Northman's Fury

A couple of interesting juxtaposed headlines for Iqaluit recently. First

Iqaluit sweats in record heat wave

It turns out that 26.8C is the absolute highest recorded temperature ever in Iqaluit. It felt hotter.

The second headline:

Ice in Frobisher Bay causing headaches for ships, coast guard

The second story is a large part of the reason that the Northwest Passage won't become the major shipping route many have speculated for quite some time. Even if the passage is mostly clear, a strong wind at the wrong time will leave a ship stranded. Its part of the reason that despite last year's record melting of sea ice, Iqaluit's sea lift was delayed because of ice build-up.

In any case, it gives me an excuse to post a couple of pictures from Friday's boat trip across the bay, showing some of the berg-lets that probably won't be around much longer.

Harper isn't ignoring Kadr because he's brown-skinned or a Muslim. He's ignoring him because he doesn't want to upset his hero Bush. The fact that he's brown-skinned and Muslim are just a happy coincidence.

It's what we get for electing a poodle.

Listen John, we already pay good money for hacks like Bill Kristol to pen attack screeds against Obama. You're going to have to do better.

I particularly like this part of the e-mail:

To that end, the article would have to articulate, in concrete terms, how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq. It would also have to lay out a clear plan for achieving victory — with troops levels, timetables and measures for compelling the Iraqis to cooperate. And it would need to describe the Senator's Afghanistan strategy, spelling out how it meshes with his Iraq plan.

You want the same kind of space we gave Obama? Give us a plan like he did, (and preferably one that you didn't just copy from him.)

The headlines sounds good:

20% increase in energy efficiency in 12 years, premiers pledge

Except that anyone who pays attention to such things knows that increasing efficiency is a far different thing from decreasing overall energy usage. This allows overall usage to continue to increase, which won't help decrease the cost of energy, even if you do happen to use it more efficiently.

Nova Scotia Premier Rodney MacDonald said the No. 1 issue facing Canadians this winter is rising energy prices, but the targets the premiers have set out are achievable goals.

No shit. In fact, if you look at trends over the last 20 to 40 years, the "goals" the premiers just set for themselves are below what has been achieved already. Basically we can expect a 20% increase in energy efficiency without the government doing a damn thing, which gives you an idea of just how much their "pledge" is worth.

The perfect campaign song for 2008

Well. this sounds like a brilliant way to win "hearts and minds".

"Israeli military officials have identified Hamas's civilian infrastructure in the West Bank as a major source of the Islamic group's popularity, and have begun raiding and shutting down these institutions in cities like Hebron, Nablus and Qalqilyah.

"Last week, troops focused their efforts in Nablus, raiding the city hall and confiscating computers. They also stormed into a shopping mall and posted closure notices on the shop windows. A girls' school and a medical centre were shut down in the city, and a charitable association had its computers impounded and documents seized.

"This policy, officials say, is meant to deny the Islamic group, which is committed to Israel's destruction, the ability to use these institutions as a pipeline by which money is channelled to finance attacks on the Jewish state. But the main goal of this campaign is to stem Hamas's growing popularity in the West Bank, and ensure it does not seize control of the area as it did in Gaza a year ago, when its forces vanquished the more moderate Fatah movement headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas...

"In recent months, the army has also closed down an orphanage, a bakery and other institutions in Hebron, which Israel believes are associated with Hamas. In Gaza, meanwhile, Israel and the Islamic group are observing a truce, but this does not pertain to the West Bank where the Israeli military operates freely."

As Brain Ulrich at American Footprints, (where I got the story), says:

Are they serious? Having Israel attack Hamas orphanages and medical centers is supposed to make Palestinians turn against Hamas?

Yeah, I can't imagine how this could possibly go wrong.

The Conservative government has appointed Preston Manning, the founder of the Reform party, to the federal science advisory panel.

Manning joins the Council of Canadian Academies, whose mandate is to provide an "independent, expert assessment of the science underlying pressing issues and matters of public interest," according to its website.

The group is supposed to "build public confidence that policy and regulatory decisions are being based on broadly accepted scientific knowledge and evidence."

Now I've always kind of liked Preston Manning. Back when he was running the Reform Party, I was a supporter and he always seemed a fair bit more rational and honest than most politicians. (Then Stockwell "The Flintstones is a documentary" Day took over, and the whole Canadian right started going to hell.) That said, he has no business being a science advisor. There is little chance of his "advice" being anything but political in nature.

. . . just not necessarily theirs.

It's not surprising that Harper and Co. are touting the agreement as a major step, particularly given it doesn't really require them to do much. The emissions target is for 2050, without any intermediate targets that they might have to actually work towards meeting while they're in office. Not only that, but their 50% cut in emissions quite notably lacks a quantifiable number to start with. If that wasn't enough stupidity, the G8 also passed this little gem:

G8 leaders also made a separate statement on oil production, calling on oil-rich nations, including Canada, to ramp up production to bring skyrocketing prices back down.

Because nothing will bring down carbon emissions like more oil! No wonder they didn't want intermediate targets.

But no worries! Our Prime Minister has done the math and found that it isn't us rich, developed countries driving our SUVs that will have to the work on emission cuts. Nope, we can sit back and let the poor do all the work for us!

I wish I was kidding.

As the Group of Eight summit wrapped up in northern Japan on Wednesday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said it's a "mathematical certainty" that developing countries will do the brunt of the work in lowering global greenhouse gas emissions.

This must be part of the "new" math, where you pull numbers out of your ass to justify sitting on it. Then again, look at the guy he's emulating.

President George Bush signed off with a defiant farewell over his refusal to accept global climate change targets at his last G8 summit.

As he prepared to fly out from Japan, he told his fellow leaders: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."

Chutzpah doesn't begin to cover it.

It appears that Prime Minister "Yo Harper!" is continuing his Bush-emulating ways, outsourcing food safety to the very companies who are supposed to be regulated, and firing the scientist who stumbled upon the plan.

Confidential documents insecurely posted on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's computer network laid out sensitive plans to turn over food inspections and labelling to industry and also led to the firing of the scientist who stumbled upon them.

Luc Pomerleau, a biologist with a 20-year "unblemished record" in government, said he was fired last week for "gross misconduct' and breaching security because he sent the documents to his union. Pomerleau, who is a union steward, also was deemed "unreliable," which means he no longer has the security clearance to do his job or to work again in the public service.

It is debatable whether or not this is Pomerleau's fault. The document was scanned and placed where any of the agencies employees could access it. As Michele Demers puts it, Pomerleau is being made a scapegoat for the senior manager who had the documents scanned and stored in an unsecured location.

She said the incident exposed another embarrassing security breach for the government, but the mistake rested with whomever authorized the documents be put on the server. Coincidentally, the circulation of the document came to light the same the week Maxime Bernier resigned from his position as federal affairs minister, after leaving classified documents in the apartment of former girlfriend Julie Couillard.

And, as has become standard operating procedure in such cases, the government is fast at work trying to figure out new ways to ensure Canadians learn as little as possible about what they're doing.

Treasury Board is reviewing the government security policy as part of its massive policy review. The new policy, which is being updated to reflect concerns about national security, will tighten rules for sharing classified information, as well how to handle it and destroy it.

And so, we are unlikely to learn any more about how Canadian's food safety has been compromised until after it's a done deal.

Via Panglossian Notes, this story from the Globe and Mail regarding a serious lack of planning and preparation in last year's "sovereignty exercise"

The Canadian Forces have come under fire in an internal report highly critical of military leaders' lack of interest in an Arctic sovereignty protection exercise last August.

. . .

It says Canadian military leaders didn't place a high enough priority on the operation, and it singles out for criticism Canada Command, the military organization given the task of defending this country.

The report says Canada Command failed to issue a set of orders that had been planned to help disseminate instructions on Operation Nanook.

“[It's] a sad testament to the lack of interest in this operation and its associated training events displayed by the superior HQ that directed it to be conducted in the first place.”

As Panglossian Notes says it, perhaps if we told them that the they were headed to a desert thousands of miles away, they would put more effort into it. After all, that seems to be the kind of missions the folks at HQ are most interested in these days.

Other than that, this is just the latest in a long line of examples of the federal government talking big about northern sovereignty and other northern issues, but failing to really push for a follow-through.

The Italian government is about to declare Pompeii a disaster zone, only 1,929 years after the disaster.

Seriously though, for such an archeological treasure to be used as a garbage dump is simply unforgivable.

Nation Buys Porn With Stimulus Package

Never heard of this Prank 3:16 thing, but this particular prank is funny on a couple of levels. Convincing somebody who believes in the Rapture that it has happened and that she's been left behind.

The US has Roe v. Wade. Canada has Dr. Henry Morgentaler. Twenty years ago, he took the fight for abortion rights to the Supreme Court and won. He's now been named to the Order of Canada, a well-deserved and long-postponed honour for this survivour of Auschwitz. His battle has been a long one, and as might be expected, still capable of generating a great deal of controversy.

In 1967, Morgentaler made his debut on the national stage and entered the abortion debate in a dramatic way. He testified before a government committee considering changes to the abortion law, advocating that any woman should have the right to end her pregnancy without risking death.

It was a bold statement. At the time, performing an abortion could land a doctor in jail with a life sentence. Women who had abortions faced imprisonment of up to two years.

Against that backdrop, Morgentaler at first refused requests to end pregnancies. But by 1969, he said he could refuse no longer. He opened an abortion clinic in Montreal and openly began performing abortions illegally — thousands of them. It was no secret; he gave interviews and even allowed TV news crews to film. He viewed the access to abortion as a simple matter of human rights.

Condemnation came quickly and on a variety of fronts. It didn’t take long for his first arrest.

He was subsequently acquitted by a jury. But the Quebec Court of Appeal overturned that acquittal and sentenced him to prison. He served 10 months in Montreal’s Bordeaux Jail.

The law was eventually changed so that a jury acquittal could no longer be overturned on appeal, another piece of Morgentaler's legacy.

There would, of course, be many more arrests, two more jury acquittals (one in Quebec and one in Ontario), at least eight raids on his clinics, one firebombing and huge legal bills.

As you may suspect, there is a lot of teeth-nashing and wailing in certain parts of the political spectrum. Today comes news that a priest in BC is turning in his OoC so as not to be associated with him. Granted I enjoyed the Craven Jamboree Father Larre created back when he was in Saskatchewan, but he's not exactly the kind of guy I'd want to be associated with anyway.

Father Larre, on the other hand, is probably best known for being convicted in 1992 on two counts of physically abusing children in his care at Bosco Homes in Saskatchewan: slapping and choking a female, and forcing another to take pills to teach her a lesson about drug abuse.

Nine other charges including one of sexual assault were overturned.

In 1998, Larre registered as a psychologist in B.C., but the B.C. College of Psychologists suspended his registration because it felt he posed "an immediate risk to the public."

I wonder how many of his fellow OoC recipients are happy he's returned the award?

As for the oh-so-tolerant Conservatives, they're doing everything in their power to distance themselves from this and diminish the honour if they can.

MP Maurice Vellacott, a Conservative from Saskatchewan who opposes abortion, told the Globe and Mail on Monday that he heard Morgentaler's appointment was not unanimous.

"This is a pretty divisive issue," he said. "I think we can all agree on that, so why would we have the highest honour in the country being issued when there is obviously a strong difference of opinion about it?"

A strong difference of opinion over the award? What do you think Canadians thought about giving the award to this guy? I didn't like him to begin with, and the fact that he destroyed the PC's as a force on the federal level is a major part of the reason the right got taken over by people unwilling to acknowledge the honour.

The Harper government said it had nothing to do with the appointment, which was announced by the Governor General’s office on the advice of a high-powered committee.

“The Conservative government is not involved in either deliberations or decisions with respect to which individuals are appointed to the Order of Canada,” said a statement issued Tuesday evening by Dimitri Soudas, a spokesman for Harper.

They do know their base. On the other hand, I suppose this explains why the Cons are losing their female supporters.

On the down side, I'll be paying a whole lot more for heating this winter. On the bright side, with the climate heating up as rapidly as it is, I probably won't be needing as much of it as I used to.

I've always liked Huckabee, even if he's something of a religious nut, and this is part of the reason why:

“Republicans will make a fundamental if not fatal mistake if they seek to win the election by demonizing Barack Obama,” Huckabee told reporters in Tokyo, according to a report by Agence France-Presse.

Of course, he then had to go and ruin his Republican cred by coming out of the closet.

Huckabee suggested questions about whether he might join McCain on the ticket were premature. “You can’t accept an invitation to the prom until the football captain asks you. So I’m not going to go out and buy the outfit just yet,”

I now have to go wash my brain out to try and remove the stain of picturing Mike Huckabee in a prom dress.

Incredible what can happen when you’re not paying attention.

CBC News has learned that 16 Canadian lakes are slated to be officially but quietly "reclassified" as toxic dump sites for mines. The lakes include prime wilderness fishing lakes from B.C. to Newfoundland.

Environmentalists say the process amounts to a "hidden subsidy" to mining companies, allowing them to get around laws against the destruction of fish habitat.

Under the Fisheries Act, it's illegal to put harmful substances into fish-bearing waters. But, under a little-known subsection known as Schedule Two of the mining effluent regulations, federal bureaucrats can redefine lakes as "tailings impoundment areas."

I had been aware of at least one of these sites for some time, the “Sacred Headwaters” area of Northern BC. Here’s a brief description from the article:

In northern B.C., Imperial Metals plans to enclose a remote watershed valley to hold tailings from a gold and copper mine. The valley lies in what the native Tahltan people call the "Sacred Headwaters" of three major salmon rivers. It also serves as spawning grounds for the rainbow trout of Kluela Lake, which is downstream from the dump site.

Just the kind of place I’d pick for a toxic waste dump. As it turns out, the way I learned of this site wasn't in regards to a gold and copper mine, but Shell Canada's plans to drill for coalbed methane in the area. That plan was put on hold thanks to stubborn opposition by the local native population, but once the area is designated a toxic waste dump, you can be sure they'll be ready to go ahead with it.

It is also reminiscent of the battle over Sharbot Lake, where the mining company and the government are skirting the law to allow uranium exploration to take place near the headwaters for the Ottawa region.

As a result, I can't help but agree with the following.

A local environmentalist who attended the Long Harbour meeting, Chad Griffiths, said of Sandy Pond: “It's easy enough to consider just one lake as just one lake, as a needed sacrifice, right? But it's not one lake … It's a trend. It's an open season on Canadian water.”

So long as it is in isolated and remote areas, much like the tar sands developments in Northern Alberta, too few people are around to pay attention, and the government and industry can get away with driving dump trucks through the loopholes, but someday soon we will all regret allowing them to poison our watersheds.

Given the bastards see fit to sue bloggers for linking to and quoting their articles, they and their feeds will no longer be used in any of my posts, here or anywhere else.



Sign the petition here.

It didn't take them too long to put the prisoners they released to good use.

Taliban fighters have taken control of 10 villages in the Arghandab district of Kandahar province in Afghanistan, and have said they plan to march towards Kandahar city.

Mohammad Farooq, a government official in Arghandab, said on Monday that around 500 Taliban fighters moved into the area and took over the villages.

Something about that area twigged a memory, so I went through the archives and noticed that Canadian troops made a major push to get the Taliban out of that area back in October, though they failed to truly destroy the force.

Odds are that Nato can and will push the Taliban back out again. Given the proximity of the region to Khandahar, they have little choice but to do so or face losing even more credibility with the population. Not that it is likely to change anything.

People take notice.

One of the many great things about being allowed to guest-post there.

Pretty good, I think.

At least he got the guy's name right.



After all, when your making Cold War analogies after spending most of your time making WWII analogies for the "War on Terror", the occasional slip-up regarding geography is bound to happen.

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton formally suspended her campaign and endorsed Barack Obama. As part of her speech she said that:

Although we weren't able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it has about 18 million cracks in it and the light is shining through like never before.

(I'd personally argue the ceiling has 36 million cracks in it, since both her and Obama's candidacies are historic and the ultimate goal has yet to be reached.)

In any case, Cernig at the Newshoggers, in commenting on the above, noted the following:

(We Brits, of course, can feel a bit smug - the final glass ceiling for women there shattered a few decades ago. Pity it was done by someone who turned out to be one of the worst, most devisive leaders in recent British history...our Dubya, if you will.)

This got me wondering about the glass ceiling in Canadian politics. Kim Campbell doesn't really count; she wasn't elected to be Prime Minister but was instead handed the reins to a party about to be annihilated from the national scene.

While the NDP has had, and the Green party does have, female leadership, to become Prime Minister requires leading either the Liberals or the Conservatives. The last woman to be seriously considered for either, (in her case, actually both), leadership positions was Belinda Stronach. And if any Hillary supporters want to talk about sexism, take a long look at how Stronach was treated throughout her abbreviated political career. It makes the treatment Hillary received look very tame in comparison. From the "ditzy blond" stereotype, to being called several variations of "whore" when she changed parties, (and several Conservatives stuck with "whore" itself), to the myriad rumours surrounding her personal life, I can't think of another Canadian politician treated with such disrespect in recent memory.

Prior to her, the most prominent females who might be touted for leadership roles were Sheila Copps with the Liberals, and Deborah Grey on the Reform/Alliance side, but I'm very hard pressed to think of any at the present time.

Down in the states, some of Hillary's supporters have complained that she is the only possible female President for the foreseeable future, and that there aren't any other qualified women waiting in the wings. In truth, there are several prominent female governors in both parties along with Senators and Representatives that could move into that role over the next decade or so. But where are the prominent women on the Canadian political scene?

On the Conservative side, it's all Harper, all the time. The only female cabinet minister I recall making headlines was the ill-fated Rona Ambrose as Environment Minister for a government that doesn't think much of the environment, leaving her to be shuffled off to another post.

On the Liberal side? No better at present. The last leadership race featured a single woman, who was knocked off in the first ballot.

Premiers? All men.

So help me out here. Are there any woman out there that I'm overlooking and who is positioned to take a run at Canada's glass ceiling in the near future? And what does it say about us Canadians if there isn't?

If either of my regular readers are wondering why there hasn't been anything posted here for the last few days, it's the result of both a busy actual life, and the fact that I'm doing most of my writing over at the Newshoggers. Check there if you don't see anything here. (There's even a link for just my posts, though why you'd want to miss out on the great writing of the rest of the crew is beyond me.)

We'd all have several ponies by now. Seriously, browsing memeorandum today, along with associated stories, I read that Hillary will concede, won't concede, will concede Obama won the most delegates, definitely won't concede, will take the VP slot, is cool to the VP slot, and about half a dozen other positions, along with a few about the guy who will actually win the nomination tonight.

What a circus. Take a breath or two folks. We'll have answers in a few hours.

Muslim extremist women are challenging al-Qaida's refusal to include — or at least acknowledge — women in its ranks, in an emotional debate that gives rare insight into the gender conflicts lurking beneath one of the strictest strains of Islam.

In response to a female questioner, al-Qaida No. 2 leader Ayman Al-Zawahri said in April that the terrorist group does not have women. A woman's role, he said on the Internet audio recording, is limited to caring for the homes and children of al-Qaida fighters.

His remarks have since prompted an outcry from fundamentalist women, who are fighting or pleading for the right to be terrorists. The statements have also created some confusion, because in fact suicide bombings by women seem to be on the rise, at least within the Iraq branch of al-Qaida.

A rather thorny issue for those who support women's rights, I'd guess. Historically speaking, women do tend to be far more involved in insurgencies, even in heavily male-dominated societies, than is generally acknowledged, so I'm not surprised to find that some women want to fight for al Qaeda's cause as well.

Still, given the organization's rather dim view of the fairer sex, it is a fairly ironic twist to see women arguing for their right to fight alongside them.