On the Take

Warren Kinsella has posted about this but all of it sounds a little familiar.  Unless I am missing something, much of this was talked about in Stevie Cameron's (whose website was just hacked) book On The Take and the money came from the PC Canada Fund.

While the optics of bag loads of cash being delivered to 24 Sussex Drive is pretty horrible, is it wrong for a party to willingly decide to supplement the salary of it's party leader?   This would be more interesting to me if there was evidence that people were donating to the PC Canada Fund knew it was being redirected to the Prime Minister and his wife AND those people had business dealings with the government.  Now I think that would be interesting.  I don't know what information Norman Spector has but I can't see anything new coming out that hasn't been written about before.

From the Toronto Star

Spector, chief of staff to Mulroney in the early 1990s, wrote about the payments in a forward to Toronto lawyer and author William Kaplan's book about Mulroney's relationship with Schreiber.

He describes Mulroney's networking with wealthy and powerful people. He writes also of Mila Mulroney's "expensive lifestyle."

"Mulroney was not a rich man. Party funds were being drawn, and one of our staff was assigned to pore through personal expenses to determine if some might be reimbursed. Every month I cashed a cheque at a local bank and remitted the funds to Mila," Spector wrote.

A spokesperson for Mulroney downplayed Spector's talk of the cash deliveries.

"There's nothing new in these allegations," Joseph Lavoie said yesterday.

The committee also expects to hear from François Martin, Mulroney's former chef, who has told of transporting thick envelopes of cash for the family.

In Stevie Cameron's 1994 On the Take, Martin tells of visiting Mulroney aide Fred Doucet in the Prime Minister's Office to pick up thick envelopes of cash and deliver them to Mila Mulroney.

"Cash came in like it was falling from the sky," he said in the book.

While the allegations may date back years, they provide fresh fodder for opposition MPs who are already seeking answers about the cash payments Mulroney received from Schreiber after he left office.

Of course if MP's read a little more history, this would be old news.

Technorati tags: Brian Mulroney, On the Take, Norman Spector

Small step forward in Kenya

Having several friends from Kenya I have found the entire situation there extremely depressing. It seems to bring back a lot of parallels to Rwanda. Anyways the NY Times reports that there may be some progress in that Kofi Annan has been named as a mediator.

The African Union announced on Thursday that Mr. Annan, the former secretary general of the United Nations, is taking over the role played by John Kufuor, the chairman of the African Union and president of Ghana. Mr. Kufuor spent the past two days in Kenya trying to broker a truce between the government and opposition leaders to end the crisis here, which erupted after flawed elections last month and went on to claim hundreds of lives.

Mr. Kufuor failed to get the two sides to even meet, but he insisted all was not lost.

“Both sides agreed there should be an end to the violence and they also agreed there should be dialogue,” Mr. Kufuor said.

Mr. Annan will lead a panel of African dignitaries who will arrive in the coming days to try to bring the two sides together, Mr. Kufuor said.

There was no immediate comment from Mr. Annan about the new role.

Many diplomats here are pessimistic that a solution will be found anytime soon because neither Mwai Kibaki, Kenya’s president, nor Raila Odinga, the top opposition leader, is budging. Both claim to have won the presidential election on Dec. 27. Western observers have said that there was widespread evidence that the president’s party interfered with the vote tallying process and rigged the results to stay in power.

Profiteering in Iraq

I am not sure what is more shocking about this video. The incompetence of American rebuilding efforts in Iraq or the profiteering that has been happening since the occupation started and the American companies started to roll up to the trough. Either way, the video is worth watching.

Crime and No Punishment

When I was about four, I picked up one of those hangers that socks hang on the rack with while at The Bay in Calgary. I thought it was cool, had no intention of swiping it (street value $0) but my parents made a big deal about how wrong shop lifting was (even if it is garbage) and I how I was on the fast lane to a life of crime. It must have made an impact since I haven't shoplifted anything ever, I don't steal cable and I don't use Napster, Kazaa or even rip other people's CD's. I am legal.

In the last year however, I have done a pretty good job of having stuff stolen from me and last night our car was broken into. They took my backpack, a copy of Will Sampson's book, Justice in the Burbs, a couple of pens and most sadly, my beloved iPod Nano. The value wasn't that great. My iPod battery was slowly dying and I had already thought of replacing it with a new shuffle (I like Wendy's Shuffle battery life) but it is frustrating to have a bunch of stuff stolen. The weirdest part is that last night I was feeling exhausted. The West Nile is lingering and is complicated by the fact that I am a diabetic. Dave King was in town and I decided to have a nap before going into work at midnight. I woke up at 10:00 p.m. with a fever and phoned my co-worker and asked if he had any post-midnight plans or if he wanted my shift as well. He did and I went back to sleep. If I had been feeling better, my car would have been parked in sight of me and the security camera all night at work.

This afternoon I was really angry over it. I have lost three nice mountain bikes in the last 8 years, while Wendy and Lee have had one taken each. We lost a GT Snowracer, had the inside of the van trashed and have had about 20 solar powered lights ripped off, one by one a couple summers ago (we just installed new ones this week but they are low wattage instead so we will see if that works). Wendy was almost assaulted when a drunk barged in weeks after Mark was born (our passive agressive dog Elway decided to take a stand and earned his keep for the rest of his life) and the house has been broken into. My co-worker was beaten up and robbed in broad daylight a couple of months ago and it seems to be a part of life too often on the west side of Saskatoon.

Our neighbor has lost $5000,00 in tools over one year from his house. Our other neighbor nonchalantly asked me if I had seen his car and snowmobile another day a couple of years ago. Our neighbor across the street has lamented making his yard more and more like a fortress to stop the theft. I agree with both his sentiment and his actions. Wendy and I have wanted to close in around our driveway with some shrubs and cedars but right now a 6 foot fence with barbed wire feels a little more appropriate.

Of course it begs the question of why don't the police do something about it. The answer is that they do. There are a lot of police on Saskatoon streets but as John Gormley said on the radio this morning, "It's hard to get sent to jail in Saskatchewan". A friend of mine's daughter was assaulted by an older girl a couple of years ago for no reason. She had over 50 probation violations and was still at large and still committing crimes. It begs the question, how many crimes does one have to commit to be put into jail? According to Statscan, crime is down in Saskatchewan and that is a good thing but the problem is that it takes so few people to commit crimes to make it miserable for everyone else in the neighborhood and for some, they grew up with crime and crime is normal.

It isn't the dollar value on my stuff that bothers me. Like I said, I was already thinking of replacing the Nano with a Shuffle or a cheap one gig expandable MP3 player, my bag was showing some age, and Justice in the Burbs can be replaced but the thing that really bugs me is that according to the laws of the land, what happened to us, isn't even worth punishing someone for.

Umm, it also means that my review of Justice in the Burbs won't be posted here this week either. It's a good book though I am hoping the person who stole it gets something out of it.

Update: At 9:00 p.m. while out replacing some of the stuff. Somebody tried to break in to the house. Lee was at home and Maggi was standing guard and they ran off.

The whole thing makes me want to move to the burbs, find a gated community or a safe small town and live there. Wendy and I debated on and off all summer about whether we wanted to re-enroll Mark into Mayfair School. His reading skills are farther behind then what mine were at the end of the first grade and the teachers have to spend a lot of time on "behaviour modification" rather than teaching. It is also frustrating to see kids moving past simple bullying and seeing kids get hurt in front of the school on many days with no intervention from parents or staff. So is the answer to bail out on the school and neighborhood? Of course not but at the same it will mean some changes for Wendy and I.

Rolling Stone on Profiteering in Iraq

You can read the gory details here.

Operation Iraqi Freedom, it turns out, was never a war against Saddam ­Hussein's Iraq. It was an invasion of the federal budget, and no occupying force in history has ever been this efficient. George W. Bush's war in the Mesopotamian desert was an experiment of sorts, a crude first take at his vision of a fully privatized American government. In Iraq the lines between essential government services and for-profit enterprises have been blurred to the point of absurdity -- to the point where wounded soldiers have to pay retail prices for fresh underwear, where modern-day chattel are imported from the Third World at slave wages to peel the potatoes we once assigned to grunts in KP, where private companies are guaranteed huge profits no matter how badly they f--- things up.

On The Take

I finally read On the Take by Stevie Cameron the other day. I had bought the book years ago at a used book sale and had never felt motivated to read it before but I wish I had.

As Amazon.ca says about the book

When On the Take came out in 1994, it made author Stevie Cameron a household name in Canada. Her book's revelations about the rampant corruption and petty greed of Brian Mulroney's decade in the prime minister's office reverberated for many years in the Canadian political landscape and helped destroy his Progressive Conservative Party. (The party, one of Canada's most venerable, never recovered from Mulroney's stewardship and eventually merged with the Canadian Alliance Party.) Cameron, one of the country’s leading investigative reporters, was one of the few reporters to consistently question and probe the corruption of the Mulroney years. She has a wonderful ear for storytelling, which helps make On the Take a page-turner. Cameron seems to rejoice in recounting the numerous unseemly episodes of the Mulroney administration and depicting all its seedy characters and hangers-on. Mulroney comes across as having been most comfortable in a powerbroker's backrooms, surrounding himself with dodgy bagmen and devious lobbyists. Cameron suggests that the country was "open for business," with a "for sale" sign on the front lawn. She writes that even in their final official act, as the Mulroneys departed from office in disgrace amid record-low popularity ratings, they tried to stiff taxpayers into buying their used furniture.

I am not sure why I read it but I kept thinking of Larry Lessig's change in focus from intellectual property issues to the larger issues of corruption in culture. It made me ask three questions

1. How did Mulroney find the nerve to do the things he did.
2. How did he get away with it. (some of it made Adscam look minor league)
3. How does a government pretend to represent all Canadians (or Americans) when only those that have money have access or influence on the decisions that are being made.

In the end I am torn. I know some very good people in public life. People I respect and like on both sides of the political spectrum who don't believe in the political spectrum as much as they believe in solutions and helping people but at the same time they are generally footnotes to history. As Will Ferguson says, "the boneheads" while the country is often ruled by "bastards" and at the end of On the Take, you see which one of them was Mulroney.

Truscott Aquitted

One of the best arguments for keeping the death penalty abolished in Canada

The Ontario Court of Appeal has acquitted Steven Truscott of murder in the death of Lynne Harper 48 years ago, saying the conviction was a miscarriage of justice.

In a ruling Tuesday, a five-judge panel unanimously decided to quash the conviction stemming from the rape and strangulation of the 12-year-old girl near a town in southwestern Ontario.

"The court unanimously holds that the conviction of Mr. Truscott was a miscarriage of justice and must be quashed. The court further holds that the appropriate remedy in this case is to enter an acquittal.

"The court thus orders that Mr. Truscott should stand acquitted of the murder of Lynne Harper," the court ruled.

Truscott was sentenced to hang in 1959 at age 14 for Harper's murder in Clinton, Ont., becoming Canada's youngest death-row inmate after one of the most famous trials in Canadian history.

The CBC has an excellent indepth page on the case as well.

A quick question? Anyone have any idea why the religious right in North America is the main voice in favor of the death penalty? I was reading how the religious right in Canada felt betrayed by Mulroney over his lack of support for it in the 80s and I have no idea what drives that desire for capital punishment other than a reading of the Bible that elevates the Old Testament (sans a certain 10 commandment) over the New.

Crime and No Punishment.

Last night I decided to ride my bike to work. The highlight of that trip was being hit by a car which I managed to avoid the worst of on Avenue C North. I was sent for a spin but my knee took the worst of it but I was okay.

I got to work, locked up my bike and a couple of hours later was in our back compound where we have some of the Centre vehicles and my bike wasn't there. It was stolen at 6:18 p.m. according to our security tape and was most likely sold within minutes for $10-15 dollars or for some drugs. I had a good lock on it but it looks like it was smashed apart.

The weirdest thing is that we are pretty sure from the camera who stole the bike. Sadly it wasn't the first bike in the last couple days stolen around here. A coworker was attacked and they stole his bike in the middle of the day.

I guess it comes with the neighborhood where anything seems to be fair game. Policing can only go so far and after a while a neighborhood itself has to want to change the culture of where it is at. We try to do that here but it is an upward climb.

Last night I was kind of down about it. Not so much the bike but I have witnessed a lot of evil lately both at work and even near home. Wendy and I witnessed one of the worst domestic beatings I have seen the other night (the cops were on their way by the time we heard the violence and others were there as well) and I have seen some at work that really gets to me. A while ago I was asked to write up something about where I find my time to listen for Listening Point and I think I am going to write about my desk. I have a prayer rope, a Bible, and the Divine Hours in my backpack and over my shift in the middle of craziness I find the time to listen and reflect on the here and now and remind myself that we are all sinners and we all need some grace and many nights, I am that agent of grace for people (so in other words suck it up and model some of that grace).

Speaking of work. I was here a year this week. I have some holidays coming in a couple of weeks and it consists of doing nothing other than doing some mountain biking. Oh wait, I guess I won't be doing any other that either :-)

Violence

I was reading in today's paper that Saskatoon had 6 stabbings over the weekend.

Billett said police received a total of 283 calls between 6 p.m. Friday evening and 6 a.m. Saturday morning, "which is a heavy call load," he said. "Staffing levels were quite good, but that number of calls with that number of stabbings was stretching things to the limit."

While I don't know any of them (of the names that were released), I have been stunned by some of the violence that I have seen lately. One of the guys was beaten because he has Huntington's disease and was an easy target. The other guy was beaten because he had no money to steal. Both of them in their 60s and harmless.

At the same time many people I know have felt the increase in police presence in the city which is good but there is only so much police can do and how do you police against a mentality that says that violence against seniors or the sick is fun?