Panglossian Notes

Canada's Federal Budget!

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Why didn't they use the verb aspirer? Oops that could have been misunderstood to mean "suck"?

Enough said?, eh

Technorati Tags: Canada, Politicians, Shmucks

The war criminal John Yoo?

So no one misses the culturally confused John Yoo carrying on with his realistic imitation of a real live war criminal.

Pay your 15¢ and see a real live American lawyer advocate war crimes:

Johnny boy Yoo

For lawyers, judges and other government officials complicit as war criminals in this Iraqi fiasco I do support hanging. Yoo I'd love to see in the dock facing a group of his tortured peers.

Never happen I know in the USA, but Yoo should be careful where he goes in the future I think. Someone may get the idea that they could arrest him like Pinochet and maybe even make Johnny boy Yoo subject to his own legal advise.

What a schmuck!

Technorati Tags: Curiosity, Delusional, Shmucks, torture, war criminals

On thinking of Baron Black of Crossharbour, CMB

So has the trial started yet? Whose trail? Conrad Moffat Black's (CMB) of course, sorry I thought you'd all know. Was Barbara with him or is she sticking around TO?

Jury selection began today, so I guess that does signal the start to it. I suspect the windy city's potential jurors will be less amused by Lord Tubby's famous and creative use of the English language the city being still characterized as populated by straightforward no nonsense mid-westerns.

The Baron parading around in one of his many costumes would likely go over like a lead balloon.

I must admitted when the Baron starts on a rant it can be quite entertaining. For example here is how he characterized one reviewer of his first book

"‘a slanted, supercilious little twit’; another was a ‘quasi-fascist Jesuit myth-maker’ and another an ‘illiterate bootlicker’."

John Lanchester
London Review of Books

A favourite of mine, and one that could maybe be used in Chicago, was his description of a close associate's behavior which Conrad said:

"gave ‘new depth, warmth and colour to the meaning of the word “shit”’."

John Lanchester
London Review of Books

Though Conrad's behavior may not be what everyone would write home about. Lanchester thinks that he may not be able to help himself. In effect he may be terminally bombastic:

"At Barbara Amiel’s 60th birthday party, he [Black] stood up and gave a speech in praise of his spouse. ‘The little woman’s body is agile and youthful. I’ve seen her naked, and it’s all natural.’ It would be nice to know exactly how many people in the audience were thinking: ‘Up to a point, Lord Copper.’ In any case: ‘She looks better with her clothes off than on . . . The little woman is perfect, vertically and horizontally.’ The party cost $62,870; two-thirds of the cost was billed to Hollinger, the publicly quoted company which owned the Telegraph. ‘The only charge that anyone can level against us is one of insufficient generosity to ourselves,’ said the man whose trial, due to start in Chicago on 5 March, sees him facing 12 separate counts of fraud, racketeering, money laundering and obstruction of justice."

John Lanchester
London Review of Books

Not everyone thinks he is a pompous over-bearing wind-bag who may have stolen with impunity, as could be expected, I guess.

George Jonas, of all people, has penned a lengthy defense of Black's actions in his National Post column. Jonas is, of course, famous for having written the book on which Speilberg based his movie Munich and, I think, being the first husband of the renown body about whom Tubby pontificated. The tone of the Jonas column seems a slight bit paranoid, to me, - the system is out to get Black who of course is defenseless in front of the puritanical US self-righteous justice system. Maybe he's right. The US system, from up here, seems at times to be simply a matter of politics mixed with a bizarre mortality play. Unfortunately for Black, the theme of the play right now is to burn "bad businessmen". The Independent last week had a good summary of the characters in this play.

You maybe happy to know, however that there is a supportlordblack site where you can read inspiring quotes from some of his loyal fans who, unlike Kissinger and Perle, may not have run as soon as the writs started to fly.

For one of those, what was it he call us again, oh yeah, we are ‘whining, politically conformist welfare addicts’, closely connected to lefties in general, who are ‘phoney, envious and mediocre bleeding hearts whining and snivelling about meritocratic Darwinism’ - a Canadian, in other words. I may just keep my cheque book in my pocket.

To close off on Lord Tubby of Crossharbour a few select rousing quotes from his shnoring site:

In support of one of the rare sovereign individuals [this is Tubby, I think] to have risen above the morass of envious mediocrity that is his home and native land [hey I think this is Canada again!]:

"The destructive fixation of the envious English-Canadian mind requires that the highest, happiest, most agile flyers be laid low. [It is] a sadistic desire corroded by soul-destroying envy, to intimidate all those who might aspire to anything the slightest exceptional."

Conrad Black
A Life in Progress

"Great men can't be ruled."

Ayn Rand

"Great men are meteors, consuming themselves to light the world."

Napoleon Bonaparte

Technorati Tags: Canada, Delusional, Shnoring

Those gd polar bears and that damned thin ice!. (draft)

The polar bear debate is on again.

The Government of Nunavut* contends that the big white bears are thriving while the World Wildlife Federation, and other environmental groups have been pushing the Bush administration to list the bears as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act because global warming is destroying their habitat.

There are two issues for the Inuit and the bears: one economic and the other cultural.

The economic issue is easy to explain. The polar bear makes a great trophy so actually hunting and killing one is an active business in the high Arctic. This activity goes on in places like Resolute Bay.

Now in the summer Resolute and Devon Island may look like Mars but Resolute, at least, does have some nice hotels by Arctic standards ( a b ). Wonder why? It's not because of the NASA people that show up in the summer months but because it is the usual jump off point for checking out the North Pole and for those seeking a white carnivore trophy.

"Polar bear sports hunters spend about $2.9 million a year in Nunavut. Of that, about $1.5 million goes to Inuit in small communities such as Grise Fiord, Resolute Bay and Arctic Bay."

Jim Bell
March 9, 2007
Nunatsiaq News

The dollars may not seem like much to a Southern qallunaat** (a non-Inuit person), but, in Canada's really only true subsistence jurisdiction, a million or 2 bucks is a significant injection into some of the communities.

The cultural matter is more confused. The Inuit, in Canada, want to control their surroundings and don't want others destroying what they may have known. This is one reason the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (Canada) (ICC) was in D.C. recently making a case, before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an arm of the Organization of American States, that climate change is a violation of Inuit human rights.

The ICCs petition to the Commission states:

"... the U.S. is violating the human rights of Inuit by refusing to sign any international treaties to cut its greenhouse gas emissions."

CBC
February 6, 2007

About the same time Watts-Cloutier, of the ICC, was laying out the case for human rights abuses for not implementing Kyoto, illustrated, partly, by detailing tales of shrinking and thinning ice, the government of Nunavut had a delegation in D.C. making a case that the white bear is not threatened and should not be considered an endangered species.

The Nunavut Minister of the Environment, in a statement on Friday, told the territorial Legislative Assembly:

"Mr. Speaker. We were in Washington, dealing with the Endangered Species Act with regard to polar bears.

They [the US] would like to put the polar bear on the endangered species list and we went down to talk with them and told them that they should not be put on the list. There were five of us that were against the States wanting to add them to [sic] the endangered species list. There were a lot of people that were against what we were trying to do down in Washington.

They don’t seem to understand what we’re trying to say, and they didn’t seem to want to pay any attention. Thank you."

Hon. Patterk Netser,
Nunavut's Minister of the Environment
Speaking in Inuktitut in the NU Legislative Assembly
March 8, 2007

The Canadian Inuit know their environment is changing and are concerned that what's left of their traditional way of life could be threatened and could disappear but they also don't want some outside government or organization to tell them what to do particularly in regard to their wildlife.

"Nancy Karetak-Lindell, an Inuit member of the House of Commons [representing Nunavut], called the effort by American environmentalists "a little intrusive and very disrespectful."

In an interview, she added that the bear hunt "is more than a way of life, it's a way of survival."

In Resolute, a snow-swept hamlet of shacks hugging a salty ice-packed Arctic channel, Inuit villagers hold an annual lottery to see who will get the permits to kill the local quota of 35 bears a year.

Fifteen of those bears will be consumed locally, as food and to make rugs, mattresses, wind pants and mittens. The 20 other permits are sold to American hunters.

Clifford Krauss
New York Times
May 27, 2006

It's an interesting dilemma, sort of, for the Inuit. One which could see Canadian Inuit allied with the oil industry in Alaska who also don't want to see the bears put on the endangered list as it will create development problems for them particularly if the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is opened up for drilling.

This could also mean that Canadian Inuit may indirectly undermine:

"the Gwich’in, who include residents of Inuvik, Ft. McPherson and Tsiigehtchic in the Mackenzie River Delta, [who] fear oil drilling could imperil one of their key sources of country food: the Porcupine caribou herd.

The 200,000 caribou of the Porcupine herd roam across the Alaska-Canada border and constitute one of the largest remaining caribou populations in the world. In the summer, they calve in the narrow coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — right where the proposed oil wells would be drilled."

Nunatsiaq News
January 19, 2001

The Board of Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated (NTI), the main birth right organization or the corporation that represents Nunavut Inuit under the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, passed a resolution opposing the listing of the bears and

"... demanded the American government use Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit in an assessment of polar bears to determine their current standing."

NTI Press Release
March 7, 2007

Unfortunately their press release went on to show a hint of the now common global warming deniers, or delusionists, if you prefer John Quiggin's new terminology, standard approach to handling attempts to do something - "its only a forecast, nothing conclusive, yet".

Raymond Ningeocheak, NTIs 2nd Vice-President, said, in justifying their stance on the bears:

“Much of the justification for the listing [of the bears as endangered] is based on a forecasted prediction of climate change and the depletion of sea ice, and incomplete scientific information on the western Hudson Bay polar bear population. They are speculating that there is a decline in the polar bear population,” said Ningeocheak. “Polar bears in Canada have shown a steady increase in number over the past 50 years. Furthermore, scientists know that polar bear populations are cyclical and fluctuate.”

NTI Press Release
March 7, 2007

I wish NTI hadn't gone that way. But who reads NTI press release?

The government of Nunavut on the other hand has consistently used Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (known as IQ for the phonetically challenged) as a tool in its determination of polar bear stocks and in setting quotas for the number of bears that can be killed in any year by local hunters and trappers. IQ is traditional knowledge - here's my simple explanation of my understanding of the concept: awareness of the minutiae of local physical circumstances and how they interact to effect survival. Currently in Nunavut IQ is gathered by chit-chatting with elders.

Using Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit at the beginning of 2005 the government increased the polar bear kill by 28% explicitly indicating that the number of bears had been increasing and not diminishing as most other government and NGO wildlife services were saying. This sent alarm bells ringing around the Northern pole countries about what maybe going on in the new territory in terms of managing wildlife. Subsequently the US Fish & Wildlife Service indicated they'd be checking how the territory arrived at its numbers:

A year after Nunavut increased its hunting quotas for polar bears, the United States government is going to review the numbers to see if any changes should be made to its trophy hunt policy for the territory.

American officials will take a close look at Nunavut's polar bear hunting quotas in a meeting with representatives of government, Inuit organizations and the scientific community in St. John's, NL next week.

The U.S. will use information gathered at the annual Polar Bear Technical Committee meeting to determine if bear populations now approved for U.S. trophy hunts are being managed properly.

"The Marine Mammals Protection Act requires that they be taken from populations that are managed sustainably and scientifically," says Peter Thomas of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Virginia.

CBC
February 6, 2006

Fast forward now to December 27, 2006 as the current US administration starts to get a bit green, least around the edges:

"The Bush administration has decided to propose listing the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, putting the U.S. government on record as saying that global warming could drive one of the world's most recognizable animals out of existence.

.....

Identifying polar bears as threatened with extinction could have an enormous political and practical impact. As the world's largest bear and as an object of children's affection as well as Christmastime Coca-Cola commercials, the polar bear occupies an important place in the American psyche.

"We've reviewed all the available data that leads us to believe the sea ice the polar bear depends on has been receding," said the Interior official, who added that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials have concluded that polar bears could be endangered within 45 years.

WaPo
December 27, 2006

So, where are we now? Who knows.

______________

*So what is Nunavut?

It's Canada's newest territory. Not a province, so it is not specifically defined in the Constitution. A child of the federal government so-to-speak. All its powers and responsibilities are laid out in federal legislation. The new territory was split off from what remains of the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999. The formation of the new territory stemmed from a land claims agreement between the federal government and the Inuit The territory is 85% Inuit but the government is public meaning there is no racial divide, everyone within the territory can vote and everyone can be an active participant in political life if they want, this is in contrasted to most First Nation (Indian) land claim agreements mainly implemented below the 60th parallel where membership in the racial group is an issue and voting rights are determined on a racial basis.

**qullunaat
As they met more foreigners, the Inuit began to see them as fellow humans, but different; the widely used Inuit word for white person is kabloona (derived from qallunaat), which means something like "eyebrow stomachs," probably a reaction to whites' hairy bodies by the almost hairless Inuit. Paul Theroux

______________

Technorati Tags: Arctic, Canada, Nunavut

The "New" government continues with old ideas.

As could be expected the bullshit eco-trust has a new signer on.

The Manitobans have jumped about a month after Quebec to get their share of the phony federal funding. In their case "Investment to Deliver Real Results to Fight Climate Change". Who writes this bumf? I do wonder which province will be next in line to get their little hands on some of this years federal surplus.

The Harper has passed his gas to loud-mouth Blaird to drool out while, I think, he heads back for another helping of beans and poutine to get his energy up for more methane exhausting when the House of Commons reconvenes.

"John Baird, Canada's Minister of the Environment, joined by Manitoba Premier Gary Doer today announced that Canada's New Government intends to provide Manitoba with $53.8 million as part of the new Canada ecoTrust to support provincial projects that will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions smog and air pollution."

March 3, 2007

I guess there's about $1.1 billion left of the $1.5 billion to drool out with Quebec having already got its $350 million and now with Manitoba $54 million. The biggest share I expect to go to Ontario, approximately $580 million.

From the self-congratulatory press release it seems no one at Environment Canada has told loud-mouth Blaird about "global dimming" else he might not be trumpeting smog and pollution reductions, eh.

Technorati Tags: Canada, Global Warming, Pinheads, Politicians

We are the U.S. State Department and we're on the job

Extract from the U.S. State Department's 2006 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices:

Internet Freedom

In 2005 the [Kazakhstan] Agency for Information and Communication (AIC) issued regulations, without parliamentary discussion, to control the application process for registering .kz domains. The AIC may suspend or revoke registration under certain circumstances, including failure to locate servers in the country. Observers criticized the registration process as unduly restrictive and vulnerable to abuse. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's (OSCE) Representative on Freedom of the Media asked the government to withdraw these regulations. In December 2005 the government deemed as offensive the content of a satirical web site controlled by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen and revoked the .kz domain.

Kazakhstan
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices
Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
U.S. Department of State
March 7, 2007

Nice to know that they are on the job down there in D.C. staying on top of those human rights abuses.

Technorati Tags: torture, World Affairs

The Japanese, are they just "shits"?

So are the Japanese just shits, meaning awful, horrible, or the worst, when it comes to thinking of themselves or their fathers and grandfathers in WWII and what they did, or should the term just apply to their government?

" The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coercion."

Japanese Prime Minister
SHINZO ABE
referring to his government's ongoing
debate of whether Japanese soldiers
forced women into sexual slavery during WWII

The PMs little quote is referencing the "comfort women" or more prosaically the sex slaves of the old Imperial Japanese Army.

Awhile ago I thought it was strange that Westerners didn't lump the various, after MacArthur, Japanese governments into the same or at least a similar category to the one reserved for the deniers of the genocide inflected on the Jews and other minorities of Europe before and during WWII. I mean, it would be very unlikely for a Western government, involved in the last great war, not to pronounce publicly against any other government that was touting the denial of the Nazi treatment of Jews and others.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran is the most obvious example lately of an elected public figure being held to account so-to-speak, by Western elected public figures, for what seems to be his semi-deranged statements about the 1933-45 Jewish holocaust in Europe. In this case, unfortunately most of the Western governments' outrage seems to have it's own questionable purpose but then to be a politician means you have been required to check your moral self at some trap-door.

The PMs quote sounds, to my modern Western ears, like a typical legally inspired government weasel pronouncement to, at a minimum, confuse liability - the fact that "comfort women" were available to the Japanese military personnel isn't directly denied but the motive or incentive of the women who provided "comfort" is called into question. No coercion? Then, unless the women were automatons, it must have been freewill? Most government's are quite good at these bumfing exercises and the one by the Japanese PM is classic, in effect blame the victims and insult them by branding them professional whores.

Would any Western government be talking, let alone trading with Germany today, if Merkel came out and said:

"... well we've been looking at things and it turns out that there is no evidence that all those Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, communists, mentally ill people, etc. etc. etc. were coerced to ride around in trucks filled with carbon monoxide, or to walk or run in front of a Einsatzgruppen, nor to step into those gas chambers ..... "

But time moves on, sort of, and the past doesn't matter particularly if it is a long ago past and if now there are other axes-to-grind.

"Issues pertaining to Japan's wartime sexual slavery should be dealt with between Tokyo and the affected parties, not a third country, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said Friday.

"Our view is what happened during the war was most deplorable. But as far as some kind of resolution of this issue (is concerned), this is something that must be dealt with between Japan and the countries that were affected," he said."

The Japan Times
REIJI YOSHIDA
March 3, 2007

I'm not sure I don't agree with the Secretary trying to keep sex slaves out of the matters he has been sent to handle. I am sure that government apologies for stupid, harmful, incompetent, racist, criminal, or bestially inhuman policies are worthless, unless provided as close to immediately after the policy has been determined to be such and, then, only if those responsible are in a dock somewhere waiting judgement.

So, on this matter I'm concluding that the Japanese starting with their government are simply shits.

Technorati Tags: Accountability, Government apology, Politicians, Shmucks