Winnipeg Free Press

Stories emanating from Burma (Myanmar) about the refusal of military leaders to allow international aid into the weather-beaten country are enough to make sensible people vomit. Unfortunately, Burma is only the latest in a growing list of countries that thumb their noses at the international community and its acts of humanitarian largesse.

Some readers may know that I spent six weeks in Sudan in 2006 to write a story about a shipment of Manitoba wheat that was sent over as humanitarian aid. We were fortunate enough to track the wheat in Sudan, and watched it being distributed in a refugee camp in south-eastern Sudan, very near the border with Eritrea. It was, for the author, a life-changing adventure. It also ensured that I would never look at international aid the same way again.

The fact is that at best, many nations accepting international aid are hostile to those trying to help them. That is not true for all nations, but in many of the neediest, aid is viewed with great scepticism and even hostility. In Sudan, the military dominated Islamic republic government has established an enormous bureaucracy to manage and manipulate aid agencies. This bureaucracy is really just an extension of a national secret police agency, and it wields enormous power.

When floods ravaged communities along the Red Sea coast in 2006, aid agencies already in Sudan trying to deal with the chronic starvation sprung into action to deliver medical and food. The military refused to allow them into the area, a politically sensitive region that had been a hot bed of anti-government sentiment. To this day, aid agencies are not sure how many people died with aid that could have saved them kept just out of reach. Sudan’s government continues to be one of the largest recipients of international aid in the world today. Sudan’s leaders accept the aid with the understanding there is no obligation for them to change in any way; aid is apolitical and the agencies that deliver it would never require a quid pro quo.

The horrible truth is that International aid is neither a carrot nor a stick when it comes to broader political issues. Most non-governmental aid agencies will not tie aid to any political or human rights goal. So, for example, aid continues to flow into Sudan’s Darfur region despite the fact the government is directing a bloody ethnic battle that has displaced millions and killed hundreds of thousands. Bilateral, government-to-government aid, on the other hand sometimes does try to attach demands of democratic or political reform, but with little success.

Unfortunately, some of the world’s largest donors - okay, really just the United States - have been overly political about their aid. In fact, it was a widely held belief that many U.S. non-governmental agencies had been conscripted to gather intelligence for the U.S. State Department in countries like Sudan that are considered enemies. In this kind of scenario, it is easy to see how some nations, even those ruled by cruel dictators, are reluctant to open the door to aid out of a fear it will lead to a potential overthrow. That is not to say that overthrowing some of these governments wouldn’t be a good idea, but only that the threat is enough to convince the worst of the worst to turn their backs on aid even at a time of great need.

The only comfort we have at times like this is that despite the better efforts of the military leaders to cut off their afflicted country, the tragedy in Burma will unfold with the international community watching intently and keeping track of the loss of life. We should hope that every person who dies unnecessarily waiting for aid that never arrived will serve as another nail in the coffin of the untenable dictatorship in Burma.

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Am I wrong, or are more and more people in politics resorting to defamation lawsuits?

In Ottawa, Prime Minister Stephen Harper sent a letter threatening legal action and asking for an apology from Liberal Leader Stephane Dion, who accused a Harper aide of peddling influence in a dispute between a Montreal real estate company and the federal government.

Harper then filed a $2.5-million suit against the Liberals for statements made about allegations the Tories tried to buy the support of dying independent MP Chuck Cadman to win a vote of non-confidence.

In New Brunswick, Tory opposition leader Jeanott Volpe has sent a letter of intent to sue the province’s health minister, Mike Murphy, for defamation. Murphy accused Volpe of hijacking her own caucus to sustain a fillibuster on a key government bill.

Now, we have word from Powell River, B.C., a small Sunshine Coast city, that the mayor has threatened a lawsuit against two citizens who publicly criticized his handling of a contentious plan to borrow $6.5 million to improve the community’s harbour. A campaign opposing the harbour project raised concerns about how the city was surveying its residents about whether to borrow the money.

As the criticism of the project grew, Mayor Stewart Alsgard sent two citizens letters threatening a defamation suit. The BC Civil Liberties Association has responded by filing a law suit against the city for attempting to chill citizens engaged in legiatimate democratic action by threatening legal action

Having been the subject of legal threats and lawsuits, it’s not a pleasant experience. Anyone who may need to make allegations of a sensitive nature in the commission of their professional duties has come to expect legal threats as part of the normal course of business. But generally, politicians have refrained from suing other politicians, and certainly politicians suing citizens is, while not unprecedented, still rare.

Although politicians deserve to be protected from defamatory commentary as much as the next person, the decision to launch a lawsuit is not one to be taken lightly. First and foremost, politicians, especially those in government, have access to virtually limitless resources for legal fees. In many cases, these resources dwarf the resources of the people being sued. The absence of any kind of a level playing field must be considered when expending taxpayer money for this form of political defense.

It would be better to enforce some sort of noble rules of engagement in politics that eliminates any possibility of politicians taking liberties with the reputation of other politicians. Unfortunately, if you consider the tenor of debate in Ottawa, that appears to be a somewhat Utopian concept right now.

Politicians are often unfairly criticized, but they also have direct access to the media to not only defend themselves but undermine the arguments of their detractors. Let’s leave the fight where it belongs, in the court of public opinion.

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Could the current federal government put aside ideology to keep the Vancouver safe injection site open? Stories in Tuesday’s papers suggest it maybe so.

If the Tories follow through, there should be credit where credit is due.

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Like today. If you haven’t already seen it, take a look at the Globe and Mail’s front page. (Again, not being a seven-day subscriber, I can’t provide an appropriate link.) The front accurately and appropriately points out how poorly this nation has fared in terms of real income over the past 25 years. The headline shows graphically that in that quarter century, median income has only gone up $53.

The entire front page, and the attitude expressed by the Globe today, is what makes me glow a bit about being part of an industry like this.

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What do you know - Manitoba isn’t the only province in this country worried about getting approval for an electricity transmission line. In Ontario, proponents of new transmission lines needed to get juice from recently re-started plants at the Bruce Power nuclear generating station are finding it more than a little difficult to get everyone to agree on how and where the new line should be built. Globe and Mail provincial politics guru Murray Campbell explains the arse-backwards scenario facing electricity-starved Ontarians now in a solid column in the April 29th edition. (Link not available because blog author is not a six-day subscriber.)

This story certainly resonates here in Manitoba, where Premier Gary Doer is sticking to his pledge to stay away from the pristine boreal forest east of Lake Winnipeg when Manitoba builds its new transmission line sometime in the next 10 years. The Ontario experience is good news and bad news for the premier.

On the good side, the troubles in Ontario seem to justify the premier’s concern about what first nations and environmental activists could do to delay construction of the Hydro transmission line. However, on the bad side of the equation, it also substantiates the concern that there could be the same level of opposition no matter where the line is established. Doer has said the line will go down the west side of the province, but Manitoba Hydro has not identified a proposed route. You can bet that once that route is laid out, there will be local governments, property owners, first nations and environmentalists lined up for a chance to derail the project.

*****

Not back to the future, but all speed ahead to the past!

The people responsible for operating North America’s only supervised, legal injection site for people addicted to illegal drugs are urging the B.C. Supreme Court to “just say no” to federal efforts to shut it down. The site had been operating with a judicial exemption from federal laws dealing with possession of illegal drugs. That exemption is scheduled to run out this summer and the federal Conservative government has not indicated whether it will consider a renewal. The injection site operators are going to court to plead their case.

It’s 2008 and despite mountains of evidence indicating that safe injection sites reduce the disease and crime associated with drug addiction, we’re still letting our squeamishness get the better of us. The federal government apparently believes tough love - in the form of harsher sentences and additional law enforcement - is going to wean addicts off hard drugs.

Those who know otherwise can only wonder what they are smoking.

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People, and not guns, may kill people, but Toronto City Hall is still urging the federal government to ban handguns outright and increase the penalties for anyone other than police and members of the military to own such weapons.

The council motion, which passed 39-3, comes as Toronto struggles with a near epidemic of handgun-related crime. Last January, a bystander was killed by a stray bullet from a semi-automatic handgun that was legally registered to one of the men now charged with his death. Gun enthusiasts like to claim that the problem is illegally smuggled guns that are at the root of the problem.

Toronto Mayor David Miller , currently Canada’s most outspoken anti-handgun activist, has correctly pointed out that this is untrue. Studies in the Greater Toronto Area have shown that a majority of the guns involved in crimes were at one time legally owned guns in Canada. In fact, the biggest source of guns used in crimes is legal gun collectors/owners who are the victims of break-ins, or who do not take appropriate care in storing their weapons.

The motion from Toronto city council is not binding, of course, on the federal government. Nor is it expected to be particularly effective. Bloody shame.

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The Ontario Attorney General decided not to call evidence in the second murder trial of Robert Baltovich, which automatically obligates the jury in the case to acquit. The prosecutor in the case determined there was not enough evidence to support a reasonable likelihood of conviction. So more than 16 years after Baltovich was convicted of murdering his former girlfriend, Elizabeth Bain, he is a free man acquitted of the charges against him.

I won’t go into the tortured details of the case. For those who are interested, Derek Finkle’s seminal book, No Claim to Mercy: The Controversial Case for Murder Against Robert Baltovich, will more than explain the botched investigation and tenuous prosecution of Baltovich. It will also explain why Baltovich’s lawyers, including noted criminal attorney James Lockyer, believe Paul Bernardo is the more likely suspect.

In the wake of the confirmation of a wrongful conviction, it has been my observation that there are usually two camps among those who feel a need to speak out. There are those who weighed the evidence available and, as objectively as possible, confronted the reality of the allegations without dismissing or ignoring the nagging shortcomings. These people are not convinced that a guilty verdict is necessarily a just verdict.

Then, there are those who cannot get beyond their outrage at the crime, and allow that to blind them to what’s really going on.

It’s easy to be outraged about the brutal murder of a young women. It’s a horrible, horrible crime, and any reasonable person with even a remote grasp on sanity would be outraged. But it’s lazy and willfully ignorant to dismiss the problems with the investigation and prosecution of any heinous crime and instead continue to harp on and on about how outraged you are about the crime.

Justice isn’t about putting ANYONE away for a horrible crime. It’s about getting the RIGHT person behind bars. Those who are outraged about the crime should save a little of that outrage for a justice system that allows murderers to go free because the wrong person is behind bars.

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Federal Conservatives should probably reconsider their strategy when it comes to dealing with, and trying to intimidate, regulators of any kind. The big splashy execution of a search warrant at federal Tory HQ last week was a clear signal that it’s not nice to mess with the Chief Electoral Officer.

The Tories and Elections Canada have been locked in a legal battle over the latter’s decision to reject expense claims by 67 Conservative candidates in the 2006 general election. EC has alleged the candidates were part of a scheme to launder national advertising expenses through local campaigns. The Tories have challenged Elections Canada in court.

I’m not going to get into the substantive details of the allegations made by Elections Canada - that will come in the days ahead in the dead-tree version of the paper - but let it be said now that it appears the legal strategy employed by the Tories has backfired. How do we know that? Because the entire search warrant raid was a massive set up that is causing the ruling party no end of embarassment.

Experienced police reporters will tell you that you only get to witness the execution of a search warrant if the police involved want you to see it. Elections Canada clearly wanted the media to see this one. I was stunned to see investigators surrounded by television cameras and reporters as they knocked on and entered Tory HQ. But that was not the only evidence of a set up.

Within days of the raid, Canwest News Service obtained copies of the information used by police to get a search warrant. Experienced reporters will also tell you that it is very rare to see that information so soon after the execution of a warrant, unless of course the people executing the warrant want you to see it.

Was it a set up? It sure looks that way. Was it dirty pool? Well, that depends on whether you’re more outraged by Elections Canada using a weapon of mass destruction to deal with a mouse-sized problem, or by the arrogance of the Conservative Party.

The moral of the story? The laws of probability state that even if you THINK you’re the toughest guy on the block, sooner or later you’ll meet someone tougher.

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As an antidote to the long, mind-numbing posts of recent days, several bite-sized chunks…..

Is Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams like the coolest premier in the country? Rhodes Scholar, lawyer and successful businessman, Williams has about as impressive a resume as any premier in this country. He has sparred with the federal Conservatives and generally created an impression that he doesn’t tolerate shite from anyone. This week, however, Williams cut a whole new chapter in his impressive political career when he commented on the cancer screening scandal rocking his province.

More than 400 Newfoundlanders received inaccurate breast cancer screening results between 1997 and 2005. A class-action suit is in the works. Williams, who claimed he was talking as a lawyer and not as premier (as if that’s possible) suggested that he would like to see the government settle with the affected patients as soon as possible. “My preference is not to see these people put through any further anguish.”

Hear, hear. By admitting liability and offering to settle fairly with the patients, Williams is showing that political leadership can be an antidote to government bungling. Moreover, he is showing that effective leadership can and should trump corporate liability issues. The trick now for Williams will be to ensure the bureaucracy acts on his comments. It has been the case that offers of compensation by politicians are not always supported by bureaucrats. We wish Mr. Williams luck in this endeavour.

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Canada may have had, at one time, a strong hand to play when it came to influencing the direction of democracy building in Afghanistan. Then Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier opened his pie hole and Canada - as Jerry Seinfeld would say - no longer had hand.

Bernier’s public denunciation of Kandahar Governor Asadullah Khalid - he actually told reporters that Khalid should be replaced - is one of the biggest gaffes ever made by a Canadian foreign affairs minister. It was inappropriate, it was ill-timed, it was completely against all logic and experience in the diplomatic world. It was positively Dick Cheneyesque in the magnitude of its stupidity.

Canada is a major player in the fight to bring democracy to Kandahar province, and could have quietly pushed Khalid to adopt a more modern approach to governing. Canada could also have used quiet diplomatic pressure on the national Afghan government to keep a tighter leash on Khalid as a condition for continued Canadian involvement in the province. In fact, a discreet campaign seeking to do all these things was underway, until Bernier did his cannonball.

I’m not normally supportive of calls for a minister’s resignation. I’ve only seen a handful of incidents in more than 20 years covering politics where a resignation was really warranted. This is one of those times.

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While we’re talking about ungoverned pie holes, could someone please get a hold of Sea Shepherd Society honcho Paul Watson and tell him to give his head a shake. This week’s events, which saw a SSS ship confiscated by the Canadian Coast Guard for allegedly venturing too close to the annual east coast seal hunt, should have been a public relations triumph for the society. The confiscation of the ship, and charging of its crew, could have been a real embarrassment for the federal government, especially since it appears the ship can prove it was outside the protection limit of the hunt when it was boarded. That was before Mr. Watson cracked the pie hole.

In response to the death of four seal hunters from Iles de la Madeleine, who died when their disabled boat capsized as it was been towed by a Coast Guard ship, Watson told reporters that while the deaths were a tragedy “the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of seal pups is an even greater tragedy.” Watson’s comments were inappropriate, and have done a disservice to his cause.

I love the SSS’s spunkiness, and the fact it posted bail for its arrested crew in toonies. I cringed when I heard Watson talking about the deaths of the sealers. I think many other people who might passively support the end of the seal hunt cringed as well.

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Finally, the Globe and Mail today published the latest poll results from the Strategic Counsel, which show the Conservatives retreating to 2006 levels with only 36 per cent support, only six points more than the Liberals. It is hard to assess the veracity of poll results these days, given the radically different results that have been published in the past month. Some show statistical ties, while others seem to show the Conservatives in majority territory.

But without a consistent trend across several different polls, it’s likely safe to conclude the Tories do not have the support to win a majority. Conservatives who are so close to a majority they can taste it should ask, and soon, why that is. Your thoughts about why the Tories seemed stalled in the mid 30s would be most welcome.

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Once again, I’m stunned about the absurdity of the U.S. presidential race. Front-running Democratic contender Barack Obama sparked another weekend of angry debate after he suggested that some voters, embittered by their depressed economic prospects, turned to guns and religion as solace. These comments prompted challenger Hillary Rodham Clinton to respond that Obama as “elitist” and out of touch with common Americans.

Where to start?

First, Obama and Clinton are both elitists. It’s part of the particular style of democracy embraced in the western world that elitists generally dominate politics. That’s a blessing and a curse, as many voters know. Good because it puts smart, successful, educated people in positions of power; bad because those smart, successful, educated people sometimes have their heads up their well-read asses. But the issue here is not whether politicians are elitist, it’s about whether elections help to solve or entrench the biggest problems faced by a society.

Eruptions of self-righteous indignation have dominated the Democratic leadership campaign. Whether it was former president and possible first husband Bill Clinton’s suggestion that African-American voters were voting for Obama just because he was black, or Obama’s slick dance around his relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., an incendiary religious leader who has garnered attention for scathing speeches in which he describes the U.S. as a deeply racist, war mongering nation. Now, we have Obama on the defensive again for his portrayal of certain pockets of the American public for whom religion and their obsession with the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment eclipses every decision they make in an election.

Second, although reasonable people might still object to the tone of some of these comments (in particular, Wright’s rantings) there is very little in what any of these people have said that is evil. African-American voters are passing over Clinton for Obama, much in the way many women are turning their backs on Obama in the hopes of electing the first woman president in U.S. history. Racism is still alive in the U.S. (as it is in every country) and as for war mongering - the cost in dollars and human lives of the effort in Iraq is certainly fodder for debate. Obama’s recent comments about bitterness, god and guns may have been poorly worded, as the senator now claims, but there are signs that he’s not too far off the mark.

Consider that alongside the New York Times article about the Democratic dust-up is a Google ad for something called The Church of God, and its collection of books and pamphlets which predict that the United States will drift closer to the Kingdom of God in 2008 when the aforementioned God arranges for the return of Jesus Christ and thus kicks off the destruction that results in the end of the world.

Now, we still have most of 2008 to get through, so I’ll be cautious in my assessment of the Church of God. But is there a small possibility here that demand for books like this have a little bit to do with the tumultuous international events, such as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the deepening fiscal crisis now gripping the U.S.? Suffice to say those conditions haven’t hurt sales of the Church’s books, which in true apocalyptic fashion are actually free. (I mean, why go through the hassle of on-line billing and charging for shipping and handling if the world is ending this year?)

Perhaps Obama doesn’t expect evangelical gun nuts to vote for him, and thus making comments like this don’t really worry him. Or, perhaps he is a rare breed of politician who doesn’t mind talking about these things because, out in the open, perhaps there is a better chance of addressing and repairing the fractured American populace. Remember, this is a country where a gun-loving, anti-government libertarian blew up a federal office building in Oklahoma City and killed 168 people in response to the federal government’s mishandling of a raid of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, the resulted in the death of 76 devotees.

At first blush, there appears to be a connection between guns, religion and economic disparity, and the potential for violence that springs out of this equation will not be alleviated if politicians are afraid to talk about the underlying causes while occupying the spotlight of an intense election campaign.

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Two catastrophic computer implosions and a sun-and-fun holiday, and it’s been ….. too long since my last entry. Much to say, and so little time to say it. Here goes.

If you haven’t, you should read a New Yorker article by Eric Alterman entitled The death and life of the American newspaper. It is a fantastic examination of the challenges facing newspapers, the most mainstream of the so-called MSM, and the opportunities that exist for these organizations in the on-line world. Perhaps most interesting of all, however, is the critical analysis of the contrasting roles of and conflicting relationships between MSM and the alternative media, in particular the blogging community.

The article correctly points out that dead-tree editions of traditional newspapers are dying; fewer people are spending less and less time reading newspapers and are turning more and more to getting their news (albeit in smaller bites) on line. There is also an acknowledgement that the more progressive MSM outlets are moving more and more of their resources on line, to reflect the new economic reality.

However, the article also examines the relationship between the traditional media and the alternative media, and discusses the good, the bad and the truly ugly that results from the oddly symbiotic relationship between the two.

While public confidence in the MSM is declining, and consumption of the alternative media is increasing, Alterman and some of the notable people he quotes, including Arianna Huffington, front woman for the Huffington Post, do not believe that traditional media as a source of content is going the way of the dinosaur. In fact, the evolution of on line news and information is really in its infancy. The economics of providing on-line news is still evolving, as are the standards for the collection and publication of information. In this regard, both the MSM and alternative media voices have a lot of work to do, Alterman suggests.

Alterman notes that while traditional news outlets and their journalists have lost credibility as elite insiders, there are concerns about whether on-line alternative media personalities have either the credibility or the tools to do the same job, or a better job, in a different form. There are success stories. Alterman correctly fetes the most successful new media journalists, including Joshua Micah Marshall’s influential Talking Points Memo site which is widely credited with breaking the story of the firing of federal justice department lawyers who were considered politically inconsistent with the Bush administration’s politics. Marshall not only set a new standard for alternative media reporting, but became the first blogger to win a George Polk Award, one of the most important journalism awards in the United States. Marshall has demonstrated that the form of media is not as important as the standard of the work.

However, the article argues that most blogging sites neither aspire to Marshall’s level of journalism, nor employ the resources to compete at that level. Many bloggers will cite heavily from the New York Times coverage of the war in Iraq, Alterman notes, but bear none of the burden of the $3-million cost of maintaining the Times’ bureau in Baghdad.

This is not just Alterman’s opinion, but a view shared by some of the more notable bloggers. Although “reader driven” news reporting has the potential to expose quality control issues in the mainstream media, including our over reliance on “professional sources” that have lost touch with the sensibilities of the ordinary citizen, most blogging sites are simply not sources of original information. They merely aggregate news from other sources (mostly MSM sources) and offer opinion and criticism. This “parasitic” relationship between blogging sites and MSM, as Alterman describes it, is perhaps the biggest point of conflict between the two communities, and one of the greatest unresolved issues on a go-forward basis.

To extrapolate Alterman’s analysis locally, you can see the Free Press and other media outlets moving more content on line to better meet the needs of its audience. You can also see a flurry of alternative media bloggers who feed daily off of what we and other MSM outlets produce. As has been discussed in the Sausage Factory before, this is a new dynamic that challenges the age-old tradition in the MSM of not reviewing or criticizing the work of other MSM outlets. Alternative media voices do not see the virtue in that tradition, and we in the MSM need to recognize that the “policing” of the MSM by bloggers is a reflection of the new relationship the media has with its audience thanks to advances in information technology.

And really, even if it is parasitic in nature it is not without its virtue. Alternative media critics may not agree, but MSM outlets are actually no strangers to criticism. In large part, however, that criticism has been delivered in more discrete packages. Critical letters to the editor are part of the tradition of any good newspaper, but the longer and more robust criticism which appear in blogs are a new experience for the traditional journalist. As is the exuberant, often profane, commentary from some on-line communities that riff off the bloggers. Although alternative media critics should be concerned about the standard of debate they are encouraging, the ability of our audience to react to and debate the veracity and quality of our work is a reality now, and something no legitimate journalist should fear.

(One digression about the alternative media’s role as critic: in our stodgy, out-of-date methodology, we in the MSM put a high price on contacting the people we want to sandbag to ask for a comment. Many bloggers do not see the benefit or the value in doing this. Not all bloggers ascribe to this approach; the folks at Comments Closed,, for example, do regularly offer comments, ask questions and seek further explanation about some of the things I write. Good on them.)

Alterman did not deal with the issue of anonymity head on, but after reading his article I think there is a strong argument for a more robust debate among self-identified alternative media sources about those alternative media outlets that hide behind pseudonyms. One of the things that make Talking Points Memo a legitimate source of news is that Marshall identifies himself, and his contributors, and their politics. He admits he is a left-leaning commentator and with a liberal bias. He is regularly quoted in a wide range of media outlets. He does not hide behind a clever handle like a computer hacker.

The alternative media may not appreciate, nor respect, the creeping influence of the MSM in the on-line news revolution. Certainly, there are still many in the MSM who do not believe the on-line or alternative media is a legitimate source of news. But it appears that for better or worse, and for the foreseeable future, we are going to be partners in evolution of journalism.

Let the games begin.

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