I blog with Irish whiskey (Jamie's) in my veins tonight.

This is St. Patrick's Day weekend in Montreal, and I imagine for Boston and New York as well. For those who haven't experienced it firsthand, it is perhaps best understood by its singularly unvarnished portrayal in a noteworthy Simpsons episode.

Montreal parade uninterrupted since 1824

Unlike the other two cities' parades, Montreal parade organizers have managed not to skip a year in nearly two centuries - this despite Quebec's penchant for long unforgiving winters. I used to routinely participate with vigor myself (once, even playing mandolin on a float, with painfully cold fingers).

Dear Americans,

You deserve much better from your northern neighbor. Please accept my sincere apology for my stupid government (I've taken to calling them the SSHITs). As the Globe & Mail has very recently made clear, our Prime Minister's Chief of Staff can't be trusted not to blab confidential information to the media from our allies - or at least the Democratic ones.

I don't blame you if you are upset. If the tables were turned, surely Canadians would be up in arms at any whiff of American influence on our political process.

Of course, it doesn't help when our idiot newsroom at CTV can't keep the facts straight:

I was sent down on a business trip last week to our head office in a Dallas suburb. These are some random thoughts on the Lone Star state, and the state of George W. Bush's America from a Canadian visitor's viewpoint.
(Link to Part 1. This series cross-posted at Tattered Sleeve).

Part 2 - Scott, meet Texas; Texas... Texas, are you awake?

Oct. 31/05, mid afternoon. After arriving at Pierre Elliot Trudeau airport more than three hours early to find exactly no one in queue; after charging briskly through the United States Homeland Security checkpoint with little hassle; after being metal-detected in under five minutes,... we are informed that, due to thunderstorm activity in Dallas, our the plane will board about an hour late.

So now we have nearly three hours to kill, but it's impossible for me to go outside for another cigarette before take-off. Must psyche-up for a long painful wait. I'm travelling with my boss, who is younger than I, but very ambitious - and good at the office politics game. He has made this trip at least four times before. He has a good 10 inches or so on me, making us a true Mutt & Jeff team.

I was sent down on a business trip this week to the head office near Dallas-Fort Worth (my employer shall remain nameless here). It's a company that deals in retail technology. My job is to write process documentation for a helpdesk here in Canada, and this trip was about me giving an assist to someone hired to fill a similar role for their larger helpdesk there. It was my first visit south of the border in five years or so. These are some random thoughts on the Lone Star state, and the state of George W. Bush's America from a Canadian visitor's viewpoint (cross-posted at Tattered Sleeve):
Part 1 - Getting past the Dept. of Homeland Security:
The official at P.E. Trudeau Airport was my first contact with an American on my trip. I think she was just returning from lunch as she got in her box and smiled me over to tell her why the fuck she should let the likes of me into her country.

Right now, I clicked on The Toronto Star and this is what I saw:

'Just ask and we'll be there,' PM tells Bush
Sep. 1, 2005. 07:01 PM

OTTAWA - Canada will send the United States any help needed in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, Prime Minister Paul Martin told President George W. Bush today. "We will do whatever we can for as long as it takes to help our neighbour and our friend deal with this terrible, terrible tragedy," Martin said he told the president in a 15-minute phone call.   [Full Story]

Friends don't retaliate, U.S. envoy tells Canada
Sep. 1, 2005. 05:13 PM

OTTAWA - Slapping sanctions on U.S. exports to Canada in reaction to softwood lumber duties won't help to solve the lingering trade dispute between the two countries, says Washington's new envoy to Ottawa. Instead of tit-for-tat measures, the two countries must return to negotiations to solve the dispute, David Wilkins said today

As surreal as Bushco's America is, I still find myself utterly bewildered at times.

Last Sunday all the TV news channels were showing footage of people - just about all of them black, mind you - lining up in New Orleans. Authorities had told them if they couldn't find any other means, they could proceed to a closed-roof football stadium to wait out a hurricane that was forecast to flood the city and do immense damage.

They were told to bring five-days' worth of whatever medicines and other things they needed. Some of them looked bemused, like they figured they may as well make the best of it. So off they went to a dome that was dubbed "Super".

What can you do about the weather, right? Might as well go. The last outbound Greyhound buses had already left the city. The remainder of regularly-scheduled routes had been allowed to be cancelled in that good 'ol U.S.A. free-market society. These were people with no cars, and no money for a plane ticket or accomodations away from their homes.

The leader of the Opposition in Parliament today made outrageous comments that will likely rekindle the separatist movement in Québec, saying that votes from our Bloq Québecois members "lack legitimacy with most Canadians"

Opposition Leader Stephen Harper says that although the same-sex marriage bill will likely become law before Parliament breaks for the summer, it won't seem legitimate to most Canadians because it will need the support of the Bloc Québécois to pass.

Although the Tories are against the bill, they don't have the numbers to fend off support from the Bloc, the Liberal cabinet and the NDP--even though some Liberal backbench MPs may vote against it.

"Because it's being passed with the support of the Bloc, I think it will lack legitimacy with most Canadians," Mr. Harper said on Monday. "The truth is most federalist MPs oppose this."

UPDATE:Sorry - I didn't realize this topic was already covered by this diary. My apologies. This from the Guardian:
Gunmen  take over Ramadi as bomb kills five Marines

A huge bomb killed five American marines yesterday and showered body parts on to rooftops, fuelling suspicion that armour-piercing technology is being developed and tested in Ramadi.

Assuming that armoured Hum-Vee did get destroyed with armor-piercing explosives, that indicates a new advance in the weaponry used by anti-coalition guerillas. It also appears that Ramadi is once again in their control. Could they be trying to provoke another U.S. over-reaction like we saw in Fallujah last year?

The Parliamentary inquiry into why Maher Arar - a Canadian engineer who, on his way home from Tunisia in 2002, was held  by US officials and subsequently "rendered" to Syria for a year of detention and torture - has heard some damning new testimony today by Canadian Liberal Senator Pierre De Bané.

According to CBC news, U.S. officials offered to hand Arar over to Canada on the condition he be arrested here.

More below...

The bastards are taking the old route of closing the doors before accepting a union in their store.

This is the store in Saguenay, a small remote area well north of Quebec City. The loss of those jobs will be severely felt.

There is a second Wal-Mart that recently got union accreditation in St-Hyacinthe, east of Montreal. If there is any good news to come of this, it's that the provincial opposition Parti Quebecois (and federal counterpart, the Bloq Quebecois) will likely make a lot of noise about this. The respective Liberal governments may be able to step in.  

We've all heard about internet users from outside of the U.S. not being able to access parts of the Bush Administration's official website. Now The Inquirer shows us how they are using a robots exclusion file to block search engines from accessing some 1,975 files.

The telling graph from Nick Farrell's article:

(Internet Consultant Dave Bender) said most web sites that use a robots exclusion file usually have a handful of files they want to keep away from the search engine robots. Six, eight or even 10 aren't unusual. However the White House site has 1,975 disallow directives.

The article posts all directives. I am reposting them here in the extended entry for those who wish to browse them.

The otherwise drab Montreal Gazette got my attention today with this headline:

Defense Shield `a Fraud'

It seems Ted Postol, the Stanford and MIT professor who blew the whistle on the Patriot Missile, is in Ottawa today trying to convince the MPs in our divided (and minority) Liberal government not to acquiesce to the Bush Administration by signing on to Missile Defense and allowing deployment of it on our shores.

Said Postol: "This is one of the biggest engineering jokes in the history of humankind. It's a fake."

From theCanwest report:

Postol suggested instead of spending billions of dollars on the missile shield, the U.S. should shore up its continental security.
Postol's concerns are echoed by a group of 49 retired American generals and admirals. In March, the officers wrote Bush recommending the billions of dollars to be spent on missile defence should be redirected to combating nuclear terrorism, the most pressing threat facing the U.S. today.

Kerry should ask Bush tonight why he has stubbornly gone ahead without listening to the scientists and Generals, leaving America open to attack. It fits in with the fantasyland theme of the Bush administration, and America deserves to have an open debate (as we are doing here in Canada) on the topic.

If there's one article to read today it's this one from Juan Cole, where he characterizes the reality of Iraq by transposing the facts to the U.S.A.

Excerpt:

What would America look like if it were in Iraq's current situation? The population of the US is over 11 times that of Iraq, so a lot of statistics would have to be multiplied by that number.

Thus, violence killed 300 Iraqis last week, the equivalent proportionately of 3,300 Americans. What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings, grenade and rocket attacks, machine gun spray, and aerial bombardment in the last week? That is a number greater than the deaths on September 11, and if America were Iraq, it would be an ongoing, weekly or monthly toll.

Read the whole thing. It's truly revelatory.

Josh Marshal asks what kind of catchphrase or question (à la Reagan's "Are you better off than you were four years ago") we might suggest for Kerry.

I have been thinking this over as well. At first, I imagined Kerry saying "Not on my watch" as punctuation between short sentences delineating Bush's many failings, as in:

Bush has created fewer jobs than any president since Hoover. Not on my watch. Bush led us to a war in Iraq he said would be measured in months or weeks - but our boys are going to be dying over there for years to come with no way out. Not on my watch. (Etc. etc.)

But that gets tedious fast. Then I came up with "Bush gives us smooth talk; Americans want results", which could be used similarly, as in:

Millions more Americans are without healthcare. Bush gives us smooth talk. But America wants results.

The economy is sputtering. Bush smooth-talked us into believing huge tax cuts for the rich would create jobs. But we haven't seen those jobs. There are fewer jobs now than when Bush came in to office. Americans want results. Bush promised he'd go after Osama bin Laden `dead or alive' and `smoke him out of his cave'. Instead he went after Saddam, who was nowhere near as potent a threat. Bush smooth-talked us into invading Iraq. Now we're in dire straits there with no help from our allies and no way out for years to come. That's not what he promised before we attacked. Americans want results. Bin Laden is still at large with al Qaida stronger and bolder than ever before. And again, all we get is smooth talk. But Americans want results.

This breaks down the illusion of Bush as strong and decisive. It's like saying the proof is in the pudding.

He could hammer on this during the debates too. It could be very effective.

Opinions and better ideas would be much appreciated...

I guess we should expect to see more and more of this spilling out in the days to come. This from the Globe and Mail:

Portland, Ore. -- A Canadian civilian says in a lawsuit that he was tortured by U.S. troops in Iraq and saw Iraqi prisoners suffer even worse mistreatment -- the latest allegations of human rights abuses to surface against coalition soldiers.

Hossam Shaltout, 57, claims in a suit filed with the U.S. Army Claims Office on April 30 that he was beaten after being taken to the Camp Bucca detention centre shortly after the launch of the U.S.-led invasion.

"I saw Iraqis tortured more than I was. They did unspeakable things to Iraqis," Mr. Shaltout said Monday in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

This is quickly becoming an uproar in the eyes of the world. Bush has taken you over a cliff, folks, and who knows if even Kerry can drag the U.S. back to some semblance of credibility. I hope so.

Someone really must do something to quash the neo-cons' power and influence. Maybe they can be bought off?

Give them, say, $100 million each. That's cheaper than the Iraqi experiment, no? They could be given the $$ plus one the Hawaiian islands to wile away the rest of their days on; where they could all personally produce their own Fox News with fictional (but uncannily real-looking) accounts about the glorious success of the United Israeli Emirates covering all of the Middle East, and the United Empirical (Puppet-)States of the World. At this point, you may as well make them some such offer.

In return, they would give back the keys to the real world (too tricky and unpredictable anyway - not as much fun as they thought it would be).

I hope this November that you vote for the responsible kids so you can save what's left of your country and its democracy. Kerry will do.

Good luck folks, and keep up the fight.

Caveat:(I posted this as a reply in another Diary entry by AnarchistFag, but I like it so much I decided to make it a diary entry of my own.)

On a day when it looks like Bush is pushing for WW3 in Fallujah and the Canadian embassy in Damascus was reportedly in the midst of an attack, some hopeful news from Justin and Sacha Trudeau. (They are the surviving sons of Pierre Elliot Trudeau, the late Canadian Prime Minister who fought for global nuclear disarmament, and who refused American nukes on our soil).

From the Toronto Star article:

The sons of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau were introduced to an audience of dignitaries, students and professors by former Ontario premier Bob Rae at the ceremony to inaugurate the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto.

Justin Trudeau, 32, referred to the importance of empowering "young minds" to help solve conflict in the world.

"I don't think it's overstating the case that the world has become a very ugly place these days," said the former teacher, who's now focusing much of his time promoting the Katimavik youth volunteer program.

"This new century needs to be one of dialogue, understanding and peace," Justin Trudeau said, adding that the peace studies centre is among the many small steps that need to be taken to create a better future.

Here's a link for the University of Toronto for those thinking about applying for college in the Great White North.

This was just posted on Reuters:

Sadr Says U.S. Must Leave

Excerpt:

"The fate of a destroyed, shattered Palestine is a clear example of what could happen in Iraq at the behest of those who call themselves Iraqis but in reality only care about their own selfish interests," (Sadr) was quoted as saying.

I didn't think he'd be inclined to like the news from the White House yesterday...

Is this all part of Bush's plan? Is this more "Bring it on"ism?