Maritime Morning - Andrew Krystal

Hamas (the acronym for the Islamic resistance) is a terrorist organization. They do, however, operate hospitals and daycare centers. They perform all kinds of roles outside of their militant bent and perform as well as a legitimate political entity. Unfortunately, Hamas maintains a dead-end proposition, committed as they are to the downfall of Israel.

Hamas claims that they are launching home-made rockets into Israel to protest punitive economic sanctions from Israel whose own aim is to isolate and choke off Hamas, their sworn enemy. Since, fundamentally, Hamas has, as its goal, the destruction of Israel, there doesn’t seem to be any placating that can be done; Israel’s attitude is to kill the mad dog.

The problem, however, is that the mad dog is, itself, a product of Israeli policy. Destroy as you might the symptom, the disease of discontent is still there.

Gaza and the West Bank are, in effect, defacto prisons: people cannot leave easily, if at all; borders are often closed, the Palestinians are subjected to a sea of humiliating check points; it is a socio-economic prison with ethnic poverty as its bars. The population density in the Gaza strip is one of the saddest, and most obscene, on earth.

To see Gaza and the West Bank is to feel the sting of being on the wrong side of history. But history hasn’t been on the side of Jews either. The historic homeland was returned by Americans and Europeans out of guilt and inaction, the sin of omission where thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler were turned back.

Following the ultimate annihilation of European Jewry, just think of how many doctors, and intellectuals, leaders and artists, both alive and yet to be born, were lost. The Ashkenazi Jews are some of the smartest people in the world. That’s the why Hitler killed them. The community was a perceived threat in Hitler’s bizarre worldview due to its innate intelligence, and irascible versatility — a flower that can grow anywhere because of its strength and resourcefulness; even in rocks, sometimes only in them. The Jews have never needed much soil to grow the flower of their character or culture.

And what did we, in the West, really give to the people of David and Abraham? The only land in the Middle East without oil! Disputed land at that!

Steeped with sentimental, religious, and cultural fervor, the nation of Israel has gone from the camel to the computer like a great wind of progress over the desert. The state of Israel is a modern marvel of Western Liberal democracy and industriousness and intellectualism. No one helped them build it either.

I have become a Judeophile due to the respect and admiration I feel for all things Israeli and Jewish.

But, as a gentile, and as an Anglo-Canadian, I also recognize that, like a doctor, you cannot operate on your own foot. Both sides in the Israeli conflict are too close to it to perform the necessary surgery. The Palestinian solution will not be with Israel, nor will it lie with the sad, intractable, Palestinians. It lies with the West.

Does Israel have the right to defend itself? Of course it does. But weeding out Hamas fighters and committing to invasion and destroying infrastructural targets and killing innocent civilians is not a strategy, it is a short-term tactic. There is no strategy. The approach now in Gaza is akin to sidewalk crack filling. And it is a long road.

Meantime, building a defensive wall in Israel, while successful in the short-term in terms of stopping suicide bombers, does not address the problem — like the invasion of Gaza, it is a short-term band-aid.

Sooner or later the demographic realities of more Arabs to Jews in Israel (not to mention in Palestine) will impinge itself upon the politics. But the real impinging force beforehand should be the international community — mainly the U.S. Unfortunately, the role of the U.S. is becoming more eroded and irrelevant just when we may need her most.

The newly eroded U.S. position also hurts Israel geo-strategically. And, under the Americans very noses, Israel is having major discussions with the Chinese as Israel looks to transition benefactors. As we speak, lots of technology is being quietly sold by Israel to the Chinese military.

The real problem with the Middle East is that America must put domestic politics aside and embrace the Palestinians too. America says it does, but it really doesn’t. America doesn’t care about the Palestinians. And swirling all around it is an Israeli media PR campaign to sell the Gaza war — their way. Israel still hasn’t forgotten the bad PR they received from Lebanon in 2006 – a military battle with Hezbollah that they lost as well.

But also remember that when the Jews didn’t fight back against Hitler until the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1944 they were criticized. Well, now the Jews are fighting back in Gaza and the criticism remains.

In terms of Palestinian behavior modification I ask you this: how do you think that the Palestinians would have behaved historically if America had subsidized them like they have the Israelis?

I have found that when people have things to lose: expensive cars, kids with university educations, etc., that they are less inclined to treat their own kind like cannon fodder. What was it Bob Dylan once said? “If you ain’t got nothin, you got nothin to lose.”

The Palestinians don’t want peace, because they can’t afford it yet.

• Thumbs down: Pamela Wallin and Mike Duffy to the Senate: the artifact of a bygone era (our Senate) is, appropriately, stocked with the ranks of the bygone — those who’s best years are behind them; but what is particularly galling is that these “journalists,” in particular Duffy, who hosted a daily CTV Newsnet show on Ottawa politics, looks now like he has been rewarded by Stephen Harper. Simply put, journalism is supposed be distanced from politics, not given its most plumb prize: an easy, overpaid, patronage job for life.

  Duffy was disingenuous, to say the least, when he told Canada AM of his oh-so-pained reaction to being asked — that he had cringed and that he had had agonizing reservations about now becoming partisan – really? No one painfully walks into the Senate – they skip.

  Duffy pouted for years after Chrétien had his communications “person”, Jim Munson, a former network TV News reporter, appointed to the Senate instead of him. The difference with Munson’s past appointment is that he had left his TV gig long before the Senate appointment occurred; he also didn’t host a daily program on politics that is supposed to be unbiased.

  Do you really think Duffy was promoted to the Senate because of qualities that were overly neutral or overly critical of the Conservative government?

  I can hardly wait for the Robert Fife announcement.

• Thumbs down: The U.S. media…..Speaking of Senate seats… (I’ll get to that in a minute). The same folks who brought you the cheerleading chorus over the Iraq war in 2003 (remember them?), now give you a People Magazine culture fandom look at Obama.

  This is easily the least experienced (but much smarter than Bush) guy who’s ever been in the Whitehouse. What is seriously irksome however is the fawning, fatuous, nature of the Liberal media even when old homeboys and confederates from Illinois, like Governor Rod Blagojevich — pop up to embarrass him or try and sell his Senate seat.

  And then there’s Tony Rezko. So, who was Rezko? Just a guy who bought Obama his first expensive house, and also a guy who happens to also be a dear friend of the disgraced Illinois Governor.

  Let me ask you this: who the hell buys someone a house that is not related to them? Obviously, Obama and he were doing a little business. Rezko is now doing hard time in the state slammer. So, let me ask you another one: how many people have you done business with, and prospered, that were also white collar criminals?

  Now, for God’s sake put your thumbs down.

• Stephane Dion

  Holy crap Batman, what can you say about this guy? I don’t give him the thumbs down for performing the poorest in an election of any Liberal leader since Sitting Bull asked for amnesty; it is because he stayed on as leader.

  Dion’s video tape malfunction was a pattern with the bungling woman (Senacal) who was running his campaign.

  Dion is a great example of a man who had been awarded a seat in cabinet but was, in essence, simply a bureaucrat with academic links that knows as much about retail politics as Jennifer Aniston.

• Speaking of Jennifer Aniston — thumbs up. Just because.
• Steve Murphy: Thumbs up. In the end, he was right about Dion. Wasn’t he?
• Thumbs down: Jeremiah Wright. If he happened to be white and saying the same things about Blacks, he would be wearing a hood with a white sheet, burning a cross, and dating a relative.
• Thumbs up: Michael Ignatieff. (So far.) Anything is better, however.
• Thumbs down: the Liberal/NDP coalition. My easy dislike of Harper’s style and policy content notwithstanding, this one stinks more. The “coalition” of the unwilling is dead anyway now — thumbs up to that. Besides, Harper sent me a Christmas card this year. (Check the weather: Hell has frozen over. Ask Richard Zurawski.)
• Thumbs up to the Chronicle Herald this year, namely Dan Leger and Steve Maher.
• Thumbs up to Richard Zurawski. But thumbs down to the fact that he is correct about ecological doom and gloom.
• Thumbs down: Sheila Fougere. She ran for mayor, had way more money than the incumbent Halifax Mayor, but started her campaign much too late and had money left over; for months, despite announcing her candidacy, she was unavailable for interviews (?!). Weird.
• Comedian Will Farrel. Stop it. Thumbs down.
• Massive thumbs down: Nova Scotia Power. These clowns are profitable and are better compensated than anybody in Canada, yet, every time a crow passes wind, there is an outage.
• Thumbs down: Peter Mackay who never takes calls but likes to do advantageous announcements and has a fit if anything moves off-script. It is unfortunate for the electorate and I because Mackay is good on his feet. I like Peter, but he needs to loosen up. And besides, Mackay will be running the Conservative party after Harper leaves following the next election where Harper is politically dead in Quebec.
• Thumbs up: Mike Baird. He takes calls. Doesn’t care who’s on the line. Water off a duck’s back. The opposition just hates this guy, so he must be doing something right.
• Thumbs up: Premier Macdonald and Premier Graham. Charming, bright, and they take calls. It helps you when you are a voter. It helps them too.
• Thumbs up and down: Finance Minister Flaherty. He has lots of time for my show (good), but his unintelligible fiscal update (akin to a late undergrad paper after a night drinking) and earlier flip-flop on the Atlantic Accord, would have made both Lewis Carroll and Franz Kafka jealous.
• Thumbs way down: Hillary Clinton’s campaign team. Defeat from the jaws of victory.
• Thumbs up: N.S. Liberal leader Steven McNeil. He’s making progress.
• Thumbs down: “The Hertitage Trust” crowd. Shame there won’t be much development going on now because of the economy. But they like that.
• Thumbs down: The hysterical, bandwagon, North American media for making the economy worse and spooking consumer spending and hurting economic demand.
• Thumbs up: Paul Martin. The former PM provided me with one my favorite moments in broadcasting on the occasion of his autobiography.
• Thumbs up: Tom Cruise. (Just because.) But when will he really grab the bull by the horns and play Hitler?
• Thumbs down: Monia Mazigh. The wife of Maher Arar, a man awarded almost $13-million (including legal feels) of taxpayer money without having a minute of sworn testimony and who worked for a CIA front company before he worked in Canada.

When I asked Monia if her famous husband was, in reality, a government agent, she gave a non-denial denial. Then she told me, when I asked of his associations with the CIA, that I was treading on issues of national security (?!) All this while Monia Mazigh was promoting her book, Hope and Despair — a piling on of a vast and insulting lie, and she literally ran from the studio when politely asked the most basic of questions.

Someday we will know the truth. In the meantime, you and I pay the bills for the couple while being told how awful justice in this country is.

Someone please take me to Syria, write me a cheque, and then give me a book deal. God Save the Queen.

• Thumbs up: investigative journalist Paul Palango. Dispersing the Fog does just that. It is the secret history of Ottawa and the RCMP. Read it, call me in the morning, and then interview Maher Arar’s wife Monia if you want to have a good laugh.
• Thumbs up: Burton Cummings. Still rocking.
• Thumbs up: you.

Thanks for joining me in the mornings.

All best for the new year.

Perhaps the best visual of 2008 is George W. Bush ducking shoes during a press conference in Baghdad. The outraged Iraqi was expressing himself freely.

Shoes have been removed in history before, of course. Not always have they been thrown. While I am too young to remember Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev removing his shoe at the United Nations and banging it on the table, I can still see the old newsreel in my mind’s eye.

I would like to remove my shoes, after stepping in a cow pasture and throw them at the over-paid CEOs of Chrysler and GM (more than Ford, who has faired better).

Chrysler has been on life support since Lee Iacocca was giving them mouth to mouth and the mini-van brought them the corporate version of the “jaws of life.”

The problem now is that they (us) are bailing out the CAW and the UAW, not just the “Big Three” car companies.

The notion of an auto bailout really irked many callers today. It seems have all of us have tired of the Wailing Wall talking points/chant “too big to fail.” We have heard it all before with the U.S. banks, so it is now with big auto now — a tiresome tune indeed.

And I asked you this morning, as Canada prepares for a $3-billion bailout for the auto sector, would it not be better to let these “big three” fail and then see them renegotiate with the labor unions?

The problem is that, for many, we just don’t understand $75-per-hour on a factory assembly line and constantly upgraded pensions. Remember, we have a culture that goes to Walmart, en mass, to take advantage of cheap goods as a direct result of exploited Chinese labour. And, as a developing country, the fact that their labor market has not matured – far from it – means that they have become the world’s factory floor by virtue of the principle of massive labor exploitation. Exploitation of labor has meant Chinese re-investment in the U.S. bond market and Treasury. The entire treasury, the whole nature of the dollar’s value, is predicated on cheap, Chinese labor and a re-investment of 50 per cent of Chinese GDP in America — pretty fragile stuff.

Now, the Japanese have a mature labor force and still maintain labour competitiveness, quality control, and a corporate captaincy that is far from incompetent. They had their own banking crisis 10 years ago and have worked themselves out of it. They also have, in spades, what Europe faces, an aging labor force. We can learn much form the Japanese economic example.

The Japanese advantage is born from outworking North American fat cats, victims of entitlement, corpulence, golf games, corporate jets, recalls and short-term thinking.

A “Big Three” case in point occurs with the choice of bigger SUV chassis. You see, the money with SUVs was too big to give up: 15K per vehicle instead of 1K on small cars — huge revenues, but short term. The Japanese also believe in diversification: they never put all their profits in one model type. They make less by not playing high stakes, but have more resources should the market shift.

It takes years to bring products to market, and, by then, the market may have shifted, so you have to be anticipatory, lucky, conservative and long-term prudent.

Everything Detroit isn’t.

And the big unions are not any better.

Taxpayers of North America unite! Take off your shoes and take aim!

You couldn’t escape the news in June 1994: the Bronco car chase, the year long trial, every lawyerly tour de force captured on cable news, radio, and evening news casts; culminating in an acquittal for double homicide despite overwhelming evidence, the gasp-inducing legal turn of which seemed Shakespearian in its macabre, Hollywood, grandeur.

On December 5th, 2008, the washed-up footballer, OJ Simpson, was back, receiving a sentence – inescapable this time — regarding a bungled bit of thuggery involving guns, kidnapping, forcible confinement, kidnapping, etc. with some equally intellectually challenged buddies in tow in Las Vegas.

Payback was sweet: a maximum of 33 years, a minimum of 9 years hard time in a Nevada prison.

For the Goldman family, specifically, Fred and Kim, payback can only go so far, but they will take what they can get. They, more than any of us, had to endure the trial and the evidence regarding their son and brother Ron, whose only mistake in life was returning sunglasses, happening upon a slaughter, and trying to intervene to save Nicole Brown Simpson. Ron’s greatest error was, perhaps, his association with Nicole at all.

For a man of limited capacities, OJ did exceedingly well and milked every bit of money out of his sports history possible. He also made a lot of people and a lot of lawyers’ money. But then there’s blood money.

The apex, (or nadir) of blood money currency, in this case the worst case, was OJ’s 2006 book “If I Did It”. And, having had enough, the Goldman’s fought back using the powers of the civil suit conviction of wrongful death and took OJ’s book away from him. The Goldman’s then added to the book and re-did the title to include, in very fine print, the word “if”.

Who would, or could, possibly write a how-to book about the butchered death of a spouse, divorced or not — a murder so brutal the victim was almost decapitated in a slaying? Never mind the poor body of Ron Goldman.

The thematic overlays during the trial of Hollywood celebrity, trophy wives, race relations, LAPD politics and past sins, proved too much for justice to be blind. Justice saw the circus and ruled accordingly.

From their respective homes in Arizona and California Fred and Kim Goldman spoke to me today. They remembered Ron. And they remain the face of families who bear the burden of justice miscarried, or not at all; they are still broken, still see their loved one in brutal butchery in the pages of a Googled universe; still feel the pain of surrendering to the system.

This time, in Las Vegas Nevada, they had to rely on OJ to do it himself — only this time, without their son, without their brother, without the world watching; without Johnnie Cochrane.

This time the glove fits.

Because of ego, the next terrorist attack on America will be just as dramatic as 9/11 - or more so - according to Counter-terror expert Brigadier General Russell Howard, an author of and contributor to many scholarly works on the subject.

As I write this there are over 200 gallons of weaponized smallpox missing from Russian stockpiles. Al Qaeda’s next attack will be a biological attack at a crowded event: Mardi gras, or a Super bowl; people will develop symptoms all across America within nine days. By that time, the “vectors” will be spreading in uncontainable ways.

When you die from smallpox you are disfigured. Death from smallpox is usually caused by complications. For example, bacteria could easily get into the open skin lesions; gruesome pneumonia and borne infections would then occur.

The other major terrorist threat that we may face is a “dirty bomb.” That is a conventional explosive affixed to a radiological device.

Tomorrow, I will write to you about new Liberal leader Michael Ignattieff. Today, I want to talk to you about U.S. Brigadier (Ret.) General Russell Howard.

General Howard was in Halifax this week speaking to the military, and government, and academia on the history, and the future, of terrorism. The lecture was delivered to a closed-door video conference that I was fortunate enough to attend courtesy of the U.S. Consul General for Eastern Canada in their downtown Halifax offices.

At issue is preparedness, and understanding.

How can we be prepared if we don’t understand the nature of the threat?

– There is no “war on terrorism.” You can’t declare war on a tactic. Terrorism is a tactic. We have to know whom we are fighting and start using the correct language.
– We need to, according to Brigadier general Howard, “de-aggregate” the issue of terrorism. While some American allies want to paint “Muslim terror” as a monolith, as a collectivity, an “us against them” fight, better to see the various discontents in the Middle East according to their specific circumstances and respective political concerns and context.
– The military cannot do it all: it is, in the main, a “political” battle. And while the extremists are not consolable, their loose confederates and state benefactors can be influenced by conventional state-to-state pressure.
– The American military is its own worst enemy. These loyal men and women never say no - despite the fact that they should sometimes. General Howard reminds us that there is no military academy in the United States that instructs troops on occupying another country like Iraq. Americans are not trained to do takeovers or conquests or occupations. The American military has no class in re-building failed states like Afghanistan. War classes in the American military are just that, about war — maneuver, firepower, and integrated target destruction doctrines and the strategy and history of strategy and approach in that regard.
– America must also integrate its police agencies in a unified manner in the U.S. and totally re-organize its mobilization of resources and communication unencumbered by State lines. Right now it is a cluster “mess” — an assortment of groups working individually and at cross-purposes.

General Howard has more to say. He will join me again. And judging by the quality of men like General Howard and General Patraeaus, I would place my money on Uncle Sam.

God Bless America.

The Wizard of Oz has also become a Parliamentary allegory with the Tin Man needing lots of heart, and the Cowardly Lion needing something much lower. Forget the Straw man. In Ottawa, brains are for sale.

Besides it’s not the content of the head that’s the problem. Among the party leaders there is book learning and academic pedigree; what is needed in Ottawa we can never get — not from these players.

We hear about deficits and recessions and downturns and emergency and urgency. But that’s only money. Money is not a cancer; money is not wedded to your DNA. Money is a thing that can be fixed. Even some cancers can be operable.

But there is a deficit in this country – a severe one.

It is a deficit of charisma, a paucity of personality, a recession of charm.

Seeing Dion speak in English is like cheering a kid on at a Christmas pageant or hearing Murray the accountant singing Muskrat Love at Karaoke.

Harper, if he dressed up as a clown at a kid’s party would actually scare them. Dressed as Santa, Harper is apt to shake kid’s hands Christmas day and remind them of program cuts. Harper is a crocodile technocrat, who has mastered the machinations of government without accepting, or understanding, that the essence of politics is the soul of connecting.

But connecting is considered pandering for Harper. Harper sees a soulless smile as sign of strength.

Well, my late Grandfather used to use the phrase about catching more flies with honey than vinegar – although Grandfather used different nouns.

Prorogued by rogues, the personality deficit in Ottawa still smells. For the sake of politics, it is time for a courtesy flush.

We used to call “spin” propaganda. Now, in Ottawa, we need time to spin so we “prorogue,” we delay, duck, demure, deflect or weasel away.

The event of delaying Parliament to dodge a non-confidence vote allows for an unofficial election campaign whose approach will be negative attack ads; all of this energy, time, and money in the midst of a global economic crisis.

The Governor General, if she “prorogues” Parliament at Harper’s request, should also have provisions: freeze spending and government announcements by the warring parties. However, it would be more interesting if Harper was called out on the misuse of a technical lever, such as prorogation to avoid a House vote.

The idea of a full-blown media blitz during the House of Commons lull in order to pressure the Liberals and the Governor General and to court public opinion is an ugly and divisive (there will no doubt be attacks on “Separatists”) thing.

Stephen Harper should face the music of a non-confidence vote instead of pulling the temple down around him - a scorched earth policy if there ever was one.

It is not about Canada now; it is about Steve — and Steve’s survival.

New reports from The Globe and Mail show a secret deal between the Conservative party antecedent, the Alliance and the Bloc in 2000. But, even today, we all know that Harper would welcome any Bloc votes in the House that he could get.

It will not be a Nationalist card that Harper plays; it will be the shrill chord of discord and dissonance.

After failing to destroy the opposition, Harper will do what he can to discredit and to diminish. It is this very approach that has brought the Conservatives to where they sit now. And should the Conservatives come out of this intact (which they won’t) what will Harper have left as a legacy? A vicious cat-fight that he created, that cost everyone, that leaves as his legacy, ironically, a culture of defeat — the defeat of a sore loser.

In the Back to The Future series with Michael J. Fox, bully Biff Tannen challenges McFly by asking him if he is “chicken.” At that point, the diminutive McFly flies into a rage and pounds out the bully and wins the day.

The beginning of the political crisis in Ottawa just may have occurred when Defense Minster Mackay accused the opposition in the Chronicle Herald of “being chicken”. Mackay said, “When they, the opposition, play chicken, they end up acting like chickens” (now close your eyes and think of George W. when he told the Iraqis to “bring it on”).

Stephen Harper, long considered a one-man-government-band with strict “message discipline” and an unwavering focus on precision, control, and access (not even allowing Steve Maher from the Herald to ask him questions when he does media events in Halifax), has now lost it all.

A brief synopsis:

During the fiscal update last week, the Tories announced, under the guise of belt-tightening, that they were killing public subsidies for all political parties. Since the Tories are the only ones with any power to fund raise properly, it hurts the opposition folks the most. The old days of relying on big cheques from Big Business (the Liberals), or big contributions from Big Unions (the NDP), are over thanks to Jean Chretien’s party finance reform edicts.

So, in the middle of a world financial crisis at Christmas time Harper chooses, as his priority, the opportunity to stick the knife in and twist it.

At that point the opposition realized that they have to take him out otherwise he could re-introduce party funding cuts at a later date. (Please note that removing public subsidies for political parties was never a part of his election campaign. This is known as a “hidden agenda”).

The cost savings for the taxpayers would be about $30-million, or $1.95 per vote. I don’t know about you, but if I had to pay to vote I would gladly pay two bucks to support my favorite party (I’ve already spent more than that on gas to get to the polls anyway).

It was another $30-million that Harper wanted to cut from arts subsidies in the last election that so enraged Quebeckers and contributed to his defeat there. Harper’s poor showing in Quebec ultimately removed his chance at a majority.

While the $30-million figure was not applied to his other electoral plank flop regarding “getting tough on youth crime” struck many in Quebec as too punitive – cold.

Quebec, actually, as a culture, looks at youth crime problems (statistically a non-event there anyway), in more social development, socio-economic terms; not so much “Crime and Punishment”. But of course taking stock of the other culture and addressing nuances didn’t matter enough to Harper as he felt he had already done enough by declaring/identifying Quebec “a nation.”

Instead of consulting with opposition parties before the last week’s economic update (sort of a budget), Harper arrogantly pursued his own agenda on the economy and, instead, used the economy as a smokescreen to bankrupt (literally) his political opponents over the political party subsidy issue I mentioned.

Had Harper announced a stimulus package for the economy last week and admitted to a deficit situation due to his GST and contingency fund cuts and spending practices, which include expensive Afghanistan extensions that he pushed through a wimpy “McFly” opposition, Harper could have said “Well, there’s no more money left for political party subsidies.”

But, you see, Harper supported U.S. De-regulators in 2000, the very same Republicans who pushed for freer markets unencumbered by government (until they fail and then cry for corporate welfare) and who created the liquidity crisis in the first place. Harper, in his cold, beady-eyed heart, is a free-marketer, a libertarian, a lover of economic theorist Milton Friedman.

Harper doesn’t like Keynesian displays of economics. He doesn’t like a “stimulus package” really – that’s why he didn’t disclose one with his Finance Minister, or even say he was working on one until it was too late.

Stephen Harper now has a stimulus package from the opposition – and it’s making him walk funny.

When Stephen Harper moves out of 24 Sussex sometime this year or next, he should re-read his copy of Machiavelli’s “The Prince”. In that old book of Renaissance tough-guy politics it advises that you should either destroy your enemies or befriend them; since Stephen didn’t do either he was, himself, politically destroyed.

In the end Harper’s bitterness and angularity, his acid grin, was a mentality, an approach to life, an approach to himself, and a spirit of self-recrimination that he, in his soul, could not vote down.

Merry Christmas, Biff.

He was once thought to be a terrorist suspect. That’s what we were told.

According to investigative reporter, Paul Palango, and his new book, Dispersing the Fog: Inside the Secret World of Ottawa and the RCMP, Arar was really an FBI informant.

The official Arar case goes like this: the Ottawa businessman Maher Arar, of Middle-Eastern descent, was grabbed in New York by U.S. intelligence, when he got off an airplane, after allegedly being turned over by Canadian officials; he was whisked away to an unknown location, possibly Syria, to be tortured.

The subsequent legal fallout over Arar’s “innocence,” and the payout by taxpayers for the injustice, is now part of the public record. What we don’t know, according to Palango, is that the RCMP were prepared to criminally charge CSIS for messing around with their investigation, slowing them down and providing misinformation or obfuscation.

Some in the RCMP didn’t know — they thought he was a terrorist suspect — others knew differently.

It is now suspected that Arar was a set-up by U.S. and Canadian intelligence. Arar has been linked to a company that does overseas trade in the Middle East. It is possible that either: a) an intelligence group didn’t tell the other group what it was doing, and that Arar really was an undercover operative working along the fringes; or b) he was “created” and given media profile to attract real terrorists to him.

One wonders who would want to work with such a high-profile spy if, indeed, he was/is one; suffice to say Maher Arar was at least not a terrorist. But, was the whole arrest a set-up for which taxpayers ended up paying?

We do know that home-grown Middle-Easterners, who have credibility and contacts in their home countries, are actively recruited by American intelligence communities. In fact, many are developed in university while they are young. Evidently, informants do not grow on trees — they are cultivated, encouraged, paid for and sought after; sometimes they are even bribed or extorted.

More than an expose, Palango reveals in his book the also worrisome problem with Canadian power structures. It is the unchecked concentration: the RCMP commissioner serves at the pleasure of the prime minister - sometimes literally. There is no oversight of the prime minister either.

The abuse of authority conducted by the disgraced former RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli is a case in point. Zaccardelli leaked, in the middle of an election, an investigation of the Liberals and Finance Minister Ralph Goodale regarding Income Trusts. The allegation/investigation turned out to be bogus, but the political damage had been done.

Does it surprise you that Zaccardelli was a pal of former Prime Minister Jean Chretien who wanted to payback Paul Martin for calling the Gomery inquiry?

Author Palango will be back live, in studio, for part two on Wednesday, Nov. 19 at 9 a.m.

And if I were Paul, I would be looking over my shoulder a lot. He has upset a lot of people. No wonder I like him.

Paul has written the hottest book in the country right now. And the son-of-a-gun lives in Chester Basin.

Be afraid, be very afraid. Your cover will be blown.

The election is over; the anointed/elected one, (“Yes we can”) has ascended the temple dais, the media abruptly stands to fan, to sycophantically faun; reporters get teary-eyed. But, never mind his formal infomercial; what I describe is/was the typical mainstream news coverage.

For Obama’s whole campaign has been an infomercial – and free, courtesy of a curtseying media. However, the piling on of love has another side – the piling on of hate. And it is hate has been reserved for former VP candidate Sarah Palin.

What we have now, despite the end of the election cycle, is gossip — gossip on the front pages no less. What a laughable mess. And we hear that she bought clothes (oh my!), went shopping, and, according to more anonymous sources, apparently (not as apparently as it turns out) didn’t know her world geography.

But these “anonymous” sources, I assume, who also seek some form of witness (or is it witless?) protection, not only refused to give their names, the media refused to out them.

In other words, gossip rules. It is reported, verbatim, while the news media hide their mincing little weasel “sources” like fey Federal agents. Only real Federal agents protect real sources who risk their lives to jail dangerous felons; the only risk for the gossip weasels might be excommunication from the Alaskan Governors X-Mas card list. Hardly a life-or-death issue. Perhaps they feel that by their conspiratorial whispers they will be targeted by moose hunters? The truth is, they are bitter about themselves and scapegoat Sarah.

Considering the words “I can see Russia from my house” were words Sarah Palin didn’t utter, that they belong to piling-on satirist Tina Fey, and considering that Joe Biden didn’t understand either the Constitution’s articles or the role of the Vice Presidency during the debates. Biden made glaring errors — egregious ones. They went unreported.

Of course they went unreported.

Complain about policy all day long, that’s fair game, but Palin’s Alaskan Governorship, her competent job during the debate with Biden, and her capacity to perform under pressure, are prominent accomplishments. Palin has done more for Alaska as Governor than Obama has for Illinois – do your own homework on that one.

The fact that the mainstream press repeats insults like “Wasilla Hillbillies,” etc. of course uttered by “anonymous” sources, is, of itself, name-calling.

Obama supporters fall all over themselves to self-congratulate their own progressiveness while they witch-hunt and berate a woman who happens to have social conservative views, who openly declares her aversion to abortion and has a down-syndrome child to prove it.

Where have we seen a woman like this before in American political life?

We never have.

And the spiritual “We Shall Overcome” is not reserved for blacks.