Tag: News, Politics, Events

Apparently the British Tories have chosen a new logo and are getting a bad reaction causing them to have to deny “any resemblance to communist iconography”.

I think they would be lucky to get away with communist iconography as at least that would be like a political party – it really looks to me like someone with a burning sambuca at a toga party. Why is the naked arm reaching through a small motorcycle tire? Why is the candlestick upside down?

I know it is all deadly serious whether the CBS memos about Bush are fake or not but I think it is hilarious when any major news item attracts this kind of reporting:

Some former engineers who worked in the typewriter division said they were not aware of a standard typewriter that could have produced the Killian documents because the superscript letters in question were so rare. Robert A. Rahenkamp, a former I.B.M. manager who wrote a scholarly history on its typewriters for a company journal in 1981, said, “I’m not aware that we had any superscript technologies back in those days” on standard proportional space typewriters. Bill Glennon, a technology consultant in New York who worked for I.B.M. in Midtown Manhattan for 14 years and repaired typewriters throughout that time, said that the Executive had proportional spacing and that its typebar could be fitted with superscript characters. Documents from the period show the Air Force tested the Selectric Composer as early as April 1969. But spokesmen for the National Guard and Texas Air National Guard said it was impossible to trace the machines that Colonel Killian’s unit, the 111th Fighter Intercept Squadron, or any unit, used so long ago. Mark Allen, chief of the external media division of the National Guard Bureau public affairs office, said there was no way to reconstruct the equipment or whether Colonel Killian typed the memos or had a clerk type them.

“…the Air Force tested the Selectric Composer as early as April 1969” – Classic.   I am so glad that the US general election, the vote for who gets the nuclear bomb codes, is going to turn on the fact of whether the IBM Selectric Compostor model was in the Texas Air National Guard’s secretarial pool or not.  War, deficit, character of the candidates – nah, who needs to consider that stuff.

Just when things in Canada were looking boring, the right-wingers, the left-wingers and the separatists have joined together to take control of the nation’s Parliment in which they hold more than half the seats but do not govern.

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, New Democratic Leader Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe of the Bloc Québécois unveiled a laundry list of measures at a joint news conference in Ottawa, topped by a call to require votes on all opposition motions — a move that could lead to House votes on international treaties, Canadian Forces deployments and changes to marriage rules. The three leaders also said that they should be consulted by the
Governor-General if the Liberals seek the dissolution of the Parliament.

The last bit is a wee bit nutty. I’ll have to have some supper and a good
think before I pronounce on how this Kingy-Byngy power grab will play out.

Later:

“My dearest Pet, so sad the colonials have no idea of their constitutional limitations” – you sense that is what the British government really wanted to tell the Canadian Governor General Mr. Field Marshall Viscount Bynggggg (sounds nice when alternated with “bonggggggggg”) in 1926 when he had the mad idea of actually using the powers granted, surely, the nicest tyrant in the world. Essentially, he – as executive of the land – wanted to tell Parliament who he would recognize as leader of Parliament, and it was not Mr. Fruitnut Cake King the minority-wielding Prime Minister. “The Governor-General might not have acted wisely but there is no doubt that he had the right, given the circumstances, to refuse to follow King’s advice.” But, in the end, the electorate voted Mr. F.N.C. King back in, telling Viscount
Byngy-Bong and the rest of his royalist hoo-haas that the gin and tonics would have ice in them from now on, thank you very much.

So here we are, 78 years later and Mr Martin and his Liberalés are 40-odd seats short of the others and face a united opposition intending on dropping the hammer at their convenience after half-running the show for a while. Sooner or later they will go to the Governor General saying, quite rightly, that they have over 60% of the seats and 60% of the popular vote and that they have the nuttiest coalition this side of Gilligan’s Island. What is the ex-host of CBC TV’s
Take
30 to do?   Will she phone Juliette
for advice? Perhaps Elwood
Glover of Luncheon Date fame? [Note: I ate more tomato soup watching Elwood Glover than all of youse put together].

So there you have it. The opposition is not supposed to talk to the Governor General and vice-versa but if they have the run of the House of Commons could she…would she?

I too have been wondering about the expansion of the word “terrorist”¹ a lot lately and words which have fallen away…but not quite this much.

¹Note: cogent discourse of the etymology of said word welcomed. Partisan pasting to be deleted or defaced with funny looking fonts which will dispell any shred of the thin veil of validity said pasting might convey otherwise.

So, now that we know that…

• Russia reserves the right to go after the terrorists where ever they are
• Chechen leader Basayev’s right hand man is in Boston, USA
• Chechen Maskhadov’s right hand man is in London, England

…surely, no one is going to mind when flashbangs and machine gun spray starts flying around those two toddlin’ towns.

Here is a blast from the past from a CBC playlist from five years ago:

The Russia military’s brutal campaign against Chechen rebels raised the ire of the international community this week, especially after the Russians told civilians to leave Grozny by Saturday before the Russians bombed the city to the ground. The IMF is now withholding a $640-million loan payment to Russia, while leaders in Europe, the United States and Canada condemn the Russians actions in Chechnya. But how much does the Chechen situation differ from the crisis in Kosovo last March, the same crisis that required a massive NATO-led air campaign? Dick Gordon talked to Richard Gwyn, a columnist for the Toronto Star, and Janice Stein, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto about Chechnya, Kosovo, and what the West should do.

I was looking for internet references to Janice Stein and Chechyna as she was on TVO’s excellent Studio 2 last night affirming that the terrorism there needs no assistance, is 150 years old and has to be understood on its own terms. Others, less ivory-towerish elite-ly but way more knee-jerk, see the world more simply.

I am wondering this morning who has not been a terrorist? What nation has not deserved the label or been labelled undeservedly? Who will be next? I think Taiwan is a good candidate as Manuchuria was in 1933. You know what place doesn’t fit the new world order? Cambodia. One of the worst genocides of all time a couple of decades ago, a little international law applied, a little peace keeping and the murder of one reporter is the news. Sounds like Derek Ali in Ohio.

In the aftermath of the tragic events in Russian brought on by wacko Chechyn separatists, the collective need to connect the dots and find evidence of a central control of all the world’s terrorist wacko ills runs rampant. It is in this light that we are reminded of the 1980s concerns that the Soviets were controlling the weather and trust that the recent spate of hurricanes last season and this can also be linked to the House of Saud and a man having a Starbucks in Indonesia.  

Due regard for the mid-1800s revolutionaries and the role of Bakunin would be instructive in these times.

Michael writes a good essay about Bill and the by-pass. We have a by-pass coming up in our family and it does all sound routine. Our guy has got 16 years on Bill mind you. Odd to think that someone whose presidency ended almost four years ago is only 58 now. With a little luck and a few fewer Krispy Kremes, Bill could be kicking around for another 30 years, senior statesman style.   It has been a real enlightenment this year listening to Bill’s amazing gift of speech and comparing to everyone else in the US elections.   He was to visit the North Country over the weekend with Hillary.