The Liberation Monument is a giant copper obelisk that rises and falls depending on the level of sunlight, and spurts flames out of the top during important festivals.
It is due to go on show in the village of Wageningen where the German capitulation was signed at the end of the Second World War 60 years ago.
In full sunlight, the erection reaches a height of ten metres, shrinking back to just six metres when the light dims.
Key word: erection
update – was sent an artist’s rendition
Oil-For-Food investigative journalist Claudia Rosett has been nominated for a Pulitzer. And deservedly so.
“Rosett’s …dogged pursuit of the oil-for-food-for-dictators scandals at the United Nations pushed that story in all of its mind-numbing complexity into the media mainstream, where it has done more to set in motion long overdue oversight of the United Nations than all of the previous blue ribbon reports and congressional hearings combined…Whether or not the Pulitzer committee recognizes Rosett for her incredible contribution to freedom through her superb journalism over the past few years, those who follow the media know she is the standard setter.” – Hugh Hewitt, Weekly Standard
Kelowna Police are going soft on crime.
The “paradoxes and contradictions of life in post-9/11 Canada: two versions of reality that tacitly undermine one another, and by so-doing muddle and mock of our collective response to the terrorist threat.”
Con’t from yesterday…
National Post is reporting on the tone of the testimony, if not substance.
…Former advertising executive Jean Brault broke down in tears on the witness stand at the Gomery Commission yesterday. It occurred in mid-afternoon as Mr. Brault was being grilled by the inquiry’s chief counsel, Bernard Roy
…Mr. Brault appeared to tire under the relentless questioning as the day wore on, and at one point buried his head in his hands and began weeping. He is scheduled to resume testifying today. The incident came just before the commission’s regular mid-afternoon break, which the judge then called. After a 20-minute respite, a composed Brault returned to the stand and resumed his testimony.
Monte Solberg writes; “it sounds like Judge Gomery has rolled over a really big rock and a lot of creepy crawlies came scurrying out from underneath.”
Watch Greg Staples for updates. I’m listening to CBC radio – there is not a whiff of this story there, nor as he points out, on their website.
Not so strange, that.
Groupaction timeline.
Also: read this March 16 “I’ll break your jaw” post at Conservative Groundswell. And from the Globe and Mail (sorry, no link) on March 29th;
Civil servant Huguette Tremblay testified at the Gomery inquiry Tuesday that she was ordered by those in charge of the sponsorship program not to leave a paper trail for an event.
[…]
Ms. Tremblay said that on most of the files it was Mr. Gagliano, not his office, who spoke to Mr. Guit�.
She said she believed the paper trail had to be hidden because the event took place outside of Canada.
The inquiry also heard that the sponsorship program used a discretionary fund for unforeseen events to finance a host of minor projects in the ridings of Mr. Gagliano and of then-prime minister Jean Chr�tien.
The existence of the fund and its use for events in Mr. Gagliano’s and Mr. Chr�tien’s ridings had first been reported by the Globe and Mail in 2001 but the inquiry Tuesday added new details.
So many contracts from that innocuous-sounding account were linked to Mr. Chr�tien and Mr. Gagliano that “it became a running gag,” communications executive Gilles-Andr� Gosselin testified Tuesday.
Mr. Gosselin recalled that the office of Mr. Guit�, the civil servant who ran the sponsorship program, regularly sent his firm a list of pre-approved projects that were to go under an $490,000 annual budget for “Unforeseen Events.”
Inquiry counsel Guy Cournoyer asked Mr. Gosselin if he noticed that a large portion of those contracts were associated either to Mr. Gagliano or to Mr. Chr�tien.
“When you do the tally at the end of the year, there is indeed a lot. Let us say there was a running gag in the office,” Mr. Gosselin said. “It became a running gag. Here, there’s another Italian coming.”
A Toronto Star timeline of testimony coverage headlines – very useful.
All of this too heavy to slog through on a fine bright Saturday? Take a break and run a word or two through Flikr…
The testimony at the ongoing Gomery Inquiry into the Sponsorship program, in which money was poured into Liberal friendly advertising agencies and possibly rerouted back to party coffers has reportedly heard “devastating testimony” over the past two days.
What it is, no one can say – the testimony is under a court ordered publication ban, on the premise that releasing it could prejudice other criminal trials. But it seems to be damning enough that both the governing Liberals and opposition parties are moving into high gear in preparation for the possible fall of the minority government.
Update – More on the Jean Brault, (former head of the Groupaction) testimony publication ban.
Bloggers are beginning to dig, but it’s uncertain what they can publish in Canada, should they uncover the details. (Perhaps its time to brush up on our “poetry” skills.)
I don’t believe the bans extend to foreign sites, though…
Other sites blogging this story:
In her opening remarks, Ms. B�dard stunned the inquiry by saying that she was told by the former head of Via Rail that people at Groupaction Marketing Inc. were involved in drug trafficking.
prompts this flashback to a CTV report from the same year.
A former executive of Groupaction, the advertising firm at the centre of the federal sponsorship scandal, says he received a death threat last week, ahead of his expected testimony next week at a Commons committee hearing.
Alain Richard told CFCF News in Montreal that around 4 a.m. on March 25, he woke up to a ringing doorbell. When he opened the front door, he found a message.
“There was a message on my doorknob, saying if I talk too much, I’m going to die,” he said.
Go here for April 2 updates
The news about the torture and rape of Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi by Iranian secret police isn’t exactly news. The Liberals have known the details of her injuries since November. Bob Tarantino at Let It Bleed;
Tortured. Raped. Murdered. A Canadian citizen. And what has the government done? Not much. In an original fit of pique, they recalled the Canadian ambassador. Then they sent the ambassador back. Then they recalled the ambassador again. Then they sent the ambassador back. It should be noted that the second time they sent the ambassador back, was after the Canadian government had received incontrovertible evidence that Kazemi had been tortured, raped and murdered.
So, after sitting on that evidence since November, and it having now come to public light, what are they going to do? Nothing.
Well, not nothing. They’ll continue to tiptoe around these embarrassing little glitches as former Librano prime ministers flit about the planet, cementing oil contracts with other repressive regimes.
Update, thanks to a reader – via LGF;
While publicly denouncing the killing of Zahra Kazemi in July 2003, Canadian officials were also quietly allowing an Iranian government official to visit Canada, according to documents obtained by CBC Radio.
Iran had requested that one of its officials, Seyed Abu Talib Najafi, be briefed on the workings of Canada’s new Advance Passenger Information database, designed to identify potential threats to civil aircraft before they board.
According to e-mails obtained under the Access to Information Act, Customs officials were concerned about the visit becoming public. One e-mail said: “We should keep this as low-key as possible.”
Two e-mails within Canada Customs suggested there were concerns: “What’s our position about the requesting country? … in view of the current situation with Iran.”
Reply: “Business as usual”.
CTV:
On Friday, a seal hunter fired a rifle into the air shortly after three helicopters carrying anti-sealing activists and photographers landed near a sealing boat.
A group of six sealers aboard the boat began yelling at the dozen or so observers, some of whom were members of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
The protesters, who are allowed to observe the hunt but must�keep�at least 10 metres from the sealers, were then approached by a least one sealer who was swinging a gaff, a 30-centimetre stick with a hook.
I can’t blame the sealers for fighting back. The seal hunt is no more or less inhumane than any other species harvest – wild or domestic, or the ways that seals die in the wild.
This type of media coverage can’t get much better for the activist organizers. The ultimate hypocrisy is that the organizations the protesters represent are the largest beneficiaries of all – whatever the worth of a seal’s fur, it’s dwarfed by its value as an animal rights fund raiser. At the Humane Society of the United States ($85 million in assets), along with other members of the animal rights scam industry, they’ll be raising a glass of seal blood today to toast their good fortune.
Greg Weston is reporting that Canadian Louise Frechette is back in the crosshairs of the Oil-For-Food investigation.
According to an interim report of the Volcker inquiry, released in February, UN auditors began smelling something amiss early in the program — and ultimately produced a total of 55 audits of it.
But for almost four years, as the humanitarian scheme became riddled with kickbacks and mismanagement, the auditors were stifled by the program’s now-disgraced director, Benon Sevan.
Finally in frustration, the chief spending watchdog announced in late 2000 that future audits would be sent over Sevan’s head, directly to the UN Security Council.
This time, it was Frechette who intervened. The Volcker inquiry reports that Frechette personally telephoned the head of audits, “denying this proposal.”
“(The auditor) then abandoned the effort to report directly to the Security Council on (oil-for-food) related matters.”
The UN audits remained under wraps for another four years until the Volcker inquiry began making them public only weeks ago. (Frechette said recently she believed the audits “were a management tool to be used only by internal managers.”)
Frechette was Canada’s deputy minister of defence in 1997 when Jean Chretien’s government shut down the Somalia inquiry. She is also no stranger to the man heading the Volcker team of 75 investigators and forensic accountants.
Reid Morden is the former director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
He was also Frechette’s boss in 1993, when she was a diplomat and he was deputy minister of Foreign Affairs.
In a wide-ranging interview with me yesterday, Morden said the inquiry has so far tried to follow the money from the sale of Iraqi oil and purchase of humanitarian aid.
“What we will do now is try to give an overall picture of the management, mismanagement and possible corruption within the program overall,” Morden said.
“And in that, we will be following up with Louise Frechette on whatever her role might have been or was not. “What we’ll try to focus on is … was the management structure appropriate and sufficient for a program of that size and complexity? And I think it is more on that side that we will be taking a look at her role.”
Call me suspicious, but considering the incestuous relationships of the characters involved, I wonder how much of this would have been “focused on” without Norm Coleman’s gun at their back.
Former national security adviser Sandy Berger (under Clinton) is going to plead guilty today to having made an “honest mistake” in going to the National Archives and shoving notes and classified documents down his pants, into his jacket and briefcase and then losing a whole lot of them.
James is rounding up reaction.
Last month we learned from university researchers that dogs have personalities.
Dr Sam Gosling, of the University of Texas, rates the dogs on four key traits with positive and negative extremes. He adds that his work suggests pets should be matched with owners who have similar personalities.
I’ll have to write this down…
The work was presented at a major science conference in Washington DC.
“We used approaches used to assess human personality and applied them to dogs,” said Dr Gosling.
“You do find personality differences between breeds. Indeed, many have been bred on that basis. But you also find enormous [personality] differences within the breeds themselves.”
Now we learn that animals like to play and have a sense of humour.
Studies by various groups suggest monkeys, dogs and even rats love a good laugh. People, meanwhile, have been laughing since before they could talk.
“Indeed, neural circuits for laughter exist in very ancient regions of the brain, and ancestral forms of play and laughter existed in other animals eons before we humans came along with our ‘ha-ha-has’ and verbal repartee,” says Jaak Panksepp, a neuroscientist at Bowling Green State University.
In otherwords, formal research dollars and intellectual resources are being devoted to experiments that reproduce observations that can be obtained by raising a litter of puppies or owning two cats.
Sean at Pol:Spy;
Here’s a question for all of you kids stranded in the maritimes who lack the requisite number of marketable skills and/or firing synapses to find gainful employment outside of your birth provinces. Exactly how much of your precious new found resource revenues do you think will be left after the Liberals sneak in their carbon tax in the new budget and claw all of that money back?
Go read the link, and then head to the main page. He’s on a roll lately.
We have good news and we have bad news.
(ht)
Writing that you’re “setting aside a bottle of expensive champagne to be opened and consumed at the moment of the vegetable’s expiry.” in response to a reader’s email seems a little over the top – particularly if you’ve just declared the “utter obnoxiousness of Terri Schiavo’s ‘defenders'” . As for obnoxious responses, I’m not sure what he expected, after his descriptions of “AHHHHH! WAAAAAAA!” Terri and her “dessicated cakehole”.
Ordinarily I enjoy Colby’s writing, and generally agree with him on substance in most issues. In this case I think he might have been wiser to begin and end the religious aspect of this debate with the “I’m not a Catholic” disclaimer and leave it at that.
On the bright side, after two weeks of TV coverage of the Terri Schiavo case, I think we have almost all liberals in America on record saying we can pull the plug on them. Of course, if my only means of entertainment were Air America radio, Barbra Streisand albums and reruns of “The West Wing,” I too would be asking: “What kind of quality of life is this?”
There are a few glaring exceptions. On the anti-killing side, to one extent or another, are: former Clinton lawyer Lanny Davis, former Gore lawyer David Boies, former O.J. lawyer Alan Dershowitz, Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman, McGovern and Carter strategist Pat Caddell, liberal blogger Mickey Kaus, Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader and Rainbow Coalition leader Jesse Jackson, as well as several of my friends who are pro-abortion and pro-gay marriage but not Pro-Adulterous Husbands Who, After Taking Up With Another Woman, Suddenly Recall Their Wives’ Clearly Stated Wish to Die.
[…]
…Pinellas County Judge George Greer found that it was Terri’s wish to be starved to death. She requires no life support; all she needs is food and water. If being (a) on a liquid diet, and (b) unresponsive to one’s estranged husband are now considered grounds for a woman’s execution, wait until this news hits Beverly Hills!
Cutting through the media borne BS quite nicely;
” Despite the media’s idiotic claims that scores of courts have made painstaking findings of fact over 15 years that Terri is in a permanent vegetative state and would have wanted to die, only one judge made such a finding. Other courts have not made any factual findings whatsoever. They simply refused to overturn Greer’s findings of fact as an abuse of discretion.”
Emphasis mine.
Terry Schiavo is now dead. And while I have tried hard to be objective and extend the “benefit of the doubt” to her husband out of concern that hype and hysteria may have led to unfair and untrue accusations against him, it is extremely difficult to do so – for this is the same man who refused to extend the benefit of the doubt to Terri and her parents, by refusing access to MRI scans and rehabilitative therapy, and preventing any attempts to give her nourishment by mouth. On that basis, it is virtually impossible to defend his decisions as those of a humane and caring guardian.
With his motives compromised by his actions, there should be no wonder that a great many people on all sides of the ideological spectrum on the “right to die” question will continue to be deeply troubled by the use of the courts to impose death on an innocent and helpless woman through dehydration.
I’ve been reading Carnage and Culture since picking it up at a used bookstore at the Raleigh airport, and it’s proving a good read. Today, author Victor Davis Hanson responds to questions from Idris A. Ahmed, editor of the Saudi daily, Al-watan Newspaper.
Their wording makes me wonder if Mr. Ahmed shouldn’t have run for the chairmanship of the DNC.
It’s another good read.
Warren Kinsella pretends to be stupid. (Mar 30 post)
You know, if I were Scott Reid – and, thankfully for both of us, I’m not – I’d get Kevin Bosch to immediately start cataloguing all of the extreme statements being made on blogs by so-called “Blogging Tories.” I’d then make it into a nice little 30-second spot come election time. Dark screen, gloomy music, then sombre voice-over: “Is the Conservative Party extreme? Decide for yourself. Here are statements made on web sites by ‘Blogging Tories’ – statements made with the approval and knowledge of the Conservative Party. [QUOTE KNUCKLE-DRAGGING, MOUTH-BREATHING RANTS ABOUT IMMIGRATION, GAYS AND LESBIANS, THIRD WORLD, WOMEN’S RIGHTS, ETC.] The Conservative Party: they still don’t understand Canada. They never will. Vote Liberal.” Anyway, what do I know? I’m a washed-up political has-been, as all those Blogging Tories like to remind me all the time. Who am I to argue?
Well, Don at All Things Canadian is a little more specific.
1993-95: Executive Assistant to Dingwall, Minister of Public Works and Government Services – memos the Deputy Minister that Guite should be placed in charge of sponsorships.
1996-97: Leaves Dingwall to become counsel at Palmer Jarvis – an adverstising firm in BC
1996: Palmer Jarvis one of five firms to receive $50,000 for design of the Unity office logo
1997: Loses election in North Vancouver riding during General Election – (Palmer Jarvis donates $10,000)
2005: Sponsorship Inquiry:
MR. COURNOYER: If we go to page 118 under Tab 17, we have a number of fax
reports or fax sheets. At 118 we have a fax that is dated August 27th, 1996. Were you aware that Mr. Guit� was exchanging information with Mr. Warren Kinsella at Palmer Jarvis about this?
MS. MARLEAU: Absolutely not. That would be highly unusual. Mr. Kinsella had been the Executive Assistant to Minister Dingwall. My understanding was that he had left Minister Dingwall’s office. So that is unusual. But I couldn’t tell you more about it. I wasn’t aware of it.
MR. COURNOYER: You didn’t have — well, superficially, that is what the document seems to be, a fax sent to Mr. Kinsella.
Via Ianism
The neocons extend their grasp, with wild-eyed polarizers at their side. Moonbats flutter in alarm.
A supporter of same-sex marriage is using the human rights process to take away Bishop Frederick Henry’s right to freedom of religion and free speech.� Despite the Catholic Church’s established role in preparing men and women for marriage and conducting religious marriage ceremonies between men and women, it appears that supporters of same-sex marriage do not want religious leaders to be part of the debate on this issue.�
Bishop Frederick Henry wrote a letter to the Catholics in his Diocese in January, 2005 outlining the opposition of the Catholic Church to same-sex marriages (see coverage).� Bishop Henry called on Catholics to talk to their political representatives and express their opposition to legislation to change the definition of marriage to allow persons of same-sex to marry.� A Complaint filed with the Alberta Human Rights Commission alleges that Bishop Henry’s letter discriminates against homosexuals.�
Local radio is reporting there are two complaints.
[Part I]
Hugh Hewitt has a related article in the Weekly Standard.
All of these charges–from the most incoherent to the most measured–arrive without definition as to what “the religious right” is, and without argument as to why the agenda of this ill-defined group is less legitimate than the pro-gay marriage, pro-cloning, pro-partial-birth abortion, pro-euthanasia agenda of other political actors. Danforth’s position is, apparently, that the agenda of the left on these matters ought not to be resisted, which means that it will
be enacted. “For politicians to advance the cause of one religious group,” Danforth intones, “is often to oppose the cause of another.” That is inescapably true. To come to the defense of the unborn, as Senator Danforth correctly notes he always did during his legislative career, is to oppose abortion on demand. To come to the aid of the Christians in Sudan is to oppose the wishes of the Muslims who sought their destruction. Every political conflict is a choice between competing moral codes.
Ammar Abdulhamid, a dissident blogger in Syria, recounts a recent interrogation at the hands of a “higher fuck”.
This regime is so cut off from reality that it always ends up making what seems so unlikely well-nigh inevitable. That is the essence of my intuition. The withdrawal from Lebanon is not the end of the ordeal, as some want, but the real beginning of it. The wolves who are interrogating me today will once again be sent loose among the sheep to help ensure our continued patriotism.
And the leadership’s line of defense against its critics at this stage will be, as is usually the case in these circumstances, to plead ignorance, albeit it is taking place will be taking place in their name.
Indeed, they might be right. Indeed they will not know all the details.
For ours is not simply a system where the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing, it is a system where the thumb, or the middle finger if you like, does know what the other fingers of the selfsame hand are doing. And so it goes. In order to assure yourself that you have true deniability, you have to grant too much autonomy to the worst most ignorant and sadistic elements in the system.
Yes. Yes. These days are coming back, just when we thought and hoped they were gone never to come back. Few of us might end up going first to this cross, but all shall soon follow. It does not take a prophet to predict this.
No. This is not a comforting thought. Nothing about this is comforting. Comfort has no place here. But then, when the noose tightens, comfort is not exactly what’s at stake.
Via Roger Simon.
