Hillary and Rudy Naked

This cover had to have been made by a Democrat.  There’s no way Hillary’s holding up that well.

BQ Ultimatum

Today the BQ threw down the gauntlet – sort of. The Bloc Quebecois have issued 5 ‘non-negotiable’ demands that the Tories must meet in order to get BQ support.

This comes less than a week after the BQ saw the collapse of their vote in Quebec and two weeks after Stephane Dion’s ultimatum to the Tories.

Here are the BQ demands via Canadian Press:

1. the elimination of all federal spending powers in provincial jurisdictions
2. the Tory government to respect the Kyoto Protocol
3. the continuation of supply management in the agricultural sector.
4. promises to help Quebec’s forest industry
5. a clear commitment that Canadian soldiers will pull out of Afghanistan when the current mission ends in February 2009.

It looks bad. But I think it’s just looks [others disagree].

I suspect that four of those demands are window dressing for the big one – and that’s the restriction on federal spending power. If Duceppe puts that on the table as a non-negotiable pre-requisite for supporting the throne speech then he positions himself to take credit for it and to run on it when it passes.

The big Tory criticism of the Bloc in the last election was that they didn’t get anything done. This bluster of Duceppe is seemingly his attempt to pre-empt that claim in the next election.

What Duceppe saw in the recent provincial election was the failure of left-wing politics to win votes outside of Montreal. In the countryside and in the smaller cities, Tory ideas or rather ADQ ideas were ascendant. He may have thought it was a fluke, but the by-election had to have confirmed this to him.

Quebecois care about the environment and the war, but that won’t sway their vote. What gets votes are Tory promises like the ‘nation’ resolution and like the commitment to restrict the federal spending power. While this is a desperate move on Duceppe’s part, it’s not brinkmanship it’s positioning.

***

One final note – I love the French language sometimes, it’s so clear. Here’s the title of the BQ demand that the Tories ‘end the mission’ in Afghanistan – in the original French : “Afghanistan : retrait en 2009″

Andrew Coyne then and now

Patience…

Andrew Coyne after the 2006 By-election [Liberal victory]:

Thanks of a grateful nation : The results are in from London North Centre, and the Tories finished … third. Behind the Greens. With a two-term mayor of London as candidate. She got 23% of the vote.

Meanwhile, in The Nation Within, voters in Repentigny have rewarded the Conservatives for their historic gesture of reconciliation and respect with … 18.7% of the vote. Mind you, that’s up from 18.1% in the general election.

Andrew Coyne after the 2007 By-election [Tory Victory]

As for the Tories, yes, they have some reason to crow…What does that mean, concretely? The Conservatives will shortly try to consolidate their gains in Quebec with further sops to nationalist opinion: the Throne Speech will reportedly promise to legislate formal restrictions on the federal spending power.

Foreign Drug Runners for Ron Paul

Foreign? High? Vote Ron Paul.

Another endorsement for Ron Paul. This one from Canada’s own Mark Emery. This is a shot of a couple marijuana cafes near Victory Square in downtown Vancouver, BC.

The store on the left is “Mark Emery’s Cannabis Culture Headquarters”. Now look closely, near the sign for the ‘Back to  School Special’:

Praise from Caeser surely. If you don’t know who Mark Emery is, he is currently facing extradition to the US as a drug kingpin. From 60 Minutes:

His name is Marc Emery and he is called the “Prince of Pot.” He claims to have sold more marijuana seeds than anyone in the world and, to date, no one has disputed that claim. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, where the culture is rather permissive concerning marijuana. The Canadian government, for the most part, has left Emery and his business alone.

But to the U.S., he is one of the most wanted men in the drug world. As 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon reported earlier this year, officials in the Drug Enforcement Administration want him extradited to the United States. They want him in an American prison and they want him badly. [source]

The Liberal Nightmare

From Liblogs (The Liberal Party Blog Aggregator):

If, and this is still a big if, these numbers come down like the above, then Dion and the Liberals suffer a huge blow, that isn’t easily discounted. A possible Conservative victory provides plenty to crow about, and the NDP would be beyond ecstatic to win in a former Liberal stronghold. The Liberals would be left to damage control, as the realization that the last bastion of support is threatened and Dion looks an albatross.

The numbers in question:

Outremont:

NDP 38%
Libs 32%
Bloc 14%

Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot

Bloc 49%
Cons 32%
NDP 7%
Libs 5%

Roberval-La-Saint_jean

Cons 43%
Bloc 37%
Lib 12%
NDP 4%

See also SDA

Comment from an El-Farouk Khaki (NDP) Supporter

I’ve been getting some traffic from NDP blogger Kenn Chaplin’s Facebook account. He’s sending people to a critical post I wrote about Toronto Centre NDP candidate El-Farouk Khaki. I received this comment from that post:

“And don’t let Tarek Fatah and the MCC fool you. He is a political chameleon who will say or do anything to accomplish his objectives. For a man who has spouted homophobic slurs and is himself an atheist, he certainly likes to chummy up to the gay community for cover and sell himself as a moderate “Muslim”.”

This is a comment which appears to come from Andrew Hwang. Hwang is a researcher in Khaki’s law office and is a friend and supporter of Khaki’s.

Calling a Muslim an atheist is uncomfortably close to calling him an apostate. Current Muslim Canadian Congress president Farzana Hassan Shahhid touched on this last year:

“there is an underlying fear all the time…that uneasy feeling is part of my daily life. I have been declared an apostate twice, for opposing the Sharia [Islamic law]. We have asked [Ontario Attorney General] Michael Bryant to include or acknowledge accusation of blasphemy and apostasy into the existing hate laws so the public and legal frame work is sensitized to this issue.”

Update – for the record, from Tarek Fatah:

…Its sad that they would stoop into the gutter. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Its sound odd to state one’s religosity, but I am no atheist and certainly not a homophobe. I could say without any fear of contradiction that as a heterosxual Muslim, I have openly supported and defended gay rights since I ran on the NDP ticket in 1995 on Bill 167 as my platform in a riding where there was no gay presence–Scarboro North.

More than ever

Those people are slaves – part of a group of nearly 500 freed from their masters in China. For as little as $50 you could but one of these men or boys to toil in your factory or to torture and murder at your pleasure:

Zhao Yanbing, a foreman who fled a brickworks where 31 men were rescued a few days ago, described on state television how he had beaten a man in his late fifties for not working hard enough. “His performance was so bad, so I thought that I would frighten him a bit. When I raised the shovel over him I never thought that he would get up and confront me, so I slammed the shovel down on his head.” The man never got up again.

You can read more about this slavery ring here.

Around the world today there are 27 million slaves – that’s more than at any time in human history. Most of the action against slavery is being done by Christian organizations, but there are some non-sectarian groups. In the UK there is Anti-Slavery International. In the US there is Free the Slaves. Here in Canada – the Future Group.

Before you get the wrong idea, we aren’t talking about so-called ‘wage-slaves’ (and what an ignorant expression that is), but real people held as chattel. Some of these people are born into slavery, others are victims of war, and others still are (as is the case with the Chinese slaves) kidnapped and sold to the highest bidder.

This is a problem everywhere – including Canada. While not a major source of slaves, this is a final destination for women and children to be used for sex. It’s surprising but Canada didn’t have a law to specifically target human trafficking until 2005. At the time the bill was passed, there were 12 slave masters on trial in Canada.

Last year the Future Group released a report on the current state of slavery in Canada. The situation is summarized here by LifeSiteNews.com):

The situation in Canada is so bad that individual law enforcement officers are reportedly approaching local hospitals and NGOs to cobble together funding to provide the most basic medical assistance for victims in major cities.

“People have been threatened and told that if they co-operate with law enforcement their families back home will be killed,” said Perrin. “What Canada has typically done is detain these victims without medical care, then deport them. It’s a practice that we’ve seen in some authoritarian and despotic countries and it has no place in a civilized, just society like our own.”

The report criticizes former Liberal cabinet ministers Irwin Cotler, Joe Volpe and Pierre Pettigrew for “passing the buck” on the issue. Conservative Citizenship and Immigration Minister Monte Solberg told Sun Media, “It’s very damning, and if there are obvious legislative or regulatory fixes that need to be done, those have to become priorities, given especially that we’re talking about very vulnerable people.”

That was back in 2006. What’s been done since then? Not enough. Monte Solberg did follow up that report with a stop-gap measure to allow victims of slavery to stay in Canada for 120 days – but they can’t stay permanently and they have almost no access to resources. In December the Commons passed a ‘feel-good’ motion condemning slavery but this isn’t legislation and it has no effect on the well-being of former slaves.

Looking at legislation, there are 2 nearly identical bills before Parliament right now. Bill s-222 in the Senate and Bill c-410 in the house. Both of these bills would allow runaway slaves to stay in Canada. Neither has moved beyond first reading and I doubt either will pass. The Senate is too busy fighting the government and c-410 is a private members’ bill from Liberal MP Marlene Jennings, and so you can imagine the chance that one has.

It’s maddening to realize that even though there are as many as 15,000 slaves in Canada this issue ranks below ATM fees, below payday loans, and below movie pirating.

What needs to be done? Domestically we need safe houses for runaway slaves. They need access to health care and they need to be granted refugee status, or at least temporary resident status for much longer than 120 days. This has been piloted in British Columbia – it needs to be extended across the entire country. Internationally, Canada has to be more aggressive with states that actively support slavery and we have to bring in laws to punish individuals and corporations such as Canada’s Talisman energy that benefit from slavery.

As individuals we have to help those who are on the ground in Africa and Asia risking their lives to free slaves and – just as important – we have to pressure our representatives to bring in legislation to deal with this.

Our ancestors would spin in their graves if they knew that the country that American slaves called the “Promised Land” did nothing while modern slaves toiled, were tortured and died in our own cities.

Conflicted

I am conflicted on Ron Paul. He has a lot of ideas that I am in complete agreement with. For example:

Under no circumstances should the U.S. again go to war as the result of a resolution that comes from an unelected, foreign body, such as the United Nations.

Too often we give foreign aid and intervene on behalf of governments that are despised. Then, we become despised. Too often we have supported those who turn on us, like the Kosovars who aid Islamic terrorists, or the Afghan jihads themselves, and their friend Osama bin Laden. We armed and trained them, and now we’re paying the price.

At the same time, we must not isolate ourselves. The generosity of the American people has been felt around the globe. Many have thanked God for it, in many languages. Let us have a strong America, conducting open trade, travel, communication, and diplomacy with other nations.

But he also has a lot of supporters who – to put it mildly – are bat-shit insane. For example:

So where do you draw the line between judging the man by his ideas alone [some of which are ... unpleasant] or judging him on the company he keeps?

Here’s a piece from The Statesman on Cheney and the company he keeps:

The fact that the president or vice president meets with certain people in a closed meeting does not suggest that they agree with those people’s views — in fact, there may be sharp arguments between them. But the public is entitled to know who the president and vice president hear from personally.

There’s something good in there – it’s possible that Ron Paul disagrees with his supporters – with the ‘truthers’. But doesn’t he have the obligation then to distance himself from them? Has he?

Actually far from it. He’s gone out of his way to embrace them. Look at this exchange between Paul and a supporter:

CALLER: I want a complete, impartial, and totally independent investigation of the events of September 11, 2001 . I’m tired of this bogus garbage about terrorism. Ask Michael Meacher about how he feels about this bogus war on terrorism. Can you comment on that please?

HON. DR. RON PAUL: Well, that would be nice to have. Unfortunately, we don’t have that in place. It will be a little bit better now with the Democrats now in charge of oversight. But you know, for top level policy there’s not a whole lot of difference between the two policies so a real investigation isn’t going to happen. But I think we have to keep pushing for it. And like you and others, we see the investigations that have been done so far as more or less cover-up and no real explanation of what went on.

So where does that leave us? Should libertarians give support to Ron Paul – in spite of his connection with the truthers – because he has ‘good ideas’? No, in fact they should oppose him precisely because he has good ideas. He’s a leper, everything he touches is going to get infected by his supporters’ lunacy. Until such time as he comes out against the 9-11 truthers, he is doing nothing but harm to the ideas of US sovereignty, libertarianism, the Constitution and the division of powers. Imagine what happens to the candidate 4 years from now when he espouses a view championed by Ron Paul in this cycle. He’ll be tarred with the name of Ron Paul – if he advocates for a strong US border, the media will invoke the name of Ron Paul and his truther hordes.

It seems incumbent on all libertarians and free thinkers to run away from Ron Paul as fast as possible. He’s not a saviour, he’s a wrecking ball.

Spare change…?

A new donation request from the Tories arrived this evening:

I’m writing you today because, as one of our most loyal supporters, you understand that the political landscape can change very quickly, and an election could be called at any time. If that happens tomorrow, we have to be ready to hit the ground running.

…

We are in a campaign readiness status right now. There could be an election very soon. Please act now and send the most generous contribution you can today by following this link to our secure on-line donations page. Many thanks.

What are they going on about? The ‘Election Fever Meter at NationalNewsWatch is at 1%. Are they finally fed up by opposition antics in committee or their theatrics on the floor? Are they planning to pull the plug before the Kyoto bill is passed?

No pun intended but this demand is coming out of the blue. Seems more likely this is to pay for airfare for the busy BBQ circuit. I gave the last $9.00 on my Van City disposable VISA, nothing else to do with it.

UPDATE: But I could be wrong, maybe there’ll have to be an election this summer.

Two big things are going to happen :

1. The Vandoos will head into battle:

“Ils sont motive et prêt pour l’Afghanistan. Les vingt-deux ont hâte, nous avons hâte, et c’est maintenant notre tour.”

2. The opposition’s Kyoto Bill will pass:

“Bill C-288 would do two important things if it became law: It would force the government to publish a plan to meet its Kyoto targets within 60 days of its enactment, and to enact legislation within six months that would enable Canada to meet those targets.”