Photo from www.draplin.com

Seemingly lost amidst the Olympic shuffle last week was an announcement by the Harper government on reaching an agreement with the United States that allowed for Canadian exceptions to the highly contentious “Buy American” regulations. The regulations, imposed last-year by the U.S. government, blocked Canadian manufacturers from bidding on almost $800-billion worth of contracts tied to stimulus spending by the U.S. government.

Given the high-profile nature of the spat and the political capital such an agreement should generate, it seems strange that the Harper government would downplay the announcement by burying it amidst Olympic fever. A closer look at the details of the agreement, however, indicate why this might be the case.
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It takes a special kind of political acumens for a regional Canadian politician to make news headlines both north and south of the border, but Danny Williams has done it.

The Blogosphere across North America lit up a few weeks ago with the news that the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador was heading to an undisclosed American medical facility for a no-further-details-given heart surgery last week. Canadian progressives are chastising Williams for bailing on his at-home medical options while American opponents of healthcare reform get a new scapegoat for why a public option doesn’t work.

Simplistic? Probably. Williams’ people were less than helpful when the news broke, initiating what CBC reporter Janyce McGregor called a “cone of silence” about the matter.

What we do know is that after “weeks of consultation” with doctors, Williams decided to head stateside for the surgery which was apparently unavailable in his home province. This was according to Deputy Premier Kathy Dunderdale, for whom the odious duty of informing the media fell.
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Photo Credit: blog.nz-online.de

Am I the only Canadian that wishes Barack Obama could be my leader? Politics aside, the man can speak. When he gives a speech, people listen. When Stephen Harper gives a speech, people fall asleep, or at least I do. From the moment Obama took office and said that he would “unclench his fist and extend an open hand,” I was hooked on the man and stopped really listening to whatever it is Stephen Harper says. I paid a hell of a lot more attention to Obama’s most recent State of the Union address than I did to Harpers speech at the World Economic Forum. As I said earlier, I fall asleep staring at his grey head of hair.
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Galbraith & Kennedy: A chance encounter that almost changed the course of history? Photo Credit: CBC-TV

President John F. Kennedy has been dead for nearly 50 years. Yet his memory still shines brightly for many people. This is in large part because he was an attractive, charismatic leader in his day and because he did not grow old with us. Despite numerous attempts by revisionist historians to disparage his reputation, there are huge numbers of people around the world who still hold him in high esteem. Although tarnished slightly, for the general public, JFK’s place among the pantheon of American heroes is secure.

In my view, John F. Kennedy was in some ways a mediocre President. His pursuit of lascivious pleasures and his opinion of the opposite sex would have risked huge embarrassment in today’s politically correct culture. His legislative record of passing laws was dismal. His domestic policies were often not as brilliant and as progressive as our faulty memories would suggest. In the private arena of the White House, he was not always the calm, well-mannered individual his spin doctors made him out to be.
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The most serious failures connected to the events of 9/11 are not those of US intelligence agencies, airport security services, NORAD and the like. Rather the deepest and darkest of the failures to protect us for those enemies that menace us most lie with journalists, mainstream media outlets, professors and the universities that employ us. It is we who have in the vast majority of cases chosen to abandon our skepticism and with it our professional ethics and responsibilities. By and large our professional class and caste continue to respond to the events of 9/11 in ways that are expedient rather than wise. As I see it, therefore, it is a mass treason of the intellectuals that constitutes the most significant underlying condition resulting in the continuing fraud known as the War on Terror. The War on Terror continues to be packaged, promoted and sold to the public in the most aggressive campaign of psychological warfare ever mounted. How many of us are complicit with our silence in this black psyop, the key enabling factor in the ongoing aggressive wars justified in the name of an unfounded and unproven official conspiracy theory of 9/11?………
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Let me start by introducing myself. My name is Jon, and I’ve lived in the heart of Canadian politics – Ottawa – for each of my 22 years. This is my first foray into the blogosphere, and I have been critical of it in the past. The main issue I had with bloggers is that many tend to hide behind the anonymity and security of their online personae. The distance created between the blogger and his/her audience by the internet allows the blogger to say things that she/he would not say if standing face-to-face with another person. So, I make a promise to you, my reader. Every word that you read in this, and any future postings I make, are words that I would be proud to speak, no matter the situation. And with the preamble now out of the way, let me tell you how Barack Obama will change the world.
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