federal government has signed a Memorandum of Understanding to participate in the next phase of development for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Details at The Torch.

Babble off.

I am the great and powerful Oz!

2006-12-08T12:06:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

At the first blog-fest I attended, none of us knew what the others would look like. As we trickled in through the front doors of a bar that no longer exists, we'd nervously say "Are you a blogger?" and introduce ourselves by both blog-name and real-life name once kinship had been established. At one point, as a number of us stood around and introduced ourselves, some clever soul said "It's like watching a dozen Wizards of Oz having the curtains pulled back on them at once." Too true.

But fun nonetheless. So if you're in Toronto tonight, whether you blog or lurk, drop by our little gathering.

I'll even let you buy me a beer. No, really, I insist...

Babble off.

When change is good

2006-12-06T10:25:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

The Department of National Defence has made some positive changes to eligibility requirements for the Memorial Cross. If you're like ninety percent of Canadians out there and have no idea what I'm talking about, go read up.

Babble off.

Where no frappucino has gone before

2006-12-05T16:31:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

My only question is this: how long do you figure before they set up a Starbucks at this way-cool location?

Babble off.

Not even enough string to hang yourself

2006-11-30T14:30:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

Replace 'th' with 'wr' to get my feelings on this piece of political merchandise.

Babble off.

Through a glass, darkly

2006-11-29T15:19:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

Here's a stat that might surprise you as well: since January 16th of this year, 175 journalists from 37 different media outlets have embedded with the CF in Afghanistan. How many stories have you seen about the [Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team] - other than from the BBC? Now, how many ramp ceremonies have you seen?

The KPRT is doing fantastic work in Afghanistan, but most of us don't know much about it. Read about some of the fantastic reconstruction projects the Canadians have taken on here.

Babble off.

I was stirred, not shaken

2006-11-22T14:36:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

Well, I saw the latest James Bond offering last night, Casino Royale, and I must say I came away impressed. Imagine the best of Sean Connery's take on the character, but with a Bourne Identity feel. Then imagine it rougher. Daniel Craig makes the part his own, partly because he was given a really good script to do it with.

I like the fact that this Bond film has stepped back from the excesses of previous movies. This Bond-girl is a better foil than the 007 has ever had, and while she's pretty enough, she wasn't cast for her looks alone - that is to say, she's not a bombshell who can't credibly pull off the part (Denise Richards as a scientist, anyone?). The gadgetry was kept to a minimum, but not eliminated - although Q was conspicuously absent. The fight scenes were exciting and original, but they weren't over-the-top as so many Bond fights and chases have been through the years.

In fact, the fights were more brutal and gritty than fantastic, which was a welcome change for me. Instead, what we got was an international mystery involving a British field operative who happens to be extremely aggressive and unorthodox. According Casino Royale's producers - both of whom are related to the franchise's driving force, Albert Broccoli - this is deliberate. More than that, it's actually been done before (from Famous magazine - the free one you get at the theatre):

"Well, I think we've seen the Bond films go through different periods of change," offers Michael G. Wilson, who produces the Bond films with his stepsister [Barbara] Broccoli. "In the 1970's they got bigger and bigger and more fantastic until we reached Moonraker [1979] in outer space. And we realized that it was going in the wrong direction and we brought it back to basics with For Your Eyes Only [1981].

"And what we saw with Die Another Day is that we got to the same point," continues Wilson. "We started getting too high in the sky - outer space, invisible cars - the technology begand to overwhelm the story and the characters. We felt it was very important to bring it back down to earth."

They certainly accomplished that, but without bringing it so far back down to earth that it became mundane. Bond might not fare well when it becomes a caricature of itself, but the franchise would implode if it ever became boring and commonplace. This film walks the line quite nicely.

Perhaps I feel that way because I'm partial to the recent trend to go back to a well-known character's roots and reinvent the character without throwing out all we already know and love about them - a la Batman Begins. Casino Royale was the first of Ian Fleming's Bond books, and while the script has taken obvious liberties modernizing the story, it gets to the heart of what has made Bond such an elemental figure in film for the past forty years or so.

In the opening scenes of the movie, Bond doesn't even have his "Licence to Kill" 00 status yet, and the movie-makers allow the story to venture into both his motivations and his weaknesses - but not so much that it lapses into a Barbara Walters self-examination mush-fest. We see how much he puts into the job, and how little that actually leaves for himself. Not in such a way that we feel sorry for him, mind you, but just enough to add depth to a character that can lapse into two-dimensionality all too easily.

In fact, if you go to the Sony Pictures website and get into Bond's dossier, you see psych evaluations, personal history, military record, and intelligence work prior to 00 designation. That's a lot of back-story for a character that has been dismissed as a cardboard cutout, and it demonstrates the producers' commitment to reinventing James Bond in a more complicated and therefore believable incarnation without throwing out the past.

I liked the little touches, too: the origins of Bond's martini; some context for his rather cavalier attitude towards women; the use of not one, but two Aston Martins, old and new; the reintroduction of Felix from the CIA; a revisiting of the classic Bond locale - the Bahamas.

But most of all, I liked the fact that Daniel Craig - in a way not seen since Sean Connery, and maybe not to the same degree even then - convinced us that James Bond isn't just a clever cad, he's a dangerous man. A man that has been given a "Licence to Kill" by Her Majesty's government for a damned good reason - he can do the jobs nobody else can. Daniel Craig takes this part to the most physical place it has ever been, and the toughest and bloodiest as well. Some might say this isn't Bond: that true Bond doesn't muss the hair, that true Bond is about clever quips in the middle of a bloodless fight where the opponent dies quietly when Bond shoots him in the heart with a silenced Walther PPK from fifty yards after rolling onto one knee in a perfectly tailored tuxedo. Me, I'm with Daniel Craig on this:

"The truth is, if you're not getting bruised when you're doing Bond, you're not doing it properly..."

Craig has signed on to film another two movies, and if they hold true to Casino Royale's promising start, they'll be damned good indeed. I can't wait.

Babble off.

Update: For once, I go into greater depth in a movie review than Master Flea. Who knew that was even possible? And if you think I liked the film, Nick positively gushes:

For fear of aforementioned spoilage I shall say nothing except that this is the best Bond film ever made. Yes, I am including all the Sean Connery films. Yes, that means this a better Bond than From Russia With Love, a better Bond than Dr. No. Time to see the film if you have not already done so.

The only reason I've not said the same is that the film is still too new to me. I've seen it once, and I'm still enjoying the afterglow. I want to see how I feel about it after I've watched it a few times through, like I have the rest of the Bond movies.

Besides, I don't think the Bond franchise is about each individual film taken on its own. And while Daniel Craig has a compelling Casino Royale working for him, Sean Connery has an entire oeuvre that set the bar for the most successful movie franchise of all time. To use a sports analogy, one good season is not a Hall of Fame career.

But put another couple of performances like this up onto the big screen, and I'll be ready to finally bump Connery out of top spot in my personal pantheon - something I thought I'd never say.

Funniest. Line. Ever.

2006-11-21T07:50:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

"Help me, David Miller. What is the correct way to wipe my ass?"

Babble off.

A whetstone for her tongue

2006-11-17T13:58:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

While watching Ugly Betty alongside my wife last night with a couple glasses of wine in our hands, a commercial for CityLine popped up on the screen. The voiceover asked cheerily "Why is Marilyn Denis the most loved talk-show host in Canada?" or some such drivel.

To which my all-too-clever wife promptly replied: "Because her competition is Vicki Gabereau?"

And I laughed, and laughed...

Babble off.

Bringin' it old school

2006-11-13T16:59:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

Booya!

Babble off.

The Dead

2006-11-11T10:36:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

We remember them, today, and every day.

Babble off.

Pardon?

2006-11-06T16:10:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

This month's National Geographic brought surprising and unwelcome news to the Brooks household: Canadians don't drink enough beer. On a per capita basis, we're in the nineteenth slot in the world's pecking order. In fact, Canucks consume less than their counterparts in countries like Finland, Spain, and Portugal where beer is what you drink when there's no spirits, wine, or port to gulp back. We drink less than half the suds of your average Czech, the world leader. Heck, we're only three spots up from Russia, where rumour has it that if you ask for a beer, the barkeep will reply he hasn't heard of that brand of vodka.

Putting back the amber nectar is a matter of profound import, a patriotic imperative. I can accept running behind the Germans or the Brits, but I cannot abide finishing nine spots back of Venez-frickin'-uela. If we lose the beer wars, what's next? This is the first step down a treacherous path, at the end of which the Phillipines will be exporting their cheap jobs to us and Zambia will be kicking our heinie in international hockey.

None of that for me! I will personally do my part by quaffing a barley sandwich or three tonight when I get home. The munchkins will get beer on their cereal tomorrow morning. Best of all, I can get my beautiful wife tipsy with just a wave of the flag.

Do your part! Alan, to the barricades!

Babble off.

"My goal is to rescue children."

2006-11-03T10:55:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

I couldn't do it. I couldn't sit at my computer and immerse myself in the world of pedophiles, predators, and other child abusers, even for the express purpose of catching them and ending their heinous crimes. I couldn't put a big enough wall up around my soul - the job would simply tear me apart.

But Detective Constable Paul Krawczyk puts on his mental and emotional armour and dives into the putrid, execrable sludge of child pornography on the internet every day in the hopes that he can rescue one of the victims and bring their tormentors to justice. On Sunday, he did just that.

In real time, before his eyes, a man sexually assaulted a little girl.

"We see these images and unfortunately we see a lot of them, many times a day even," he told a news conference yesterday announcing the arrest of a 34-year-old St. Thomas man who police believe is responsible for the horrific assault.

"But to see this child and look in that child's eyes and realize that that child was alive somewhere and we had the possibility to save the child right then, it's difficult to describe."

In an interview with the Toronto Star, Krawczyk said he saw one thing in that little girl's eyes.

"Helplessness," he said, his right hand grabbing his forehead.

"It came without warning," he said.

Krawczyk had been chatting periodically with the man since January and was suspicious of him. But it wasn't until Sunday that the man started to send images and then assault the girl, he said.

"We had no reason or ability to arrest this person before that."

Within two hours, police in St. Thomas arrested a man at his home and charged him with a slew of sex crimes.

Unfortunately, our justice system has no tools at its disposal severe enough for someone - something - that commit such atrocities against a child. Temujin at West Coast Chaos said something online a long while back that stuck with me, and while I'm obviously not encouraging anyone to go Punisher on the abuser, Tem's words have been at the top of my mind since I heard this story on the radio last night: "I'm not picky: any kind of dead will do."

To Detective Constable Krawczyk and his fellow sleuths at the child-exploitation unit of the Toronto Police, I say "WELL DONE!" When I think of the difference you have made not only to this poor little girl, but to others less publicized, and of the toll it must take on you, my chest gets tight and my vision blurry. I cannot thank you enough.

Babble off.

Defending the dead

2006-10-31T13:24:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

The Globe & Mail recently did a hack-job on the character of Pte Mark Graham, who was killed in Afghanistan earlier this year. Some of us are hacking back.

Babble off.

Imagine if he'd had a weapon

2006-10-30T10:54:00.000-05:00

Babble on.

"They didn't get anything – except a bloody good hiding."

Who exactly? The four muggers who attacked a seventy-year-old former British soldier in Bielefeld, Germany, that's who (ht:FbL).

Picture for a moment the thrashing Douglas O'Dell could have unleashed if he'd been walking with a cane. The thought positively warms my heart.

Babble off.

Welcome to the woodshed, Mr. Akin

2006-10-28T15:13:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

Mark Collins takes CTV reporter David Akin out back and absolutely thrashes him - to my thinking, deservedly so. In attempting to craft a 'balanced' story, David gives more weight to remarks and ideas that he well knows don't merit it. While this creates the illusion of balance, those who know the merits of both arguments see it for what it is: a mirage.

I generally like and respect David, but this is not his finest hour, and I'm glad Mark called him on it.

For more decent information on the C-130J vs. A-400M debate, head on over to Army.ca.

The bottom line is that even if the A-400M eventually turns out to be a better plane, we need replacements for our Hercs yesterday, and the Airbus is not only years away from flying, it's even longer away from delivery.

That is to say, if we buy the updated Hercules, we're buying an airplane. If we buy the Airbus, we're buying a nice idea.

I'll take the plane, thank you very much.

Babble off.

Watch your black, gents

2006-10-26T07:47:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

I must apologize to Master Flea for treading on his culture-beat turf, but I trust he'll forgive me, since the play I quote from is a military one: Black Watch, about the legendary (former!) regiment of the same name.

At one point a Black Watch sergeant explains to his men why they are in Iraq: “You’re here because Her Majesty’s Government has decided that there’s no way we can sit down in Basra brushing up on our Arabic and topping up our tans when our allies are getting ten types ay shite knocked out ay them by the Mujahidin. It’s our turn tay be in the shite. We’ve had three hundred years ay being in the shite. If you dinnay like shite, then you shouldnay have bothered f*****g joining.”

Unfortunately, the shite didna limit itself to the stage, or even to field operations for that matter. The shite was dropped upon this proud military unit from a great height - the Palace of Westminster, to be exact.

The Black Watch are no longer a regiment, due to the machinations of Britain's Labour government. Instead, they are the 3rd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland. Like the author of the article quoted above, I doubt the regiment's soldiers appreciate the supposed efficiencies of amalgamation.

I wonder what was going through Gordon Brown’s mind as he watched the 3rd Battalion of the Black Watch (sic) swinging past him through the streets of Kirkcaldy on Saturday, pipes playing, boots thudding, eyes left. They had just been granted the freedom of Fife, the region that provides the bulk of their recruits, and they were parading in front of the VIPs, who included their local MP, the Chancellor.

He may have noticed that they wore battledress, not kilts, and he may have wondered why. It was not because they are about to go back to Iraq — which they are — but because, since the amalgamation of the Scottish regiments, they are allowed to wear the red hackle, their most famous emblem, only when they are kitted out for patrol.

Personally, I must echo the sentiments of Jeff Duncan:

"It is only a matter of time before all five Regiments are wearing the same uniform and the bracketed names are dropped. This is a meaningless gesture in the greater picture of almost 400 years of proud service to the country. The appalling decision to merge the Royal Scots with the King's Own Scottish Borderers will be remembered by all patriotic men and women of Scotland as the ultimate act of betrayal by this Labour Government and those cowardly, so-called Scottish MPs and MSPs - mainly Labour - who deserted the men of those Regiments in their hour of need."

Why is this important? Because, as Tom Clancy sagely asserted with the voice of a fictional but most realistic Royal Warder in his novel Patriot Games, tradition is in an integral part of the bedrock of what makes militaries function.

“Tradition is important,” Evans said. “For a soldier, tradition is often the reason one carries on when there are so many reasons not to. It’s more than just yourself, more than just your mates – but it’s not just something for soldiers, is it? It is true – or should be true – of any professional community.”

Who would have thought that Great Britain, of all the countries in the whole wide word, would have forgotten this? What a shame.

Sometimes fiction, no matter whether play or novel, tells the factual story best.

Babble off.

Putting in a call to the big 'Help Desk'

2006-10-22T20:21:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

So my dad has a bunch of old vinyl albums that he wants to convert into CD's, and neither of us had any clue how to do it, but we tried anyhow this afternoon: the blind leading the blind, deaf, and terminally dopey. Needless to say, we had zero success, although not from lack of time ~~invested~~ completely wasted.

Which is why I'm appealing to you, Gentle Reader, for help. Unlike the 'Help?' dropdown on just about every Windows-friendly program out there, I can explain my situation, and I trust you'll 'get it' without dredging up a bunch of false positives in some database that have nothing to do with my real question.

How the aitch-ee-double-hockey-stick do we get what's on his 33's and put them into a digital format that we could burn onto a CD?

Bueller? Anyone?

Babble off.

If you're not a gentleman, you can at least try to impersonate one at work

2006-10-20T10:41:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

I'm no fan of Belinda Stronach. She's proven time and again that fidelity - to a set of ideals, to a political party, to a person - isn't her strong suit, and I'm the sort of guy who takes that sort of character issue pretty seriously.

But MacKay should apologize for referring to her as a dog in the House of Commons (ht:DMB). What he has to say about her in private to his friends and family is his own business and will only reflect upon him. What he says in public, and especially in the House of Commons, also reflects upon his party, his government, his constituents, and ultimately the integrity of the Canadian political system.

You want to call your ex a bitch in a bar over a beer with your buds? Whatever. She's probably calling you an asshole over daquiris with her girlfriends just down the street, and the truth is that neither of you is probably going to have much class talking about the other one for awhile. I get that. Breakups are acrimonious more often than not, and it's hard not to level personal attacks on such a personal matter. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt and keep it in a bottom drawer so I don't have to be reminded about what a classless jerk I've been in decades past.

But levelling that sort of an insult in the House of Commons? Mr. Mackay, are you familiar with the concept of gravitas? Would you ever have made that remark in a court of law before you got into politics? Where is your professionalism? Where is your judgement?

Babble off.

Success? Failure? How long have you got?

2006-10-19T10:31:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

Some folks are somewhat smugly noting Jonathan Kay's lack of smugness. Why? Because Kay has published a piece in the National Post recanting his earlier support of the war in Iraq.

Kay makes three points to support his decision to issue a public mea culpa:

As I saw things in early 2003, there were three good reasons for deposing Saddam Hussein, any one of which, by itself, was sufficient to justify his ouster: (1) Saddam was a maniac who had weapons of mass destruction; (2) The creation of a democracy in the heart of the Muslim Middle East would transform the region by firing a fatal crack into the monolith of Arab tyranny; and (3) Putting the wrecking ball to Saddam's dungeons would end the wanton slaughter of Iraq's long-suffering people.

Turns out I was zero for three.

The first zero became obvious in the early months of the American occupation: The WMDs simply weren't there.

The second zero is playing out on the streets as you read this: Rival sectarian militias, rogue Iraqi security units, foreign Jihadis and coalition soldiers locked in an endless war of all-against-all. Amidst the carnage, millions of brave Iraqis have voted in national elections. But the forms and pageantry of democracy can't disguise the fact that the tolerant, pluralistic government everyone wanted remains a pipe dream: While Iraq's legislature serves as an arena for squabbling amongst the country's three main groups, the real spoils are hashed out on the streets by their various militias. Far from setting off a freedom epidemic in the Middle East, Iraq's tragedy has created Exhibit A for every Arab tyrant looking to justify his hold on power.

And then, last week, the third and final zero: a new study of 1,849 randomly selected, geographically representative Iraqi families conducted by the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

These 1,849 families had collectively suffered a staggering 547 violent deaths since the American invasion, a number almost eight times higher than one would expect based on pre-invasion death rates. If you extrapolate that increase to the whole of Iraq, you come up with a total of about 600,000 violent deaths.

As critics of the John Hopkins study have noted, extrapolation is an imperfect business. So let's assume the real total is half that -- that a mere 100,000 per year died violently in the three years following the invasion. This reduced total would still be stunning enough to undermine the humanitarian argument for war. Consider: During his quarter-century of absolute power in Iraq, Saddam killed about a million innocents through aggressive war, internal slaughters, political pogroms and assorted acts of torture and brutality. Do the math and you find that, as horrible as Saddam was, his killing machine chewed up humanity at less than half the rate of the bloody insurgency unwittingly spawned by America's invasion.

Jonathan Kay is, by all accounts, a fairly bright man, so I'm wondering why he chose these three particular points and these three specifics to support those points. Because you can make at least as good a case against each of those points as he makes for them.

Everyone opposed to the war likes to talk about WMD's. There was undoubtedly bad intelligence out there - French, Russian, British, and yes, American - about Saddam's purported stockpiles and production capabilities. Heck, even Saddam's own generals were reportedly surprised he didn't have them when push came to shove and they were facing the considerable might of the U.S. Army in the field. And he was certainly working to acquire WMD capacity despite the U.N. sanctions. So to me, second-guessing the coalition's decision to invade, given the intelligence they had, is like second-guessing the cop who sees a known violent criminal reach into his coat when told to freeze, and drops him, only to find out he only had a cell-phone in there. One of the best life lessons I've ever learned is that leaders make the best decisions they can with the information available to them at the time, and accept the consequences of those decisions. So I think Kay's first point is overblown Monday-morning quarterbacking.

The newest anti-war prop is the Lancet study. Call me a cynic, but the last study was a farce. The current study is receiving some informed criticism as well. Besides, when the first study was released less than a month before the U.S. Presidential election, and the current one was released less than a month before the Congressional mid-terms, my Spidey-sense starts tingling.

But all this talk about numbers obscures a more subjective criticism, which is that those who accord peace a higher relative value than freedom or justice will think one more death is too many, and no amount of talking with them will convince them otherwise. Some, both within Iraq and without, would argue that when the goal is a free and just society, a simple ledger can't tally the true results.

That's why the fact that the Lancet study seems to be what pushed Kay over the edge is so surprising to me.

Because to my way of thinking, the linchpin of any reasonable argument against the war is Kay's third supposed failure: it hasn't produced the free and just democracy supporters of the war hoped it would.

That's certainly true, as long as you append the statement with these two words: to date.

From the West's point of view, the Cold War was a failure until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Or, to put it in different terms that might make my point more clearly, the Russian Revolution was a success from 1918 to 1991. So to all who would declare any major geo-political event an unqualified success or failure, I have a question: what's your time frame?

Kay and other "misguided hawks" see Iraq in decline and have given up hope. They're like the investor who buys a stock at $50, sees it drop to $30 and decide to cut their losses and sell. Others see the drop as temporary, and have faith the stock will rebound and yield the profits they'd expected.

To me, the question is not whether Iraq is a success or a failure, it's whether Iraq is more like Apple Computers or Bre X - one eventually pulled out of the dive, and one cratered.

Whether Jon Kay is willing to admit it or not, his flip-flop is less about concrete facts, and more about his tolerance for risk and his own time horizon. The jury on Iraq remains out, and will remain out until the allies and the Iraqis themselves stop working on the problems facing that country.

Both the I-told-you-so's and the boy-was-I-ever-wrong's are premature.

Babble off.

More greenhouse gases, please

2006-10-12T19:37:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

Global warming, my pasty white ass.

It's October frickin' twelfth, for crying out loud. And in the sprawling countryside west of Toronto, we have snow. SNOW. Right now, outside my frickin' window. As I type this.

Don't believe me? Take a glance down my street.

What? You can't see my street? That's because there's a crapload of cold white fluffy stuff blowing and swirling out of the sky.

Look at my poor tree, my fence! It's not even Halloween yet!

Am I unimpressed? Note the unimpressed face on this blogger as I get dusted with a light coating of snow. Which takes all of a few seconds, since, in case I haven't mentioned it yet, we're in the middle of a frickin' snowstorm not halfway through October.

I live at the same latitude as Marseilles on the Mediterranean. The same as Tuscany. The same as Sapporo, Japan.

If we're going to have Global Warming^TM, at least send a little of it my way.

*shiver*

Babble off.

Update: Silver lining? At least I don't live in Buffalo. Of course, you don't need a snowstorm to say that...

Damned if you do, damned if you don't

2006-10-04T11:16:00.001-04:00

Babble on.

Neither the revival of Iraq nor of Afghanistan is going as well as proponents of both wars, myself included, would have hoped. The authority and legitimacy of both local and national governments remains tentative, violent insurgencies are still active and effective, and reconstruction and revitalization efforts have yielded disappointing results. Neither country is as far down the road to recovery as any of us would like.

The purpose of this post is not to delve into the various and sundry reasons for that state of affairs. No, I'm simply interested in pointing out a particular dynamic operating among many of us who look back and try to figure out how it all could have been done better.

On the one hand, you have folks - including at least one very senior officer in the Canadian military - who think the de-Baathification of Iraq and the disbanding of the Iraqi army were collosal mistakes. Bruce at Flit falls into this broad category of pundit:

First off, much of the German army was kept in being or reconscripted into labour battalions to assist in early rebuilding. I identified the May 23, 2003 decision to permanently disband the Iraqi military and aggressively de-Baathify the civil service as a huge error in September of that year, and nothing that's happened since has changed that opinion.

Many of these same people will argue that the way the Afghan situation was handled was a much smarter line of attack: work with those, regardless of previous political affiliation, who seem to have a grasp on how to push and pull the levers of power and command the authority within their community to do so effectively. In Afghanistan, this meant bringing 'warlords' into the fold.

The problem with that particular plan is now quite evident to people on the ground:

Even before I arrived in Kandahar, in December, 2001, I was worried about what kind of government would replace the Taliban regime. For it seemed that U.S. officials were ushering discredited warlords into positions of power, though the Afghan people wanted nothing of them, and gave President Hamid Karzai a resounding mandate to expel them from the body politic. In 2002 and 2003, the U.S. government prevented Mr. Karzai from moving against these warlords, and then he, discouraged, gave up trying. The result is a government that is devoured by corruption, with offices up for sale, and officials whose entire motivation is to extract money and favours from their countrymen.

Safia Ama Jan, unfortunately, was one of those, and so her death is very emblematic indeed. She used her office to monopolize money earmarked for Kandahar women, pocketing much of it and using the rest to favour exclusively the members of her own ethnic group. Afghans currently dread interaction with officials like Safia Ama Jan. Bribes are extracted for the least administrative task; soldiers manhandle people or shake them down; principals steal humanitarian assistance earmarked for their students.

"We are like a man trying to balance on two watermelons," said Zarghona, a member of my co-operative, this summer. "The Taliban prey upon us at night, and the government preys upon us in the daytime."

As I mentioned on this blog a year and a half ago, I find the second-guessing on this particular issue frustratingly unconvincing.

Some of the other points critics of the war make are questionable, and come down to carping. Take the example of disbanding the Iraqi army and banning Baathists from holding any positions of power. Turned the country into a chaotic mess, right? In hindsight, maybe. But we'll never be able to know what would have happened if the U.S. had taken the other fork in that road. It's quite possible the insurgency would have been far more effective with Baathist sympathizers in key government positions. And how much would the brutalized Shia and Kurdish populations have supported the reform process if their oppressors had been left in positions of influence? This sort of criticism is about counting angels dancing on pinheads.

Is it worth having the discussion about hypotheticals? Sure it is. But we shouldn't jump to unsubstantiable conclusions. That holds true for my side of the argument as well: keeping experienced Baathist hands on levers of government with which they were intimately familiar might well have avoided much of the chaos that has allowed the insurgency to survive this long. Just because I have a hard time swallowing that line of reasoning doesn't mean I'm right.

Historians, political scientists, and military strategists will dissect the decisions made in these campaigns for decades to come. Distilling the one essential factor that made post-war Japan different from post-war Iraq (or Germany from Afghanistan) will be the speculative work of many a scholar.

But the truth of it as I see it, in the simple terms my non-scholarly understanding permits me, is that there is no definitively right or wrong decision when it comes to rebuilding a country, an entire society from the ground up. Perhaps neither decision would have been a good one; perhaps both were equally unlikely to produce the desired results.

That's why I'll continue to straddle the fence on this issue: nobody's yet made a convincing argument to jump one way over the other. Somehow that doesn't seem to stop either side from trying.

Babble off.

Seeing red

2006-09-29T10:31:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

Dundas Square. Ninety minutes from now. A sea of red in support of the troops.

The bigger the crowd, the bigger the cheer Canadian soldiers will hear.

Afghanistan is a long way away. But at Yonge-Dundas Square today at noon, a lot of people will let our troops know that we care.

And they will hear us.

AM 640 and CFRB 1010 radio stations will both carry the program live to our troops in the field.

That's right Toronto, thanks to modern technology, our support will be dropped right into the war zone. Our message will be taken directly to our soldiers in the field. We will talk directly to them.

I'll be there, and I hope you will too.

Babble off.

Update: I've put up a couple of photos over at The Torch.

Things are moving along swimmingly

2006-09-27T15:16:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

Canada does not lack the talent to compete with other nations at the Olympics, winter or summer. In any event, the talent pool tends to be related more to population than anything else - the rest is exposure and development - and so worrying about talent isn't too productive. What we have lacked, up until fairly recently, is organization and focus. Unlike talent, organization and focus can be improved through...well...organization and focus. The point is, we can actually improve it with a little effort.

The Own the Podium program for the winter games has already borne fruit, and now Alex Baumann has been repatriated to lead the Road to Excellence initiative, a similar program for the summer games.

Some top athletes can't pass on what made them successful. Some can only do it on a tactical level, and not a strategic or systemic one. Baumann isn't one of them.

In 1991, Baumann moved to Australia to pursue graduate studies at the University of Queensland. Following his academic career, he was appointed as the Manager of Sport Programs for the Queensland Academy of Sport in 1996. He then held various positions with the Queensland Government before becoming Chief Executive Officer of Queensland Swimming in 1999. In 2002, he assumed the role of Executive Director for the Queensland Academy of Sport where he was responsible for overseeing sport programs, athlete and coach support services, regional services, the Centre of Excellence for Applied Sport Science Research and business services in order to ensure that Australian athletes had the best resources necessary for attaining high-performance goals.

"The appointment of Alex Baumann to lead the Road To Excellence initiative is a major shot in the arm for the Canadian summer sport system," said Swimming Canada Chief Executive Officer and National Coach Pierre Lafontaine. "Having worked with Alex in Australia, I am confident in saying that no individual will bring about as much focus, dedication, passion and commitment to the position as Alex. He is one of the top high-performance strategists in the world and we are very lucky to have his guidance and leadership in developing and executing this plan."

Not that the good folks at the COC need my advice, but I can't think of a better choice - inspirational for Canadians because of his personal performance and iconic athletic status, and proven organizationally for leading a prominent and successful high-performance sporting body. Hopefully the days of never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity are done and gone. This is a good sign for Canadian athletics.

Babble off.

Deficient

2006-09-22T16:10:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

The Liberal Party of Canada lacks any sort of class whatsoever these days.

There were many notables in the Commons for his speech and some notable no-shows. Former Prime Minister Paul Martin, for example, was not in the House — even though both he and former Prime Minister Chretien were praised by Karzai for their commitment to Afghanistan. In fact, there were more than a dozen Liberal MPs — and perhaps as many two dozen — who were absent for the speech. This is all the more odd because it was the Liberals, of course, who first sent Canadian troops into Afghanistan. By comparison, I did not see an empty seat among the Conservative, BQ, or NDP benches.

Martin didn't even bother to show up? The mind boggles...I'm just flabbergasted. Tell me again why this man should be allowed to continue collecting a paycheque on the taxpayers dime?

Pearson must be spinning in his grave. What a disgrace.

Babble off.

All the depth of a parking-lot puddle

2006-09-22T10:20:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

Rosie DiManno's column in today's Toronto Star is worth reading for this line alone:

But elsewhere, be it Darfur or Haiti — or whatever bright object of humanitarian need might captivate the likes of Jack Layton — would lose its thrall, you can bet on it, as soon as Canadian troops started dying there, too. (Babbler's italics)

Apparently DiManno's not the only one unimpressed by Taliban Jack! and his adamant refusal to accept the realities of rebuilding a peaceful and independent Afghanistan, when the glib and easy alternative is to exclaim "Support our troops! Bring them home!" to ego-feeding applause from his domestic political base.

Hamid Karzai - you know, the elected leader of Afghanistan who has publicly thanked Canada a number of times for sending soldiers to his country to help stabilize and reconstruct a civil society there - isn't even answering Layton's correspondence (ht: The Cornerbrook Doppelganger).

NDP Leader Jack Layton has made several requests for a meeting with the Afghan leader - and has had no reply.

Well, when Jack! is spouting the drivel that follows, it's no wonder Karzai doesn't want to waste his time sharing fake smiles over stale donuts with the man.

“This mission is completely out of whack,” Layton said.

“By investing so heavily in the war effort in the south, it’s depriving Afghanistan from the investments in humanitarian aid and in reconstruction that are required elsewhere in the country.”

So...what, Layton? Are we supposed to abandon the southern provinces to barbarism? Or is some other nation supposed to have its sons and daughters trudge and bleed and fight in the dirt of Kandahar to pacify the region before we arrive bright-faced and bushy-tailed ready to dig wells and build schools? Which nation should shoulder that burden? Someone's going to have to, because the Afghans themselves can't yet. That's why Karzai continues to request our support, you posturing, facetious dilettante. Any wonder why he won't allow you to waste his precious time?

As Christie Blatchford has noted, this man is clever enough to know that the CF is doing the heavy-work required to allow the humanitarian and reconstruction projects to take root. That he chooses to deliberately ignore that fact for crass political gain speaks volumes about his character.

Or lack thereof, to be more accurate.

Babble off.

Update: Stephen Taylor notes that the ass doesn't fall far from the hole:

In 1937, Tommy Douglas said the following before Parliament:

"Against whom are we arming? What potential aggressor is more aggressive today? Oh, I know that bogeymen have been trotted out in this chamber. It has been suggested that it might be Italy, it might be Germany, it might be Japan."

It might be congenital.

Floaters

2006-09-19T13:13:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

Correspondent JMH sent this "Navy recruiting ad" along by e-mail. You'll need your speakers on, and depending upon where you work, you might need to listen at home.

Needless to say, JMH is an army guy.

Of course, my navy buddies got a kick out of it too - military humour tends towards the dark and the sharp, and no offense is intended or taken when it tends this way, because it always has.

Babble off.

The real issue hardly registers

2006-09-15T11:50:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

Skippy's on a roll these days, and I can't find much I disagree with in this stand-out post on gun control and the Dawson College tragedy:

The real issue here is not whether a long gun registry is required, or whether a long gun registry is useless. The weapon in question, as it turns out, is not a long gun, a fact which snuck in the back door in the middle of this bunfight and made fools of the participants.

The weapon in question is a restricted firearm. As with a pistol, this weapon needed to be registered regardless of the long gun registry. And the information released so far suggests that it was, in fact, registered, which means -- if it was registered to the shooter -- that the shooter, a bona fide nutcase, passed all the background checks required to obtain it, and register it.

It's all too easy to use such an emotionally compelling incident to bludgeon a political or ideological opponent. I fall victim to that temptation from time to time myself.

But if we're to have any hope of effectively addressing this issue at all, we need to resist that temptation and ask the questions that will best help us prevent another senseless tragedy, and not just the questions that will make our opponents squirm the most.

As Skippy puts it, it's time for the grown-ups to talk.

Babble off.

Stand easy

2006-09-14T15:40:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

RIP, Philip Cowie, husband and father, naval officer, rugby player, and mentor.

I knew Phil for only three years from '89 to '92, while attending RMC, but how long you knew Phil had nothing to do with how much he inspired you. He was a man, in the noblest sense of the word, and for a boy striving to become a man at the time, his character and presence was a beacon.

One story among my memories of Phil stands out among the rest.

It was rugby season in the fall of '91 at RMC, and Phil was just coming back from his first bout with cancer, not yet fully recovered. The cadets from West Point were coming to Kingston, and Phil wanted to play, if he could. I gladly gave up my spot in the lineup.

There was a fierce wind that day, and for some reason, the normally hard-running USMA team were kicking the ball deep as often as they could. Phil at fullback ran under under every single kick and stood up under the punishing tackles he knew were coming until support could arrive. He didn't drop a ball, he didn't let a single man past him, he kicked the ball miles in the air, and he inspired the rest of the team around him.

He couldn't have weighed more than 160lbs at the time - not a lot for a man with his six-feet-plus athletic frame, and probably fifty pounds off his prime - but he didn't shepherd his strength or pace himself. He went all out right from the opening whistle.

Those of us on the sidelines knew we were seeing something special, and when we weren't cheering ourselves hoarse with encouragement, we were holding our collective breath. You could see the superhuman effort he was putting forth and how much this performance was costing him, etched grimly on his face. He just wouldn't quit, wouldn't back down, wouldn't accept anything from himself other than his very best. It was leadership by example, distilled and pure.

At the half, visibly exhausted, Phil asked me to take over for him. Whatever he had set out to prove to himself that day, he had done it. I had played rugby for years, and I was never as nervous going into a game as I was that day, trying to fill shoes the size of a boat. But after his example, how could you not step up?

As I write this, I realize it sounds silly making so much of what, at the end of the day, was just a game. All I can say is that something about how he played, and practiced, and coached; about how he doled out scolding with nothing more than a disapproving look and encouragement with a grin and a clap on the shoulder; about how he held himself and...LIVED, I guess, simply showed everyone around him how to be better themselves. Not just at rugby, mind you, but at anything they chose.

I've never forgotten that episode, or dozens of others involving him, because Phil Cowie inspired me like few others in my life ever have, and the memory of him inspires me still. He was larger-than-life, and he will be truly missed.

Babble off.

Tanks very much for the primer, son

2006-09-13T21:05:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

Over at The Torch, Wonderdog, who has some experience operating from the inside of the armoured behemoth we call the Leopard C2, has written an excellent primer on the proposed deployment of that weapon to Afghanistan.

Debunking the Globe & Mail's sloppy and dishonest reporting on this story would require more typing than I'm willing to do. Suffice to say that the total number of the 2000-plus Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan who will be buttoned up in those fifteen Leopards will be ... 60.

That should put all the cheering and hand-wringing into perspective.

Let's be clear. What the government is sending -- if the proposal is approved -- is the Leopard C2 tank. The Leopard is operated by a crew of four (driver, gunner, loader and crew commander). It does not carry troops, and is not a substitute for the LAV III. Its frontal armour is essentially impervious to RPGs and other mere pop-guns, but this is not to say that it is invulnerable. The side and rear armour is thinner, and a roadside bomb could easily render a Leo immobile by damaging tracks or suspension. If that were to happen, and an ARV was unavailable, the crew could be forced to destroy the tank in place -- not something you'd like to see, if you only had 15 of them.

[Zipper]head on over and read the rest.

Zipperhead. Are you listening, son? I'm talking about a tanker. That's a joke, son, a joke. Stand up next time, son, I say stand up - they're going right over your head. /Foghorn Leghorn

Babble off.

Now who's wearing the pants, baby!

2006-09-12T15:59:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

Well, if the winning ticket isn't the one sitting folded in my wallet, I guess it might as well go to these deserving souls:

The eight women, who are civilian staff members at Canadian Forces Base Petawawa in eastern Ontario, bought the ticket that had the winning numbers for Friday's Super 7 lottery.

The jackpot divides to about $650,000 for each of them.

***

All eight wore T-shirts emblazoned with yellow ribbons signalling support for the soldiers.

The women, who range in age from 24 to 55, work for the Normandy Officers Mess and learned of their good fortune on Saturday after one of them looked up the numbers on the internet.

All but one of the women is a military spouse and two of their husbands are among the more than 2,000 Canadians now serving in Afghanistan.

The women said their husbands didn't believe them at first when they told them of the win on the telephone.

Hoo-ahh, ladies. Six hundred and fifty K goes a long, long way in Pet.

Babble off.

Cross-posted to The Torch.

Ignorance trumps knowledge on volume alone

2006-09-11T18:04:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

In each of the past four years, this anniversary has left me with different thoughts and emotions, like my subconscious needs to choose a theme. This year, the strongest of those is curiosity, combined with all-too-familiar frustration. Specifically, as I reflect today upon the events of September 11th, 2001 and the subsequent shift in geopolitics precipitated by that event, I keep coming back to Russia.

I'd guess that Russia had more and better intelligence from inside Afghanistan than any other major power in the world on September 10th, 2001. I'm wondering how much they would have shared with the Western powers on September 10th, and how much they started to share on September 12th. I wonder how active they've been in influencing first, U.S. efforts, and second, NATO efforts in the country. They've undoubtedly provided intelligence support to Western nations, but I wonder how useful and reliable that intelligence has been, and I wonder what they've held back. I'm curious about what the West disregarded and what it heeded, and whether lessons have been learned about how to best utilize Russia's purported help.

If that story has been told, I sure can't find it. My guess is that, even within the intelligence organs of the West privy to Russian cooperation, the story isn't a complete and coherent one. Leadership often requires that hard decisions be made on incomplete information, but how can we refine our efforts if we don't even know what we're doing right and wrong - what we know and what we don't?

The discouraging thing is that Russia's influence upon in this great conflict is such a small part of what we don't know - about that day, about the events leading up to it, and about our efforts and those of the enemy subsequent to it. I'd guess that today I'm focused on such a sliver of 9/11 because it's practically impossible to focus on everything about that day. You have to pick something within it, or the magnitude of the problem can overwhelm you.

Who knows what about whom and whether they really know what they think they know, not to mention whether anyone trusts what anyone else knows, let alone trusts their own information, is a confusing tangle of uncertainties. In order to even make a start, you have to pick something out of the mess, and concentrate upon it. But if you focus too tightly upon a particular aspect with no vision of the whole, your lack of context hobbles the entire effort anyhow. What a frustrating game intelligence can be.

Especially when real people die, and remind us that national security intelligence is not a game at all.

***

RIP, Bernard Mascarenhas, a former colleague, and a human face on a tragedy that would have defied my comprehesion without a personal dimension to anchor it. My condolences on this terrible anniversary to his friends and family.

Babble off.

Stuff that isn't political

2006-09-06T17:22:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

I once complained over a beer to Bob Tarantino that the hardest thing about blogging for me was thinking up clever titles to posts. He replied that he'd given up on that and was simply pulling quotes from his links instead. I'm beginning to think that's not a bad idea, given my complete blank on this post.

At least the title's descriptive, if not even close to clever. Ah well, you get what you pay for, etc.

***

My darling Litlbit and I saw some Jay Strongwater pieces at Harrods in London, and coveted them greedily right away. If I had a tip jar, I'd be begging you to hit it now, since this stuff is way out of our budget. Way out. The truly crappy aspect of this is that it's carried in only three stores in three cities across Canada: Vancouver, Montreal, and...wait for it...Winnipeg. Yes, that Winnipeg. Not a single shop in T.O. where we can go to drool over the stuff. I mean, Winnipeg? WTF?

***

About a month ago, one of my brothers asked if he could take my five-year-old Boo to a movie, which I thought was a great idea. All of us, including Boo, thought that Over The Hedge would be a perfect choice, and so after installing the car seat in my brother's car, off they went. As it turns out, they missed the showing, and my brother called me to see if he could take Boo to another flick - Superman Returns. I hadn't seen the movie at that point, but my brother had, and I told him I'd trust his judgement. He replied that he didn't think there was anything inappropriate in the film, but that he wasn't generally familiar with what might or might not be OK for a five-year-old. So instead of checking it out myself first, I told him I trusted his judgement, and they went to the Superman movie.

After seeing it myself a couple of weeks later, I realized it really wasn't appropriate for Boo - not my brother's fault at all, mind you, but mine. Part of the problem was that I had no idea where I would have turned to see if the movie was appropriate. Another of my brothers provided that answer: Kids In Mind.

The purpose of kids-in-mind.com is to provide parents and other adults with objective and complete information about a film's content so that they can decide, based on their own value system, whether they should watch a movie with or without their kids.

It's like a food labeling system which tells you what a food item contains. That's it. We make no judgments about what is good or bad or anything else. Indeed, we do not "condemn," "critique" or "criticize" movies. And we don't "praise" or "recommend" movies either. We advance no "beliefs" and we do not "preach" anything. We are not affiliated with any political party, any cultural or religious group, or any ideology. The only thing we advocate is responsible, engaged parenting.

If one reads our reviews one will often find many instances where our descriptions are so detailed they seem absurd. But we'd rather err on the side of comprehensiveness. It's up to parents to decide which details are useful to them and their family, and which ones they consider fatuous.

What an excellent idea, and only a dozen years old, or so. Smack me with a clue-bat. I need to stay with the tour.

***

It's too bad she's decided that she needs to out-skank the rest of the field to compete, because Christina Aguilera can flat-out sing. I know, I know, not a particularly sophisticated music consumer, am I? Well, I like to think that musically I know a hawk from a handsaw most of the time - but sometimes a song is just plain catchy. Ain't No Other Man fits that category. It's got a nice beat, and my kids dance to it. Sometimes, that's good enough.

Try watching the live version as well. I'm partial to funky big bands.

***

As always, your mileage may vary.

Babble off.

Bringing up the average

2006-09-05T15:09:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

Whether he intends it or not, David Akin is bringing up the average level of quality and integrity in Canadian journalism, one small action at a time.

Yesterday, he explained in detail how he covered the recent deaths of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, with respect:

I'm a TV reporter [see the profile for details]. Just as I wouldn't presume that one CF member's behaviours and attitudes are typical of all CF members, I trust you'll recognize that all journalists behave and act in different ways. Here's my story.

I was assigned to Petawawa yesterday...

The kicker? His explanation was posted at Army.ca - where you should read the entire comments thread.

Media accountability, responsibility, sensitivity, and professionalism. That's the way it should be done.

Babble off.

If you do it at a park, why isn't it called 'parking'?

2006-08-25T20:23:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

Have you ever been to Presqu'ile Provincial Park? Either have I. I'll let you know what it's like when I get back.

If the kids don't run me into the ground, and the wife doesn't disown me first, that is. I tend to like the whole living outdoors thing more than they do.

Just to be prudent, I'm shutting down comments until I get back - around Labour Day. Until then, try some of the blogs in my sidebar, especially The Torch.

Babble off.

Update: Well, much fun was had by all. Bleached seagull skulls and maggoty fish carcasses on beaches ripe with the stink of blooming algae proved quite interesting for the bairns. I got to start and finish the latest Gabaldon novel, which I will return to my mother's library smelling heavily of woodsmoke. My lovelier half met new friends, as we took over a whole section of the campground with fourteen other souls connected by a somewhat unique university experience more than a decade ago. I would heartily recommend Presqu'ile to any and all.

But now we're back. Senior kindergarten starts tomorrow for Boo. Home improvement projects await my hand. The office is spooling back up after the typically slower pace of summer. Pitter patter, let's get at 'er.

Minarets should be for muezzins

2006-08-25T17:30:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

U.S. forces in Iraq used direct fire from an Abrams to take out a building insurgents were using to launch a fierce attack. How is this noteworthy? Well, usually you don't fire a tank's main gun in an urban environment, but that's not why Reuters cares. They care because the building U.S. soldiers took out was a mosque (ht:JD)

U.S. tanks shelled a mosque in the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Ramadi on Friday after coming under rocket-propelled grenade and machinegun fire from the building, the U.S. military said.

A doctor at Ramadi hospital told Reuters three people had been killed and 22 wounded by the U.S. fire, which the U.S. military said was provoked by a "complex attack" that also included hand grenades and improvised explosives.

"Coalition forces returned fire in self defense, using escalation of force procedures, and finally fired several main gun rounds from M1 tanks into the mosque in order to defeat the attackers," the military said in a statement.

The mosque suffered serious structural damage to the dome and minaret, it said, adding that one soldier had been slightly hurt in the attack.

U.S. forces generally refrain from damaging religious buildings but say they will attack them if fired upon. They accuse militants from both Sunni and Shi'ite factions of using mosques for military purposes.

A couple of years back, I commented - roughly, to be sure - on how much that sort of tactic drives me nuts. To launch an attack from a religious building, a spiritual centre is absolutely indefensible.

Now I know that it may be counterproductive from a 'hearts & minds' perspective to return fire into a holy site. I know that that's one of the reasons the fanatics do it - to turn general opinion against their opponents.

But there's something that resonates for me about a policy that boils down to this: "We will accord religious sites precisely the same respect as our opponents do."

Do not hide behind innocents, do not attack from sacred ground, do not use Western decency against us. Because one day, the West - whether it be Canada, Israel, Britain, France, or, God forbid, the U.S. - might well feel the time for Western decency has passed. And at that point, it really will be about killing them all and letting God sort them out, as the old slogan goes.

The capability exists, it's the will to use it that doesn't...yet.

Poking an elephant with a sharp stick when it's tied up presumes the leash will hold. That's a dangerous presumption to make. Hopefully this escalation will forestall further provocation. But given the jihadis' historical pattern, I'm not holding my breath.

Babble off.

"Blog eradication team reporting, General Canute!"

2006-08-23T17:36:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

Did you know that, according to a story in the Toronto Star, the Canadian Forces has no official policy on blogging? Neither did I. That surprised me enough that I wrote a post about it at The Torch - one I hope you'll read.

The truth is that the CF should have two policies: one for uniformed personnel who choose to blog, offering guidance on how to do that without running afoul of their military obligations; and one for DND Public Affairs on how to utilize blogs to the benefit of the CF.

Some will cry foul over the last part of that statement: "but...but...you wouldn't allow yourself to be manipulated by a PAO, would you?" No, I wouldn't. But I would consider putting stories out on my blog that had come from CF Public Affairs and weren't getting any MSM press, if I found those stories had merit. And besides, the CF shouldn't be concerned with how I run my blog, they should be properly concerned with how to get their message out to the Canadian public.

You, gentle reader, may not realize it, but some bloggers - myself included - already get press releases. Personally, I receive information directly from a Canadian political party office (I'll let you guess which one), from an independent advocacy group, and from a PR firm who does defence lobbying, among others. Some of this information makes its way into the blog posts I write here and at The Torch , some makes its way into the e-mail trash bin.

Online media is only going to grow in volume and importance. The CF needs to get out in front of the wave, instead of forbidding it to come in.

Babble off.

The cat's among the pigeons, now...

2006-08-22T16:24:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

I await the rending of clothes, the beating of breasts, the wailing and gnashing of teeth. Because the Canadian Medical Association's straight-out-of-the-box shiny brand new President not only owns a private orthopedic clinic, he actually has the temerity to believe Canadians should be able to pay for health care if they so choose.

Day said he has never supported the privatization of health care in Canada, and accused his detractors of deliberately distorting his position.

"Like most Canadians, and most physicians, I believe there is a place for the private sector and for public-private partnerships," he said.

Day believes the CMA has an important role in defining how the public and private sectors can work together to provide the best possible health care for Canadians.

Currently, my mother has more choice in how she handles her cat's health issues than she does over how she handles her own. For a CMA President to recognize the ludicrousness of this situation should not be cause for alarm.

But it will be. The calls to defend the integrity of Medicare will come faster than you can sign your name on a family practice waiting list.

Never mind that the CMA's mission statement eschews ideology in favour of results:

CMA Mission Statement
To serve and unite the physicians of Canada and be the national advocate, in partnership with the people of Canada, for the highest standards of health and health care.

In fact, never mind that the CMA President doesn't set policy for the group, and that even if he did, the physicians' association doesn't set policy for our various levels of government. Never mind that parallel public and private systems operate successfully around the world. Never mind that Canadians already access those systems in significant numbers. The health care Chicken Littles won't have any of it.

Having said that, the election of Dr. Day is not entirely insignificant, considering the discussion paper on this week's agenda:

Delegates at the CMA Annual Meeting Aug. 21–23 will be asked to use the paper to reconsider the private–public split. The CMA has traditionally supported a public system.

More privatization, however, may be problematic, the paper states, noting that reform of the system may be all but impossible without a significant increase in the number of physicians.

Drawing on international data and feedback from some 2800 Canadian doctors, the paper sketches 4 possible scenarios for the evolution of the Canadian system:

Status quo

Medicare plus: Including an evaluation of the basket of insured services, more cost-sharing arrangements (e.g., premiums), allowing physicians to opt out, and allowing Canadians to buy private insurance for some services and to get paid care elsewhere if wait times are exceeded (safety valve)

Medicare complemented: Including a safety valve for more procedures, an expanded range of privately funded services (and private insurance for the same), and allowing physicians to deliver medically necessary services under both publicly and privately funded systems

Medicare plus parallel private: Public services for all, but Canadians will have the option of private insurance for a full range of hospital and medical services.

None of the scenarios completely meet all the paper's 10 recommended guiding principles for the future of health care, CMA President Ruth Collins-Nakai said during the paper's release.

“At some point Canadians have to decide whether or not they want to continue with a tax-supported collective health care system or whether they wish to go with a more private, individual-rights type of system and ignore the collective. That's what it comes down to. Or whether they want something that is somewhere between those 2 extremes.”

One wonders if what the CMA sees as the biggest roadblock to reform is actually a chicken and egg scenario:

The paper indicates that it may well be impossible for Canada to adopt any alternative to the status quo without significantly increasing the number of physicians and hospital beds. It states that “All 12 countries with parallel private systems have a higher ratio of practising physicians to population than Canada.” Canada had the lowest ratio of physicians to 100 000 population at 2.1; the highest is 4.4 in Greece.

Does a more flexible system attract or help retain qualified physicians, or are they a prerequisite for a more flexible system in the first place.

I don't know the answer to that question. But if the CMA is discussing this, and the membership has elected a president with a vision that departs from the status quo, one wonders if we're seeing the first signs of a sea change in Canadian health care. At least the CMA isn't backing down from this discussion. Good on them for realizing our health system is a means to an end, and not an end in and of itself.

If only the defenders of the status quo would have the same revelation.

Babble off.

Update: Egad. I'm disappointed, but can't say I'm surprised. Tip of the toque, as Andrew would say, to his own Bound By Gravity, where he weighs in himself.

When to talk, and when not to

2006-08-22T11:55:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

Borys Wrzesnewskyj is wrong. I don't just mean wrong about what he supposedly said to CanWest, I mean wrong even in his clarifying press release (ht:Akin):

“What I did say, however, is that the legislation surrounding our banned list of terrorist organizations must be evaluated to ensure our role as mediator is not compromised. Currently, the legislation forbids Canada from having any discussions with those on the list, and I believe this is not the way to achieve peace.

“Canada must be a partner in any efforts by the international community to bring peace and stability to the region, and we can not play that role if we are shackled by this legislation which forbids us from even speaking to those groups on our list. Discussion, negotiation and diplomacy are paramount to a lasting peace.”

From that CanWest article, here's a bit more of his rationale for this position:

He likened the situation in the Middle East to that of Northern Ireland, where "if there wasn't the possibility for London to negotiate with the IRA, you'd still have bombings."

"Hezbollah has a political wing. They have members of parliament. They have two Cabinet ministers. You want to encourage politicians in this military organization so that the centre of gravity shifts to them."

Sounds reasonable, right? I mean, the old saw about making peace with your enemies, not your friends is actually true. If you can't talk with your enemies, how will you ever make peace with them?

Well, the Phantom Observer makes a good start chipping away at Borys' argument by tackling the IRA angle:

The big problem with Borys’s analogy, of course, is that the IRA never denied that Britain had a right to exist, never claimed that England was their territory.

Bingo.

And that's actually symptomatic of an even bigger problem for Borys and all those who think like him: Hezbollah doesn't want to achieve peace through negotiation. The only peace they're interested in is one resulting from the destruction of their enemy.

"I am against any reconciliation with Israel. I do not even recognize the presence of a state that is called "Israel." I consider its presence both unjust and unlawful. That is why if Lebanon concludes a peace agreement with Israel and brings that accord to the Parliament our deputies will reject it; Hizballah refuses any conciliation with Israel in principle."

I'm all for talking with your enemies - once they're ready to talk. Sometimes that requires a bit of aggressive persuasion. Until Nasrallah and his band of thugs are interested in talking about a lasting peace - not a strategic pause - we shouldn't grant them any legitimacy whatsoever.

Babble off.

What to say about Vic and the kids?

2006-08-16T11:40:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

I'm all for accountability, and I'm all for learning about consequences at a young age. Caring for kids isn't the same as giving them unlimited licence to do whatever they please; in fact, caring for kids expressly calls for instilling a sense of accountability in them that prepares them for responsible adulthood. On the basis of that, you'd think I'd be in favour of Justice Minister Vic Toews' plan to allow the legal system to address crime in kids down to the age of ten. Actually, I'm leery.

Chris Selley takes a run at Toews' position in a piece today, and I find myself in agreement with much of what Chris says. What Tart Cider doesn't do, however, is acknowledge in any real way the legitimate concerns that have prompted Toews' move. Today's Calgary Herald does, though:

Several years ago, when Winnipeg was plagued with a rash of car thefts by under-12s, police expressed their frustration at their inability to deal with these kids who, when caught, brazenly told the officers they knew the law couldn't do anything to them. Police dubbed one of the repeat offenders the Tiny Terror, but they had to wait until he turned 12 before they could formally charge him. In 2005, Brian Smiley, a spokesman for the Manitoba Public Insurance Corp., said: "We hear of kids as young as nine and 10 years old getting behind the wheel of a vehicle and driving it."

Adults would have to be in the throes of extreme naivete to believe these kids don't understand that stealing a car is wrong. Or that the 11-year-old arrested last year in Burnaby, B.C., in connection with a series of armed muggings didn't know it's wrong to threaten people with a knife and take their money. Yet, all police could do was release the child to his family.

Those who dismiss these examples as isolated incidents have a point, although not quite the point they believe they do. It's true that you don't turn an entire justice system upside down because the Calgary Herald quotes two examples of kids not responding to the current system. But talk to a primary school teacher, and you'll find that these are simply the most extreme examples of a widely acknowedged trend that sees parental control declining as state control in schools, law enforcement, and child welfare agencies becomes increasingly toothless and ineffective. Just because too much fear is decidedly a bad thing, doesn't mean a touch of fear of authority isn't a good thing in a child - and on this front, the battle isn't running in society's favour.

Releasing a young but delinquent child to his or her family simply isn't enough these days, especially in instances where violent or repeated crimes have been committed.

But is the answer to this real issue to have the heavy-handed justice system intervene? It seems to me that Toews' biggest problem is that he sees this issue as a nail, and as Justice Minister, he thinks he's holding an awfully big hammer.

"The theory is that the child welfare system will take care of those children, but that is not the case in most provinces," [Toews] said. "In most provinces, in fact, the child welfare system is allowing criminal conduct to continue among those types of children."

This illustrates the weakness of his position. Throwing kids to the courts to prevent continuing criminal conduct can only plausibly be projected to work if the criminal justice system in this country isn't "allowing criminal conduct to continue" among adult offenders as well. And that is decidedly not the case in Canada. So why does Toews think he can fix problems for kids that his justice system can't even fix for adults?

The real answer to this problem, as with most problems involving kids, starts at home with parents. Parenting isn't an easy task, but I firmly believe it's the most important one anyone with kids faces in their life. Setting limits and enforcing them, following through with consequences to kids' actions - good and bad alike, and giving children love without giving them unlimited licence is essential.

But as you can't legislate good parenting beyond some incredibly broad strokes (your child must be fed, you must not endanger your child, etc), what is a government to do? Well, it could start with strengthening the ability of schools to reinforce good parenting instead of undermining it. Teachers' hands are tied in many respects when it comes to enforcing good behaviour in the classroom and schoolyard. I'm not talking about a return to the strap, but something more than "Johnny, that's not very nice" is needed. And yes, I do understand that changes to the country's school systems don't fall within the Justice Minister's purview.

Another thing government could do is bolster the child welfare infrastructure. Minster Toews himself admits that part of the impetus for his proposed changes stems from a perception that some kids simply slip through the cracks between child welfare and the YCJA. If the child welfare system isn't shouldering their load, the logical response would be to encourage, cajole, or force it to do so. But again, changes of that nature aren't up to Canada's Minister of Justice.

So what should Toews do? He should show some restraint. Nothing within his repertoire as the elected head of Canada's legal system is going to be useful here, and accordingly, he needs to resist the urge to 'do something.' His proposed cure will not ameliorate the situation a bit, and it may even worsen the disease.

Instead, he should advocate the changes that will lead to less people ending up in his criminal justice system at all. Advocating isn't exciting, but surely a Conservative would understand that some things are the proper responsibility of someone else.

Babble off.

The good Trudeau

2006-08-15T10:58:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

I thought it would be a cold day in hell before you ever saw me associate the name Trudeau with anything good. But today, the devil's wearing longjohns, apparently.

Here's why: Trudeau knows customer service. Following is the text of an e-mail exchange I had with them just the other day (with some personal details removed).

From: Damian Brooks [mailto:damian.brooks - at - gmail.com]
Sent: August 9, 2006 3:40 PM
To: SAC - Trudeau Corporation
Subject: Salt shaker

I bought a tall, elegant stainless steel Trudeau salt and pepper set about a year ago. The pepper grinder is fantastic - the best I've ever used. Unfortunately, the plug in the bottom of the salt shaker has never fit properly. I didn't want to go through the hassle of taking it back to the store I bought it from, especially since I would have had to return the pepper grinder too. My wife managed to jerry-rig the plug for a while with some tape, but it leaks salt out the bottom.

I never wanted to return the set - we really like it. All I want is a plug that fits.

Any ideas?

Damian Brooks
1 Address Street
Aroundtoronto, ON
L** ***
ph: 905-***-****

From: Sylvie ******* - Trudeau Corporation
Mailed-By: trudeaucorp.com
To: Damian Brooks
Date: Aug 9, 2006 3:59 PM
Subject: RE: Salt shaker

Hi Mr.Brooks

Since we have some replacement parts, we will send a new plug at no cost to replace the defective one. Give us a couple of days and you should receive the plug by Canada post.

Thank you and have a great day

Sylvie Mickel

Gestionnaire de compte National
National account manager
450-***-**** #314
450-***-**** fax
sylvie.NOSPAM - at - trudeaucorp.com

Note the time and date of the response. Sylvie got back to me, not with just an acknowledgement, but with a solution, nineteen minutes after I e-mailed the corporation from a simple website link. That is kick-ass customer service, period.

And sure enough, the replacement plug arrived in the mail yesterday. My wife put it into the salt shaker, and it fits perfectly. Problem solved, repeat customer solidified, and good word-of-mouth advertising secured.

Well done, Trudeau. (As Satan absolutely nails a triple axel.)

Babble off.

What we don't know

2006-08-15T10:17:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

Further to the ongoing discussion about how sports reporters bring more to the table professionally than war reporters do these days, I recommend reading Occam's Carbuncle's abridged list of things we don't know about the recent Israel-Hezbollah state of open hostilities. Feel free to add to that list in comments.

And ask yourself if there's any good reason we don't know at least a bit more about each of those points - heck, why the points are only raised at all on a couple of relatively obscure Canadian blogs like BB and OC.

Memo to news organizations: time to start probing deeper into the dynamics of conflict than "look at all the refugees."

Babble off.

Airlift - let it roll off your tongue

2006-08-15T10:01:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

Over at The Torch, Chris Taylor has written an excellent post, complete with graphics, about strategic and tactical airlift in the context of the CF's projected purchase of C-17 Globemaster aircraft. Worth the read if you're interested in matters of airpower.

Which, it goes without saying, all thinking people, including readers of this blog, surely are.

Babble off.

Globemasters and Chinooks

2006-08-12T11:02:00.000-04:00

Babble on.

Apparently the federal government is ready to move on strat-lift aircraft and heavy-lift helos. More here at The Torch (ht:DA).

Babble off.