More people would rather see the Coalition run things than the Conservatives

Accidental Deliberations: On legitimacy

Now, it's undoubtedly fair to say that the latest polls should be taken as reflecting only a portion of public opinion - as the previous ones should have been as well.

But when more people want to see the coalition in power than the Cons, it would defy belief to try to make the argument that the Cons could have any more democratic legitimacy than the coalition would based on current levels of popular support. And to the extent anybody wants to play the national unity card, it can't escape mention that the greatest regional legitimacy issue would involve the Cons' lack of support in the one region which has actually seriously threatened to separate in the past.

All of which is to say that the number of serious arguments against the coalition is rapidly dwindling. And with any luck, public opinion will keep turning in the coalition's favour just in time for it to come into being.

Coalition support overall: 42%
Conservative support overall: 33%

"This time they mean to kill us. There is no escape."

World Report: "Blogging from Gaza," Just World News, compiled by Don Bacon, January 11, 2009.

The Gaza Blog:
'This is not like the previous invasions - this time they mean to kill us. There is no escape.'

NDP - Winning Friends and influencing people on the financial front

Accidental Deliberations: Winning friends and influencing people

International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people

International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network

We write with grief and rage as we watch the horrifying Israeli air and ground attacks on Gaza. As Jews committed to ending Zionism, the founding ideology of Israel, and all forms of colonialism, we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, who continue to struggle in the face of these attacks, much as they have against more than 60 years of ethnic cleansing and racism. As Joseph Massad recently wrote, Gaza is in uprising against genocide, and is receiving today the same indifference from the capitals of the West that the rebels in the Warsaw Ghetto received in 1943.

Bush - Signature authorized torture

The Bush Administration's Most Despicable Act - TIME <read me

"This is not the America I know," President George W. Bush said after the first, horrifying pictures of U.S. troops torturing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq surfaced in April 2004. The President was not telling the truth. "This" was the America he had authorized on Feb. 7, 2002, when he signed a memorandum stating that the Third Geneva Convention — the one regarding the treatment of enemy prisoners taken in wartime — did not apply to members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban. That signature led directly to the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. It was his single most callous and despicable act. It stands at the heart of the national embarrassment that was his presidency.
...
Incredibly, the Bush Administration decided to have SERE trainers instruct its interrogation teams on how to torture prisoners.
(Read "Shell-Shocked at Abu Ghraib?")

Remember that school Israel targeted a few days ago?

UN: IDF officers admitted there was no gunfire from Gaza school which was shelled - Haaretz - Israel News

"In briefings senior [Israel Defense Forces] officers conducted for foreign diplomats, they admitted the shelling to which IDF forces in Jabalya were responding did not originate from the school," Gunness said. "The IDF admitted in that briefing that the attack on the UN site was unintentional."

He noted that all the footage released by the IDF of militants firing from inside the school was from 2007 and not from the incident itself.

Smarter Men Have More Sperm

Smarter Men Have More Sperm | LiveScience

The smarter the men were, the more sperm they produced and the better their wee ones swam — and it didn't matter how old the men were or whether they smoked, drank or were obese.

The realities of life in Gaza

Sudbury Against War and Occupation: What You Don’t Know About Gaza < read me!

NEARLY everything you’ve been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below
are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the
conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about
Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip.

Naomi Klein - Israel: Boycott, divest, sanction

Israel: Boycott, divest, sanction | rabble.ca < read me

It's time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa.

Canadian Media fails (on purpose) to properly report what is happening in the Middle East.

Sudbury Against War and Occupation: Turn off the Canadian Media, Please <READ ME!

If national media help make a nation, then we all need to stop reading and listening to conventional Canadian media if we want to make a decent Canada. Benedict Anderson, perhaps the leading scholar of nationalism, wrote that the daily newspaper (along with other innovations like novels, maps, censuses, museums) played a key role in creating national consciousness. People in a country like Canada use their own media - public (CBC) and private (CanWest, TorStar, CTVglobemedia) - to know what is happening in their own country. Media are also an important part of forging a national identity. They are supposed to represent the broad spectrum of Canadian opinion. When they present information on the rest of the world, they do so from a Canadian perspective and have the Canadian audience in mind.

And today, if you want to have the first idea what is happening in Israel/Palestine (or most of the rest of the world), the best thing to do would be to turn them off completely.

In the face of a major ongoing crime like that of Israel's siege and assault on Gaza, Canadians turn to the Canadian media in good faith to try to learn and understand what is happening, who is to blame, and what they might be able to do to help the victims. On each of these counts, the Canadian media fails. But the days when Canadians would be stuck listening to local radio, picking up the local print newspaper, or watching local television packaged by Canadian media corporations for their consumption are over. There is, for the time being, media choice. And given the choice, on Israel/Palestine, it would be foolish to turn to the Canadian media.

Israel corrals up 110 civilians and then bombs them

Israel shelled Gaza Palestinians after evacuating them, UN says | World news | guardian.co.uk

Israeli soldiers evacuated about 110 Palestinians to a single-storey house in Zeitoun, south-east Gaza. The evacuees were instructed to stay indoors for their safety but 24 hours later the Israeli army shelled the house. About half the Palestinians sheltering in the house were children, OCHA said. The report also complains that the Israeli Defence Force prevented medical teams from entering the area to evacuate the wounded.

Paranormal Penises

Alpha Heroes: The Curious Case of the Paranormal Penises

Upcoming Dragon Hunter movie

Dragon Hunter: It's Time for Some Serious Dragon Slayage

Watch the trailer.

This looks VERY cheesy, but could be fun.

New Judge Dredd movie

He Is The Law: Your First Look At Judge Dredd Movie!

Coming Sci Fi flicks

2009 Movie Preview: 30 Fantastic Movies To Watch (Or Avoid) This Year

Flexible computer screens almost here

Inhabitat » HP Announces Flexible Computer Screens On the Horizon

"Look up, and see the wonders I've seen" - John Chrichton

APOD: 2009 January 7 - The Galactic Core in Infrared <see me!

Earth life headed for Mars

Earth life headed for Mars moon - Mars- msnbc.com

My Atheism is not a rejection of your god

Uniform Velocity: My Atheism Is Not A Rejection Of Your God

it is impossible to hate what one views as non-existent, but I do take issue with the actions carried out in the name of religion and the anthropomorphic attributes placed upon a supposed 'higher being".

Robert Fisk - the whole article. "But let us not say we do not know the answer"

Robert Fisk: Why do they hate the West so much, we will ask - Robert Fisk, Commentators - The Independent <READ ME!

Canada condones war crimes

Bill Longstaff: Canada condones war crimes

The Isreali assault on Gaza is unequivocally a criminal act. To cite only one item of international law Israel has violated, I offer Article 33 of Convention IV of the Geneva Conventions relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War:

No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.

Israel's massive collective punishment of the Gazan people clearly violates this article. Staunchly defending Israel's behaviour, as our government is doing, just as clearly puts this country in the position of condoning, indeed supporting, war crimes.

I am usually proud of my country and very happy to be living here, but sometimes I am ashamed of it.

Robert Fisk: Counting the lies and the dead

Rusty Idols: Robert Fisk: Counting the lies and the dead. <READ ME!

And our leaders will huff and puff and remind the world that Hamas originally broke the ceasefire. It didn't. Israel broke it, first on 4 November when its bombardment killed six Palestinians in Gaza and again on 17 November when another bombardment killed four more Palestinians

Sign Amnesty's open letter to the government of Canada to take action

Amnesty.ca | Speak out for peace in Gaza

Go here, read, and sign the petition.

Red Cross Reports Grisly Find In Gaza

stageleft:. life on the left side : Red Cross Reports Grisly Find in Gaza < read me.

Israel Accused of Blocking Aid to Wounded

The
International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday that it had
found at least 15 bodies and several children — emaciated but alive —
in a row of shattered houses in the Gaza Strip and accused the Israeli
military of preventing ambulances from reaching the site for four days.

Red
Cross officials said rescue crews had received specific reports of
casualties in the houses and had been trying since Saturday to send
ambulances to the area, located in Zaytoun, a neighborhood south of
Gaza City. They said the Israeli military did not grant permission
until Wednesday afternoon.

In an unusual public statement
issued by its Geneva headquarters, the Red Cross called the episode
“unacceptable” and said the Israeli military had “failed to meet its
obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and
evacuate the wounded.”

(more)

The Right-Wing running scared of the rise of Jack Layton and the NDP

blogging a dead horse: The Layton factor (or why Robert Silver can't take success for an answer) < read me.

The party has increased its seats in every election since Layton became
leader and in the Commons has rewritten the 2005 budget to make key
investments that are building affordable housing and putting buses on
the roads right now.

And as the willingness of Liberals to agree
to the coalition policy agreement shows, Layton's NDP understands the
modern economy better than any “tax cuts will save us all” Liberal or
Tory government ever has.

Layton's (latest) accomplishment has
been the unprecedented coalition agreement reached with Mr Dion with
the tacit support of Bloc MPs – a feat considered impossible by Ottawa
insiders. No New Democrat leader has come this close to producing a
stronger economy or fundamentally changing the culture of Ottawa
before. As a result, Layton is in the strongest position among his
party and Canadians who want change.

More Toronto sewer news.

TheStar.com | GTA | Sewer fix will take 18 months

It will take 18 months and up to $30 million to build 600 metres of sewer to bypass the cracked part.

The good news is that there's no sign yet that the big sewer is leaking
sewage outward, or collapsing inward. Its flow – three times the volume
of the Don River in dry weather – is unimpeded, carrying the waste from
one-third of the city to the Ashbridge's Bay sewage treatment plant.

Israel intetionally targeting civilians

The Raw Story | Norwegian doctor: Israel intentionally targeting civilians

"We have been doing surgery around the clock," Gilbert replied. "I just talked to to one of my colleagues in the ICU who has not been sleeping for three days and they hospital is completely overcrowded and we are running six, seven OR's and there are injuries that you just don't want to see in this world. Children coming in with open abdomens and legs cut off.

"We just had a child who left. We had to amputate both legs and the arms and the only crime they have done is been civilians -- Palestinians living in Gaza. The relief now is not more doctors and more drugs the relief now is to stop the bombing immediately. This can not go on. It is a disaster."

Venezuala Expels Israeli Ambassador

Venezuela Expels Israeli Ambassador , Chavez Fiercly Critical Of Gaza Conflict, Israel's "Barbarism" - CBS News
Chavez earlier condemned the Israelis carrying out the military
campaign as "murderers" and urged Jews in Venezuela to take a stand
against the Israeli government.


"Now I hope that the Venezuelan Jewish community speaks out against
this barbarism. Do it. Don't you strongly reject all acts of
persecution?" Chavez said.


"How far will this barbarism go?" he said in an appearance on state
television. "The president of Israel should be taken before an
international court together with the president of the United States,
if the world had any conscience."

The Angry Arab New Service

The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب

A source on politics, war, The Middle East, Arabic poetry, and art.

B'Tselem - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories

B'Tselem - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories

B'TSELEM - The Israeli Information
Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories was established in
1989 by a group of prominent academics, attorneys, journalists, and
Knesset members. It endeavors to document and educate the Israeli
public and policymakers about human rights violations in the Occupied
Territories, combat the phenomenon of denial prevalent among the
Israeli public, and help create a human rights culture in Israel.