Slashdot Mirror
U.S. Blogger Breaches Canadian Publication Ban
nnet writes "The Toronto Sun is reporting that a U.S. blogger has been breaching a Canadian publication ban on AdScam. While The Sun hasn't given the URL for the blog itself, in fear of a contempt of court charge, this isn't the first time an American has breached a Canadian publication ban according to the article." The Sun story, though, does give a nice title for which to search, and this quickly yields the story in question.
April 02, 2005
Canada's Corruption Scandal Breaks Wide Open
A political scandal involving the Public Works Ministry, a government effort called the Sponsorship Program, and allegations of corruption in the ruling Liberal Party has Canada abuzz with rumors of payoffs, Mob ties, and snap elections. For the last two years, Canadian politics has been gripped by the so-called "sponsorship scandal" - tens of millions of dollars in government contracts which were funneled into advertizing firms closely connected with the Liberal government for little or no work, but with shadowy rumours that much of the money found its way back into Liberal coffers. Prime Minister Paul Martin, himself a Liberal, appointed the Gomery Commission to investigate these charges and determine whether to bring charges against government officials for corruption and malfeasance. (See the blog Small Dead Animals for some excellent background on the case.)
Most of the testimony heard by the Commission has been public, but Judge Gomery has decided to create a publication ban on the testimony of three key witnesses: Jean Brault, president of the ad agency Groupaction, Charles Guité, an officer of the Public Works ministry who worked on the Sponsorship Program, and Paul Coffin, president of the ad agency Coffin Communications. The potential damage of their testimony has so unnerved the Liberal Party that they have reportedly started working towards a snap election so that they will not have to face the voters once the facts surface from the record.
And well they might, if Brault's testimony gives any indication of what they will face. Thanks to a friend of mine, CQ readers can get a taste of what Brault has already told the Gomery Commission. For obvious reasons, I cannot reveal this person's name or position, but this person is in a position to have the information. Bear in mind that this comes from a single source, so while I have confidence in the information, you should consider the sourcing carefully.
Payoffs And Kickbacks
On Thursday, Jean Brault began his testimony, subject to the publication ban, and revealed a massive pattern of corruption going to the highest levels of the Liberal party and government. Brault testified to hundreds of thousands of dollars of bogus transactions designed to benefit the Liberal Party of Canada over a period from 1994 to 2002.
Most of the illegal campaign contributions involved Brault either hiring "employees" -- who were in fact working full time on Liberal Party activities -- or paying invoices for Liberal Party campaign expenses (which were never declared as such) or making untraceable cash donations to Liberal officials. In exchange for helping the federal Liberals in Quebec, Brault received millions of dollars in federal advertising contracts.
Brault said he met with Jean Carle, a key aide to then Prime Minister Jean Chretien to propose a more direct way of ensuring that Groupaction got a large share of federal advertising dollars in Quebec. Carle referred Brault to federal bureaucrat Charles ("Chuck") Guité and told him that "there was room for everybody." Guité later put together the sponsorship program, in which five Liberal connected firms -- including Groupaction -- were guaranteed a monopoly on government "sponsorship" advertising (e.g. federal
advertising at sporting or cultural events) and related work. The sponsorship program eventually became a huge slush fund into which over $250 million was poured, over $100 million of which was paid in fees and commissions to these five advertising firms, with little or any evidence of work done or value for money.
In exchange for these large contracts for little or no work, Brault kicked back generously to the Liberal Party, putting Liberal organizers on his payroll while they continued to perform party work (including, at one point, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's brother, Gaby Chrétien), paying invoices to other companies for work actually done for the Liberal Party, a
How quaint.
sulli
RTFJ.
If bloggers wish to be afforded the privileges and protections held by mainstream journalists (the ones not named Jayson Blair or Mary Mapes), they should follow the same ethical standards.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Get the site linked on Slashdot!
Politely, of course.
sulli
RTFJ.
The idea was to try to provide the defendant with an unbiased jury.
Quaint indeeed...
Imagine that... The internet actually getting used for one of its single most useful potentials - Preserving true and absolute freedom of speech.
Guess what? Canadian gag-orders don't apply in the US (and vice-versa). US cryptography export restrictions don't apply from Norway. Just about any of the BS Sharia laws don't apply outside the Middle East. Pretty much nothing applies in Vanuatu.
Welcome to the dawn of a new era. Wake up, world leaders, and smell the coffee - Doesn't it smell so deliciously like your obsolescence? Your petty little regional fiefdoms no longer exist. If the entire planet doesn't agree with you, you lose.
Charles Guité, an officer of the Public Works ministry who worked on the Sponsorship Program
i misread this as "charles guilté" and was immediately confused as to how he'd not already been convicted.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-Oscar Wilde
How quaint.
Canada takes quite seriously the concept of making sure that suspects receive a fair trial. When the publication of evidence in advance of the trial would make it impossible for someone to receive a fair trial, a publication ban is entirely reasonable.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Disclaimer: I'm Canadian.
Yes, there is a publication ban. However, Canadian courts have no jurisdiction outside of Canada's borders. Just as US courts have no pull inside of Canada's borders.
If there was a publication ban on a case in the states - Canadians could feel free to ignore it.
However, if this is a Canadian posting on a US blog site... he should be prepared to spend some time in jail.
BlackNova Traders
We must liberate Canada from this evil immediately.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
...more likely, 'attention whore'.
The gist of the article is "i know a guy who told me what the secret testimony was". Most likely Gomery banned the publication of this information on the basis that it was unsubstantiated in court, and could be damaging to the Liberals even if untrue. For Slashdotters not familiar with the case, Gomery has been exceedingly level handed and fair and in fact if anything is more likely biased against the Liberals than not.
If all of this DOES turn out to be true I wouldn't be surprised, given that the advertisement scandal gets deeper and deeper every day, but I don't think this blogger amounts to much.
Before everyone starts yelling "too bad Canadians don't have the 4th amendment!" blah blah blah, just ask yourself how you'll feel when the next multiple-murderer gets off in the US due to jury tampering because of a Canadian publication.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
Never thought I'd say this, but thank you Americans for making my country free, it's sincerely appreciated.
There's way more to this liberal scandal than we're supposed to know. I understand the necessity for short-term publication bans when a trial is in progress, but anything pertinent to discovering the truth about something (hence a trial) should really be accessible when it comes to public office.
-Matt
--- Need web hosting?
I'm not going to bother reading it, because it's long, confusing and boring. I'm going to give my stock answer to anything involving Canada, simply because once again, it holds true...
Lets' invade!!!Someone tell bush that they are the REAL target.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
But surely the reason for the ban in the first place was so that the jury pool will remain unbiased... it's not as though the testimony is "secret" - journalists have been allowed in. If the prosecution's case collapsed because of this, would it really be something to be proud of?
There's a difference between imposing a gag order on parties to the legal action and blocking members of the public from speaking about what they witness. In the US, the latter would be an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech, not to mention completely impossible to enforce.
sulli
RTFJ.
ssshhh. They beat us once...besides..our army is in the middle east. A perfect time to come and kick our yankee asses.
Jisho - A Japanese English German Russian French Dictionary for the rest of us.
With press gags, Canada's government discards its own protection: competing debate of the case in a free press. So the blogger becomes the only voice presenting the story to most of the public. The need to violate the gag selects people whose version of the story is is more antigovernment. So the gag prevents people who respect (or fear) the government from providing the accurate picture which can come only from multiple independent reporters. This tawdry little conflict illustrates how free, independent press, competing to tell the story most completely, is the most essential part of a functioning free people with a government that serves them more than it serves itself. Press control is a dangerous game, because tiny leaks multiply the power of the leaked info to completely occupy the info vacuum.
--
make install -not war
Yes, a publication ban on an event open to the public. Not quaint, but rather an indication of the vast differences between Canada and the US.
Here in Canada, a fair amount of the law relies on common sense and good will. The intent of these publication bans is to ensure the accused gets a fair trial. This is essentially the judge saying to the press, "Look, if the whole world hears this testimony before the trial gets fully underway and everything can be put into a proper context, it will be really hard to get a reasonably impartial jury so this person gets a fair trial." They know very well that it's impossible to guarantee it won't come out, but Canadian journalists typically respect it.
What's more important? Having one newspaper scoop another in an attempt to splash the headlines with more sensationalism? Or having an accused person get a fair trial?
Note that this isn't censorship or a closed trial or any of that nonsense. You can physically go down and sit in the courtroom if you really want to (and lots of the public do). Sometimes conflicting rights have to be balanced, and most Canadians that I know feel that, in this case, the right of the accused to receive a fair trial outweigh the rights of media to publish this stuff immediately.
In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it. -John Archibald Wheeler
"The information, I gather, is very, very damaging and very prejudicial," he said. "If it's accessed by large numbers of people in Montreal where the trial will take place it could have a prejudicial effect."
There is an easy solution to this. Have a change of venue to someplace where they haven't been paying much attention to the news. I recomend somewhere in the Northwest Territories.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
They can't. However, what they can do is simply bar journalists from the hearing, or one particular journalist if they find out who it is. That's what they normally do if someone outside of jurisdiction breaks a ban on publication.
They can also charge his "buddy" who presumably sits at the hearing room, which, last time I checked, was still on Canadian soil.
The blogger is safe; his source might dry up pretty soon though.
Most of the testimony has been public and not subject to a ban; there isn't much that isn't known from any newspaper and I didn't see anything in the blogger's post that hasn't been reported elsewhere in the public press in Canada. Not really sure what the "secret" is; I didn't see any.
They Judge must have his reasons, he is widely believed to be hostile to the Liberals and it was that Judge that none the less ordered the ban. I just didn't see any evidence of anything new in the blog entry. Typically the ban is in place to avoid prejudicing a trial jury if charges are a likely outcome of the testimony.
There is currently a royal inquiry going on into some mishandling of federal advertisement contracts. A royal inquiry is similar to congressional hearings in the US, except this one is not lead by congressmen, but by a retired judge. When finished he gets to report back to parliament on his findings.
Now, some of the people subpeonaed to give testimony at the inquiry are also being charged with crimes related to the events under discussion. They will go to court in the next several months on those charges.
The publication ban was put in place to ensure things that these people say at the inquiry will not affect their chances of a fair jury trial. (Compare this to the baseball hearings where they players wanted immunity for their testimony, for many of the same reasons.) The ban will be ended after the jury has been sequestered, at which all that was said during the ban can be made public.
Note that this is only a publication ban -- it doesn't prevent people from actually going to the hearings to hear for themselves; it just attempts to limit what the jury pool will hear outside of the court case.
Publication bans are common in Canada, and typically have a similar duration and purpose -- to prevent the jury on high profile cases from getting the "facts" of the case from anywhere but the courtroom. The media typically fight the ban, and often win certain relaxations on the ban (you can report the events, but not identify the person giving testimony, etc.). In this case, Judge Gomery has said the media can ask at the end of each day what of that day's testimony can be released.
I'm generally in favour of such time limited bans, since they are designed to help ensure a fair trial. However, it looks like maintaining such bans is getting more and more difficult in the era of the Internet. Other cases where Canadian publication bans have been breached by American organizations include the Air India case (IIRC), and the Paul Bernardo case.
E.
A publication ban is the VERY DEFINITION OF CENSORSHIP. People have morphed the word and try to apply it to all kinds of other things (like a bookstore refusing to carry a book), but if the GOVERNMENT is BANNING PUBLICATION of something based on the CONTENT, then that is censorship.
You can make cases for why it's important and a good thing, and you can argue about that if you want, but I don't see how you can possibly claim that this isn't censorship.
hawk
Someone from the US is interested in Canadian politics? Weird.
So, you're saying that because his political beliefs differ from yours anything he says is suspect?
The evil monkey commands you to dance.
I wouldn't worry too much, if I remember correctly you folks have more *women* in the US Air Force, than we have people (male or female) in our entire Armed Forces. The Liberals have been steadily eroding the Canadian Forces to their currently too small size for decades.
What remains is very well trained, but too small to carry out its commitments I think.
And to think that after WWII, Canada had the 4th largest Navy in the world. Now our navy is laughably small.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Both the prosecution and defense deserve a fair trial. This includes protecting potentially biasing information from leaking out into the general public, since that's where jurors, witnesses, etc come from. A publication ban does not mean that the result of the trial are kept secret. It is a legal measure in an attempt to guard fairness for the duration of a trial.
By the way, violating such a court imposed ban is a criminal offence and I believe you can be jailed for it in Canada.
Isn't it ironic. On the one had we hold a jury of our peers in high enough regard, that they are allowed to judge us, on the other we believe that allowing them to read a newspaper makes them unable to be objective in court.
It maight be good for the American audience here to know that the gag order applies to testimony at an inquiry, not to a trial.
The gag order, in this case, is to prevent any bias at the trial stage.
** Sig-a-licious **
Wouldn't want to actually read what he wrote and judge it on it's face would you? If you never read anything you disagree with you can always be right.
Is that your shiny little hat fallen off on the floor over there?
His claims have been verified by The Globe and Mail journalist Jane Tabor (I heard her verify it this morning on my local radio station, 580 CFRA, in Ottawa). She was present during the testimony, so I would be inclined to trust what has been posted.
But don't you also need to ask if the publication ban is being used to shield the government from damaging news? The article indicates the government is using the time under the ban to force elections before the news can get out.
The are obviously using the ban in this case to avoid the political fallout, or at least do some major damage control.
Do the media bans only come into effect with high-profile crimes? Or does every crime go unreported until after the trial of the accused? I imagine it doesn't.
Save a life, sign your organ donor card.
First, we do not have grand juries in Canada and the trappings of secrecy therein, but we do have a process called preliminary inquiry which achieves the same function and is open to the public like all our courts are. Publication bans are routinely ordered to protect the rights of the accused until the conclusion of the trial.
Now the Gomery Inquiry is a legal tribunal initiated by parliament to investigate possible corruption surrounding advertising contracts given to certain agencies that are believed to be loyal to the ruling Liberal Party. Extremely damaging testimony was recently given by witnesses during the inquiry and the judge invoked a publication ban to protect the rights of those witnesses who face certain criminal prosecution. Note that the ban does not remain in force forever and, while I don't agree with it, the testimony will eventually be made public.
The crux of the matter is while the rights of potentially accussed persons are protected we are likely to face another election in the very near future before the information is made public. Without the knowledge of the testimony the public may be heading into an election with more questions than answers. Does the right of the public to know the substance of the allegations made during the inquiry outweigh the rights of accused persons?
I think the publication ban does more harm then good as speculation swirls around the subject and the real truth remains hidden. In the meantime, the Liberal minority goverment is probably happy with things the way they are considering the potential damange to their reputation.
Until you produce your above post in french as well, you can consider your warning null and void
This is what we skeptics call the ad hominem fallacy. When you critique a viewpoint, statement, or article by questioning the character of the author, or of the author's other works, rather than the content of the work in question itself, you have committed the ad hominem fallacy. It is an invalid criticism. As much as I like bashing neocons - and they do deserve it - one can do much better than attacking the character of the messenger (which in the case of neocons, is always questionable, and a rather moot point as the past two elections have shown).
Edith Keeler Must Die
Never? It will *NEVER* work? My, that's a bold statement.
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
-- Arthur C. Clarke
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
I hate to say it but anyone who is willing to have his tax money spent on a missile shield defence, of which it has been demonstrated that it will NEVER work, has to be considered low on intelligence...hence the term "idiot".
You should tell that to the US navy, which has been largely successful in its trials: five hits in (I think) six attempts. See here for example. I agree that the USAF's program, which has received more press, has been dismal.
I don't get why people keep saying it will "never" work. It's a hard problem, but I'm aware of no physical laws that are violated by BMD.
But more generally, the way things are now, the only thing defending you from nuclear attack is that the USA is prepared to commit an act of genocide to avenge your death, which incidentally conveys no protection from insanity, error, or equipment failure. As a first line of defence, I would much rather be protected by a system that could destroy the incoming warhead -- even if it had a certain percentage chance of failure.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
The cries of censorship seem a bit overblown to me. This isn't a perminant ban, just a temporary gag order, much like those issued daily in U.S. courts. All it says is that the information needs to be held until a jury is selected and sequestered for the upcoming (about a month) trials.
They're allowing reporters and photographers. Presumably, those stories and photos may be published once a fair trial can be assured.
Nobody likes these gag orders, but you can't select an impartial jury once details of a case have been all over national news and everyone has formed an opinion based on the news. As important as freedom of the press is, a fair trial by an impartial jury is also important.
The thing to watch for with gag orders is not their existance, but if they are, in fact, lifted as soon as is possable. I guess we'll know in this case in a month or two.
Canadians have a serious problem: corruption in government, with money being funneled in illegal ways.
This scandal implicates the previous prime-minister, the current prime-minister, and a slew of relatively wealthy people.
A huge inquiry ensues, and costs an amount similar to the amount of money that was originally stolen (perhaps, misused is a better word). In particular, around 250 million is supposedly improperly accounted for, and the commission investigating the problem is costing another 130 million.
Since the inquiry isn't a criminal case against the individuals involved, the commissioner in charge of the inquiry has asked that journalists not publicise the events, so that an unbiased jury can be found for the real criminal proceeedings.
Members of the public are still welcome to go see the events, just not to publicly report them. (keep in mind that until the publication ban was put in place, the TV channel with the live hearings was getting amazing ratings in Quebec- hence constituting a serious problem for finding an unbiased jury)
I think it is pretty sad that someone finds it necessary to publicise their own version of events on their blog, in defiance of the ban, because it presents all kinds of problems in actually prosecuting the people who have allegedly committed serious crimes.
As per the slashdotting, a pity even the slashdot effect hasn't torn the site down.
The whole freedom of speech issue is not really a big problem for most people I know in Montreal, as there is no permanent secrecy being imposed. The events being investigated happened several years ago, and it doesn't make a huge difference if the details are known today or in a few months- except for the prosecution aspect.
The really scary freedom restrictions here are the 'security certificates' which allow the government to throw people in jail, and not tell people what evidence they are being convicted with.
Then again, the same thing seems to happen in the US, only justified with terms like 'enemy combatant', instead of 'security certificate'.
So the public can observe the proceedings, as long as nobody tells anybody else?
A secret simply cannot be contained this way. It sounds like they're relying on people to be honest - the data isn't even watermarked individually in each person's brain - so how can they really be surprised?
It sounds like they don't have a problem with the entire population of Canada being present (barring physical restrictions) but for some reason replicating the information later is bad.
Come on! If you don't want information to get out, restrict access to it. The story here is not that what happened; it's the broken security itself.
P.S. Let me get this straight: If I attend the proceedings, I'm not allowed to tell anybody? Even a spouse? Or am I only allowed to tell people I meet in person? Is it legal to send snail mail regarding the experience? email? send it to a mailing list? Is it OK as long as I don't do this for a living?
The whole thing seems to be based on the distinction between members of the press and non-publicators. This distinction is arbitrary and archaic.
So... this is an American blog by an American, yet it breaks a Canadian publication law, and that's bad? :-/
Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Bugs are good for building character in the user.
In other news, Internet news source http://www.slashdot.org/ Breaches Canadian Publication Ban.
Speaker: The Right Honourable Prime Minister.
Paul Martin: Mr Speaker
Some Member: Guilty!
Speaker: Order, order. The Right Honorable Prime Minister has the floor.
Rt. Hon. Paul Martin, Prime Minister: Mr Speaker, the Liberal Party consists of thousands of men and women, in Quebec and right across this country, who are dedicated to the Liberal Party and to their country. They work day in and day out, Mr Speaker, for the benefit of Canadians, and Mr Speaker, those members of the Liberal party should not have to bear the rumours, Mr Speaker, or the burden of the activities of a very small few who may have colluded against the Party and against, Mr Speaker, the well being of Canadians, and we will defend, Mr Speaker, those Liberals. These are Canadians, Mr Speaker, who have given their all for this country.
Some Member: Hear, hear.
Speaker: [inaudible] the Opposition.
Stephen Harper: Mr Speaker, the judge, police, and Canadians will be the judge of how involved the Liberal party is.
On another subject, last week Canadians finally learned the details of the brutal torture and murder of Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi. Now it turns out, for months the Prime Minister knew the true extent of the brutality inflicted upon Ms Kazemi. Instead of taking a firm stand against Iran, he sent our ambassador back to that oppressive regime. What kind of callous, spineless government reestablishes normal diplomatic relations with this kind of regime?
Speaker: Hon. Prime Minister.
Paul Martin: [inaudible] ... respond first to the preamble. The fact is, Mr Speaker, that Candians do de-- [aside] are Americans -- that Canadians should have the facts, Mr Speaker, and that is why I called for the Gomery commission, that is why this government, Mr Speaker, put that commission in place, Mr Speaker, it is precisely to have those facts, and that's why there should not be an election until Justice Gomery has reported, because Canadians deserve to know the facts.
Now, Mr Speaker, if I may respond to the Honourable Member's question, if the baying on the other side... the member has asked a question, ....
Speaker: I'm afraid the Right Honourable Prime Minister has used up the time responding to the preamble, but I suspect there might be a supplementary question, may be a supplementary question from the Honourable Leader of the Opposition.
Stephen Harper: Mr Speaker, may I just say that that is a perfect example of what is wrong with this government. They should have used this opportunity to defend a Canadian citizen, not the Liberal party.
[continues re Iran]
Here in America, the right of the accused to receive a fair trial depends on the rights of media to publish this stuff immediately. It never occurred to me that someone would think that the government's ability to keep secret the court proceedings against its citizens is a Good Thing. Interesting.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
The fact of the matter is that any missle defense system will be fooled by dummy warheads. Making a missle hit another is a tough enough task in itself. Now imagine an ICBM that carries 10 dummy warheads to one real one. How does the system tell the difference? It can't.
That is the problem with missile defense. You have to ask yourself how difficult it would be to fool the system. Just like with computer protection, you test your system with someone that is actively trying to defeat it. I don't see the US military doing this. All I see is easy trials to show the press. It's SDI all over again. It's technology that works in very specific circumstances that is never tested in real life conditions.
You are correct for the most part, but I think there is relevance here due to the Canadian system.
If the Liberal party can suppress this unfavorable information long enough to hold a new election for themselves (as this is a parlimentary system and terms are not specifically fixed), they could be already elected by the time any nasty details came out!
Its like sweeping your dirt underneath a rug until just after your relatives leave.
A somewhat similar thing happened during the CDN media blackout of the trial of the infamous Carla Homolka. There was a complete media blackout in Canada, and suddenly a newsgroup which Paul Vixie had newgrouped for me back when I was feeling a bit blue (alt.fan.shedevil) was taken over by a bunch of Canadians desparate for news of what was going on, and a place to talk about it, and which was beyond the reach of the CDN authorities. Wow..it's still archived in Google groups!: http://aunty-spam.com/ref/carla-homka-alt.fan.shed evil (URL redirected because the Google url is so darned long.)
I seem to recall that China treats corruption as a treasonous offense punishable by death. Perhaps if we took a page from that book these stories wouldn't pop up so frequently. Or if they did, they'd all end with "All the offending officials have been taken out and shot." Same thing should go for corporate upper management too.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
BMD (shield) might work, but then "the enemy" just needs to switch to a cruise missile or similar. I'm not aware of any physical laws that would prevent "the enemy" from building a cruise missile, nor am I aware of any physical laws in smuggling and launching them from anywhere within the US. Crap - it'd be a hell of a lot easier and cheaper than building a ballistic missile.
BMD (shield) isn't dumb because it won't work, but because it's just plain dumb.
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
It's much easier than that. Just get a bunch of Americans and Europeans to volunteer to be on the jury. I mean, most Americans have only the vaguest notion of where Canada is even located. Europeans in my experience know where Canada is, but unless they're French they don't see any reason why anyone would want to go there.
Speaking personally, I've visited Canada twice and have every intention of visiting again, but I'm prepared to admit that I have no clue whatsoever what the Gomery inquiry is, or what kind of guy Chretien is. (I've heard the name, I remember that he is or was a Canadian politician, but that's about it.)
So if Canada needs a jury, I'd be glad to offer my services as a completely ignorant neutral member of the jury. All they need to do is pay for the plane ticket, my accomodations, and arrange with my employers to get me the time off work.
If I committed a crime in Canada, I'd be tried before a jury of foreign nationals--i.e. Canadians. If a Canadian committed a crime in the US, he'd be tried before a jury of non-Canadians. So I don't see why a Canadian alleged to have committed crimes in Canada shouldn't be tried before a jury of foreign nationals, if that's the best way to ensure that he gets a fair trial.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
He's a neocon, or at least a neocon sympathizer, which makes anything he says highly suspect.
I suppose that means you can take everything Michael Moore says at face value? If a socialist says the sky is pink at high noon on a clear day it must be so? Unless the source clearly has something to gain from publishing certain information you might want to put your prejudice aside and look at things deeper.
FYI, without mentioning the details themselves, "real journalists" have confirmed that this report is completely accurate--journalists employed by a company owned by major Liberal party supporters no less. Slanted site sponsors notwithstanding the report looked to me to be surprisingly balanced. There is some editorialising but a remarkable absence of ideological bias. The article could've been written word-for-word by an NDP supporter (NDP is Canada's socialist party) just as much as could've been written by a Conservative.
IMHO "AdScam" is not an ideological debate with small-gov't "neocons" whining about big gov't make-work projects (that is only one small facet). It is a debate about openness and ethics first and foremost by far. Ask NDP supporters and they will be just as critical as a Conservative about the honesty and openness of the Liberal government--or lack thereof. Whatever your political leanings, if you are Canadian you would do well to follow this story, regardless of whether the source represents your political values. The average citizen would be astonished at how corrupt the Canadian gov't is and how long it has been that way. Perhaps that would motivate voters to get off their asses and vote next election.
I'm not aware of any physical laws that would prevent "the enemy" from building a cruise missile, nor am I aware of any physical laws in smuggling and launching them from anywhere within the US.
I love this argument. So in your opinion, an enemy will either:
- smuggle nuclear weapons -- not just one, but dozens -- into the United States during peacetime, knowing that the discovery of even one will be tantamount to a declaration of war; and somehow maintain secret absolute command and control over those weapons within the territory of the United States; or
- somehow smuggle dozens of nuclear weapons into the United States during a crisis or during wartime.
Furthermore, with existing technology, we know how to knock down subsonic, low-altitude aircraft (which is what cruise missiles are). We don't yet know how to take out ballistic missiles, which is why BMD research is compelling.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
A few years ago, several US papers covered a Canadian trial in defiance of a Canadian publication ban. That trial was a sensational double rape-murder, i.e. was interesting enough to defy the publication ban.
The judge felt that the information should be published later instead of sooner, and I respect that decision. The last thing that we would want is a trial by media. Time and time again the media gets legal facts wrong in order to make the story more interesting. Often times if I hear about a court case, I will actually read court documents instead of relying on a news article. In any case, his decision was no different than what happens here in the USA. Judges routinely "seal" testimony for various reasons.
Anything that slows down the transparency in government, or the free telling of the occurrences in government, is in essence, is censorship.
This just happens to be time censorship.
In America, there would have been cameras in the meetings and conversation all over the country. All this does is not make any public videotape available to those that would like to know, and helps minimize the impact and importance to the public.
Man, every time I screwed up, I would love to make everyone talk about this later so I could have enough time to set up alibis and work out counterarguments. Also, I would like for there to be no cameras, so in a short while, everyone would have nothing to see. Especially when the wanted to see my real face twisting to the lies and bad things I did.
*Poof* "It was all a dream, and happened long ago, and no one cared about it then, so why now?"
The fact of the matter is that any missle defense system will be fooled by dummy warheads.
Well no, it won't. Unless, of course, you make your dummy warheads the exact same size and density, etc, as the real thing (otherwise they won't have the same flight characteristics.) Since ICBM launchers are expensive, you might as well, in that case, just use the real thing.
Either way, the cost of mounting an attack just went way up, and the certainty of it succeeding to the point where no retaliation is possible just went way down.
SDI never claimed to be impervious nor was it ever intended to let us launch a first strike without fear of retaliation. It was intended to prevent the other guy from launching a (massive) first strike without fear of retaliation. It would also defend against an accidental launch or rogue-state single missile attack.
(Further and more, many of the SDI technologies tested were aimed at interception during the boost phase, before the warheads were deployed. We had people straight-facedly suggesting that the Soviets could defend their ICBM boosters against lasers, for example, by "simply" spinning the booster so no one spot would get hot. I'll leave calculating the dynamics of steering a spinning booster -- and bear in mind the Soviets used liquid fueled ICBMs -- as an exercise for the reader.)
-- Alastair
No, it is not self-evident. That point is explained in the article, duh...
The question to ask yourself is "is socialism good for the poor?" Then look at the nations where socialism has been enacted to its largest degrees -- Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, East Germany, Vietnam, India, Maoist China, present-day North Korea -- and ask yourself if those are nations in which the poor would like living.
Indeed, the difference between capitalism and socialism was probably starkest and most-clearly explained by the difference between East and West Germany. On one side of the wall, there was prosperity and wealth and individuality and uniqueness and freedom; on the other, poverty, run-down, same-looking government-owned housing, and totalitarianism. Ever wonder why so many people in East Germany were happy to tear down the wall?
Figure it out doofus. Feel free to join the rest of us someday in realizing that socialism and communism have been proven, repeatedly and everywhere they've been tried, to be failed economic systems. Look around: even the "socialist" nations of Sweden, etc. have significant market (i.e. capitalist) elements to them; those nations simply round off the harder edges of capitalism with large welfare systems.
That said, those nations are facing fiscal distress because even *they* have too much socialist influence... But at least they have been more-prosperous, more stable and more free than more-strongly socialist nations like those I mentioned earlier.
If you need further evidence, talk to Jeffrey Sachs, the economist leading the war on extreme poverty worldwide. He wrote a piece in Time magazine recently (in the last month or so) pointing out that one of the reasons people in Africa and elsewhere have been so poor is because of socialist economies; he called such economies "mistakes."
Today, India and China are growing at torrid rates because of their market liberalizations and large populations of relatively well-educated people willing to work for pay rates that in the U.S. would be peanuts, but in those nations enables them to live as comfortably as the very well-to-do here in the U.S..
Their populations are becoming increasingly-wealthy as a result of globalization, and the same can occur in other nations -- if only economic illiterates who promote failed economic systems and policies would sit down and read an econ. text sometime.
That isn't to say there aren't some rough edges; China's healthcare system has worsened overall since their liberalizations and their environmental regulations haven't yet caught up with the fast-rising amount of pollution they have there, for example. But on the whole, they are improving and developing rapidly, and eventually they will grow their way out of such problems and join the developed world -- just as the U.S. did, just as Europe did, just as Japan did, just as Canada did, etc...
BTW, one last point. Look at Ronald Reagan's policies in the U.S., and compare them to this graph. Notice something? During Carter's years (1976-1980), the poverty rate rose, despite high taxes on the rich. From 1982-1990, it fell, during the "evil capitalist" reign of Ronald Reagan (who cut the top income tax rate from 70% to 28%) and Bush Sr.. It rose to 15% in 1990-1992, due to the recession, but has been dropping ever since then, with only a slight increase in income taxes instituted by Clinton (and cut again by Bush Jr.).
Today, after some 30 years of "creeping capitalism" (as capitalism's opponents might call it), we are at the same level of poverty as we were in the "golden era of American socialism", the 1960s. Capitalism not good for the poor? Don't bet on it.
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?