How far is too far?

Canada's Conservative government has boycotted a hearing of Commons Committee that was schedule to set the agenda for the inquiry into the mistreatment and mishandling of Afghan detainees by Canadian forces.

The Conservatives defended the move saying that now wasn't the time to be holding these inquiries into possible war crimes committed by Canadians. The boycott comes as rumors swirl in Ottawa that the Conservatives plan on suspending parliament until after the Olympic games in Vancouver.

The Conservatives accused the opposition of only trying to satisfy their "political blood lust" and also ignored a motion passed in the House of Commons to release documents that speak about Afghan detainees. This denial could lead to the current government being charged with contempt of Parliament.

So... the Conservatives are grasping at straws to maintain their image in the midst of a Human Rights controversy, trying to save face as Canada prepares to welcome the world in Vancouver for the Olympics and trying to make people forget the sorry state of our leadership with the old "bread and games"? Well I'm sorry Mr Harper, this won't just go away.

The political blood lust in this case doesn't belong to the Liberals, the NDP or the Bloc... it belongs to the Conservatives who are (supposedly) willing to to shut down the Canadian government for a few months to try and save themselves; the Conservatives who are willing to boycott an inquiry that was started by an independent overseer who's job it is to oversee certain areas of our governance and by the Conservatives who are apparently more concerned at pointing fingers than the lives the of Afghan citizens we are supposed to protect.

The Conservatives complained big time when PM Jean Chretien shut down an inquiry into the behavior of Canadian soldiers in Somalia. So did all the other parties... Now the Conservatives are the ones effectively shutting EVERYTHING down to avoid a similar subject. But Jean Chretien didn't shut down parliament or boycott committees, even if he didn't always face the music at least he never plugged his ears and pretended he couldn't hear it.

Hypocrisy seems to be the rule of thumb with the Conservatives and quite frankly I can't remember a minority government taking this much leeway and freedoms in exploiting our parliamentary system. If parliament is prorogued it would be the second time the Conservatives, in a bid to hold on to power, have done it in almost a year.

So my question to everyone is: how far is too far? How far will this government go to cloud the issues and maintain power? Because they aren't doing this to save Canada's image prior to the Olympics, they're doing it to save face while they regroup and hide and hope that the world forgets the fact that Canada may have violated the Geneva Convention.

ETECSA

Hello everyone!

I'm back from my two weeks off and I'm rejuvenated and ready to get going all over again. So many things have gone on in the news while I've been incommunicado that I'm trying my best to catch up. I just figured to get back into the swing the things, I'd add another government that is apparently randomly checking my blog.
This time, it's ETECSA, the Cuban telecoms Ministry. I know I didn't log into my blog from Cuba that day and as far as I know no one else did and certainly not for 47 minutes...

From the past:
The US State Dept
The Canadian House of Commons

It's good to be home!

Muchacho Enfermo

The Government?!

So I was looking at my stats today, as I usually do every few days and I noticed that this is the 3rd or 4th time that I get a hit from gc.ca about this post... If it really and truly is the Government of Canada, I'd love some comments on this post from them!

Muchacho Enfermo

Burmese Monk has website hacked.

As I just reported on Ashin-Mettacra.com:

The news site Ashin-Mettacara.com, of Burmese monk in exile Ashin Mettacara, was attacked twice in the past week with DDoS attacks. The first attack came on March 11th and the second on March 15th. A distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) usually aims at flooding a web server with so many queries to requests as to render it unable to process further requests. The query limit on Ashin-Mettacara.com, which is designed to accept huge volumes of traffic, was exceeded within the span of an hour on both of these dates.

This is not the first time a Burmese news site in exile has been hacked using this method; last fall the news sites Mizzima and Irrawaddy were both victim of DDoS attacks. The perpetrators of these attacks are still unknown and have yet to be brought to justice. The attacks of March 11th and March 15th were the second attacks on Ashin-Mettacra.com, the first wave of them occurred January 20th and 21st 2009 shortly after the launch of the website.

The attacks on Ashin-Mettacara.com took place at a time when Ashin was lecturing on web programming to over 50 monks and could not monitor his site. The site, which gathers news from all over the world and is crawled by Google News, has the slogan “Free Press for Freedom of Thought, Belief and Expression”. It is clear that whoever is behind these attacks does not share the values of the writers that publish their news on the site daily or those of their readers. It is unclear whether the Burma’s military junta is responsible for the attacks.

Muchacho Enfermo

It's cold outside... where are you sleeping?

For us the economic crisis started in 1931… (or something along those lines) was an advertisement to raise funds for a homeless shelter that I saw in the subway today. And it really made me think. As I got out of the subway station and walked across the parking lot to my car, the bitter -29 temperature freezing my nose and ears on my short 3 minute walk, I was asking myself about how this economic crisis affects the poorest of us all.

Maybe it’s in my nature to want to help those less fortunate then me, maybe it’s the fact that I hate seeing people out in the cold; but I’m really concerned that places like shelters and food banks aren’t seeing an increase in government funding despite the increased demand for their services as the economic crisis deepens.

We have a paper here that is published twice a month here called L’Itineraire. It’s published by former homeless people. All the reporters are either homeless or less fortunate. They sell for 2$ each, the seller keeps a dollar from every sale. With the proceeds the paper has opened a restaurant, full meals for 2-3$ each three times per day. Every time I see someone selling it I buy one, it ends up costing me about 20$ per month. But the great part about it is that sellers have an income, an opportunity to write and they can afford 3 square meals per day.

But other then this paper, every other organization in my great city relies on donations and government funding. With people’s savings shrinking, jobs becoming scarce and everyone panicking about money; how are these places supposed to not only stay open but increase their services to those who need it the most?

If you’ve got a couple of dollars you can spare, please, I urge you: buy someone you see begging a meal, a coffee, a book or give them money. If you don’t like giving them money, like I said, buy them a meal. Take them to McDonald’s it’ll cost you 4$ and it’ll take 15 minutes of your time. I met one of the most interesting people ever a few years back doing just that, we ended up talking about classical music for hours and the finer points of the compositions of Rachmaninov and one memorable occasion we even discussed Winston Churchill’s wartime political strategies.

So when it’s cold outside and you see someone who looks like they might need 5 minutes of your time or the sandwich took work, look into your heart and brighten someone’s day because the government won’t. It’s amazing what you can learn from the less fortunate when you’re willing to open your heart, your mind and your change purse.

Muchacho Enfermo