Tag: bush

A flurry of quick things

Am I the only one uncomfortable with “too difficult to prosecute but too dangerous to release” apparently being a legit category? Doesn’t that pretty much read as “we can’t prove you did shit, but we’re going to keep you in jail anyway”? I officially call bullshit on that. Of course it should come as no surprise given that the current… Read more →

Exceptional In Many Ways

What you’re looking at there are the results of the 2009 Global Peace Index. (The full ranking is available online, as are details of the methodology used.) Canada is #8, and for the third year running is “the most peaceful country in the North and Central America and Caribbean region”. That’s a kind of exceptional result, especially considering our neighbour,… Read more →

Links On A Saturday Night

Between this whole house-selling/house-buying thing, and the relatively insane week I’ve had at work, I have been neglecting the blog. Let’s catch up on a few things that have popped up in the meantime. I may have mentioned here before that I enjoyed Farmer’s Riverworld books (for getting me into Burton, among other things), and I certainly have mentioned my… Read more →

Aside

I love effective visualizations, and the Billion Dollar gram is a very simple and effective way to help normal people understand the relative sizes of some of the ridiculously large dollar values attached to various government, corporate, and public initiatives. As someone who enjoys data visualization I appreciate it. As a human being, I can’t get past that items across the top row without feeling a combination of almost blinding rage and terrible, terrible shame.

Cheney’s Assassination Bureau

You’ve probably seen the story by now: Hersh replied, “After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet.” Hersh then went on to describe a second… Read more →

Aside

The details of the story might not be all I am hoping for, but seeing a headline that says “Cheney and Gonzales Indicted for Prisoner Abuse” is certainly a step in the right direction. Let’s hope it’s one of the first pebbles in an avalanche.

Raging Out: No One Cares About Torture

It is now a matter of record that Bush, Cheney, Rice, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Tenet, and Powell were all directly involved in authorizing the use of torture. The group called itself the National Security Principals Committee. It held dozens of top-secret decisions in the White House. This according to an ABC News investigation, sourced with unnamed, high-ranking officials. The Principals included… Read more →

Conservatives in league with war criminals, despite will of the public

Here’s one that both angers me and makes me embarrassed to be a Canadian: globeandmail.com: Canada deports U.S. army deserter U.S. army deserter Robin Long was quietly deported from Canada Tuesday morning, while protesters unaware of his whereabouts picketed the Canada-U.S. border crossing south of Vancouver. The first and most important question here is why are we letting a minority… Read more →

I am shocked! Shocked I tell you.

And in is-anyone-surprised-by-this news, the Senate intel committee’s Phase II report on pre-war intelligence on Iraq is just out. You can read the details and the reports themselves over at TPM. I’ll just list some of the choice points from Sen. Rockafeller’s press release, and if any of them surprise you, raise your hand and give yourself a firm smack… Read more →

I’ve Got The Box

Did you catch the snippet from (retired) General Sanchez’s new book that was in the WaPo earlier this week? As I was reading this bit: During a videoconference with his national security team and generals, Sanchez writes, Bush launched into what he described as a “confused” pep talk: “Kick ass!” he quotes the president as saying. “If somebody tries to… Read more →

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada
This work by Chris McLaren is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada.