Kevin Jaeger is going on hiatus.
I’m afraid I’ll be on hiatus for many weeks at least, spending time deep in secure network environments.
If someone would like to take over this blog let me know. I could make an occasional guest appearance some time in the future.
I can think of someone I’d like to see back.
At least four RCMP officers are not responding to their radios after conducting a raid on an alleged marijuana grow operation in northwestern Alberta, says Alberta Solicitor General Harvey Cenaiko.
“They don’t know whether that’s a malfunction of the equipment or what yet, but it’s a very serious situation,” said Cenaiko.
He added that gunfire was continuing.
And our marijuana decriminalizing legislators would have us believe that the safety of the public depends on arresting hotel owners for smoking violations, unhelmeted bicycle riders and dog owners.
Keep them in your prayers.
Update – 4:30pm reports are that all four are confirmed dead. Military is reported to have been called in.
update 2
CBC report
Background:
“The Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police estimates that the number of illegal grow-ops in this province has increased 250 per cent. Revenue could hit $12.7 billion.”
Realty Times – How can you tell if there’s a grow-op house in your neighbourhood.
More details are emerging – this was not a raid, per se, but the intentional killing of four junior officers who had been posted to guard the property until evidence gathering could be completed in the morning. The owner returned to the scene to, for all intents and purposes, execute them.
More on James Roszko from Cosh.
The link referred to on “everyday things that are disappearing from our lives” on the Murray Wood Show is here.
I attended the SaskParty Leaders Dinner last evening. Reportedly, the 700 plus attendance was a new record for the party. I didn’t take notes, so just a few general remarks from memory. The introduction by long time Liberal Bob McKercher, QC, who argued that it was time for Liberals to stop diluting the free-enterprise vote was well recieved.
I went to the event with an open mind and no expectations. I was pleasantly surprised – impressed, even.
Brad Wall is the real thing. A gifted speaker, he communicates with vision, optimisim, conviction, humour, self deprecation – and apparently, without notes. His pokes at the NDP and their proclivity for “investing” tax dollars in the wishful-thinking segment of the economy were well aimed and damaging – as was his criticism of the competence of the union-controlled NDP government in throwing grenades at the confidence of the business community.
“The left hand doesn’t know what the extreme left hand is doing”.
I divided my time listening to Wall, and watching the face of a well-known New Democrat, and former city councillor. Reading facial expressions and body language is an inexact science, but it was fascinating to watch the reaction. Restrained, below-the-tabletop applause when there was agreement, discomfort when he hit senstive nerves.
In conversation after the dinner broke up, I was a pleasantly surprised to meet a few people who knew of SDA. One amusing anecdote – someone laughed that he had been led to my site by a friend who sent him an email from “Izbecka-khazik-somewhere-stan”. (I have no memory for names).
There were a handful who were aware of how powerful a role the blogsophere played in the re-election of Bush, and recognized that this medium is a tool that conservative policy makers in Canada should try to utilize – or perhaps more accurately, include.
We shall see. Hopefully, attendees with better memory for detail will drop in and add their observations of the dinner, the SaskParty, and Brad Wall, in the comments. Send me links to consider for the sidebar. If there’s room for the Blogging Tories, there’s room for the blogging SaskPartiers.
If you didn’t catch Jon Stewart last night, this is well worth a read.
Stewart: Do you think that the people of Lebanon would have had, sort of, the courage of their conviction, having not seen–not only the invasion but the election which followed? It’s almost as though that the Iraqi election has emboldened this crazy–something’s going on over there. I’m smelling something.
I hope there’s a heavy duty axle on that bandwagon.
A Montana court has granted an injunction to R-CALF, keeping the US-Canadian border closed to Canadian cattle. It’s unlikely that any appeal will be heard prior to the scheduled March 7th opening.
Is the decision the result of Paul Martin’s botched BMD fiasco? No – but the oncoming freight train of Bush administration indifference to Canadian grievances will be.
Condoleezza Rice has deferred her visit and Paul Martin can’t get his calls returned. Martin’s flip flopping support for missile defense reminds me about something that David Frum wrote in his book “The Right Man”;
Then Arafat made what may someday be reckoned as the most fateful miscalculation of his career. On January 5, 2002, Israeli naval forces intercepted a Gaza-bound merchant ship loaded with fifty tonnes of arms from Iran. Arafat hastily sent Bush a letter denying any involvement in the shipment. Probably Arafat did not even intend his denial to be interpreted literally; he may have written it as a social form, like the phrase I regret in a letter declining an invitation to a wedding or a dinner party. If so, Arafat sorely misunderstood his man. Bush does not lie to you. You had better not lie to him.
I’m beginning to wonder if Paul Martin has just been confined to his compound on 24 Sussex.
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Sean has the top ten reasons that porn actor Ron Jeremy should be Canada’s next prime minister.
Because I’d pay good money to see Warren Kinsella working as ‘special assistant’ to the Right Honorable Ron Jeremy.”
They’re hard to argue with.
Debbye has a lengthy post based on a Fox News report uncovering well buried information in the Volker report that there was “a systematic attempt by the Deputy Secretary-General, Canadian Louise Frechette, to block results of audits into the Oil-for-Food program from the Security Council”.
Four years into the seven-year Oil-for-Food program, with graft and mismanagement by then rampant, Frechette intervened directly by telephone to stop United Nations auditors from forwarding their investigations to the U.N. Security Council. This detail was buried on page 186 of the 219-page interim report Volcker’s Independent Inquiry Committee released Feb. 3.
This decision from within Annan’s office left only the Secretariat privy to the specifics of the waste, bungling and contractual breaches detailed by U.N. internal auditors in dozens of damning reports. The extent of what Annan�s office knew was not available either to the Security Council or the public until Congress finally forced the issue and the United Nations produced the reports in conjunction with a Volcker “briefing paper” in January.
For reasons unexplained, Volcker’s report did not mention Frechette by name.
The article mentions that although the Volcker Commission interviewed Frechette, the results as well as her name were not published. During her tenure as Canadian Ambassador to the U.N., current Volcker executive director Reid Morden was the Canadian Deputy Minister.
They say it’s a small world. Well, if that’s true, it’s a miniscule Canada. As we have come to expect, there are the usual connections from Canadian investigator Volker, the executive director Reid Morden and the omni-present Paul Desmarias.
Canadafreepress.com;
Continuing to join the dots on Volcker and potential conflicts of interest is Volcker�s number two man on the IIC, Reid Morden. Morden has connections to Desmarais in his role of selling nuclear plants to China and others for companies dominated by Desmarais.
Although he is Canada�s former intelligence chief, Morden does not answer to the Canadian government.
As CFP letter writer Peter Herberg puts it, “Can you imagine the uproar if a former CIA chief did this and took part in a UN investigation that refused to cooperate with congress?”
From all reports, Prime Minister Paul Martin has no problems with Morden�s arm�s length relationship with the Canadian government. But then again Martin�s senior adviser is Annan pointman, Maurice Strong.
Trivia: Frechette and Desmarias are both directors of the Trudeau Foundation. Frechette has a rich history in the upper echelons of the civil service. She also served as Deputy Defence Minister during the aborted Somalia Inquiry coverup.
From the site sisis.nativeweb.org;
Frechette’s appointment is believed to have come as a result of the influence of Canadian businessman and Trilateral Commissioner Maurice Strong. Strong has been acting as “executive co-ordinator of UN reform” to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Frechette stepped into a post that was created, it seems, especially for her.
The position of Deputy Secretary-General was created as part of the reform of the United Nations, to help manage Secretariat operations and to ensure the coherence of its activities and programmes. The purpose was also to elevate the UN’s profile and leadership in the economic and social spheres. In addition to assisting the Secretary-General in the full range of his responsibilities therefore, Ms Fr�chette also frequently represents the United Nations at conferences and official functions all over the world.
Go read all of Debbye’s post.
Medienkritik on the current economic situation in Germany.
Now the most unpopular government in German history has achieved a new all-time low: Schroeder, who earlier demanded that the German people judge him on his ability to create jobs, currently presides over a nation with over 5.2 [million] unemployed citizens, the highest number since the Nazis came to power during the Great Depression. Right-wing extremists are gaining strength with every passing day, but Schroeder and his party refuse to accept any implication that their failed economic policy is a direct or indirect cause of the re-emergence of German nationalism.
So what is the SPD’s solution? German exports. Particularly arms sales. Gerhard Schroeder recently visited China and expressed his desire to lift the EU’s arms embargo on the Communist nation. The “Peace” Chancellor is currently on a trip to the Middle East where he is sealing business deals in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other dictatorial Arab states. There too, German arms are a best seller. The same German left that can’t get enough of pointing out America’s supposed hypocricy in supporting Saudi Arabia is busily signing weapons deals with the same government.
And even the German media, which has so often towed the government line, can no longer ignore the extent of Germany’s economic tragedy. The usual excuses, that the unemployment is due to September 11 or that the numbers are due to statistical changes, now ring hollow. Even SPIEGEL ONLINE is describing the situation in Schroeder’s government as one of “helplessness, perplexity and naked panic.”
Well, Germany has always found solutions before. I don’t know that Poland is the place to look for them this time, though.
A collection of colour war photos from WWI, I believe.
Amazing.
h/t Spoons Experience.
Christopher Hitchens is dead wrong that the “Arab Street” is a ” vanquished clich�” that should be put to rest.
The return of politics to Iraq has had many blissful secondary consequences, one of them apparently minor but nonetheless, I think, important. When was the last time you heard some glib pundit employing the phrase “The Arab Street”? I haven’t actually done a Nexis search on this, but my strong impression is that the term has been, without any formal interment, laid to rest. And not a minute too soon, either.
It’s only begun to stir.
Iraqis protest at the scene of yesterday’s car bombing.
More than 2,000 people held the impromptu demonstration on front of the clinic, chanting “No to terrorism!” and “No to Baathism and Wahhabism!”
Steyn argues that the world is witnessing the crumbling of the Arab wall. It’s hard not to agree.
Meanwhile, other miracles unfold…
Les Sayer took a challenge from his students, after tossing off a casual remark about the documentary “Supersize Me”. He said he could probably lose weight on a McDonald’s diet. After 29 days, he has. He’s lost 17 pounds and his blood pressure has dropped significantly. He ate from the full menu (sans fish), and nothing else – but decided to conduct the experiment on the basis of sensible eating – no “supersizing” , and he kept up a regular exercise routine.
Les Sayer hasn’t cheated on his McDonald’s-only diet. Not an apple, an orange, a cantaloupe or grapes in 17 days. Sayer, a teacher at NorQuest College and Metro Continuing Education, wanted to drive home the point to students that Morgan Spurlock’s documentary, Supersize Me, was an opinion piece. He said he could eat McDonald’s food for a month and lose weight, not gain it.
“The main reason for doing this is because my students thought (Supersize Me) was an objective piece,” the 39-year-old Sayer said yesterday.
Les’s website is here.
Via John Gormley Live. No *ahem* link.
I don’t think Matt Drudge has much use for the Jackson trial.
PAPER: JACKO’S CHIMP TO TESTIFY… DEVELOPING…
He’s positioned it higher on the page than the NYT coverage. What a card.
Saskatchewan Health has a website “committed to providing Saskatchewan residents with the most complete and up-to-date wait time information available”. I took a look at it today, prompted by a conversation I had with an elderly acquaintance. “Jean” is still fairly active, though she’s slowed noticably in the past few months. She lives alone, independantly.
She’s scheduled for heart valve surgery. When, is still open to question, because she first must have a diagnostic angiogram. She’s been on the wait list for the angiogram since July. She mentioned this, because she had finally become frustrated and started to call and bother her doctor about it. She was finally told she’ll recieve it in the next three weeks, but to “be thankful”, because the “normal” wait time for angiogram is a year.
Of course, she could have also looked for basic information on how many patients are on surgical (which I assume are different than diagnostic) wait lists, on the Sask Surgery “Current Information” page.
It hasn’t been updated for 5 months.
(correction: original stated angioplasty, in error)
The Iraqi Truth Project has released a DVD documentary called Weapon of Mass Destruction: The Murderous Reign of Saddam Hussein. One of my favorite historians, Victor Davis Hanson, and one of the best up-and-coming documentary film-makers, Evan Coyne Maloney, both had a hand in this film. It will be shown at the war crimes trials of both “Chemical” Ali and Saddam Hussein.
I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I did watch the trailer. It damn near knocked me out of my chair. I knew right away I had to order this movie at once. I’ve been back to watch the trailer several times already. It’s an incredibly powerful minute-and- a-half of footage and music.
(The link to the trailer is at the top of the Iraq Truth Project page)
Bob Tarantino skewers Linda McCuaig’s defense of the Dither slither away from BMD that
“standing up to the American empire … will only improve our standing in a world increasingly alarmed by U.S. unilateralism”.
This is one of those fascinating rationalizations that requires a complete suspension of any connection with reality in order for it to make sense. “Improve our standing in the world”? Who is she kidding? Does anyone honestly believe that anyone outside the US military establishment and the incestuous world of the Canadian media and political culture gives a flying hump about this issue? Who is getting fired up about this? Jack Layton. Newspaper editorialists. Some Canadian bloggers. That’s pretty much it. The issue was splashed across front pages for a day, and now it’ll likely fade away, never to be heard about again. Check Google News, and see if you can even find any non-Canadian, non-US media outlets reporting about the issue. I saw one mention in Australia, one in Borneo and one in India. That’s it. If the primary rationale for dodging participation in BMD is to get brownie points with “the world”, we’re gonna need to do a much better job of selling it.
Joel Fleming weighs in on a similar remark later in the “opinion” column, (we can use scare quotes, too, Linda), that “Canada’s gutsy refusal to go along was the right move – and one that, incidentally, will win us higher standing in the world.
Except “incidentally” isn’t really accurate, is it Linda? Why else would the title trumpet Canada’s newfound “respect”? International popularity was the primary factor in the decision, wasn’t it? This is what happens when you extend the Liberals trademark, poll-driven decision-making to foreign policy. Congratulations Canada – North Korea, Iran and Syria like us a lot more today.
Though I’m not sure you could call it “respect.”
To repeat something I’ve said earlier – Canada’s role in the world has been reduced to serving as a warning to the US.
In the province of Ontario, the words “wife,” “husband,” “widow,” and “widower” are now all to be stricken from the law. The words “mother” and “father” cannot be far behind.
Ontario’s action is a reminder that same-sex marriage is not just the extension of an existing legal status to previously excluded persons. Same-sex marriage is a revolution in the definition of marriage for everyone – a revolution not just in law, but in consciousnessness.
And one effect of this revolution – and for many proponents, one of the revolution’s aims – is to make forever unthinkable the idea that husbands and wives each have special duties to one another, and that a husband’s duties to his wife – while equally binding and equally supreme – are not the same as a wife’s duties to her husband.
Once we lose that knowledge, we lose the basic grammar of marriage. It is one more reminder that in the same-sex marriage debate, we are debating not marriage’s change – but marriage’s overthrow.
The dominos continue to teeter towards democracy and reform in the Middle East.
BEIRUT, Feb 28 (AFP) – Two weeks after the assassination of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri, some 10,000 people massed in the streets of Beirut early Monday in defiance of a ban as the government faced a tough test in parliament where the opposition planned to present a censure motion to bring it down.
The Lebanese opposition vowed to defy the pro- Syrian regime on the streets and in parliament on Monday, amid claims of ministerial resignations, after a top US envoy upheld demands for an immediate Syrian troop pullout from Lebanon.
Waving the Lebanese flag and shouting “Syria out!” the protesters ignored a ban on demonstrations and converged on the central Martyrs’ Square as hundreds of heavily armed but good-natured troops aided by police deployed jeeps and trucks to the main crossroads leading to the square.
Publius is collecting reports, and Caveman In Beirut reports crowds could be as high as 200,000.
It’s going to be a rough ride, though, as evidenced by this report of a blogger’s arrest in Bahrain. Jeff Jarvis is watching Egyptian bloggers, who have justifiably mixed confidence in election reform under Mubarak.
Update – breaking reports that the Syrian-backed government has resigned.
Via Instapundit this email published at Belgravia Dispatch;
On Friday evening I headed down to the mosque where Hariri and his body guards are buried. A mosque still under construction, the outside protective walls of the site are covered with urban graffiti, people writing condolences and messages for freedom, truth and independence. At the grave site itself, the earth is still fresh over the coffins, and has become home to shrines, covered in flowers, images of christianity, verses of the koran, all of it alight with burning red and white candles. Throughout the evening and during the following day people have been streaming through paying their respects. At the foot of the mosque is the Place des Martyres, a Statue erected by the French. Since the 15th of February, the day after the assassination, a steady number of Lebanese have been setting up tents around the statue and now expanding outward in the square. Essentially a political squat, inhabited by activists making up the faces of the 8 anti-syrian coalition parties have congregated in a similar way to those involved in the Orange Revolution which just took place in the Ukraine.
Update: Photos here.
