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Posted by Scott Tribe on August 9, 2008, at 8:33 pm |
While watching all this rain and thunder and lightning occur (as Matthew over at Pample the Moose observed, I didn’t know Ontario had a monsoon season), I thought I’d ask if anyone’s interested or excited in watching the Olympics.
For myself personally, I don’t know if it’s the time zone difference, or the bad publicity surrounding the games (ie. Tibet, ridiculous air pollution, or China going back on its promises and stifling freedom to access sites they may not necessarily like politically), or getting depressed reading some Canadian sports journalists saying there should be low expectations for the Canadian team and its medal haul, but I’m really not into [...]
Posted by Scott Tribe on August 1, 2008, at 1:27 pm |
If you’re not aware of STAND Canada, they are an organization in Canada that is committed to mobilizing “a critical mass of Canadian students, citizens, and decision makers to end the crisis in Darfur, and respond to future threats of genocide.
They give a bit of background on how their organization formed here, what the situation is currently in Darfur here, where it also details what steps they feel the Canadian government could be taking to help contribute to ending the violence and bringing peace to Darfur.
Next week, I’ll probably be talking a bit more about Stand Canada after I get some more details from them on their [...]
Posted by Scott Tribe on July 24, 2008, at 8:34 am |
Bob Hepburn writes this morning in the Toronto Star asking Obama (figuratively) to come and visit Canada, arguing it would help him “hone his views” on Canada and policy towards us. Unfortunately, I don’t see that happenning. He doesn’t need to use Canada to practice his foreign diplomacy skills, as his tour to the Middle East shows he’s more then capable of handling that. He also has little incentive to visit a country whose Conservative government tried to sabotage his presidential nomination run in Ohio with those “leaked” documents, in a clumsy attempt to either help defeat him in the Democratic primary or failing that, give the Republicans something [...]
Posted by Scott Tribe on June 17, 2008, at 7:06 pm |
They’re being George W. Bush-Republican shills, or at least parroting what they say:
“Mr. Khadr could become a litmus test on Canada’s commitment to impeding global terrorism and the results of our actions today could result in consequences that are not in the long-term interest of the country,”
This was the reason given by the Conservatives in their minority dissenting opinion on a subcommittee report that calls for the Government of Canada to demand to the US that the military commission’s proceedings be halted, that Omar Khadr be repatriated, and that an investigation be commenced and if warranted, Khadr charged and prosecuted under Canadian law.
They couldn’t exactly [...]
Posted by Scott Tribe on June 6, 2008, at 4:17 pm |
Somehow, I doubt it:
A United Nations committee has reprimanded the U.S. for trying Omar Khadr for war crimes and detaining hundreds of children in Iraq and Afghanistan, when international law requires that they be rehabilitated..“The Committee is seriously concerned that children who were recruited or used in armed conflict, rather than being considered primarily as victims, are classified as ‘unlawful enemy combatants,’ and have been charged with war crimes and subjected to prosecution by military tribunals,” the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child stated in a report released Friday.
It is more likely the Conservative government will either mumble again about US assurances of a “fair [...]
Posted by Scott Tribe on February 12, 2008, at 3:27 pm |
Well, this is noteworthy and dare I say it, encouraging, from a Prime Minister who hasn’t exactly been known to be the master of compromise:
Mr. Harper said his government will seriously consider the Liberal proposals, which include an end to combat operations in 2009 and full troop withdrawal from Kandahar in February 2011. Mr. Harper said the Liberal commitment to a continued military presence in the country post-2009 is “really very close to the government’s position” and he raised the possibility the Conservatives would introduce a new motion on the matter
Knb said over at her blog it will be interesting to see how the Cons. and [...]
Posted by Scott Tribe on February 12, 2008, at 12:05 am |
I just was reading the Star, and these are apparently the Liberal amendments that Dion will propose to the Conservative government motion to extend the Afghanistan mission to 2011:
In addition to the February 2009 end date for the combat mission and the full withdrawal by 2011, sources said the Liberal amendment will demand a freer flow of information about the mission. It will call on the government to submit quarterly progress reports to Parliament and for cabinet ministers to make monthly appearances before a new Commons committee on Afghanistan. As well, the amendment will call for the appointment of a special envoy to oversee the treatment of [...]
Posted by Scott Tribe on February 10, 2008, at 1:37 pm |
Garth Turner has posted the Conservative motion on extending the mission in Afghanistan to 2011 at his blogsite and asked for comments on whether his readers would vote Yea or Nay, and why.
This is what I left over there, and what I will re-post here:
I’m an obvious no to this motion. We’ve already had 1 extension of this (3 years) and the Cons. propose to have another. If they were still (God forbid) in power then, what would stop them from extending it further when 2011 rolled around, short of a total victory, which even the NATO commander over there says wouldn’t be possible without 400 000 [...]
Posted by Scott Tribe on February 5, 2008, at 9:45 am |
So I was chatting with one of my acquaintances up on the Hill who observes the Parliamentary goings-on for a living, and I asked that person what they made of the Conservatives issuing a press release last evening on Bill C-3 (dealing with the new revised security certificates that the Supreme Court struck down last year), which more or less said the Liberals would be weak on Canadians public safety if they don’t pass the Conservatives version of that bill. I said it seemed a rather silly move by the PMO to make going after the Liberals when Harper was supposed to be meeting Dion today to try and [...]
Posted by Scott Tribe on February 1, 2008, at 2:24 pm |
I’ve been afflicted with a severe neckache/headache problem the past couple of days which doesn’t allow me to be at my computer for more then a few minutes at a time, and thus I’m not about to leave any long-winded posts (like I normally do), but when I see stories like this that show that the Governor of Kandahar province might be personally involved in torture (and the added outrage that the Harper government tried to cover it up), and when I see another story this week where a young Afghan journalist gets sentenced to death for supposedly blaspheming Islam, when all he was doing was challenging Muslim fundamentalists [...]
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