Dawg's Blawg

Peter MacKay comes clean?

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 11:02:22 PST

This was back in April, and passed almost unnoticed. Freudian slip?

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Torturegate North: the "6,000-mile screwdriver"

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 07:35:59 PST

The phrase above is used in military circles to describe far-flung command-and-control systems. And we now know who was turning that tool as far back as 2007: Stephen Harper. Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office used a "6,000-mile screwdriver" to oversee the denial of reports of Afghan detainee abuse when the scandal first erupted in 2007, according to a former senior NATO public affairs...

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No E-mails please

noreply@blogger.com (John Cross) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:13:43 PST

Damn - I see that the good Doctor beat me to it! Well, since we are all talking about the hacked e-mails from the CRU, I suppose I should post about it as well. There are three points that I want to raise. First, I think this is one of the most despicable acts I have come across. The e-mails contained personal opinions and observations. Who among us has never written an e-mail which they...

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Conservative Party logo, updated

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:37:25 PST

[H/t]

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The Great Global Warming Conspi...whoops

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:12:05 PST

One of the usual dolts asks, "Where's Dawg?" Here I am, after faithfully observing the 24-hour rule. Don't you wish you and your cadre of bloviating denialists had done the same? You've had your day. Great big searchable files. Where's the smoke? Where's the gun? Any proof climate change isn't taking place? Any proof that AGW isn't happening? Any proof of fraud? Any proof of a cover-up? Any...

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The Maple Leafs

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 11:55:48 PST

...forever. A couple of winters ago we had more snow in Ottawa than most folks could remember. We suffered, and shoveled, and grumbled, as windrows grew to twenty feet or so. Then we learned that we were literally inches from the all-time snowfall record. You guessed it. We prayed for a storm that would put us over. (And it didn't come!) Go, Leafs. I just can't seem to wrench my gaze away.

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Brother Gil

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:06:09 PST

I can't add a single word to this moving tribute to my union brother (although sometimes he seemed more like an uncle) Gil Levine, a legendary trade unionist in these parts. A mensch indeed. Rest easy, old friend.

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Ñakaq attack

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:58:33 PST

A bizarre story out of Peru today--with the backstory almost entirely missing, and the lede truly buried. Police say a gang in the Peruvian jungle has been killing people and draining fat from the corpses to sell on the black market for use in cosmetics, although medical experts say they doubt a major market for fat exists. Three suspects confessed to killing five people, but the gang may have...

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Torturegate: the Liberal leader's vanishing act

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:31:12 PST

The Liberals drop the ball again. The Invisible Man is too busy reconnecting, it seems, even if he never actually connected in the first place. His descent into utter irrelevance continues.

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Man with a conscience

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:55:14 PST

Everything has by now been dragged into the sunlight. The Harper government, beyond all reasonable doubt, has been complicit in the torture of Afghan civilians, and the Canadian Forces' leadership and assorted conniving bureaucrats have joined this government in their complicity, and assisted it in trying to cover it up. I have little to add. But I would like to salute the man who blew the...

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There ain't no-flys on me

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:02:27 PST

...yet. For the gentle folks who wondered if I was overreacting by suing for a retraction recently, this news: Transport Canada maintains its own no-fly list. The people in charge of your fate consist of a troika of representatives from CSIS, the RCMP and Transport Canada, and a Deputy Minister who was, at least until last February, "signing [recommendations] in a completely blind fashion."...

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The Prisoner [updated]

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:04:14 PST

The remake of the cult series that starred Patrick McGoohan, he of the one facial expression, begins tonight on AMC, continuing tomorrow and finishing Tuesday. I'm looking forward to it. I watched "The Prisoner" originally as a re-run on TVO (or was it PBS?), avoiding most of Warner Troyer's insufferably pretentious post-show commentaries (a parasitical series called "The Prisoner Puzzle"). For...

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The war against terror, Ch.3014

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:54:12 PST

In which our banks give whole new meaning to the word "teller." Depositing a cheque could see Canadians entered into a government database of suspicious financials based on the colour of their skin and the whims of the local teller, warns Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart, according to one of two new audits released today. The commissioner audited the little-known Financial Transactions...

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Hasbara by juxtaposition

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:24:13 PST

One story is a report on anti-Semitic graffiti sprayed by vandals in Calgary, the city of whites-only nightclubs and apparently a place for up-and-coming Nazis to prosper. No surprises there. Nevertheless, Calgary Police Inspector Richard Hinse is being prudent: This could be kids who have no hate in their hearts to have done something like this or it could be a group that does. So really it's...

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Maintiens le droit

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:13:00 PST

"[W]orse than watching the Dziekanski tape." That's how Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, describes watching an edited version of a video shot in 2003 in which a Metis man, Clayton Alvin Willey, is knocked to the ground by RCMP officers, hogtied, kicked in the chest, pepper-sprayed and repeatedly Tasered. Willey died. A coroner cleared the...

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Trash talk

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:05:31 PST

Those pesky opponents of the foreign occupation of Afghanistan are due once again, it seems, for a ritual denunciation, and a couple of bloggers, Terry "War is not the answer" Glavin and one who shall remain nameless, have mounted their Stalinist podia to oblige. Glavin's target is the outspoken Afghan feminist Malalai Joya, of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), an...

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Fun with VISA

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:27:57 PST

Bad enough trying to find what is effectively a last-minute flight to transport my stepson (presently at college in Whitehorse) home from the Yukon for the holidays. Aeroplan almost laughed at me, and I can't say I blame them. My tardiness was not entirely my fault, but I won't get into that. Using my points being out of the question, I soon found an on-line seat sale outfit, flightnetwork.com....

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HUAC North: the Chairman's sophistry

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:20:53 PST

Mario Silva today: I think Israel can be criticised like any other country, but the question is where to the lines start to be crossed, and when those lines are crossed then it becomes a problem and it is anti-Semitism. For example, when there’s cartoons depicting Jews in a very derogatory fashion, when there is presentation that all Jews are responsible, when they’re referring to Israel as an...

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Canadian citizenship, second class

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:44:19 PST

Another significant omission from Jason Kenney's shiny new booklet for aspiring citizens: there are levels of citizenship in Canada. Just ask our Native people, remorselessly played with by a succession of governments, impoverished and neglected, unable even to get decent schools out of the current regime. Canada is one of only three countries in the world (Australia has since ratified) that have...

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The unbearable lightness of Sarah Palin, Ch. 423

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 10:27:43 PST

The person who can see Russia from her house (well, not really) has published a Palindrone--equally non-compelling, apparently, read backwards or forwards. Fresh from her disastrous intervention in New York, she's on an honest-to-goodness book tour at the moment, doubling as an early campaign launch for 2012. The way things are going, she ought to have her nomination in the bag. The next GOP...

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HUAC North: the fix is in

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 05:21:27 PST

If anyone had any doubts about the purpose and function of the Parliamentary inquisition now under way--the so-called Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism--they should now be dispelled. This isn't an inquiry. It's a witch-hunt. Here is the Chair, Mario Silva: "Freedom of speech, thought and expression are vital components of academic discourse - but this rule has to apply to...

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"An unhappy day for these girls"

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 10:31:57 PST

It's official. International ski jump champions will not be permitted to compete in the Vancouver Olympics. Because they're women. Them's the International Olympic Committee rules, and the Vancouver Organizing Committee spent $100,000 to enforce them. They were successful: apparently, according to our courts, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms doesn't apply--despite the heavy infusion of federal...

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Colby Cosh, b'gosh

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:47:25 PST

Colby Cosh has left the building. I didn't usually agree with him (although on occasion I did), and sometimes I found him insufferably smart-ass, even callow. He was also named after a cheese. But the man could write, one of the few in the Natty Post stable who had that ability, and I'm actually going to miss his stylish and intelligent feistiness and his edgy ideological excursions. Best of...

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"Barbaric cultural practices"

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:53:18 PST

I've been doing a little self-interrogation about my discomfort with the phrase quoted, from Jason Kenney's spanking-new Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship. (There's a fine spoof of the pamphlet here, although I'm not entirely opposed to its revised emphases, which include references to some of the darker chapters in our history.) Here's what Kenney himself has to...

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Trivialization of the Holocaust slammed

Dr.Dawg@gmail.com (Dr.Dawg) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:52:14 PST

B'nai Brith Canada has received a stinging rebuke from Canadian Holocaust survivors for its recent advertisement comparing radical Islam and Nazism. "We survivors have fought everybody that tries to trivialize the Shoah. We get very, very angry when it is done by Jewish leaders. I think that they should know better," said the co-president of Canadian Jewish Holocaust Survivors, Sidney...

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