CNN:

President Bush said Monday there could be no cease-fire until Hezbollah was reined in and international borders respected, reiterating the U.S. stance on the conflict.

I'm confused. I remember a time not too long ago when a well-armed militia disrespecting the border of a sovereign country was a good thing--so good, in fact, that US politicians from both parties lined up to vote this militia upwards of $100M to keep it equipped and in the field. Read more…

On the occasion of his 5-3 defeat at the hands of the Supreme Court, I patriotically submit the following anthem for the Era of the Unitary Executive. Perhaps Bush can get the Nuge to play it this Independence Day: Read more…

Never having been much of a supporter in the first place, I can't say I mind this week's demolition of NAFTA, aka the US/Canada softwood lumber "compromise." But if I were a "sober realist" about free trade, I might be composing a mea culpa of my own to those hippie NAFTA skeptics right about now:

The federal government defended its softwood deal with the United States Friday, dismissing suggestions the pact favours American interests and arguing that it took action where past efforts had failed.

This (and the earlier post linked to) has to be one of the classiest mea culpas I have ever read. Belle has my admiration and respect. Now if only she had been a conservative supporter of the war instead of a liberal, because, you know, conservatives believe in taking responsibility and shit. Oh, well: one down, about 30 million to go. Read more…

Proving that you don't have to waterboard people to get them to renounce everything they know, arrested Vietnam-era deserter Allen Abney now says refusing to fight was a "mistake." And all it took was a couple of nights in a brig and the prospect of 5 more years in prison:

"When I was 18, I wasn't aware that duty and honor would mean as much to me as they do now," Allen Abney, 56, said Monday....

"The (Marine Corps) is one of the finest military organizations in the world," he said. "Good or bad, they take care of their own and I feel privileged to have shared some time with those fine young warriors."

Well, Allen, I have good news. You may have missed out on My Lai, napalming villages, fragging your commander, whoring with Third World women, and defoliating jungles 38 years ago, but there are ground-floor opportunities in "duty and honor" opening up in a desert theater of war not so near you: Read more…

I have little doubt this partially explains why Tom Fox's fellow Christian Peacekeepers, all Canadian, are still alive:

Passport saved Canadian hostage

Mark Budzanowski could almost feel his captors' mood sag when they rifled through his pockets and found his passport. The word 'Canada' on the cover was a blow to the dozens of masked men who surrounded him in the nondescript basement somewhere in the Gaza Strip. They thought they had kidnapped an American. Read more…

By now readers are probably aware that Christian activist Tom Fox's body was found, shot and showing signs of torture, in a Baghdad suburb. Tom's group, Christian Peacemaker Teams, was abducted several months ago by an insurgent group and held hostage in exchange for the release of Iraqi prisoners held by coalition forces. Tom was the only American in the group. He leaves behind two children. A video aired recently on al-Jezeera showed the other hostages still alive.

In a world where "moral clarity" amounts to giving rein to the animal instincts of predation and revenge, it may not count for much that a few people were willing to fight hate with love and violence with peace. To be honest, I can imagine situations where I'd pick up a gun. In any case I don't want to cheapen their their actions by wrapping myself in their bravery. But Tom and his comrades only put their own lives on the line, not those of others, and did so for a radical faith that most of us pay only lip service to. And for that attention must be paid. Read more…

What do the Washington Post, the New York Times, the LA Times, the Seattle Times, the Miami Herald, the Chicago Sun-Times, and for all I know every other paper in the US all have in common today? Today is International Women's Day, and not one of the papers covers it--unless you count as "coverage" a story on page A17 of the Washington Post about Bush "celebrating" IWD, with Afghan and Iraqi women as props. From W we learn that democracies flourish when women can vote, preferably under US tutelage, and vice versa. We need look no further than the great state of South Dakota to see this deep truth at work. So, I suppose, there really isn't a "local angle" for the US press on this, and I shouldn't be too critical. Read more…

Here's a nice big stinkbomb for Stephen Harper from the voters who recently gave him a minority government:

Majority opposed to Afghan mission

A robust majority of Canadians say they would opt against sending troops to Afghanistan and would like to see parliamentarians have the opportunity to vote on the issue.

...The poll found that 62 per cent of Canadians are against sending troops to Afghanistan, while only 27 per cent are in favour. Furthermore, 73 per cent of those surveyed said parliamentarians should have the chance to vote on deployment.

Canada being an advanced capitalist nation, like the US it also has its claque of propagandists to tell the people what their opinions mean: Read more…

I know it's hard to keep track of all the things wingnuts are outraged about, so most corrente readers may have forgotten about this one if it ever crossed their radars in the first place. But back in 2004, this was briefly a very big deal: a bunch of peaceniks in Nelson, BC actually had the unmitigated gall to announce plans for a "draft resister memorial" honoring the Americans who took refuge in Canada rather than kill for LBJ and Nixon in Vietnam. O'Reilly called for a boycott of this sleepy (some would say stoned) little ski town of 10,000 inhabitants, and the 101st Fighting Keyboarders did their patriotic duty by carpet bombing the town's website with angry emails pledging never to visit this place they'd never heard of before. More seriously, some veterans groups took offense and pledged to protest the gathering if it ever survived the Keyboarders' fearsome firepower. I blogged about it at the time here. Read more…

I'm not naive enough to believe that Canada's courts are going to hand Stephen Harper a political IED by granting American soldiers asylum here, but any publicity about soldiers who are refusing to fight in Iraq helps bring this depraved war closer to an end. It should be abundantly clear by now that everything that's happening in Iraq right now is about protecting Bush and the Republicans politically--it cetainly isn't about saving Iraq--so even if once upon a time it was possible to imagine one was fighting for a freedom and democracy, that fairy tale is now standing crucified on a box in Abu Ghraib, and the soldiers fighting and dying aren't doing so for a mistake, they are doing so for a squalid band of thieves and liars. The only question is whether they admit it to themselves. If they do, their course of action is pretty clear. Read more…

In a parallel universe, far, far away:

RUSSERT: No, they will say it is a primarily a Democratic scandal because the Madison Guaranty money was siphoned off by Jim McDougal to cover his losses in Whitewater. But Matt, the issue is broad and wide. Republicans also understand that their policies created the Savings and Loan debacle, the Bush family--Jeb, Neil, the former President--is up to its eyeballs in failed S&Ls and so forth, and that’s why in order to reform all this, it has to be a bipartisan approach. But Republicans get raging mad when you suggest Whitewater is a bipartisan scandal. Read more…

In the wake of the Hamas victory in the Occupied Territories, Israel loudly announced that it would have nothing to do with the resulting government. That's interesting, because Hamas owes its very survival in large part to Israel. As Richard Sale accurately reported for UPI (no doubt when the usual media filters were unaccountably offline):

[A]ccording to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials, beginning in the late 1970s, Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over a period of years.

The Toronto Globe and Mail tells the Liberals that they'd like to try dating other people for a while:

Three Reasons Why It's Time for Change

Canada has been well served by 12-plus years of Liberal rule. Despite what the opposition parties would have us believe, it has not been all scandal and nest-feathering.

Ask yourself a simple multiple of Ronald Reagan's famous electoral question: Are you better off today than you were 12 years ago? Unemployment then stood at 11.2 per cent. Today, it is 6.5 per cent. An average mortgage rate was 8.78 per cent. Now it is 5.99 per cent, making home ownership affordable for hundreds of thousands more Canadians. The national debt has fallen from 66.5 per cent of gross domestic product to 38.7 per cent. Taxes are down; our standard of living is up. Read more…

With the likelihood of a Conservative (possibly majority) government coming to power here in Canada shortly, it makes sense to get a few things out before the US press spins it in its usual braindead fashion. Read more…

Even if ThinkProgress is right, I'm still not happy if Clinton felt that he had the inherent power to order a warrantless search on national security grounds. Separation of Powers 101 says that the Executive only has the powers that Congress gives it, other than those vested in the Executive by the Constitution. And Congress can't mess with the vested ones. Read more…

My first encounter with Canada's approach to religious matters came the other day when my son asked me for $5 so he could go see "The Chronicles of Narnia" (which he'd long ago read) with the rest of his 6th grade class. No permission slip, no guidelines for opting out. Nor, from what I could tell, was there any suggestion of a need for either. It was a done deal. Read more…

If John is right, and Bush really is spying on journalists, this may be the final nail in the coffin of his 5-year honeymoon with the media. Chomsky frequently argued that the press didn't get outraged about Nixon's abuses of power until his enemies list showed that they were on it. Until then, repression up to and including murder (Black Panther Fred Hampton) was regarded as no big thing. This may prove a test case of Chomsky's argument. If confirmed, I'll be happy, though it will only tacitly confirm the deep-seated corruption of a press that's first and foremost concerned about its own powers and privileges, as Plamegate has already shown. Read more…

I know Corrente's American audience has been checking this site obsessively for my report on the Canadian election debate yesterday, so here it is.

If you're a newcomer it's the missing things you notice first. For instance: Read more…

Never let it be said that Corrente let the historic Iraqi elections pass unremarked upon. Unlike my fellow America-hating pacifists, I must say that my entire stance on the War to date underwent a profound reappraisal when I read articles like the following:

U.S. Encouraged by Iraq Vote: Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Insurgent Terror

Special to the New York Times

WASHINGTON, December 16-- United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in Iraq's presidential election despite an insurgent terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting. According to reports from Baghdad, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the insurgents. Read more…

I was going to comment on this earlier but Josh Marshall beat me to it. However, Marshall's touchingly rational take on the US, through Ambassador David Wilkins, butting into Canada's election forgets that under the Bush Administration one can safely invert the old maxim about not ascribing to malice what one can more easily ascribe to incompetence. Marshall assumes that Wilkins, an honorary Brownie, was shooting from the hip. The more likely truth is that this particular bright idea came directly from the Boy Genius or one of his minions:

Observers of Mr. Wilkins's long career in South Carolina politics, where he served as the powerful Assembly Speaker before being appointed ambassador last summer, say his outburst on Tuesday was likely planned and approved by a White House increasingly irritated by a Prime Minister's Office anxious to exploit differences with Washington for political gain.

A US friend wrote me this morning to draw an edifying comparison between the collapse of the Liberal government here in Canada and the Republican albatross around the American political neck down South. For what it's worth, I had to say that I didn't think a parliamentary system would do Americans much good right now, since no-confidence motions depend on having a minority government, and a minority government is hard to have when you have only two parties (and that's only if you debase the concept of "party"). Read more…

Shystee's excellent work on the US' use of white phosphorus notwithstanding, it's important to keep this observation by the Guardian's George Monbiot in mind:

[T]he use of chemical weapons was a war crime within a war crime within a war crime. Both the invasion of Iraq and the assault on Falluja were illegal acts of aggression. Before attacking the city, the marines stopped men "of fighting age" from leaving. Many women and children stayed: the Guardian's correspondent estimated that between 30,000 and 50,000 civilians were left. The marines treated Falluja as if its only inhabitants were fighters. They levelled thousands of buildings, illegally denied access to the Iraqi Red Crescent and, according to the UN's special rapporteur, used "hunger and deprivation of water as a weapon of war against the civilian population".

In a dysfunctional system nearly every participant is complicit in its actions, even those who resist it, because the system defines the context within which resistance occurs, and because those resisting often do not want to admit the extent of the rot. In the case of the criminals dragging America's name through the gutter, we now find dissidents ratifying part of their criminality in the rhetoric of repentant liberal hawks and quisling Democrats like John Kerry, who okayed a war of aggression and now lament how badly the war has gone--as if a war without legal justification, marinated in obvious lies, and thus plainly criminal from the outset deserved to turn out any other way. Read more…

Why does the Vatican hate God?

Jeez, no sooner does my Canadian Comintern cell return from a summit meeting with Fidel, about our plan to smuggle pot into the US in the designer luggage of newly married gay couples (code name: Operation Rainy Day Women), than news of our alliance nearly leaks out! Damn the self-correcting, decentralized blogosphere, damn it to a gulag in North Korea! Read more…