Canadians in Afghanistan

A further fart in church

2012-01-30T22:34:00.000-08:00

So, fresh from the Libya disaster - six months of a no-fly zone producing anarchy - the same crowd is now enthusiastic about some kind of UN Security Council Resolution on Syria.

Recalling, the original Resolution 1970, passed 15-0, that referred certain members of the Libyan regime to the ICC while establishing economic and other sanctions in accordance with Chapter VII of the UN Charter;

Recalling also the subsequent Resolution 1973, that passed 10-0 with 5 abstentions; that established a no-fly, free-fire, make-of-it-what-you-will, zone in Libya;

Affirming the right of all peoples to elect their own governments without fear of being shot;

Decides under Chapter VII to make growly noises at the Syrian regime without prospect of anything else occurring because the Russians have a naval base in Syria, which isn't all that different from the Americans having a naval base in Cuba or the UK having one in Gibraltar.

The Northern Gateway Zeppelin Alternative

2012-01-30T21:04:00.000-08:00

So, here's something Northern Gateway hasn't considered: dirigibles. A University of Manitoba prof is all over this for northern transport, and a scaled up version eliminates a lot of problems associated with a pipeline and tankers.

1. The Great Circle Route from Fort Mac to Shanghai is almost all over Alaska and Russia! No horrible Douglas Channel tanker disasters or Kalamazoo seepage catastrophes. There might be the odd plummeting bitumen anomaly, but most likely on somebody else's territory.

2. No processing would be required! The oil sands could be dug up and transferred directly to airships, and then China could do its usual magic at the other end and transmogrify oil sands into iPhones. It's like spinning oil into gold!

3. Canadian technology would be key. We just need airships on an industrial scale.

4. The First Nations could continue to gather berries or whatever!

House of Commons All Star Night

2012-01-28T19:58:00.000-08:00

Excerpt, National Archives of Canada

Backcheck: a Hockey Retrospective

THE GOVERNOR GIVES A CUP.

March 18, 1892.
"I have for some time past been thinking that it would be a good thing if there were a challenge cup which should be held from year to year by the champion hockey team in the Dominion.

"There does not appear to be any such outward and visible sign of championship at present, and considering the general interest which the matches now elicit, and the importance of having the game played fairly and under rules generally recognized, I am willing to give a cup which shall be held from year to year by the winning team.

"I am not quite certain that the present regulations governing the arrangement of matches give entire satisfaction, and it would be worth considering whether they could not be arranged so that each team would play once at home and once at the place where their opponents hail from."

Lord Kilcoursie stated that Capt. Colville, who was at present in England, had been commissioned by the Governor to order the cup.

It would be held here by trustees, till the end of next season, and then presented to the champions.

The reading of the letter was greeted with enthusiastic applause.

Mr. Bethune sang a song in capital style.

The next toast was the event of the evening, "The Hockey team." It was proposed in a brief but capital speech by the chairman. Great cheering followed.

Pointing to nowhere

2012-01-26T19:43:00.000-08:00

una piaga di ratti

2012-01-23T21:06:00.000-08:00

@acoyne As usual NDP confusing recommending with choosing. Another NDP drive-by slime.
— Tony Clement (@TonyclementCPC) January 23, 2012

SIMPLY PUT, TONY CLEMENT RECOMMENDED TO JOHN BAIRD THAT HE SHOULD RECOMMEND TO THE CROWN THAT IT SHOULD... [1/2]
— InfoAlerteBot (@InfoAlerteBot) January 23, 2012

...RECOMMEND THE EXPENDITURE OF FUNDS BASED ON THE RECOMMENDATIONS FROM MUSKOKA MAYORS. GOT IT? [2/2]
— InfoAlerteBot (@InfoAlerteBot) January 23, 2012

Northern Gateway EROI 2.4:1?

2012-01-22T20:58:00.000-08:00

So now I'm reassured about the Northern Gateway Review Panel. In particular, I was interested to read the submission of C. J. Peter Engineering Associates on the "energy return over invested" analysis of Northern Gateway (EROI), which seems hard to find elsewhere. According to their public interest calculations - they're not getting paid for any of this - it will cost 1 barrel of energy to provide 2.41 barrels of energy to a Chinese refinery. This is not .... efficient. As historical perspective, the early days of the oil rush provided something like an EROI of 100:1 in Texas. Further, according to the authors, the point at which fossil fuel economies die is the point at which 1 barrel of energy returned requires 1 barrel of energy invested to produce.

This analysis was presented at the Ramada Inn in Prince George on January 18, 2012 (in the dead of winter) and the authors got slapped around for their trouble by Ken Bateman who - according to the Review Panel website - is an "energy lawyer." His point was that C.J. Peter's analysis was available in written form, and that the oral presentation was inappropriate and a waste of resources because it was not supplemental to the written presentation and not subject to appropriate cross-examination. I couldn't find the written presentation on the Panel's website. The C.J. Peter presentation on the other hand seemed completely complementary to that of the presenter from the Metis Nation. Mr. Bateman might well have a valid procedural point. What was in short supply was any curiosity on the part of the panel.

It seem obvious also that none of this "mass balance" calculation - crucial though it is - takes into account the possible trashing of the global climate, as feared by James Hansen, or the cost of clean up in the MacKenzie Basin after all this development has occurred.

Me, I'm with C.J. Peter. I'd like to see a reasoned rebuttal, but not an hysterical reds-under-the-bed Joseph McCarthy rebuttal by Canadian cabinet ministers.

Peter MacKay and the language of nothing

2012-01-17T21:35:00.000-08:00

"Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Here it is in modern English:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

This is a parody, but not a very gross one. Exhibit (3) above, for instance, contains several patches of the same kind of English. It will be seen that I have not made a full translation. The beginning and ending of the sentence follow the original meaning fairly closely, but in the middle the concrete illustrations -- race, battle, bread -- dissolve into the vague phrases "success or failure in competitive activities." This had to be so, because no modern writer of the kind I am discussing -- no one capable of using phrases like "objective considerations of contemporary phenomena" -- would ever tabulate his thoughts in that precise and detailed way. The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness. Now analyze these two sentences a little more closely. The first contains forty-nine words but only sixty syllables, and all its words are those of everyday life. The second contains thirty-eight words of ninety syllables: eighteen of those words are from Latin roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six vivid images, and only one phrase ("time and chance") that could be called vague. The second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its ninety syllables it gives only a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first. Yet without a doubt it is the second kind of sentence that is gaining ground in modern English."

George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

'Defence Minister Peter MacKay is trying to reassure Canadians that allegations of espionage centring on a Halifax naval intelligence officer will not affect the country's reputation among other NATO members.

"Our allies have full confidence in Canada, full confidence in our information," MacKay said during a news conference in Ottawa late Tuesday morning.

MacKay was responding to questions about the case of Sub.-Lt. Jeffrey Paul Delisle, 40, who was arrested in the Halifax area over the weekend. Delisle faces two charges under the Security of Information Act that deal with communicating information that could harm Canada's interests, according to court documents.

MacKay described the case as a matter of national security because of the charges involved. But he would not discuss specifics, including whether the foreign entity in question is Russia, as at least one intelligence expert has speculated.

"Given the early stages of the proceedings, there is really nothing more that can be said."'

CBC

Rats in the House of Commons

2012-01-16T22:18:00.000-08:00

RON MACLEAN
You know Grapes, we're talking a lot about respect these days, and Brian Burke was going on about how rats are taking over the league, on account of there being no tough guys to sort them out...

DON CHERRY
I agree with Burke 100%!

RON MACLEAN
...but I seem to remember you had your own rat epidemic, as was shown on "Keep Your Head Up, Kid" and you had to exterminate them for Rose.

DON CHERRY
Those were mice. The league doesn't have a mouse problem, it's got a rat problem. Big difference.

RON MACLEAN
So I'm wondering how you see that in the House of Commons...Tony Clement was musing on Twitter about how your views on rats got him thinking..

DON CHERRY
Clement was where?

RON MACLEAN
On Twitter.

DON CHERRY
You know, I'm starting to think he's part of the problem not part of the solution. But yeah, the House of Commons has a huge rat problem. I read somewhere they have the same problem in Britain.

RON MACLEAN
I thought you might see it that way. Got some examples for us?

DON CHERRY
Almost too numerous to mention. There was the Bev Oda "NOT" incident...

RON MACLEAN
Yes...

DON CHERRY
The Jason Kenney - George Loudmouth Galloway Immigration incident...

RON MACLEAN
Yes...

DON CHERRY
The Peter McKay helicopter incident...

RON MACLEAN
Yes...

DON CHERRY
The Rob Nicholson intimidation of witnesses incident...

RON MACLEAN
Yes...

DON CHERRY
The Peter Kent "piece of shit" incident...

RON MACLEAN
Yes, but that was Justin Trudeau calling Peter Kent a piece of shit...

DON CHERRY
Yeah, well, Trudeau was calling him out. It's a rat move by Kent and I have no doubt Trudeau would have taken him on, given the chance, like happened during an incident of "grave disorder" in the British House of Commons...

RON MACLEAN
That was where a Major Molson (no relation) hauled a Mr. Devlin, representing the Falls Road in Belfast, over the front bench as members of Molson's party shouted "kill him!"

DON CHERRY
Exactly. That's the kind of honourable players we need in this day and age, like Burke said. And yet he has to send Colton Orr back to the minors just because the guy can't play hockey...

RON MACLEAN
So that's it for us on House of Commons Night in Canada...

DON CHERRY
What did you think of the Marchand suspension?

RON MACLEAN
I think Shanahan got it right.

DON CHERRY
Kenny Linseman didn't.

RON MACLEAN
Well, Kenny was the original rat.

DON CHERRY
Not like Eddie Shore...

RON MACLEAN
Who is?

angolo del coach

2012-01-11T23:28:00.000-08:00

TonyclementCPC Tony Clement

Coach's Corner gave me a lot to think about tonite...

Yeah. It's important to tear up during the national anthem but not OK to take a ride on your stick after scoring a goal. Somebody should of taken Marchand's head off after his hit on Sami Salo. There's a rat epidemic.

These are all important lessons for the governance of Canada.

A Swedish Iranian in the Court of King Steve

2012-01-06T19:58:00.000-08:00

Reuters/Andy Clark

RON MACLEAN
So it's me Ron MacLean here with Don Cherry on House of Commons Night in Canada, and it's been pretty busy, what with the Prime Minister attending the bronze medal hockey game at the World Junior Championship in Calgary.

DON CHERRY
Did he make the gold medal game?

RON MACLEAN
I really don't know. I do know he was in the Canadian dressing room after their game as a surprise visitor to congratulate them on their win over Finland.

DON CHERRY
Yeah, I read that. Don Hay told them their surprise visitor was Mr. Harper.

RON MACLEAN
But I don't know if he stuck around to watch the gold medal game.

DON CHERRY
If he didn't, he missed out. That was a great game!

RON MACLEAN
Some people say it was a little one-sided.

DON CHERRY
People say a lot of things, but if it's 0-0 after three periods, it ain't one-sided. I'll admit that Makarov stopped 57 shots, but I seem to recall Kirk McLean stopping 52 in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup final in 1994, and nobody complained about that, except of course in Manhattan.

RON MACLEAN
What did you think of the winning goal?

DON CHERRY
It was a beauty! That Mahmoud Ahmadinejad kid has a great future.

RON MACLEAN
It was Mika Zibanejad.

DON CHERRY
It all sounds the same to me although I have to say it's a pretty weird name even for a Swede.

RON MACLEAN
His father's Iranian.

DON CHERRY
WHAT? Does Harper know that?!

RON MACLEAN
Are you gonna do the piano thing again?

DON CHERRY
No, I'm taking up air guitar.

RON MACLEAN
Our ratings will go up for sure.

DON CHERRY
Listen! For years they tried to get me to say French names, you know, parlez-vous and everything. Then I had to learn Russian names. Then it was Finnish, then it was Swedish and now it's the whole United Nations!

RON MACLEAN
Not exactly the UN. There's about 190 countries in the UN and you've said four of them.

DON CHERRY
That's three more than I can handle. But having an Iranian kid score the gold medal goal for Sweden in Calgary the same day the Prime Minister says Iran is the biggest threat to world peace just strikes me as crazy or subversive.

RON MACLEAN
How so?

DON CHERRY
Isn't it obvious?

RON MACLEAN
No.

DON CHERRY
If Iran can produce hockey players like that, they might try to steal the Stanley Cup! Then where would we be?

RON MACLEAN
Playing international hockey in Sochi. It's only a couple of hours from Iran.

DON CHERRY
I don't think you're paranoid enough. Excuse me while I bring up Stompin' Tom on the air guitar.

RON MACLEAN
Anyway, the Prime Minister might not have been able to see the gold medal game because he was back in Ottawa appointing seven new Senators.

DON CHERRY
What fresh heck is this? Did he come up with a new Silver Seven? Who said he could appoint Senators?

RON MACLEAN
Not the hockey team, the actual appointments were to the Senate of Canada.

DON CHERRY
You had me worried for a minute there.

RON MACLEAN
But get this: Mika Zibanejad is already an Ottawa Senator.

DON CHERRY
What!? Harper appointed an Iranian to the Canadian Senate?

RON MACLEAN
No! He's a Swede even though he's got an Iranian name.

DON CHERRY
Same difference. I need my piano.

RON MACLEAN
And, Don, Mr. Harper was actually appointing Senators to the Senate. Zibanejad is an Ottawa Senator, on the hockey team, although they're letting him develop in Sweden.

DON CHERRY
Not Iran?

RON MACLEAN
No!

DON CHERRY
Thank God for that! Now I'm thinking, you know, maybe we should just introduce hockey to Asia and the Middle East. The United Nations could do that, organize the leagues and everything...

RON MACLEAN
And that's it for us at the World Juniors.

DON CHERRY
Waywaywaywaywaywaywait! We're not gonna talk about the Bruins-Canucks game?

RON MACLEAN
Later. This show's about politics.

DON CHERRY
It's all the same thing. Harper wouldn't have been in Calgary if it wasn't. Did he fly Business?

One more time! Article 8 of the Atlantic Charter

2012-01-05T21:38:00.000-08:00

"Eighth, they believe that all of the nations of the world, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons must come to the abandonment of the use of force. Since no future peace can be maintained if land, sea or air armaments continue to be employed by nations which threaten, or may threaten, aggression outside of their frontiers, they believe, pending the establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security, that the disarmament of such nations is essential. They will likewise aid and encourage all other practicable measures which will lighten for peace-loving peoples the crushing burden of armaments."

Terrorism in Canada

2011-12-22T13:47:00.000-08:00

Section 83.01 of the Criminal Code of Canada (enacted in 2001) defines terrorism. As far as I can see, everything defined as "terrorism" has already been criminal for a long time. It is not new, and in fact nothing has changed, including the desire of executive governments to find excuses to subvert the rule of law. Murder is murder, mass murder is murder, conspiracy to commit murder is still conspiracy to commit murder. No new legislation was required to prosecute the Air India Flight 182 disaster in 1985. The Anti-Terrorism Act seems to be distinguished only by modification of existing legislation. Some of that modification - like Section 38.01 of the Canada Evidence Act - adds nothing to public safety in my opinion, but does add horrendous opportunities for the Canadian government to subvert the democratic process, as was seen in the Kafka-esque machinations against Richard Colvin.

Terrorism is a very small problem. As George Orwell said:

"Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers."

And...

"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, "I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so." Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

"'While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.'"

"The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find -- this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify -- that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.

"But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better."

Emphasis added.

As the United States Department of Fear would have it: Ignorance causes fear.

America’s Silent Collapse

2011-12-20T16:51:00.000-08:00

America’s Silent Collapse » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

by Sam Smith

Go, Sam!

My American Cousin

2011-12-19T21:02:00.000-08:00

RepublicanDalek Republican Dalek

THE DALEK MODEL OF TIME: TIME IS AN INFINITE SERIES OF INTERCONNECTED LUMINOUS STRINGS OF INDESCRIBABLE BEAUTY. THEN WE SNUFF THEM OUT.

InfoAlerteBot InfoAlerteBot

NOW THEY CAN PUBLISH EDITORIALS RANTING ABOUT CBC'S "EXCLUSIVE, INCESTUOUS, ACCESS"! EVEN BETTER! RT@glen_mcgregor: No PMSH for Sun. Weird.

RepublicanDalek Republican Dalek

@x7o @timeoutcorner OH SURE, DON'T BELIEVE THE CITIZEN OF A TYPE IV CIVILIZATION ABOUT TIME UNLESS HE USES NONSENSE WORDS LIKE 'TIMEY-WIMEY'

InfoAlerteBot InfoAlerteBot

@kady BESIDES, IF THEY DON'T LIKE THE DEAL, WHAT'S THE WORST THEY CAN DO, SEPARATE?

RepublicanDalek Republican Dalek

#ThingsThatILike ENORMOUS SUBSIDIES TO GET FARMERS TO CONVERT SOME OF THE WORLD'S MOST VALUABLE FARMLAND INTO MAKING THIRD-RATE SUGAR

InfoAlerteBot InfoAlerteBot

IS THERE ANY WAY WE CAN MOVE FOR TIME ALLOCATION ON FEDERAL-PROVINCIAL HEALTH CARE NEGOTIATIONS? #cdnpoli

RepublicanDalek Republican Dalek

*SHOOTS TYPING AUTON IN THE FOOT* FOR EACH TYPO YOU LOSE ANOTHER LIMB, STUMPY! #DALEKTHREAT

InfoAlerteBot InfoAlerteBot

HOW IS THIS CONTROVERSIAL? WE DON'T WANT OUR ELITE SPIES BEING INFECTED WITH CHINESE NANOBOTS FROM TAP WATER! bit.ly/vqNtY7 #cdnpoli

etc. To be continued....

Omar Suleiman is alive and well and living in Cairo

2011-12-18T20:16:00.000-08:00

Reuters

"Grave Disorder" on House of Commons Night in Canada

2011-12-18T12:19:00.000-08:00

46. In case of grave disorder arising in the House the Speaker
may, if he thinks it necessary to do so, adjourn the House
without putting any question, or suspend the sitting for a time
to be named by him

British House of Commons Standing Orders

Hansard HC Deb 22 November 1920 vol 135 cc38-43

Mr. DEVLIN May I ask the Prime Minister why it is, when a question is put to himself and the Chief Secretary to recite all the horrible occurrences that have taken place last Sunday in Dublin, that we have heard nothing about the appearance of the military forces at a football match. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh!"] At which ten people were killed. [HON. MEMBERS: "Sit down!"] I will not sit down. I want to know from the Prime Minister why the House of Commons has not been made acquainted, in the recital of these other things that have occurred, with the onrush of the military into a football field, with fifteen thousand people, indiscriminate shooting, and ten men killed. Why was the House not told that when the other story was being told? May I ask for an answer?

Sir H. GREENWOOD I was never asked that question referred to by the hon. Member, but I am prepared to answer it now.

Mr. DEVLIN rose to put further supplementary questions, amid loud shouts of "Sit down!"

Grave disorder having arisen, MR. SPEAKER suspended the Sitting under Standing Order No. 21.

Sitting suspended at Five minutes after Four o'clock, the public galleries being also temporarily closed.

Mr. SPEAKER resumed the Chair, at Twenty minutes after Four o'clock.

Major MOLSON I wish to apologise to the hon. Member for the Falls Division (Mr. Devlin), to you Mr. Speaker, and to the House. I am afraid that I allowed my feelings to get the better of myself, and I forgot myself.

RON MACLEAN

Welcome to a special holiday edition of House of Commons Night in Canada, continuing with our focus on the apparent decline in standards of debate in our own House of Commons. I'm Ron MacLean here with Don Cherry. Don, there's been a lot of interest over the last few weeks in how Canada's House of Commons conducts itself. Aaron Wherry quoted the Ottawa Citizen as saying, and I'm gonna read this out:

Minority or majority, the constant is the lack of honour and civility in Parliament. What hasn’t changed is the reduction of the role of elected members to bit players in hackneyed political theatre. Every MP, of any party, who acquiesces in this must answer for it to his or her constituents.

DON CHERRY

Yeah, I think this is an important thing to talk about, especially for all the kids out there watching. I went and had a look on the internet about this - I'm starting to get the hang of this internet thing, although I still don't get Twitter...

RON MACLEAN

You definitely need a Twitter account. I'm imagining @HNIC_Grapes...

DON CHERRY

...Forget it...but I can see the attraction of looking up stuff almost instantly. So I went looking for unparliamentary language in the Mother of Parliaments...

RON MACLEAN

...that's the British House of Commons...

DON CHERRY

...right, where we were tuned into the toe-to-toe debates in the summer, and hey, presto, there's a lot of good stuff.

RON MACLEAN

Such as?

DON CHERRY

For instance the front benches of the British House of Commons are two sword's lengths apart, because MPs could carry side-arms into the Commons!

RON MACLEAN

So, not very different from the NHL.

DON CHERRY

Absolutely! And then I discovered Wikipedia that had a whole section on "Incidents of grave disorder in the British House of Commons..."

RON MACLEAN

And are they going downhill as well?

DON CHERRY

That's the interesting thing! The Brits seem to be getting better not worse. One of the more recent incidents was of Michael Heseltine, a Conservative MP, who on May 27, 1976, in the context of a vote on the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Act, seized the Mace and waved it in a threatening fashion at members of the Labour Government who were singing a song at him.

RON MACLEAN

Sounds like Alan Eagleson. Justin Trudeau looks like a model of restraint.

DON CHERRY

It gets better. In 1920, during some of the Irish difficulties, an MP in what is now Northern Ireland wanted to know why the government was concerned about the killing of members of the British military in Ireland, but neglected to mention the random killing of Irish spectators at a Gaelic football match at Croke Park....

RON MACLEAN

The subject matter sounds a little dangerous but not out of control. I don't recall any random killing of spectators at a hockey game in Canada...

DON CHERRY

Yeah, well what happened next was that Devlin was attacked by a Major Molson (no relation) - physically - and hauled over his desk. One of the other Honourable Members in the Government was heard to shout "Kill him!" (as reported by The Times) after which the Speaker adjourned the House because of "grave disorder."

RON MACLEAN

Well, it does make Justin Trudeau seem like a model of restraint...

DON CHERRY

...and then Molson came back and apologized, just like Trudeau did.

RON MACLEAN

So no lives were lost.

DON CHERRY

My point exactly. A lot of feeling got aired, there was a frank exchange of views, and then the business of the House went on as before.

RON MACLEAN

So, in your opinion, there's no cause for despair here in Canada?

DON CHERRY

Absolutely not. It's the game of parliamentary democracy. You have to let 'em play.

RON MACLEAN

And until the New Year, that's it for us on House of Commons Night in Canada.

DON CHERRY

Do you like my new suit with the Winnipeg Jets logo on it?

RON MACLEAN

It's very elegant, particularly with the Art Ross tie.

DON CHERRY

Yeah, well, he was from Brandon.

P.J. Crowley channels Strom Thurmond

2011-12-16T18:06:00.000-08:00

"The Pentagon has learned nothing, and forgotten nothing."
- famous quote, maybe by Talleyrand

PJCrowley Philip J. Crowley

The essence of the #BradleyManning case is, if every soldier gets a vote on national security policy, the military ceases to function.

5 hours ago

ggreenwald Glenn Greenwald

.@PJCrowley Actually, the "essence" is: when the gov't does everything of importance behind abusive secrecy, democracy ceases to function

5 hours ago

Testimony July 16, 1973, by former Major Hal Knight, USAF, at Hearings of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Ninety-Third Congress, on bombing in Cambodia - particularly regarding falsification of records of B52 targets - page 44

Mr.Knight. Frankly, sir, I felt that theSenate Armed Services Committee was deceived. On this side of the House, if you go up through the military chain, Idon't imagine that anybody was deceived.

SenatorThurmond. It was your duty to act withinthe military channel and to pass on anything to higher headquarters which youfelt was improper, wasn't it?

Mr. Knight. Yes, sir, but I didn't take an oath to support the military, I took anoath to support and defend the Constitution. That goes beyond strictly military channels.

(emphasis added )

US Military Oath of Enlistment

"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God." (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962).

So really, the question is what happens when an oath to defend the Constitution conflicts with an order from the President of the United States and his appointed officers, particularly when the order is unlawful.

So that takes us back to Nuremberg, and the Charter of the International Military Tribunal agreed in London, August 8, 1945, in particular Article 8:

"The fact that the Defendant acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior shall not free him from responsibility, but may be considered in mitigation of punishment if the Tribunal determines that justice so requires."

There you go. Keitel was hung at Nuremberg. The majority of his crimes had nothing to do with the Holocaust, and everything to do with violations of international humanitarian law as it then existed. For example:

"When, on 8th September 1941, OKW issued its ruthless regulations for the treatment of Soviet POW's, Canaris wrote to Keitel that under international law the SD should have nothing to do with this matter. On this memorandum in Keitel's handwriting, dated 23rd September and initialled by him, is the statement:" The objections arise from the military concept of chivalrous warfare. This is the destruction of an ideology. Therefore I approve and back the measures." Keitel testified that he really agreed with Canaris and argued with Hitler, but lost. The OKW Chief directed the military authorities to cooperate with the Einsatzstab Rosenberg in looting cultural property in occupied territories."
...

"In the face of these documents Keitel does not deny his connection with these acts. Rather, his defense relies on the fact that he is a soldier, and on the doctrine of "superior orders" prohibited by Article 8 of the Charter as a defense.

There is nothing in mitigation. Superior orders, even to a soldier, cannot be considered in mitigation where crimes as shocking and extensive have been committed consciously, ruthlessly, and without military excuse or justification.

Conclusion: The Tribunal finds Keitel guilty on all four Counts.

Proud ignorance as Canadian government policy

2011-12-15T20:33:00.001-08:00

Canada's government makes a point of not knowing anything. Policy flows from ideology, ideology takes no account of truth, so why cloud policy with inconvenient evidence?Canada spent some $5 million on upgrades to the Sarpoza Central Prison in Kandahar following the Great Escape of Friday, June 13, 2008. Subsequently,a mass escape was engineered on April 25, 2011, via a tunnel dug under the noses of the Afghan prison authorities Canadians had "mentored." As the Canadian mentor-in-chief said nostalgically, on March 28, 2011, before leaving (and immediately before the second prison break):"[Ian]Chinnery says such problems will have to be addressed by the Afghans and a small group of U.S. mentors, because the three remaining Canadian correctional officers are heading home over the next few months."Still, he said he believes the prison has largely conquered its biggest troubles."'We are pretty proud of how far we've come with this place,' Chinnery says. "'The Afghans now need minimal assistance to run it. But leaving here is like watching your kid get on the school bus for the first time. You know he's going to be fine, but it's still hard to let go.'"

And according to the BBC:

"Police said they were looking for men without shoes - many escaped barefoot." Prime Minister Stephen Harper's subsequent comment was, apparently without irony, "we'll just keep plugging away."

Five million into the black hole of Kandahar, and effusive videos about Canadian "mentoring" for the Afghan prison system, failed to alert Canadians to the irony of the remedy, or possible total futility of the remedy, or even more likely, government bullshit about the remedy, for a "problem" framed completely in western European Crusader terms: Afghanistan has to be rendered safe from future terrorist havens. The obvious conclusions that the only people interested in a "mentored" Afghan prison system or the future safety of western civilization from crazed Afghan terrorists, are white guys from NATO, and that a significant percentage of the Afghan citizenry are actually on the side of the inmates of the Sarpoza Central Prison, seem literally unthinkable hypotheses for the Canadian government or its ISAF functionaries tucked up on the blvd Leopold III in Brussels, Leopold II of course having been a savage monarch in the time of Belgian oppression in the Congo.

Now, Canadians are "training" Afghan troops who have a desertion rate of 50% per year. Right. The goal is that these "troops" will take over security functions from NATO - who can't provide reasonable security as it is - and that the training that has gone on for some 10 years without reaching some mythical figure of 200,000 that was a target at least 5 years ago and will somehow magically come to fruition in the next 3 years, seems to be not so much a fantasy as a hallucination. If the target is 200,000 functional Afghan troops to take over from NATO, and there is a 50% desertion rate per year, then 100,000 new troops will have to be trained every year to replace the desertions.

None of this deters NATO or the ludicrous Bonn Conference, or even the Germans who sponsored the ludicrous Bonn Conference who otherwise seem to have a reasonable grasp of reality. The irony of having a conference on the future of Afghanistan in Crusader Europe - rather than say in south Asia - seems lost on all the participants except Pakistan who declined to attend. Meanwhile, the obvious sensible idea of having such a conference in Qatar seems radical beyond comprehension to the ideologues who don't have a clue. Also, Karzai seems desperate to prevent any Taliban presence in Qatar from occurring for the purposes of negotiation.

It's just stupid. It would be a Pythonesque comedy were it not for the endless carnage, waste, and pain that is the responsibility of NATO and its complicit partners like Australia and New Zealand.

Further feverish intercourse in Canada's House of Commons

2011-12-14T20:40:00.000-08:00

RON MACLEAN

So we're back on House of Commons Night in Canada with a torrid wrap-up to the current session, Justin Trudeau having called the Minister for the Environment, Peter Kent, "a piece of shit." That's pretty inflammatory language, Grapes, and we've talked before about respect in the game of Parliamentary Democracy, so what's your take on Trudeau and his apology.

DON CHERRY

He's got nothing to apologize for.

RON MACLEAN

But it's not parliamentary language, as Trudeau himself said, and apologized for without reservation.

DON CHERRY

Yeah, OK. So he wasn't Churchill, who could've got the point across in parliamentary language just as cutting, but not everybody can be Winston Churchill. The fact is that Kent's comment was the definition of - how you say in Yiddish - chutzpah. The government refused to let opposition members be part of the Canadian delegation to Durban, then Kent complains that they were't there.

RON MACLEAN

How is that chutzpah?

DON CHERRY

I read the definition of chutzpah is somebody who kills their parents and then complains about being an orphan.

RON MACLEAN

That's a pretty inflammatory statement all by itself.

DON CHERRY

Hey, I didn't make it up. It's like I said about Pat Martin: if I have to choose between bad language with honourable intentions, and smarmy PR language with evil intentions, I'm gonna take bad language every time.

RON MACLEAN

Merry Christmas.

DON CHERRY

Now you're the one being inflammatory.

RON MACLEAN

Moi?

DON CHERRY

Vouze.

Getting bin Lego

2011-12-13T21:12:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of The Guardian* and Profound Whatever

(*Female figures not Photoshopped out)

Drones Fell on Manitoba...

2011-12-12T18:52:00.001-08:00

... last night.

So much for plans to smuggle humans across the border disguised as the brass section of the International Peace Gardens Symphony Orchestra. It's time we launched anti-Predator Twin Otters armed with the LePage Glue Gun (both Canadian technologies):

Yossarian sidled up drunkenly to Colonel Korn at the officers' club one night to kid with him about the new Lepage gun that the Germans had moved in.

"What Lepage gun?" Colonel Korn inquired with curiosity.

"The new three hundred and forty four millimeter Lepage glue gun," Yossarian answered. "It glues a whole formation of planes together in mid-air."

Colonel Korn jerked his elbow free from Yossarian's clutching fingers in startled affront. "Let go of me, you idiot!" he cried out furiously, glaring with vindictive approval as Nately leaped upon Yossarian's back and pulled him away. "Who is that lunatic, anyway?"

Give us your Predators, your Reapers, your RQ-170's. We'll give you back more Justin Biebers, David Frums, and Mark Steyns. We have lots of them.

Bad Vibrations

2011-12-09T21:33:00.001-08:00

Imminent failure of the American experiment

The best Congress money can buy passes the hideous National Defense Authorization Act that dispenses with the rule of law, habeas corpus, the American Constitution, all that. This brings to mind the extra-constitutional courts established in the Third Reich - the lovely Roland Freisler presiding - particularly Tony Scalia and the Guantanamo kangaroo courts.

Good night and good luck.

War is obsolete

2011-12-08T19:03:00.001-08:00

It is said that generals are fighting the last war, but maybe the last war is in fact the last war. As Germaine Tillion said:

"We see the United States as deeply worried about terrorism. But effectively fighting against terrorism does not mean increasing the number of military operations; it means fighting against what causes terrorism. If you introduce kindness and gentleness at the place where terrorism begins, you will eradicate terrorism without pain. It is necessary to examine the most sensitive areas of the earth. You can do nothing to stop the seventeen-year-old kid who has decided to place a bomb somewhere. You can do strictly nothing, and any effort against him will just fly back in your face. Countering violence with violence is the most ineffective response imaginable. Instead, we should target the pain, with the goal to alleviate it. I firmly desire a worldwide dialogue, and I would like to see the United States discharged from the monologue. The period of great wars is over. Science has put in the hands of children extraordinary means of death. The greatest error the United States is currently making is to think that international military operations can stop a seventeen-year-old child from acting. The focus should be placed instead on alleviating the pain in the most sensitive regions of the world, beginning with Jerusalem."

Excerpt from “Déchiffrer le silence”:
A Conversation with Germaine Tillion
by Alison Rice
Research in African Literatures 2004 35(1):162-179

Germaine Tillion
Indomitable French enthnologist who survived the concentration camps to champion human and women’s rights in Algeria
Obituary from The Times
April 24, 2008

The alternative hypothesis is that war will never work again. Either you have nuclear weapons and the power to destroy the world, or you have Semtex and the power to destroy whatever is at hand. Or both.

That's it, really. For everything else, there's openness and transparency.

Feingold for President

2011-12-07T21:57:00.000-08:00

Russ Feingold should be President of the United States. There are many reasons for this but I list only those that are crucial from a Canadian perspective:

1. Wisconsin plays hockey. They get it. This can't be overemphasized.

2. Wisconsin has a socialist football team that is owned by the community and is the only NFL team to make its finances public. It also won the Super Bowl, tawdry celebration of schlock American culture though it is, with grace and discipline. They might do it again.

3. Wisconsin shares shores of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior.

4. Feingold was the only American Senator to vote against the hideous Patriot Act - the even worse Tonkin Gulf Resolution of its time - ensuring his position in history with Morse and Gruening, as opposed to Fulbright who was a shameful wuss.

5. Wisconsin stood up to rabid Republican fascists.

6. Feingold opposed the hysterical American invasion of Iraq.

7. The guy has half a brain.

8. He survived Oxford.

There is more, a lot more.

The Nazification of North America

2011-12-06T19:40:00.000-08:00

THE NAZIFICATION OF GERMANY: 1933-34

Excerpt from "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," by William L. Shirer

from pages 188 - 196
"Women and children were to be sent in front of terrorist groups."

The theory which Hitler had evolved in his vagabond days in Vienna and never forgotten—that the way to power for a revolutionary movement was to ally itself with some of the powerful institutions in the State—had now worked out in practice pretty much as he had calculated. The President, backed by the Army and the conservatives, had made him Chancellor. His political power, though great, was, however, not complete. It was shared with these three sources of authority, which had put him into office and which were outside and, to some extent, distrustful of the National Socialist movement.

Hitler's immediate task, therefore, was to quickly eliminate them from the driver's seat, make his party the exclusive master of the State and then with the power of an authoritarian government and its police carry out the Nazi revolution. He had been in office scarcely twenty-four hours when he made his first decisive move, springing a trap on his gullible conservative "captors" and setting in motion a chain of events which he either originated or controlled and which at the end of six months would bring the complete Nazification of Germany and his own elevation to dictator of the Reich, unified and defederalized for the first time in German history.

Five hours after being sworn in, at 5 P.M. on January 30, 1933, Hitler held his first cabinet meeting. The minutes of the session, which turned up at Nuremberg among the hundreds of tons of captured secret documents, reveal how quickly and adroitly Hitler, aided by the crafty Goering, began to take his conservative colleagues for a ride.*(1) Hindenburg had named Hitler to head not a presidential cabinet but one based on a majority in the Reichstag. However, the Nazis and the Nationalists, the only two parties represented in the government, had only 247 seats out of 583 in Parliament and thus lacked a majority. To attain it they needed the backing of the Center Party with its 70 seats. In the very first hours of the new government Hitler had dispatched Goering to talk with the Centrist leaders, and now he reported to the cabinet that the Center was demanding "certain concessions." Georing therefore proposed that the Reichstag be dissolved and new elections held, and Hitler agreed. Hugenberg, a man of wooden mind for all his success in business, objected to taking the Center into the government but on the other hand opposed new elections, well knowing that the Nazis, with the resources of the State behind them, might win an absolute majority at the polls and thus be in a position to dispense with his own services and those of his conservative friends He proposed simply suppressing the Communist Party; with its 100 seats eliminated, the Nazis and the Nationalists would have a majority. But Hitler would not go so far at the moment, and it was finally agreed that the Chancellor himself would confer with the Center Party leaders on the following morning and that if the talks were fruitless the cabinet would then ask for new elections.

Hitler easily made them fruitless. At his request the Center leader, Monsignor Kaas, submitted as a basis for discussion a list of questions which added up to a demand that Hitler promise to govern constitutionally. But Hitler, tricking both Kaas and his cabinet members, reported to the latter that the Center had made impossible demands and that there was no chance of agreement. He therefore proposed that the President be asked to dissolve the Reichstag and call new elections. Hugenberg and Papen were trapped, but after a solemn assurance from the Nazi leader that the cabinet would remain unchanged however the elections turned out, they agreed to go along with him. New elections were set for March 5.

For the first time—in the last relatively free election Germany was to have—the Nazi Party now could employ all the vast resources of the government to win votes. Goebbels was jubilant. "Now it will be easy," he wrote in his diary on February 3, "to carry on the fight, for we can call on all the resources of the State. Radio and press are at our disposal. We shall stage a masterpiece of propaganda. And this time, naturally, there is no lack of money."(2)

The big businessmen, pleased with the new government that was going to put the organized workers in their place and leave management to run its business as it wished, were asked to cough up. This they agreed to do at a meeting on February 20 at Goering's Reichstag President's Palace, at which Dr. Schacht acted as host and Goering and Hitler laid down the line to a couple of dozen of Germany's leading magnates, including Krupp von Bohlen, who had become an enthusiastic Nazi overnight, Bosch and Schnitzler of I. G. Farben, and Voegler, head of the United Steel Works. The record of this secret meeting has been preserved.

Hitler began a long speech with a sop to the industrialists. "Private enterprise," he said, "cannot be maintained in the age of democracy; it is conceivable only if the people have a sound idea of authority and personality . . . All the worldly goods we possess we owe to the struggle of the chosen . . . We must not forget that all the benefits of culture must be introduced more or less with an iron fist." He promised the businessmen that he would "eliminate" the Marxists and restore the Wehrmacht (the latter was of special interest to such industries as Krupp, United Steel and I. G. Farben, which stood to gain the most from rearmament). "Now we stand before the last election," Hitler concluded, and he promised his listeners that "regardless of the outcome, there will be no retreat." If he did not win, he would stay in power "by other means . . . with other weapons." Goering, talking more to the immediate point, stressed the necessity of "financial sacrifices" which "surely would be much easier for industry to bear if it realized that the election of March fifth will surely be the last one for the next ten years, probably even for the next hundred years."

All this was made clear enough to the assembled industrialists and they responded with enthusiasm to the promise of the end of the infernal elections, of democracy and disarmament. Krupp, the munitions king, who, according to Thyssen, had urged Hindenburg on January 29 not to appoint Hitler, jumped up and expressed to the Chancellor the "gratitude" of the businessmen "for having given us such a clear picture." Dr. Schacht then passed the hat. "I collected three million marks," he recalled at Nuremberg.(3)

On January 31, 1933, the day after Hitler was named Chancellor, Goebbels wrote in his diary: "In a conference with the Fuehrer we lay down the line for the fight against the Red terror. For the moment we shall abstain from direct countermeasures. The Bolshevik attempt at revolution must first burst into flame. At the proper moment we shall strike."

Despite increasing provocation by the Nazi authorities there was no sign of a revolution, Communist or Socialist, bursting into flames as the electoral campaign got under way. By the beginning of February the Hitler government had banned all Communist meetings and shut down the Communist press. Social Democrat rallies were either forbidden or broken up by the S.A. rowdies, and the leading Socialist newspapers were continually suspended. Even the Catholic Center Party did not escape the Nazi terror. Stegerwald, the leader of the Catholic Trade Unions, was beaten by the Brownshirts when he attempted to address a meeting, and Bruening was obliged to seek police protection at another rally after S.A. troopers had wounded a number of his followers. Altogether fifty-one anti-Nazis were listed as murdered during the electoral campaign, and the Nazis claimed that eighteen of their own number had been done to death.

Goering's key position as Minister of the Interior of Prussia now began to be noticed. Ignoring the restraining hand of Papen, who as Premier of Prussia was supposedly above him, Goering removed hundreds of republican officials and replaced them with Nazis, mostly S.A. and S.S. officers. He ordered the police to avoid "at all costs" hostility to the S.A., the S.S. and the Stahlhelm but on the other hand to show no mercy to those who were "hostile to the State." He urged the police "to make use of firearms" and warned that those who didn't would be punished. This was an outright call for the shooting down of all who opposed Hitler by the police of a state (Prussia) which controlled two thirds of Germany. Just to make sure that the job would be ruthlessly done, Goering on February 22 established an auxiliary police force of 50,000 men, of whom 40,000 were drawn from the ranks of the S.A. and the S.S. and the rest from the Stahlhelm. Police power in Prussia was thus largely carried out by Nazi thugs. It was a rash German who appealed to such a "police" for protection against the Nazi terrorists.

And yet despite all the terror the "Bolshevik revolution" which Goebbels, Hitler and Goering were looking for failed to "burst into flames." If it could not be provoked, might it not be invented?

On February 24, Goering's police raided the Karl Liebknecht Haus, the Communist headquarters in Berlin. It had been abandoned some weeks before by the Communist leaders, a number of whom had already gone underground or quietly slipped off to Russia. But piles of propaganda pamphlets had been left in the cellar and these were enough to enable Goering to announce in an official communiqué that the seized "documents" proved that the Communists were about to launch the revolution. The reaction of the public and even of some of the conservatives in the government was one of skepticism. It was obvious that something more sensational must be found to stampede the public before the election took place on March 5.

*This cabinet meeting, of course, was private, and, like most of the other conferences, many of them taking place in the strictest secrecy, held by Hitler and his political and military aides during the Third Reich, its proceedings and decisions were not accessible to the public until the captured German documents were first perused during the Nuremberg trial.

A great many of these highly confidential discussions and the decisions emanating from them—all regarded as state secrets—will henceforth be chronicled in this book, which, from here to the end, largely rests on the documents which recorded them at the time. At the risk of somewhat cluttering the pages with numbers indicating notes, these sources will be indicated. No other history of a nation over a specific epoch has been so fully documented, I believe, as that of the Thrid Reich, and to have left out reference to the documents, it seemed to the author, would have greatly weakened whatever value this book may have as an authentic historical record.

THE REICHSTAG FIRE

On the evening of February 27, four of the most powerful men in Germany were gathered at two separate dinners in Berlin. In the exclusive Herrenklub in the Vosstrasse, Vice-Chancellor von Papen was entertaining President Hindenburg. Out at Goebbels' home, Chancellor Hitler had arrived to dine en famille. According to Goebbels, they were relaxing, playing music on the gramophone and telling stories. "Suddenly," he recounted later in his diary, "a telephone call from Dr. Hanfstaengl: 'The Reichstag is on fire!' I am sure he is telling a tall tale and decline even to mention it to the Fuehrer." (4)

But the diners at the Herrenklub were just around the corner from the Reichstag.

Suddenly [Papen later wrote] we noticed a red glow through the windows and heard sounds of shouting in the street. One of the servants came hurrying up to me and whispered: "The Reichstag is on fire!" which I repeated to the President. He got up and from the window we could see the dome of the Reichstag looking as though it were illuminated by searchlights. Every now and again a burst of flame and a swirl of smoke blurred the outline. (5)

The Vice-Chancellor packed the aged President home in his own car and hurried off to the burning building. In the meantime Goebbels, according to his account, had had second thoughts about Putzi Hanfstaengl's "tall tale," had made some telephone calls and learned that the Reichstag was in flames. Within a few seconds he and his Fuehrer were racing "at sixty miles an hour down the Charlottenburger Chaussee toward the scene of the crime."

That it was a crime, a Communist crime, they proclaimed at once on arrival at the fire. Goering, sweating and puffing and quite beside himself with excitement, was already there ahead of them declaiming to heaven, as Papen later recalled, that "this is a Communist crime against the new government." To the new Gestapo chief, Rudolf Diels, Goering shouted, "This is the beginning of the Communist revolution! We must not wait a minute. We will show no mercy. Every Communist official must be shot, where he is found. Every Communist deputy must this very night be strung up."(6)

The whole truth about the Reichstag fire will probably never be known. Nearly all those who knew it are now dead, most of them slain by Hitler in the months that followed. Even at Nuremberg the mystery could not be entirely unraveled, though there is enough evidence to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that it was the Nazis who planned the arson and carried it out for their own political ends.

From Goering's Reichstag President's Palace an underground passage, built to carry the central heating system, ran to the Reichstag building. Through this tunnel Karl Ernst, a former hotel bellhop who had become the Berlin S.A. leader, led a small detachment of storm troopers on the night of February 27 to the Reichstag, where they scattered gasoline and self-igniting chemicals and then made their way quickly back to the palace the way they had come. At the same time a half-witted Dutch Communist with a passion for arson, Marinus van der Lubbe, had made his way into the huge, darkened and to him unfamiliar building and set some small fires of his own. This feeble-minded pyromaniac was a godsend to the Nazis. He had been picked up by the S.A. a few days before after having been overheard in a bar boasting that he had attempted to set fire to several public buildings and that he was going to try the Reichstag next.

The coincidence that the Nazis had found a demented Communist arsonist who was out to do exactly what they themselves had determined to do seems incredible but is nevertheless supported by the evidence. The idea for the fire almost certainly originated with Goebbels and Goering. Hans Gisevius, an official in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior at the time, testified at Nuremberg that "it was Goebbels who first thought of setting the Reichstag on fire," and Rudolf Diels, the Gestapo chief, added in an affidavit that "Goering knew exactly how the fire was to be started" and had ordered him "to prepare, prior to the fire, a list of people who were to be arrested immediately after it." General Franz Halder, Chief of the German General Staff during the early part of World War II, recalled at Nuremberg how on one occasion Goering had boasted of his deed.

At a luncheon on the birthday of the Fuehrer in 1942 the conversation turned to the topic of the Reichstag building and its artistic value. I heard with my own ears when Goering interrupted the conversation and shouted: "The only one who really knows about the Reichstag is I, because I set it on fire!" With that he slapped his thigh with the flat of his hand.*

*Both in his interrogations and at his trial at Nuremberg, Goering denied to the last that he had any part in setting fire to the Reichstag.

Van der Lubbe, it seems clear, was a dupe of the Nazis. He was encouraged to try to set the Reichstag on fire. But the main job was to be done—without his knowledge, of course—by the storm troopers. Indeed, it was established at the subsequent trial at Leipzig that the Dutch half-wit did not possess the means to set so vast a building on fire so quickly. Two and a half minutes after he entered, the great central hall was fiercely burning. He had only his shirt for tinder. The main fires, according to the testimony of experts at the trial, had been set with considerable quantities of chemicals and gasoline. It was obvious that one man could not have carried them into the building, nor would it have been possible for him to start so many fires in so many scattered places in so short a time.

Van der Lubbe was arrested on the spot and Goering, as he afterward told the court, wanted to hang him at once. The next day Ernst Torgler, parliamentary leader of the Communists, gave himself up to the police when he heard that Goering had implicated him, and a few days later Georgi Dimitroff, a Bulgarian Communist who later became Prime Minister of Bulgaria, and two other Bulgarian Communists, Popov and Tanev, were apprehended by the police. Their subsequent trial before the Supreme Court at Leipzig turned into something of a fiasco for the Nazis and especially for Goering, whom Dimitroff, acting as his own lawyer, easily provoked into making a fool of himself in a series of stinging cross-examinations. At one point, according to the court record, Goering screamed at the Bulgarian, "Out with you, you scoundrel!"

JUDGE [to the police officer]: Take him away.

DIMITROFF [being led away by the police]: Are you afraid of my question, Herr Ministerpraesident?

GOERING: You wait until we get you outside this court, you scoundrel!

Torgler and the three Bulgarians were acquitted, though the German Communist leader was immediately taken into "protective custody," where he remained until his death during the second war. Van der Lubbe was found guilty and decapitated.(7)

The trial, despite the subserviency of the court to the Nazi authorities, cast a great deal of suspicion on Goering and the Nazis, but it came too late to have any practical effect. For Hitler had lost no time in exploiting the Reichstag fire to the limit.

On the day following the fire, February 28, he prevailed on President Hindenburg to sign a decree "for the Protection of the People and the State" suspending the seven sections of the constitution which guaranteed individual and civil liberties. Described as a "defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state," the decree laid down that:

Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searchers, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.

In addition, the decree authorized the Reich government to take over complete power in the federal states when necessary and imposed the death sentence for a number of crimes, including "serious disturbances of the peace" by armed persons.(8)

Thus with one stroke Hitler was able not only to legally gag his opponents and arrest them at his will but, by making the trumped-up Communist threat "official," as it were, to throw millions of the middle class and the peasantry into a frenzy of fear that unless they voted for National Socialism at the elections a week hence, the Bolsheviks might take over. Some four thousand Communist officials and a great many Social Democrat and liberal leaders were arrested, including members of the Reichstag, who, according to the law, were immune from arrest. This was the first experience Germans had had with Nazi terror backed up by the government. Truckloads of storm troopers roared through the streets all over Germany, breaking into homes, rounding up victims and carting them off to S.A. barracks, where they were tortured and beaten. The Communist press and political meetings were suppressed; the Social Democrat newspapers and many liberal journals were suspended and the meetings of the democratic parties either banned or broken up. Only the Nazis and their Nationalist allies were permitted to campaign unmolested.

With all the resources of the national and Prussian governments at their disposal and with plenty of money from big business in their coffers, the Nazis carried on an election propaganda such as Germany had never seen before. For the first time the State-run radio carried the voices of Hitler, Goering and Goebbels to every corner of the land. The streets, bedecked with swastika flags, echoed to the tramp of the storm troopers. There were mass rallies, torchlight parades, the din of loudspeakers in the squares. The billboards were plastered with flamboyant Nazi posters and at night bonfires lit up the hills. The electorate was in turn cajoled with promises of a German paradise, intimidated by the brown terror in the streets and frightened by "revelations" about the Communist "revolution." The day after the Reichstag fire the Prussian government issued a long statement declaring that it had found Communist "documents" proving:

Government buildings, museums, mansions and essential plants were to be burned down . . . Women and children were to be sent in front of terrorist groups . . . The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a bloody insurrection and civil war . . . It has been ascertained that today was to have seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons, against private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and also the beginning of general civil war.

Publication of the "documents proving that Communist conspiracy" was promised, but never made. The fact, however, that the Prussian government itself vouched for their authenticity impressed many Germans.

The waverers were also impressed perhaps by Goering's threats. At Frankfurt on March 3, on the eve of the elections, he shouted:

Fellow Germans, my measures will not be crippled by any judicial thinking . . . I don't have to worry about justice; my mission is only to destroy and exterminate, nothing more! . . . Certainly, I shall use the power of the State and the police to the utmost, my dear Communists, so don't draw any false conclusions; but the struggle to the death, in which my fist will grasp your necks, I shall lead with those down there—the Brownshirts. (9)

Almost unheard was the voice of former Chancellor Bruening, who also spoke out that day, proclaiming that his Center Party would resist any overthrow of the constitution, demanding an investigation of the suspicious Reichstag fire and calling on President Hindenburg "to protect the oppressed against their oppressors." Vain appeal! The aged President kept his silence. It was now time for the people, in their convulsion, to speak.

On March 5, 1933, the day of the last democratic elections they were to know during Hitler's life, they spoke with their ballots. Despite all the terror and intimidation, the majority of them rejected Hitler. The Nazis led the polling with 17,277,180 votes—an increase of some five and a half million, but it comprised only 44 per cent of the total vote. A clear majority still eluded Hitler. All the persecution and suppression of the previous weeks did not prevent the Center Party from actually increasing its vote from 4,230,600 to 4,424,900; with its ally, the Catholic Bavarian People's Party, it obtained a total of five and a half million votes. Even the Social Democrats held their position as the second largest party, polling 7,181,629 votes, a drop of only 70,000. The Communists lost a million supporters but still polled 4,848,058. The Nationalists, led by Papen and Hugenberg, were bitterly disappointed with their own showing, a vote of 3,136,760, a mere 8 per cent of the votes cast and a gain of less than 200,000.

Still, the Nationalists' 52 seats, added to the 288 of the Nazis, gave the government a majority of 16 in the Reichstag. This was enough, perhaps, to carry on the day-to-day business of government but it was far short of the two-thirds majority which Hitler needed to carry out a new, bold plan to establish his dictatorship by consent of Parliament.

_______________

(1) NCA, III, pp. 272-75 (N.D. 351-PS).

(2) Goebbels, Kaiserhof, p. 256.

(3) See affidavit of Georg von Schnitzler, NCA, VII, p. 501 (N.D. EC-439); speeches of Goering and Hitler, NCA, VI, p. 1080 (N.D. D-203); Schacht's interrogation, NCA, VI p. 465 (N.D. 3725-PS); Funk's interrogation, NCA, V. p. 495 (N.D. 2828-PS).

(4) Goebbels, Kaiserhof, pp. 269-70.

(5) Papen, op. cit., p. 268.

(6) Rudolf Diels, Lucifer ante Portas, p. 194.

(7) For sources on the responsibility for the Reichstag fire see: Halder's affidavit, NCA, VI, p. 635 (N.D. 3740-PS); transcript of Gisevius' cross-examination on April 25, 1946, Trial of the Major War Criminals [hereafter cited as TMWC], XII, pp. 252-53; Diehl's affidavit, Goering's denial, TMWC, IX, pp. 432-36, and NCA, VI pp. 298-99 (N.D. 3593-PS); Willy Frischauer, The Rise and Fall of Hermann Goering, pp. 88-95; Douglas Reed, The Burning of the Reichstag; John Gunther, Inside Europe (Gunther attended the trial at Leipzig). There are many alleged testaments and confessions by those claiming to have participated in the Nazi firing of the Reichstag or to have positive knowledge of it, but none, so far as I know, has ever been substantiated. Of these, memoranda by Ernst Oberfohren, a Nationalist deputy, and Karl Ernst, the Berlin S.A. leader, have been given some credence. Both men were slain by the Nazis within a few months of the fire.

(8) NCA, III, pp. 968-70 (N.D. 1390-PS).

(9) NCA, IV, p. 496 (N.D. 1856-PS).

Waiting for the Reichstag Fire

2011-12-05T19:00:00.000-08:00

Canada's Parliament on fire, 1916

(Title courtesy Magellan's Log)

In accordance with the Constitution of the Weimar Republic (Section 48), a decree to cancel the Constitution...

Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and the State (Reichstag Fire Decree), February 28, 1933
(Translated from Reichsgesetzblatt I, 1933, p. 83.)

Translation from United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “The Holocaust.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. Accessed on December 5, 2011.

In virtue of Article 48(2) of the German Constitution, the following is decreed as a defensive measure against communist acts of violence endangering the state:

Article 1
Sections 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice. Therefore, restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press, on the right of assembly and the right of association, and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic, and telephonic communications, warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations, as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.

Article 2
If in a state the measures necessary for the restoration of public security and order are not taken, the Reich Government may temporarily take over the powers of the highest state authority.

Article 3
According to orders decreed on the basis of Article 2 by the Reich Government, the authorities of states and provinces, if concerned, have to abide thereby.

Article 4
Whoever provokes, or appeals for, or incites the disobedience of the orders given out by the supreme state authorities or the authorities subject to them for execution of this decree, or orders given by the Reich Government according to Article 2, is punishable-insofar as the deed is not covered by other decrees with more severe punishments-with imprisonment of not less than one month, or with a fine from 150 up to 15,000 reichsmarks.
Whoever endangers human life by violating Article 1 is to be punished by sentence to a penitentiary, under mitigating circumstances, with imprisonment of not less than six months and, when violation causes the death of a person, with death, under mitigating circumstances, with a penitentiary sentence of not less than two years. In addition the sentence may include confiscation of property.
Whoever provokes or incites an act contrary to public welfare is to be punished with a penitentiary sentence, under mitigating circumstances, with imprisonment of not less than three months.

Article 5
The crimes which under the Criminal Code are punishable with penitentiary for life are to be punished with death: i.e., in Paragraphs 81 (high treason), 229 (poisoning), 306 (arson), 311 (properties), and 324 (general poisoning).
Insofar as a more severe punishment has not been previously provided for, the following are punishable with death, life imprisonment, or imprisonment not to exceed 15 years:

1. Anyone who undertakes to kill the Reich President or a member or a commissioner of the Reich Government or of a state government, or provokes such a killing, or agrees to commit it, or accepts such an offer, or conspires with another for such a murder;

2. Anyone who under Paragraph 115(2) of the Criminal Code (serious rioting) or under Paragraph 125(2) of the Criminal Code (serious disturbance of the peace) commits the act with arms or cooperates consciously and intentionally with an armed person;

3. Anyone who commits a kidnapping under Paragraph 239 of the Criminal Code with the intention of making use of the kidnapped person as a hostage in the political struggle.

This decree is in force from the day of its announcement.
Berlin, February 28, 1933
The Reich President von Hindenburg
The Reich Chancellor A Hitler
The Minister of Interior Frick
The Minister of Justice Dr. Gürtner

And now, in Newtspeak, we're waiting for the Reichstag Fire so Congress can burn itself down and destroy the American Constitution in order to save it from Terrorism.

A swamp to die in

2011-12-01T19:26:00.001-08:00

Showdown at Fort McMurray

Edward Burtynsky

It seems increasingly clear that the global warming/environmental debate is going to be settled - even if temporarily - in northern Alberta. Why die on this particular hill?

On the one hand we have the environmental people like James Hansen and Bill McKibben, American activists and scientists who believe that development of the Athabasca toil sands will lead to irreversible and catastrophic climate change......and on the other we have economists - even Jeff Rubin who is an staunch opponent of globalization and its acolytes - who state bluntly - without any supporting evidence - that Alberta Crude is going to find its way to market at world prices. The environment it seems, in this view, is irrelevant. Somewhere in between we have a voice of pseudo-reason saying nothing has been proven and more research is needed - this from the Royal Society of Canada, although the authors are mainly from Alberta, which makes the objectivity a little suspect. Why the Royal Society of Canada, one wonders, and not some other dispassionate agency that has constituencies outside Alberta?

Really, there is no middle ground. There's no definitive answer either, although the question boils down to whether or not we're going to develop the resources in the short term out of self interest and deal with the complications as they arise, or whether we're going to stop such development cold in its tracks until the consequences are known in a more realistic fashion. As far as I know, there's no solution to the relentless aggregation of toxic tailings ponds at Fort Mac that nobody knows what to do with, just like the spent fuel rods of the nuclear power industry remain toxic festering dumps for decades - or longer - without anybody really knowing what to do with them either.

In this feverish environment, common sense is scarce. Either one is a Luddite irrational tree-hugger who would rather languish depressed around camp-fires while waiting for bison to throw themselves off cliffs, or one uses the resources at hand to continue industrial development that has freed the world from many ills and has the capacity to do wondrous things like explore the planets, even though an unfortunate by-product is the capacity to blow up this particular planet in a frenzy of xenophobic annihilation.

The "jobs creation" argument is obviously bullshit. Any jobs associated with the oil sands and pipelines are temporary, unsustainable, and have the social cost related to itinerant construction camps that create local boom-towns of unknown relation to a real long term economy, but bring with them demand for social services - at least in Canada - that are borne by government. In other words, the costs are handed to civil society. The profits go to corporations that have little loyalty to the jurisdictions that have to deal with the consequences.

A battle is brewing. Neither side is about to back off.

We the Government of the United States...

2011-11-29T00:23:00.000-08:00

... in Order to form a more despotic Executive, circumvent Justice, impose domestic Tranquility, commandeer the economy for the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex, ignore the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and fuck Posterity, do establish this Constitution for the United States of America as quaint.

Ritorno della donnola

2011-11-23T23:50:00.001-08:00

The Gazebos, Season 3, Episode 14

(further excerpt from Cabinet minutes)

WEASEL

The Government of Canada has returned in triumph from its Pacific Tour.

THE LOON

The Government of Canada has returned in triumph from its Pacific Tour.

TONY

The Government of Canada has returned in triumph from its Pacific Tour.

WEASEL

Unfortunately, Obama rammed Keystone XL up my ass.

THE LOON

The Government of Canada has returned in triumph from its Pacific Tour.

WEASEL

Stop repeating my sentences!

TONY

The Government of Canada has returned in triumph from its Pacific Tour.

WEASEL

What did I just say?

TONY

"Stop repeating my sentences!"

WEASEL

Before that...

TONY

Somebody rammed a pipeline up your ass.

THE LOON

The Government of Canada has returned in triumph from its Pacific Tour.

WEASEL

Obama fucked me over, even though he's committed to the destruction of international humanitarian law like we are.
He just wants to get re-elected.

JOHNNIE

The Government of Canada has returned in triumph from its Pacific Tour.

WEASEL

Enough already! You didn't do so good in the Middle East!

THE LOON

The Government of Canada is committed to reducing crime.

JOHNNIE

The Government of Canada is reduced to committing crime.

WEASEL

There are days I wonder whether it's all worth it....

...to be continued

"Reneging on Justice at Guantánamo"

2011-11-23T00:15:00.000-08:00

I can't believe it! The New York Times comes through, belatedly, limply, half-heartedly....

And now...Omar Khadr.

UN Security Council Resolution 1970 is alive and well, and living in The Hague

2011-11-23T00:01:00.000-08:00

So UN Security Council Resolution 1970 arises from the smouldering wreckage of 1973, and therefore The International Criminal Court has jurisdiction over crimes committed in Libya under authority given to it by Resolution 1970 (unanimously 15-0, no abstentions, including Brazil, Russia, China, Germany, and the United States.) I'm liking this. What this means, I'm thinking, is that the current struggling civil administration in Libya that came to power through Resolution 1973, is bound by the provisions of 1970. This is going to be interesting.

Crazy about Islamists

2011-11-22T13:37:00.001-08:00

"But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better."

George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

ANALYSIS| Fear of Islamists drove Egyptian military's recent power grab
Experts on region weigh in on military council's move to extend rule, influence constitution
By Kazi Stastna, CBC News Posted: Nov 22, 2011 8:57 AM ET Last Updated: Nov 22, 2011 3:31 PM ET

None of the experts says what "Islamists" are, or why anybody should fear them. Is a Muslim an Islamist? Are all Muslims "Islamists?" Are all "Islamists" Muslims?

The CBC quotes all these experts (who happen to be American academics) but then states baldly, out of the blue, with no attribution:

"The establishment of a set of founding principles that all parties would agree on, and that could not be altered by those drafting the constitution, had been discussed for months in Egypt. The idea was endorsed by secularists such as Mohamed ElBaradei, who had wanted a constitution established prior to elections, for fear the Islamists would have too much of a hand in drafting it after the vote."

So who are "the Islamists?" I looked up the Oxford English Dictionary on the subject. The usage of "Islamist" seems clearly in the 19th century to mean a person whose faith is Islam, but in the 1993 and 2007 "draft entries" there seems to my ear to have crept in unpleasant political overtones. Maybe that's just me, but I'd like to hear a discussion on this from people who don't make their living as American academics. George Orwell is definitely not an American academic but he said: "Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies 'something not desirable.'" Perhaps the word "Islamist" is being similarly abused, consciously or not.

Who exactly is the "The Muslim Brotherhood?" Is that like A Band of Brothers, or the Blues Brothers? So as I understand Karen Armstrong, "The Battle for God,"the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt set out to fill a void left by a corrupt colonial and subsequently a military neo-colonial administration that looked after their own interests rather than those of the population, not unlike Mubarak et al. And then:

"By the end of Novermber 1954, over one thousand Brothers had been arrested and brought to trial. Innumberable others, however, many of whom had been guilty of nothing more inflammatory than distributing leaflets, never appeared in court, were subjected to mental and phyical torture, and languished in Nasser's prisons and concentration camps for the next fifteen years. Hudabybi was sentenced to life imprisonment, but six other leaders of the Society were executed. Nasser seemed to have broken the Brotherhood, and to have stopped the only progressive Islamic movement in Egypt in its tracks. Secularism appeared to be victorious, especially after Nasser became the hero of the Arab world two years later after the Suez Crisis, in which he not only successfully defied the West but inflicted a crushing humiliation on the British. But his triumph over the Brotherhood proved in the end to the a Pyrrhic victory. The Brothers who spent the rest of Nasser's life in the camps had experienced the onslaught of secularism at its most aggressive. We shall see that it was in the camps that some of the Brothers abandoned Banna's reformist vision and created a new and potentially violent Sunni fundamentalism."

"I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return"

W.H. Auden
September 1, 1939