Dismantling The Catapault

PushBack
RealityVille


It's amazing how easily and quickly the Bloggodome was able to push back the veil just enough to give mainstream media access to a number of principles involved so that they could emphatically point out a number of the outright falsehoods that are in ABC's schlock-u-drama called the 'Path To 9/11'. One of those is former Whitehouse counter-terrorism director Richard Clarke whose statement to Thinkprogress.org was quoted in the NY Times:

In a posting on ThinkProgress.org, and in a phone interview, Mr. Clarke said no military personnel or C.I.A. agents were ever in position to capture Mr. bin Laden in Afghanistan, nor did the leader of the Northern Alliance get that near to his camp.

“It didn’t happen,” Mr. Clarke said. “There were no troops in Afghanistan about to snatch bin Laden. There were no C.I.A. personnel about to snatch bin Laden. It’s utterly invented.”

Mr. Clarke, an on-air consultant to ABC News, said he was particularly shocked by a scene in which it seemed Clinton officials simply hung up the phone on an agent awaiting orders in the field. “It’s 180 degrees from what happened,” he said. “So, yeah, I think you would have to describe that as deeply flawed.” …


And now ABC is clearly backpeddling, given that they have been exposed as a purveyor of what is clearly G.O.P. TV. But why they agreed to be used as a propaganda catapault for dung flung by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Far Right Screamers in the first place is still not clear, although there is some interesting speculation floating around, some of which helps 'consolidate' things, like this from Billmon:

I find it much easier to believe that somebody -- maybe lots of people -- saw a chance to cash in on the Disney-ABC-Capital Cities axis of weevils. Limbaugh, after all, is an extremely lucrative franchise for the rodent. The ABC Radio Network has over 4,000 affiliate stations. I don't know how many of them are fully or partially dedicated to the conservative propaganda (slap) talk show format, but I'm guessing it's a substantial number.

As I recall, a few months back various lefty bloggers were debating the political impact of media consolidation, with the majority opinion seeming to be that it was no big deal.

Guess again.

All of which just goes to show, especially given the fact that Edward R. Murrow is still dead, that it is imperative that all liberal democracies have a truly independent, arms length public broadcaster that does it's best to deliver real perspective, not Prop-A-Gannon.

And, unlike the current situation with the Corporation For Public Broadcasting south of the 49th, we Canuckistanis can thank our lucky stars that we still have that, at least to a degree in the CBC*.

As such we have an alternative to ABC's crappolafest, which is Terrance McKenna's 'Secret History of 9/11' which will be aired this Sunday Sept 10th @ 7pm on the main network.

Now, the thing about McKenna's piece is that it appears to have nuance. Thus, unlike what ABC tried to do, it does not lay the blame at the feet of Bill Clinton and exonnerate George Bush, at least according to this interview McKenna gave to Anna Maria Tremonti on 'The Current' this morning (see Part I) or this excerpt that the CBC has released (RAudio clip). Neither does it do the opposite. Instead, what McKenna does do is allow people like Richard Clarke to make the point that by the late 1990's Clinton clearly understood the threat and tried to do something about it whereas Bush did everything he could to demonstrate the exact opposite in the months before the event occurred.

OK?

_____
*At least as long as Mr. Harper doesn't make, say, David Frum, the Mother Corp's President.
Oh, ya -In addition to ABC, it looks like Scholastic Books, which, as we noted in the previous post, was also doing quite a bit of catapaulting of it's own, has retreated from the ramparts. Our good friend Richard Cranium of Allspin Zone has that story.
Finally, pretty bizarre 'eh how much things have changed when you realize the the NY Times now goes to lefty fact-check blogs for source material. The critical thing now will be for such sites to be as rigorous as possible and not go tit-for-tat with the Rovian Prop-A-Gammon. After all, as has been amply demonstrated here, reality is powerful enough stuff on its own.

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Catapaulting The Kids

IndoctrinationForTheNation
InfoDomVille

When I was a kid I went completely googlie over those Scholastic book flyers.

And getting the packages a few weeks later was even better.

And for a while, I even enjoyed going through them with my own kids.

But increasingly, I have become dismayed with all the outright junk that they cram in those things these days.

And now?

Well, it looks like they've started to peddle outright crapola:

To spread the word about “Path to 9/11,” ABC is sending 100,000 high school educators a letter from 9/11 Commission co-chair Tom Keane informing them of the various platforms on which the mini is available. ABC and Scholastic have pacted to produce an online study guide.


I guess it's like the PropMasters always say.....'Get 'em young, get 'em forever'.

Sheesh.

Where Has All The Summer Gone?

ShortTimePassing
PeteVille


I can't believe it.

Seems like just a couple of months ago that the summer was so young as it galloped across the horizon that we were chasing.

And now it's all gone and I still owe Bev a story and images from our holiday, which are coming, I promise.

But for now I'm more occupied with tomorrow because that's when little E. starts grade 2. And she is happier than any kid can possibly be.

Bigger E., on the other hand, starts grade 8 - highschool and all that entails. She's taking it pretty well, but she's nervous beyond all get out, and asked this evening if I had any tricks for getting to sleep when I'm all wound up too.

Regardless though, no matter what, just like always, in the morning we will take our going off to school picture in front of the sunflowers we've been growing all summer long.

****

I'm not sure if it's just the business I'm in or what, but I always feel like the day after Labour Day is the real time for New Year's resolutions, because for me this is the real time to start fresh again.

So, this past weekend I've been mulling it all over. What should I resolve to do?

Spend more time with the kids? Of course, that's a given....... Try to help out more around the house and be more supportive of C.'s song and dance stuff? Of course, again....... How about try to be more efficient in my work and not digress into spending hours and hours reading and figuring out how things like how the cAMP-Response-Element Binding Protein jumps on and off the promoter elemnts when cells are overlaid with extracellular matrix molecules? Well, who could possibly argue with that?

But all that stuff is self-evident.

So by the time this morning rolled around I was starting to get ancy because I hadn't come up with anything really new that would mean something.

And by this afternoon I was back at work trying to hammer out a grant that will hopefully keep me from having to think about laying off people (that's the dark side of the science world, which runs perpetually on soft-money). Luckily, though, all the usual suspects on the wireless were either running junk or re-runs today so I turned to Amy Goodman instead and listened to a full, one hour interview with Pete Seeger.

It was unbelievably entertaining. I loved what he had to say about technology - that it might just save us if it doesn't wipe us out first...... And I loved what he had to say about fighting with CBS to get his anti-war songs on the Smothers Brothers TV show in 1968.....and I loved what he had to say about his roll in standing up to Joseph McCarthy in the '50's......and I loved hearing about what really happened at the Newport Folk festival when Dylan went electric in 1965....And I loved hearing about how he discovered 'We Shall Overcome' and came to write 'Where have all the Flowers Gone?' (and the back story of almost losing the copyright to the Kingston Trio).....And I loved hearing him talk about how he developed his talk-ahead-to-tell the-verse sing-a-long style that Arlo loved so much and how it has come to mean so much more as his own singing voice fades....And I loved hearing him describe how, with age 90 fast approaching he still goes skiing because he's just fine from the ears down.....And always it seemed to come back to the Weavers and Woodie, even when he wasn't saying it explicitly.....

But mostly I loved to hear him speak about how we will always win as long as we keep trying.

So, when he said the following, I paid attention:

"I honestly believe that the future is going to be millions of little things saving us. I imagine a big seesaw, and at one end of this seesaw is on the ground with a basket half-full of big rocks in it. The other end of the seesaw is up in the air. It's got a basket one-quarter full of sand. And some of us got teaspoons, and we're trying to fill up sand.

A lot of people are laughing at us, and they say, "Ah, people like you have been trying to do that for thousands of years, and it's leaking out as fast as you're putting it in." But we're saying, "We're getting more people with teaspoons all the time." And we think, "One of these years, you'll see that whole seesaw go zooop in the other direction." And people will say, "Gee, how did it happen so suddenly?"


So now, if you'll excuse me, I've gotta go find me some spoons.


_____
Almost forgot: The Goodman/Seeger interview can be found here.


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Gangster Tag

TrampledByBeavers
LitVille


Dana over at the very fine Galloping Beaver smacked me up the side of the head with this one. Usually I ignore these things, but this one looks kind of fun........


A Book That Changed My Life:
Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut.
I read it when I was 12. It was the first time I really understood that pathos and hope could be all mixed up, together, in one big bottle of syrup. And Vonnegut was the first author who made me, like young Mr. Caulfield, want to call him up on the phone.

A Book I've Read More Than Once:
Chip Hilton, Touchdown Pass by Claire Bee.
My brother and I read it over and over and over again when we were kids. I think he still wants to be Speed Morris. It's kind of like a 'Boys' Sporting Life' version of Frank Capra's best known film.

A Book I Would Take With Me If I Were Stuck On A Desert Island:
Animals Without Backbones, by Ralph Buchsbaum.
This is actually a textbook that changed my life in my second year of college when it helped push me down the bizarre 15 year long twisty slide that ended at a place called biology career. Actually, come to think of it, I may still be on that slide. Anyway, on that desert island and in the water around it there are sure to be thousands of species of invertebrates and I figure I'd have enough time to try and find and identify all of 'em.

A Book That Made Me Laugh:
Tales Of The City by Armistead Maupin.
C. and I both read it when we first moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. Amongst the serialized great fun narrative I just couldn't believe all of the crazy, whacked-out uproariously funny stuff, like cruising the Marina Safeway or, living undetected as a hobo in a cabin in Golden Gate park, or having a flamboyant landlordess that was actually your long, lost father. That book helped C. and me fall in love with the place. Not that we wouldn't have anyway.

A Book That Made Me Cry:
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
It just did. And it still does.

A Book That I Wish Had Been Written
The Second Third by Neal Cassady
After I became obsessed with all things Kerouac and the 'origins of spontaneous prose' I always wanted to read Cassady (ie. the real Dean Moriarity) unleashed like he was in 'The Great Sex Letter' which was, apparently, one of Sad Paradise's main inspirations. Alternatively, I would have have gone for Kesey's version of the history of the Merry Pranksters, and Cassady's role in it, rather than the one we got from Tom Wolfe.

A Book I Wish Had Never Been Written:
Better Than Sex by Hunter S. Thompson
Like that neighbour and women-friend in the 'World According To Garp' he just should have sstthhoppped.

I'm Currently Reading
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Magnificent. And behind the humanity of it all are the constant reminders of how important, and how fragile, being a nation of laws, not men, truly is.

A Book I've Been Meaning To Read:
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
Her first, 'White Teeth', was one of the most astonishing things I've ever read. And what was even more astonishing was the fact that she was only 26 when she finished it. I liked her second, 'The Autograph Man', well enough, but thought it was tinged with the sophomore slump. Thus, I'm really looking forward to seeing what she's gotten up to with her third.

What Turned Me Onto Fiction:
A pup tent I had between the ages of 11 to 14. I would go in there late at night, with the campfire still flickering, and read until dawn. I can still remember everything about it, right down to the tiniest detail, even the smell.


OK?

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Where Will All That Slush Go?

It'sMine, AllMine
ShrubberyVille

So, the date for announcing the list of all the ' meritorious initiatives' to be paid out of the SLA's $450 million dollar Fund of the Slushies has come and gone and Lambert of the Corrente wire has some interesting speculation as to why there has been nothing but silence.

Remember, the original example of a “meritorious initiative” Katrina reconstruction. So, you’d think the Bush administration would do everything possible to end their Katrina public relations nightmare by making half a billion dollars available to the citizens of New Orleans. But apparently not.

So, why hasn’t the list been published?

1. They forgot. $450 million, they forgot?

2. They don’t want to tell anybody where the $450 million is going.

Call me crazy, but I’ll pick door #2.


And while Lambert may be right, I'm still looking for that door #3. After all, Monty Hall never offered to make a deal without giving a sucker a third choice.

Right?

_____
And don't forget, ol' Monty was once a Canuckistani before the game show (fool's) gold dust started getting in his eyes. Not sure about Carol Merrill though.

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Alphabet Soup.....

RRRRRRight....Now...Ha, Ha, Ha

IsSomethingRotten
InOttaWashVille?

Is this the MPLA?
or is this the UDA?
or is this the IRA?
I thought it was the UK
or just another country
another council tenancy?

The lyric above is one of the lesser known verses from the infamous Sex Pistols song 'Anarchy in the UK', which was released with Britain on the verge of its viscious and vengeful lurch to the far right under Dame Thatcher.

It was also a time of alphabetical abbreviations gone wild.

So now that we Canuckistanis are apparently on the verge of a lurch to the far right of our own it's hard not to notice the sudden outbreak of letter-based acronyms like the CPC, the SOW, and the dreaded SLA.

Which, of course, stands for the Softwood Lumber Agreement, not the Symbionese Liberation Army.

And the thing that bugs me most about the SLA is not just that it is a bad deal that was originally 'struck' when the Minister responsible, David Emerson, chopped his negotiators' legs out from under them just as the final ruling from the American Court of International Trade was about to come down in our favour.

Or that the Canadian lumber industry was bullied by the same Minister into accepting it.

Or even that this recently reported $450 million dollar Bush Administration slush fund was set up with Canadian money.

No.

What really gets me is that a deal like this, and I'm pretty sure others to follow (think oil pipelines out of Alberta, water pipelines out of the Manitoba, and massive, HMO-assisted P3 health care delivery cash-cows everywhere), appears to be signalling Messr's Harper and Bush's true intention.

Which, of course, is to turn Canada into just 'another council tenancy' of Fortress North America.

But will we go for it?

I, for one, sure hope not.

Then again perhaps I shouldn't set my hopes too high.

After all, returning once more to the words of Mr. Rotten et al., it looks, at least for the moment, like for our......

Future dream is a shopping scheme.

OK?

_____
And that OttaWash thing is no joke. The two cities were was recently inserted, together, at the top of a Globe and Mail piece on the, you guessed it, SLA.

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Stamping Out Equality In The Name Of.....

......Equality?

WhatDoTheyReallyWant?
TrueAgendaVille

Alison over at Creekside, after pointing us to an excellent opinion piece by Heather Mallick on the efforts of the group 'REAL Women Canada' to eliminate the Federal Government's standing committee on the 'Status of Women Canada', asks the following:

"Dear REAL Women : How much clout do you think your little club would have in a world without feminism, given that even if you're a REAL good little chicken, Colonel Sanders can't marry each and every one of you?"


Why does Alison ask such a question, you might be asking yourself?

Well, if you go to the REAL Women website you will find that one of their stated goals is actually Equality for Women:

"The issue of equality for women is one with which few women would disagree. There are, nonetheless, different approaches to achieving it. The development of an alternate women's movement, therefore, with a different perspective should not be regarded as a threat, but should be regarded as an advancement for women, in that it reflects the great depth and diversity among Canadian women."

And what exactly is this alternate 'Women's Movement' and what is it's perspective?

Well, that is a little more difficult to discern by searching the website. In addition to the apparent fact that 'most women have children and want to nurture them' it appears that a 'diversity of views' and the 'individuality of women' are very important components of this movement. However, additionally it appears, at least according to the group's latest 'Action Alert' that this alternate women's movement has no room for feminists who write letters to the Prime minister about the Status of Women's support for women's shelters.

"The theme of these many letters is that "shelters for abused women and children protect them from the violence." (No mention of the studies which indicate that half of domestic violence is instigated by the women.) The letters also claim that women need the support of the Status of Women to work for pay equity, marital property and senior women's income, etc."

All of which leaves us slightly confused and wondering what REAL Women really want.

Clearly, the group is conservative. It has aligned itself with other conservative groups, including Focus on the Family (Canada), Home School Legal Defence Association of Canada, and the Canada Family Action Coalition under the banner of 'The Coalition For Family Automomy' in the past and still refers to these various groups in the present on the website. And just as clearly, again based on past actions and current statements on their website, they also believe in so-called 'traditional' family values and would like to see stay-at-home Mom's be more highly valued.

All of which is fair enough.

I mean, if you are a group that really wants to see the tax system modified to help out single income families with stay-at-home Mom's, make your case and openly push the government and public opinion alike for those changes.

I would have no problem with that because that is the way a liberal democracy is supposed to work.

But for the life of me I honestly cannot understand what this has to do with 'equality', especially given that the group has worked so hard to get rid of shelters for battered women and universal childcare that would have been universally equal for everyone.

Given all of this, a cynic might suggest that this is actually a strategy of obfuscation designed to co-opt the other side's (ie. feminism's) strongest asset (ie. equality).

Which makes it all the more curious that one of the members of the afore-mentioned 'Coalition for Family Autonomy', the 'Canada Family Action Coalition' last fall helped the 'Institute For Canadian Values' bring Ralph Reed to Toronto to energize the faithful to punch the ballot for Stephen Harper:

US political wiz, Dr. Ralph Reed, addressing a Toronto gathering of religious and other social conservative leaders Nov. 30, urged them to organize effectively and on Jan. 23 “usher in the greatest victory in the history of this country.”

Dr. Reed, was senior adviser for President George W. Bush’s election campaign and as executive director of the Christian Coalition built the most influential grassroots organization in recent U.S. politics. He was invited to address the Wednesday evening banquet of the three day 2005 Canadian Values - Embrace Democracy conference organized by the Institute for Canadian Values.

Again, on the face of it, there's nothing wrong with that, as long as one considers the source.

And when considering the source it's not just the ties to the current U.S. Administration that one should take into account, but also the fact that the doctorous Mr. Reed is a very fine fellow who once said:

"I want to be invisible," Reed said. "I paint my face and travel at night. You don't know it's over until you're in a body bag. You don't know until election night."


Unfortunately, especially for those who, including conservative christians, really and truly do believe that obfuscation and hypocrisy are actually bad things, Mr. Reed also said the following very recently when he lost his primary bid to become the Lt. Governor of the State of Georgia:

"I'm proud of the campaign we ran," Reed, weary but ever positive, told TIME. "I'm glad we did it."


Why is this statement unfortunate?

Well, read on.....

He (Reed) didn't want to talk about why he lost, but those who know him say he blames the media--particularly the Atlanta Journal-Constitution--for their extensive coverage of his business ties to (Jack) Abramoff, his friend from their days running the College Republicans in the early 1980s. For a high-profile religious conservative like Reed, the stories of being paid millions by one Indian tribe to run a religious-based antigambling campaign to prevent another tribe from opening a rival casino made him look like something worse than a criminal--a hypocrite. He had once called gambling a "cancer" on the body politic. And the e-mails to Abramoff didn't help, especially those that seemed to suggest that the man who had deplored in print Washington's system of "honest graft" was eager to be part of it. "I need to start humping in corporate accounts!" he wrote Abramoff a few days after the 1998 election.


Hmmm.....that cynicism meter is now starting to red line. Guess Mr. Reed just figured that some tribes were more equal than others.


_____
And the sudden, REAL Women-assisted, swarming of the Status of Women by the right side of the Canadian Bloggodome has only served to increase my level of cynicism.
And how about the 'Christian Coalition' (these folks just seem to love names, names, names), well in the wake of Mr. Reed's latest 'difficulties' it seems to be splintering all over the place. Guess that means there will soon be a whole passel of new names to try and keep track of.

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An Alternate Equality

WhatDoTheyReallyWant?
TrueAgendaVille

A million apologies.....I did something goofy and lost all my links.....this is an opinion piece on what I thought the real agenda might be with respect to REAL Women Canada's attempt to scuttle the standing committee on the Status of Women.

I'll try and fix it and get it up soon.

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Who Is That Old Guy.....

.....In The Mirror

ThePastIs
Everybody'sPrologueVille


So there is this young kid from Saskatchewan named, appropriately enough, Saskboy,whose stuff I like.

Anyway, one time I wrote something about a TV show from days of yore that I thought was quite clever in a Canuckleheaded, prairie-wind, sort of way and left it on one of his comment threads.

His rejoinder was something to the effect that 'it sounded like something his parents might have liked if they'd watched that show at all'.

Which floored me, not because I don't think I'm getting older*, but rather because on the Internets it's really easy to forget, especially if you never visit myspace.com, how different everybody really is at a whole lotta levels.

Anyway, Saskboy and I did reach a kind of strange congruency this week over our shared experiences over the cancelled CBC show Street Sense.

Which is still kind of weird because his fond memories of the show were generated when he was a kid watching it, while mine were generated as an adult watching it with kids.

Sheesh.

And what is the point of all this?

Well, I guess I'm wondering, if I hadn't been blindfolded by the Internets, whether I would have dismissed and/or ignored the mutterings of a young whippersnapper like Saskboy out of hand if I had met him somewhere in the real world like, at say, a political fundraiser or something?

Hmmmmm.....

______
*The 'whose that old guy in the mirror anyway?' meme comes from, at least in my increasingly fuzzy memory of him and his words, Danny Finkleman.

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Stop Making Sense!

NoMoreSmartHeads
TalkingVille

Sure, Softwood's a worry.

As is our new anti-Envrionmental environmental policy and the fact that we are making noises about throwing 10 year old kids in jail.

And then there's our final demise as a peacekeeping nation and our suddently non-existent reputation as an honest broker on the world stage.

There is also this business of giving all our billions to Boeing that signals the coming creation of the cretinous crony classes.

Not to mention the beating of the drums for increased private healthcare and the fullest use of the ultimate stratergy of dumb governance by even dumber tax 'credit' bribing.

But if you pay attention to the puffmasters of the punditry this is nothing to worry about because it is all just tweaking from a minority government that doesn't yet have the parliamentary clout to affect real change.

And I might be inclined, at least when half in the bag on a Sudbury Saturday Night, to almost maybe sorta, kinda, almost, but not quite, agree with them.

Except then I read this missive from the Teamakers*, who inhabit what's left of the increasingly atrophied guts of the CBC:

A quiet death Friday (Aug 18/06) for one of the remaining slivers of CBC-mandate programming. Street Cents, the cheeky consumer affairs show aimed at teenagers, was finally snuffed out. It wasn't much of a surprise as no commitment had been made to launch a new season. After 17 years of edgy and fearless programs, the Halifax-based production was killed because - according to the information passed on to staff from Sursberg via Atlantic Regional Director Ron Crocker - it's not attracting a big enough audience.

Why does this matter at all? Well, as Antonia Z. makes clear, this show actually did something that meant something which is why, in the eyes of most thinking people at least, a public broadcaster actually exists:

Yes, that's me screaming. Why? Because in TVland, which is all about selling as much crap as possible to as many eyeballs as possible, and which is also about suckering your kids into becoming consumeristic greed heads, Street Cents was, for 17 years, a boob tube oasis for teaching kids abou t what not to buy and why. The award-winning media literacy show -- seven Geminis plus an International Emmy -- had its roots as a regional production in Halifax and from there it grew and grew.

So, clearly, the hogs are now in the tunnel.

Or, put another way, Canuckistan is already in the frying pan and the fire is getting pretty darned hot.

_____
*And check out their slogan at the top of the page. One of the best bits of word image-induced 'Oh, now I get it!' lightbulb popping that I've come across in the bloggodome.

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And The Winner Is.....

NiceGuysAndCountries
FinishLastVille


So, forget we the losers for a minute......

Who are the real winners in Little Stephen's Softwood Capitulation for the Nation?

Well, here's an easy one:

Canfor, which stands to get back 600 million of the 800 million dollars it paid in duties, supports the deal. President Jim Sheperd says it will give the industry stability.

Stability, sure.

But will it get the trains running on time?

Now, let's see......who else is a big winner, winner, winner?

.

The Wordsmith Wizard

What'sMyLine?
I'mHappyCleaningWindowsVille


How can anybody possibly match something like this, from Billmon, regarding France's latest diplomatic smart balm that has scored a direct hit on the dopey doctrine of disengenuous destructionism:

"Considering that the French basically invented modern diplomacy, and were pitted against the tag team of John Bolton, Madame Supertanker and the moron, we certainly shouldn't be surprised by the result."


Indeed.

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History Means Something

Tommy,WeNeverReallyLikedYouAnyway
DoctorVille

Before everybody goes too far off the deepest of deep ends, as I'm sure certain media outlets south of the border will, about how the election of private healthcare advocate/proprietor Brian Day as president of the Canadian Medical Association represents a huge change in heart for M.D.'s in this country it might be worth considering things from a historical perspective.

And Tim from POGGE, in the comments to his excellent 'heads-up' piece, gave us a little of that perspective a few days ago when he handed us the link to this, from the Canadian Encyclopedia:

In 1959, Premier T.C. DOUGLAS announced his intention to provide medical care insurance, based on pre-payment, universal coverage, quality service and government administration, and through a scheme acceptable to both doctors and patients. The election of 1960 was fought on this issue, the doctors campaigning against it. A commission, established to recommend a plan, reported in Sept 1961. Members of the Saskatchewan College of Physicians and Surgeons met with the government, stating that they could not work with a compulsory, government-controlled scheme.

The Saskatchewan Medical Care Insurance Bill was introduced in the Legislature 13 Oct 1961, and received royal assent 17 Nov 1961, after Woodrow S. LLOYD had replaced Douglas as premier. It was to come into force April 1, but this was amended, later, to 1 July 1962. While the bill was still being debated, the college emphasized its refusal to co-operate with the scheme, claiming that it would bring regimentation and would interfere with the doctor-patient relationship. At a meeting in May 1962, the doctors resolved not to practise should the Act come into force.

In Regina, a group of mothers formed a committee to support their doctors. Similar committees were organized throughout the province, encouraged by doctors and joined by political opponents of the government. These KOD (Keep Our Doctors) Committees, with support from the media, launched a well-organized campaign against the government and the medicare plan. Rallies, petitions, panels and advertisements raised the emotional climate to a white heat.

On 1 July 1962, when the Act came into force, most doctors closed their offices, some took holidays or educational leave, while some staffed emergency centres. A few left the province for good. The Medical Care Insurance Commission brought doctors from Britain and encouraged others to come from the US and other parts of Canada to meet the emergency. Local citizens groups organized medical clinics and hired doctors to attend them.

By mid-July much of the KOD support had dissipated. Some doctors were returning to work; the force of the strike was spent. Lord Taylor, a physician who had been active in introducing Britain's health-care scheme, was brought to Saskatchewan by the government. He acted as mediator and the 2 sides signed an agreement in Saskatoon 23 July 1962.

Sheesh.

I mean, who even knew they had Astroturf in 1962?

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Check All Their Passports

DrivingTheHardestBargain
WithOurselvesVille


Do you have to be Canadian to be the Canadian Ambassador to the US or the Canadian Trade Minister?

Why do I ask?

Well it has to do with this business of their bullying Canadian companies into accepting the softwood lumber capitulation.

At first I thought that the Glimmer Twins had just given up on the Lumber Co's when they started changing the rules at the end of the game:

Canadian Trade Minister David Emerson, facing growing opposition from lumber firms, is no longer requiring that 95 percent of the industry back the accord. Instead, he's only seeking "substantial" support, said the people, who spoke on condition their names not be used.

......

"It's (the term substantial) not an absolutely fixed number," (Ambassador) Wilson said.

But now I'm thinking that the 'substantial' gambit was all a ruse and that the following was the real hammer.

The government had also asked all firms to drop litigation in the dispute.

However, Wilson said on Monday (Aug 21st) that companies refusing to drop litigation wouldn't be able to veto the lumber agreement.


All of which makes it very difficult to not conclude that the hardest of the hardball bargaining by Messr's Emerson and Wilson has not, in fact, been done with the Americans, but rather with the Canadians.

Isn't there a name for people who screw their own country to advance the agenda of another?

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The Lord Of The Bling

CaughtInTheCrossHairs
FitzVille

First it was the mansion.

Now, in a new indictment, Patrick Fitzgerald is going after the jewelry.

A grand jury has handed up additional charges against toppled media baron Conrad Black and three associates, alleging their fraud caused Hollinger International Inc. to file false income tax returns.

The third superseding indictment in the U.S. case alleges that Black, 61, and the others contributed to the underreporting of Hollinger International's corporate income by approximately $13 million to $16 million in 1999 and 2000.....

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The superseding indictment seeks forfeiture of a 26-carat diamond ring purchased by Black for more than $2.6 million as well as assorted antiques and jewelry for which he paid more than $600,000, all in 2000.


Pity.

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In related non-news: Wonder if, in their most private moments, Babs and the Marauder ever refer to former friend and now repentant felonious flim-flam man David Radler as......... Boo Radley?


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