Peace, order and good government, eh?

Sunday morning: Lazy

2013-05-19T12:54:00Z

If you're not wide awake yet, this should do the trick.

Friday night blues blogging

2013-05-18T00:00:00Z

This is Rory Gallagher playing solo on Too Much Alcohol.

And this is Ray Wylie Hubbard appearing on Letterman performing Mother Blues.

Son Seals was a professional musician at 13 and a bandleader at 19. At 29, he moved to Chicago where he was signed by Alligator Records and began a long career as a recording artist. Here he is performing The Sky is Crying (complete with extended clarinet solo). Have a good weekend.

BC provincial election lessons

2013-05-16T20:46:05Z

Well, having had my whining rant, I might as well get in on the post mortem. I'm substantially in agreement with Greg Fingas of Accidental Deliberations' column here, which helped crystallize some of this. So this is a piece of my take on what the NDP should do and didn't. I'll start with the summary:

Stick it to 'em. Have a strong narrative. Use the strong narrative to build strong positions. Use that strong narrative to attack, and never back up or apologize for it no matter how the pundits try to dismiss. Relate both our policies and opponents' attributes, not just obvious failings but even perceived strengths, to that narrative.

Adrian Dix did not have a strong narrative. He was too busy being moderate, which is to say fearing his own message.

Not having one, he couldn't stake out many strong positions, because he would not have a basis for defending such positions. He did not stick it to 'em. He was taking the high road. To the extent that he ever did point out the failings of the Liberals, it did not connect because he was avoiding narrative. He could critique individual actions or positions of the Liberals, but couldn't offer a general story about why they represented Liberal failing in particular, why the NDP would be more trustworthy or do better. It couldn't, because he wasn't willing to take a strong NDP position that could contrast our identity and goals with theirs. It has been said that Dix wasn't a good speaker, not a great performer in debate. But he had little to say. Or rather, there was little he was prepared to risk saying. Under those circumstances, how could he perform well? The Liberals to some extent did have a narrative, the standard right wing narrative--they characterized themselves as the sound capitalist economy people who would create jobs and slay deficits, and the NDP as the big-government socialists who, by hating big business who are the only job creators, will kill jobs and the economy and create deficits. To do this, they often lied, but being mendacious nonsense only blunted the narrative to a very limited extent. We had nothing much we were willing to counter with because we were too scared any truth we might say, most especially any coherent story contrasting us with the Libs, would look non-moderate. And so Adrian Dix lost.

I realize this is vague. But the whole thing would be way too long. Think I'll do a short series talking about what I mean by a narrative, what I think the core NDP narrative is, what it can do for us and so forth, a piece at a time.

Peter Penashue takes a Mulligan and slices it into the woods.

2013-05-16T15:29:00Z

CBC News on Monday night:

Liberals take Labrador, as Jones wins big over Penashue

I have to confess to being caught by surprise when Labrador MP Peter Penashue suddenly announced his resignation from the House of Commons and his intention to run in the subsequent by-election. It made a lot more sense when it was later reported that Elections Canada was putting pressure on him to address the problems with his 2011 campaign and might continue to press. And while things may not have worked out quite the way Penashue hoped, the Conservative Party might be just as happy that now the whole thing will go away.

Penashue had never denied the problems from the 2011 election. As the evidence piled up that his campaign had grossly exceeded the spending limit, accepted dozens of illegal corporate donations in the process, and generally made a complete mess of the paperwork, the MP just shrugged it off as someone else's fault and swore up and down that his own intentions were entirely pure and honorable. He promised faithfully to work with Elections Canada to make whatever remedies were required.

His colleagues in the Conservative Party, up to and including the prime minister himself, were happy to rally to his defence and insist that he was just the best darn MP Labrador had ever had. Until that announcement in March, there was never any hint displayed that Penashue or anyone else in the CPC regarded this as an offence worthy of his resignation.

The records from that original campaign were in enough of a mess that even Penashue's new official agent -- they brought in the chief financial officer of the CPC to straighten this out -- hadn't been able to satisfy Elections Canada with the revised documents she submitted. On Feb. 12th Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand wrote to advise that further steps were required and that if revised documents weren't filed by Mar. 4th, Penashue would be unable to sit in the Commons or vote. And there it was: the indication to Conservatives that the electoral agency was playing hardball on this one. (Yes, I've mixed my sports metaphors.)

Revised records were dutifully produced, signed and submitted on Mar. 4th. By that date the Receiver General was on the receiving end of over $48,000 as repayment of illegal corporate donations, money that mostly came straight from the Conservative Party. A week later, there was Penashue making a splashy funding announcement in Labrador. And a few days after that, he announced his resignation and his campaign for re-election began while the other parties were still trying to sort out who to put up against him.

The cynics among us — which would certainly include me — should be forgiven for thinking this attempt at a do-over was sold to Penashue as a pre-emptive move. It remained entirely possible that Elections Canada would continue its investigation into Penashue's campaign and might ultimately decide to refer the matter for charges. If found guilty of intentional violations of election law, Penashue could face what, for a politician, would be the ultimate punishment: he could be barred from running for elected office.

It seems entirely consistent with the Conservative Party of Canada we've all come to know that they wanted to get Penashue safely re-elected before any final judgement might come down on him. If that ultimate punishment was to be applied, it would be entirely consistent with the Conservative Party's combative nature that it would fight the sentence, insisting loudly and at every opportunity that Penashue -- the best darn MP Labrador had ever had -- was re-elected in a clean campaign and what a terrible crime against democracy it would be to deprive the good people of Labrador of the representation they so obviously deserved!

And if Penashue lost, it would at least settle the matter.

And so the writ was dropped. And the best darn MP Labrador ever had was well behind the Liberal candidate from the first poll to the last. The highlight of the campaign had Penashue confiding to an audience of supporters that he had used his cabinet position to hold financing for one project hostage in order to secure money for another of his choosing. It strikes me as a dubious proposition for a candidate who's already under fire over allegations of breaking election law to brag publicly about his willingness to abuse his cabinet position for partisan purposes. But then I'm not a successful politician. Come to think of it...

And so Penashue lost. And rather convincingly too. And now he can fade into obscurity with a good two years to go before the next general election.

Or will he walk off the course and take up permanent resident in the ultimate clubhouse? They could seat him next to Mike Duffy.

BC provincial election sour grapes

2013-05-15T16:51:36Z

So, the BC Liberals won last night's election. I'm sure there will be lots of post mortems over the next week or two, and some soul searching going on well past that. People will point out the flaws in the campaign, whinge about media coverage, wonder whether the NDP had the right leader, and so on. All of it will no doubt have some validity.

But ultimately, this is a democracy. The people choose. And they'd had years and years of the BC Liberals, who had spent the time taking bribes from cronies and systematically hosing the public. They shouldn't have needed the media or the NDP campaign to remind them of half this shit. The speed of forgetfulness required to ignore their consistently awful record is staggering; it's not like they'd ever stopped fucking up right until the election campaign began. Meanwhile Christy Clark is the emptiest suit I have ever seen, her desire for power so completely lacking in any notion of what she might want to actually accomplish with it that she was like a deer in the headlights every time there was occasion for her to have to make a decision. Her campaign was polished--but so polished it was obvious there was nothing there but the high gloss. Anyone voting for her had no choice but to realize they weren't electing a candidate but a slick hairdo.

And yet they did just that. I can only conclude that the majority of my fellow British Columbians are morons.

The Liberal supporters are morons. The NDP supporters who didn't vote are morons. Very likely many of those who voted NDP are actually morons who just happened to accidentally do the right thing. They had the right to do the stupid thing and I will defend that right to the death; that's democracy. But I must say it's a blow to my particular strain of radicalism, in which I fondly imagine an active populace governing themselves. On the evidence, it's looking an awful lot like people ain't bright enough to govern themselves. Not that that's an endorsement of existing systems--our elites are also clearly not bright enough to govern themselves, let alone anyone else.

So where does that leave us? Governed by the fucking BC Liberals. Four more years, probably even worse. Pipelines, temporary foreign workers, kowtowing to big pharma so they can give us worse drugs for more money, bribery, PPP giveaways, more attempts to find ways to pay more for power, raw log exports. And it's ultimately the public's fault. That old sarcastic comment about ditching the current public and electing a better one . . . I'm kind a feeling like taking it seriously.

Friday night blues blogging (because I don't have any cats)

2013-05-11T00:05:00Z

Last week I posted a version of this song by the Asylum Street Spankers. Here's a different interpretation, and a different spelling of the title, by Blackberry Smoke. This is Deep Elem Blues.

Let's slow it down and go back a few years at the same time. This is Memphis Slim, ably assisted by Matt "Guitar" Murphy and Willie Dixon, with I'll Just Keep Singing the Blues.

And let's pick it back up again. This is the Gregor Linden Band with Wilson B. handling the vocal on Sittin' In the Shade. Linden is the one with the Les Paul. Have a good weekend.

Shorter Corporations on Temporary Foreign Workers:

2013-05-07T22:29:18Z

"We've been lying all this time; turns out free markets don't work after all."

Well I'm glad we finally agree. Let's remind them of that every time from now on when they go on about how X policy that's good for people must be abandoned because it's not free-markety enough.

But did they fill out an application first?

2013-05-06T21:00:00Z

Enbridge pipeline protesters close Ontario highway

A highway near Hamilton, Ont., was shut down for almost 90 minutes Monday morning as a group stopped traffic to protest Enbridge's plan to reverse the flow of its pipeline that cuts through a rural area of Hamilton.

About 40 protesters staged a mock oil spill and cleanup on Highway 6 near Concession Road 6 to express their concerns about the pipeline. Six Ontario Provincial Police cruisers and two Hamilton police cruisers arrived at the scene shortly after the protest started at around 11 a.m. The road reopened around 12:30 p.m.

The hearings about Enbridge's plan for this pipeline are the first instance where the NEB's new rules regarding public participation come into play. Yesterday's news suggested that making the normal means of expressing opposition more difficult had silenced a certain amount of dissent. Today's news reminds us that some won't settle for being silenced; they'll seek alternative means to express themselves. Things will escalate and the government will attempt to marginalize the dissenters.

Expect Joe Oliver to resume blustering about radical environmentalists any moment now.

As I was saying...

2013-05-05T13:52:00Z

Few complete application to reverse Ontario, Quebec pipeline

Fewer than 200 interested parties have completed a 10-page application form asking the National Energy Board to accept their written comments about the reversal of a pipeline that would carry diluted Alberta oil sands bitumen across Southern Ontario and into Quebec.

That compares to the more than 9,000 letters that were written during the approvals process for the Northern Gateway pipeline that would transport the same material over 1,177 kilometres to a tanker port in Northern British Columbia.

The authors of "more than 9,000 letters" didn't have to fill out that 10-page application. That's a new process the NEB has set up and as I suggested here, it's having the desired effect. By discouraging feedback from the public, the government can claim there's much less opposition to the project. This kind of obstruction to public participation in the decision-making process is just another form of voter suppression.

Mission accomplished.

Friday night

2013-05-04T00:04:00Z

This evening's proceedings will begin in a recording studio and finish up at the White House. This the Tedeschi Trucks band live in the studio with Learn How to Love.

I believe this was recorded in Austin, Texas which would explain why they're making jokes about Dallas-Fort Worth. This is the Asylum Street Spankers with Deep Ellum Blues.

Have I mentioned that one of the house rules for these Friday night posts is: never make anyone follow Buddy Guy? So this is the closer. There are a few other familiar faces involved in this rendition of Five Long Years. Have a good weekend.

We need more spies

2013-05-02T22:57:44Z

I never really believed it at the time, but more and more I run across references to poilcymakers in the US administration back in the cold war having turned out to actually be Soviet spies. The architect of the Bretton Woods system seems to be the most notorious example these days, but I've seen references to a number of others.
So what I'm wondering is: How is it that in the current time, the US seems to be far worse run in terms of both domestic and foreign policy than it was when it was riddled with agents of a hostile foreign power?

Abstaining above our weight

2013-05-01T20:10:00Z

Canada won't run for UN Security Council seat in 2014

Canada will focus on other priorities rather than mount a fresh campaign for a spot on the United Nations Security Council, says Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird.

Baird's disclosure that there's no new campaign in the works comes after Canada's failed 2010 campaign to win one of the two temporary two-year, non-veto-wielding seats on the UN's top body that were available at the time.

That loss in 2010 was the first time Canada had ever lost a bid for a seat on the council. I guess Baird doesn't handle rejection well.

But if we keep disengaging from things, we might just get a reputation for not playing well with others.

Wait, what's that? Ah. I've been informed that's it too late, we already have that reputation. Never mind.

Abdelrazik's still looking for answers

2013-05-01T00:51:00Z

Abousfian Abdelrazik has decided that if the Canadian government refuses to disclose information about its actions, he'll have to ask someone else. Like Sudan.

A Montreal man who believes Canada's spy agency had a hand in keeping him behind bars in Khartoum is pressing the Sudanese government for documentation about his case.

Abousfian Abdelrazik, flanked by about a dozen supporters, hand-delivered a letter Monday to the Embassy of Sudan in Ottawa seeking records that might reveal the full role Canada played in his ordeal.

He hasn't been left with many other options. Much of the documentation the government has produced in response to the lawsuit he filed has been redacted. And as this article reminds us, the promised review by SIRC of any involvement CSIS may have had in his detention and mistreatment has never materialized. For reasons "the committee has refused to explain."

I suppose Abdelrazik could give Chuck Strahl a call. Try him at the Manning Centre.

All stocked up on popcorn and no reason to pop it

2013-04-30T19:31:00Z

Back in November I noted my surprise at how low Chuck Strahl's profile had been since he'd been named to chair the Security Intelligence Review Committee the previous June. I would have thought the person appointed to direct oversight of our national intelligence agency might get a little more press, and particularly when the CSIS inspector general's office was shut down by the Harper government two months after Strahl's appointment. When it comes to keeping tabs on CSIS, SIRC is really all there is.

But Strahl's profile remained pretty low until last week and when his name did pop up, it wasn't exactly because of his duties with SIRC. He's also the incoming chair of the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, Preston Manning's finishing school for movement conservative candidates and political operatives. The centre's involvement with municipal politics in Calgary became an item when a surreptitious recording of a presentation by "a major home developer" in that city included this:

He pointed to the Manning Centre's Municipal Governance Project, which another speaker later noted has "come on to help with support for this group."

Wenzel said that "in order to bring Preston (Manning) on board, 11 of us put up $100,000 - so a million-one - so it's not as if we haven't put up our own money."

Spoken like a group who believe the Manning Centre is supporting their particular agenda and doing it for the money.

Since Preston Manning was out of the country at the time, a spokesman for the centre directed media inquiries to the incoming chair. And that's how, at least for a few days, Strahl was suddenly in the news. As you'll gather from the iPolitics link above, Calgary's Mayor Nenshi isn't too pleased with the role the Manning Centre is playing in politics in his town and wonders if all of this, and especially the $1.1 million in donations, is quite kosher for an organization that's officially a non-profit and maintains that it's non-partisan and is all about building democracy. As opposed to buying it.

The federal NDP then picked up the story but from a different angle. And in that, they actually echoed Alberta journalist and blogger David Climenhaga who was already asking early last week whether it was appropriate for the chair of SIRC to be so heavily involved in the Manning Centre. As both iPolitics and the CBC reported, the NDP raised the issue in the House of Commons on Friday morning.

And I thought it would become an issue. The Manning Centre's focus is, by its own admission, on building the conservative movement and equipping that movement's followers to campaign for, and win, elected office. The fact that it doesn't officially endorse a slate of candidates or accept donations with "strings" tied to them doesn't alter the fact that the organization's devotion to movement conservatism is spelled out on its About Us page. By now, I'm sure, people who donate money to the centre know they're not doing it to ensure that all points of view are heard and reflected in the various levels of government. The shindig the Manning Centre sponsors in Ottawa every year is the meeting ground for everyone who's anyone in the CPC. Any claim that this is a non-partisan organization should provoke gales of laughter.

And the chair of SIRC shouldn't be involved in partisan political activity. When, at the same time this story was developing, BC's Christy Clark named Strahl as someone who was assisting her re-election campaign, she backtracked in a hurry and insisted that Strahl's involvment had ended when he was named to SIRC.

By now I expected to see at least a bit more on Strahl in the media. You'd think there'd be at least an editorial or two if not a follow-up story. But all I've got is this report about some teaching he's doing at UBC this summer.

While all this is happening there have been other recent stories of interest. There's Public Safety Minister Vic Toews micro-managing the RCMP and interfering at Corrections Canada. There's a report reminding us that CSIS is now keeping company, and sharing information, with the private sector. At the same time, the agency's definition of "person of interest" seems to have loosened up some.

So I was looking forward to my Google Alert on "Chuck Strahl" lighting up. I really thought this would be the occasion for a wider discussion on the degree to which the national security and law enforcement establishment has become compromised and that SIRC and CSIS would be at the centre of it.

So far, it's not happening.

Friday night: RIP Richie Havens

2013-04-27T00:17:00Z

It wasn't planned that way but the first performer to take the stage at the Woodstock Music & Art Fair in 1969 was Richie Havens, who passed away earlier this week. The famous performance of Freedom/Motherless Child was actually an improvisation for an encore after a long set.

He didn't appear on the pop charts very frequently but Havens went on to have a long career as a singer, songwriter, performer and recording artist. The first four and a half minutes of this next clip is a performance of an original song called Paradise from a 1999 television appearance. The rest of the clip is an interview if you're inclined to stick around for it.

Aside from the rapid fire right hand and that voice, Havens was known for his covers of songs by other writers. This is a performance of James Taylor's Fire and Rain from 1971 and it seems like an appropriate closer under the circumstances. Have a good weekend.