Category: U.S. Politics
How the US views Darrell Dexter
Nice guy, as socialists go
When Darrell Dexter’s New Democrats swept to power in 2009, it fell to Harold D. Foster, the US Consul General in Halifax, to profile the new premier for his State Department colleagues. His assessment, in a cable sent one week after Dexter’s government took office, was among the diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks Thursday. Moneyquote:
Dexter is highly regarded by friends and political foes alike as a nice, down-to-earth kind of guy who has the interests of his constituents at heart. However, his victory came about primarily through his skill as a natural consensus builder, evidenced early on by his ability to bring together several differing factions within own his party. When he became NDP leader in 2001, Dexter inherited a party that still had a heavy influence of what pundits like to call the “fiery, socialist old guard”–members who were bitterly opposed to people like Dexter who wanted to move the party to a more centrist position on the political spectrum.
Post has had a longstanding cordial relationship with Dexter and his inner circle of advisors who come from both the old and young guards of the party. All, like their predecessors the Tories, attach great importance to issues of interest to the United States: fostering bilateral trade, increasing energy exports to the United States, and working cooperatively with the Canadian federal government on secure border issues. Dexter is also a frequent visitor to the United States, primarily to play golf even if (as he has confided) it means going by himself when none of his golfing partners is available to travel with him. Overall, post anticipates seeing this cordial relationship continue and expand as this well-liked and respected Premier settles down to implementing an agenda overwhelmingly embraced by the voters of Nova Scotia.
NS Wikileak: US Consul assesses anti-Iraq war sentiment in NS
On the evening of March 26, 2003, the US Consulate in Halifax sent two “sensitive but unclassified” cables to the State Department in Washington assessing “the view from Atlantic Canada” on the Iraq War begun by George W. Bush three days earlier. Then-Consul General Steve Kashkett also reported on a series of anti-war demonstrations in Halifax.
Following a week of discussions with then Lieutenant Governor Myra Freeman, various ministers in the John Hamm cabinet, local newspaper editors, a political pollster, businesspeople, and “some of our key military contacts here,” Kashkett came away with “the impression of a profoundly conflicted public.”
Steve Kashett, now vice president of the American Foreign Services Association, welcomes Hillary Clinton to the State Department Headquarters in Washington on her first day as Secretary of State
“Canadians in the atlantic provinces, most of whom consider themselves to have a staunchly pro-U.S. world view on most issues, are deeply divided over the war in iraq,” he wrote.
One of two cables points out that although university groups had vocally opposed the war, demonstrations had drawn hundreds, not thousands or tens of thousands, of participants.
“Of course, Halifax is a medium-sized provincial town with a smaller population than Toronto or Montreal, but the lukewarm response to the anti-war movement reflects deeper emotions here,” Kashkett concluded.
The other cable, sent an hour earlier, reported on three demonstations at the consulate’s Purdy’s Wharf II offices, and on a reception the consulate was forced to cancel at his residence after police warned that student groups planned to disrupt it.
“As is usually the case in the Maritimes, the protestors are conducting themselves in a restrained, mostly non-violent manner,” wrote Kashkett, who appeared to have detailed information from various local police.
“We are coordinating closely with the RCMP, the Halifax Regional Police, and our own building security people to minimize any risk,” he reported. “No protesters have targeted the CG residence as of yet, but RCMP contacts have confirmed that the location of the residence is known to local anti-war activists.”
Most of the sources referred to in the cables are unnamed, but the first cable reported that Rear Admiral Glenn Davidson, Commander of Canadian Forces Atlantic, “confided to Consul General today that there is fairly strong support for the war within the military services,” and “many of his navy officers and enlisted personnel feel that they should be part of the war effort.” The cable says Davidson believed the Chretien Government’s refusal may harm Canadian-US military ”interoperability,” a matter of “highest importance” to the Canadian military.
The text of the first cable follows:
UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 HALIFAX 0091 SIPDIS SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED DEPT FOR WHA/CAN E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PREL PGOV ASEC KPAO CA US SUBJECT: CANADIAN PUBLIC OPINION ON THE IRAQ WAR: THE VIEW FROM ATLANTIC CANADA REF: HALIFAX 0086 ¶1. SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED - ENTIRE TEXT. ¶2. (SBU) CANADIANS IN THE ATLANTIC PROVINCES, MOST OF WHOM CONSIDER THEMSELVES TO HAVE A STAUNCHLY PRO-U.S. WORLD VIEW ON MOST ISSUES, ARE DEEPLY DIVIDED OVER THE WAR IN IRAQ. IN DISCUSSIONS DURING THE PAST WEEK WITH A WIDE RANGE OF PEOPLE INCLUDING THE LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR, PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT MINISTERS, LOCAL NEWSPAPER EDITORS, A POLITICAL POLLSTER, BUSINESSPEOPLE, AND SOME OF OUR KEY MILITARY CONTACTS HERE, CG HAS GOTTEN THE IMPRESSION OF A PROFOUNDLY CONFLICTED PUBLIC. HALIFAX AND OTHER KEY ATLANTIC CITIES HAVE FAIRLY VOCAL STUDENT GROUPS AT THE MAJOR UNIVERSITIES WHICH HAVE BEEN OUTSPOKEN IN CRITICIZING THE WAR, AND WHICH HAVE ORGANIZED A NUMBER OF ANTI- WAR DEMONSTRATIONS (REFTEL) SINCE THE MILITARY CAMPAIGN STARTED. BUT THESE DEMONSTRATIONS HAVE ONLY DRAWN PROTESTERS IN THE HUNDREDS, NOT THE THOUSANDS OR EVEN TENS OF THOUSANDS THAT HAVE MARCHED ACROSS OTHER, LARGER CANADIAN CITIES. OF COURSE, HALIFAX IS A MEDIUM-SIZED PROVINCIAL TOWN WITH A SMALLER POPULATION THAN TORONTO OR MONTREAL, BUT THE LUKEWARM RESPONSE TO THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT REFLECTS DEEPER EMOTIONS HERE. ¶3. (SBU) OUR CONTACTS SAY THAT MOST ATLANTIC CANADIANS HAVE SERIOUS RESERVATIONS ABOUT ANY POLICY POSITION DICTATED FROM OTTAWA THAT PUTS CANADA AT ODDS WITH THE UNITED STATES. THIS PART OF CANADA IS PROUD OF THE FACT THAT IT HAS CLOSE TIES OF HISTORY, FAMILY, TRADE, AND CULTURE TO THE NORTHEASTERN UNITED STATES. ALTHOUGH MANY PEOPLE SHARE THE ANTI-WAR ACTIVISTQSQ CONCERNS OVER THE UTILITY AND TIMING OF THIS MILITARY CAMPAIGN AND OVER THE PERCEPTION THAT THE U.S. GOVERNMENT IS ACTING UNILATERALLY WITHOUT U.N. SANCTION, A STRONG CURRENT WITHIN LOCAL OPINION MAINTAINS THAT, NOW THAT THE WAR HAS BEGUN, FOR BETTER OR WORSE, IT IS IMPORTANT FOR CANADA TO STAND BESIDE ITS U.S. ALLY. MANY ATLANTIC CANADIANS BELIEVE THAT THE DISAGREEMENT BETWEEN OUR TWO COUNTRIES OVER WHETHER TO INITIATE MILITARY ACTION WAS ESSENTIALLY A DISPUTE OVER TACTICS, NOT OVER THE ULTIMATE GOAL OF ENDING THE INTERNATIONAL THREAT POSED BY AN OUTLAW REGIME IN BAGHDAD. TACTICAL DIFFERENCES, THEY ARGUE, SHOULD NOT BE THE CAUSE A SERIOUS RIFT BETWEEN TWO LONGSTANDING PARTNERS. ¶4. (SBU) AMBASSADOR CELLUCCIQS PUBLIC REMARKS YESTERDAY TO THE EFFECT THAT AMERICANS ARE DISAPPOINTED WITH CANADAQS FAILURE TO SUPPORT THE WAR HAVE GIVEN MANY ATLANTIC CANADIANS A JOLT. ALTHOUGH SOME DO APPEAR TO FEEL INSULTED AT SUCH CRITICISM, MANY OF OUR CONTACTS HAVE QUIETLY TOLD US THAT THEY BELIEVE THE AMBASSADOR WAS RIGHT TO EXPRESS HIS CONCERNS AND TO WARN OF THE POSSIBILITY THAT THERE MIGHT BE LONG-TERM CONSEQUENCES IN THE BILATERAL RELATIONSHIP. WHILE PEOPLE HERE ARE WORRIED ABOUT THE RAMIFICATIONS OF U.S. ACTIONS, THERE IS ALSO A PALPABLE DISCONTENTMENT WITH THE ACTIONS AND STATEMENTS OF PM CHRETIEN AND HIS GOVERNMENT. ATLANTIC CANADIANS BELIEVE THAT CROSS- BORDER COMMERCE AND TOURISM ARE VITAL TO THIS REGION, AND MANY FEAR THAT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS ADOPTING POSITIONS THAT COULD JEOPARDIZE THESE ESSENTIAL BILATERAL RELATIONS. ¶5. (SBU) PUBLIC OPINION IN THE ATLANTIC PROVINCES TENDS TO BE MORE CONSERVATIVE THAN ELSEWHERE IN CANADA, PARTLY BECAUSE HALIFAX IS HOME TO THE CANADIAN NAVYQS ATLANTIC FLEET AND TO MANY MILITARY FAMILIES WHICH HOLD THE U.S. MILITARY FORCES IN HIGH REGARD. REAR ADMIRAL GLENN DAVIDSON, COMMANDER OF CANADIAN NAVAL FORCES HERE, CONFIDED TO CG TODAY THAT THERE IS FAIRLY STRONG SUPPORT FOR THE WAR WITHIN THE MILITARY SERVICES. MANY OF HIS NAVY OFFICERS AND ENLISTED PERSONNEL FEEL THAT THEY SHOULD BE PART OF THE WAR EFFORT. ACCORDING TO RADM DAVIDSON, THE CANADIAN MILITARY ATTACHES THE HIGHEST IMPORTANCE TO DEVELOPING ITS "INTEROPERABILITY" AND COOPERATION WITH THE U.S. MILITARY SERVICES, AND MANY MILITARY PEOPLE HERE FEAR THAT CANADAQS REFUSAL TO PARTICIPATE IN IRAQ WILL DAMAGE THAT CLOSE BILATERAL RELATIONSHIP IN THE FUTURE. ¶6. (SBU) THE HEAD OF A WELL-ESTABLISHED PUBLIC OPINION POLLING ORGANIZATION IN NOVA SCOTIA TOLD CG THAT A MAJORITY OF CANADIANS IN THIS PART OF THE COUNTRY ARE PREPARED TO SET ASIDE THEIR QUALMS ABOUT THE U.S. DECISION AND ARE LEANING TOWARDS SUPPORT FOR THE U.S. WAR EFFORT, NOW THAT HOSTILITIES HAVE BEGUN. IN HIS VIEW, OTTAWA COULD EASILY MOVE PUBLIC OPINION IN THIS DIRECTION IF IT CHOSE TO DO SO. HE COMMENTED THAT THERE MAY BE MORE PRO-U.S. SENTIMENT IN OTHER PARTS OF CANADA THAN CURRENTLY APPEARS TO BE CASE, BUT IT IS DIFFICULT TO TELL BECAUSE THOSE OPPOSED TO THE WAR TEND TO SPEAK THE LOUDEST AND GET THE MOST MEDIA ATTENTION. KASHKET
The text of the second cable follows after the jump:
The triumph of taxophobia
Writing in Democracy, Jonathan Chait plumbs American right’s aversion to taxes:
The conservative movement’s embrace of taxophobia is probably the most important development in American political life over the last three decades. It is the one quality that most distinguishes American conservative elites from conservative elites in other countries. They’re more likely to question climate science, more sanguine about people dying for lack of health insurance, and less xenophobic (which is rather nice). But above all—far above all—they hate taxes.
Understanding the American Right is critical for Canadians, because if voters make the mistake of giving Stephen Harper a majority on May 2, we will see the same bizarre ideology shape our country in ways many Canadians have not stopped to think about.
H/T: Richard Stephenson
Presidential home movies
The Watergate scandal really began to unravel with the discovery that President Nixon had secretly tape recorded most of what happened in the Oval Office. Forgotten, until now, was that the FBI also confiscated 204 reels of Super-8 film—home movies, shot inside the White, by the likes of H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and other officials.
Filmmakers Brian L. Frye and Penny Lane are turning this amateur footage into a feature-length documentary. They have prepared a trailer as part of a Kickstarter promotion to raise production money for the project:
Click here is the video is not visible. Andrew Rosinski elaborates on the footage:
They filmed the pivotal and the prosaic, from Nixon’s historic meeting with Mao to the bathroom fixtures in the Forbidden City. They filmed White House performances by Red Skelton, Bob Hope, Dionne Warwick, Johnny Cash and Raquel Welch, the historic 1971 May Day Protests against the Vietnam War on the National Mall, and Tricia Nixon’s Rose Garden wedding. But mostly, they filmed each other: Higby standing in front of the Eiffel Tower and waving at the camera, Chapin and Kissinger clowning around at the beach, and a hummingbird sipping nectar from a feeder. Ehrlichman was quite fond of hummingbirds.
Graham Bell to Teddy Roosevelt: Protect blacks in Cape Breton
TheAtlantic.com’s tech columnist Alexis Madrigal marked the 135th anniversary of Alexander Graham Bell’s US patent for the telephone by reproducing a doodle-like drawing of the device Bell submitted with his patent application:
That’s a fragment; see the whole diagram here.
Madrigal found the image among Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers, which are stored at the Library of Congress and available online in a searchable database. Naturally, that set Contrarian searching for terms like “Telegraph House” (9 hits), “Beinn Bhreagh” (100), “Ross Ferry” and “Kempt Head” (zip and zip). A search for “Sydney” produced 47 hits, including this remarkable letter to then-US President Theodore Roosevelt:
Charles Thompson was a longtime employee of Bell’s, described by biographer Robert Bruce as the absent-minded Bell’s “chief proxy in coping with the gritty details of domestic life.” According to Baddeck historian Jocelyn Bethune, he had come into the Bells’ employ in January, 1887, when a fire damaged the third storey of the family’s Washington home. Bell’s papers suffered water damage, and the 18-year-old Thompson was one of several residents of a nearby boarding house hired by a housekeeper to help clean up the mess. He was smart, and he proved adept at deciphering Bell’s scrawled handwriting, and this led to a permanent position.
Thompson became a frequent seasonal visitor to Baddeck, and owned property in Sydney. On a visit there in late November, 1904, he and his wife tried to check into the Grand Hotel, but were turned away. In a severe downpour, they tried the The Queen, The Windsor, The Sydney, and possibly one other, but were turned away every time. Finally—and by now soaking wet—they were accommodated at The Royal, ironically, the only one of the group that survives 106 years later.
Returning to Baddeck with a bad cold, Thompson wrote the Sydney Post a letter describing his treatment. The paper published it November 28, under the headline, “Color Line Under the British Flag.”
Bell’s entourage, and his Baddeck social circle, were outraged. The inventor wrote a letter of protest to Sydney’s US Consul, a Mr. M.E. West, as well as President Roosevelt.
Mr. Thompson… is an upright, conscientious man in whom I have the highest confidence. He has traveled with me in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, France, Italy and Great Britain, as well as in Japan and the Hawaiian Islands, and never outside of his own country has he been discriminated against on account of his color except in Sydney, Cape Breton Island — at least so far as I know.However one may deplore the existence of the color line in certain parts of the United States, we have hotels there specially for colored people, so that the exclusion of a respectable colored man from a public hotel in our country does not work the hardship it does in Sydney. Exclusion from six of the hotels of Sydney resulted in turning these people out into the cold and wet, during one of the most severe storms of the season without a place where they could lay their heads. After several hours exposure to the storm they fortunately found at last one hotel — the Royal — where the Proprietor had humanity enough to receive them and give them shelter. Mr. Thompson is now lying ill in my house here as the result of the exposure, and his wife also is far from well.I propose to call the attention of the State Department in Washington to the necessity of providing protection for colored citizens of the United States in Canada — so as to prevent the possibility of the repetition of another such outrage as this.There is nothing in the appearance of Mr. and Mrs. Thompson, or in their manners or characters to justify exclusion from any hotel. There is so little of the negro in Mr. Thompson’s appearance that he has often — in foreign countries — been taken for a Japanese, while his wife might well pass for Spanish.
A committee of Baddeck burghers delivered a letter of profuse apology to Thompson, to which many Baddeck residents added their signatures.
We do not understand why a respectable couple (as we all know you to be) although colored, should be turned away from any Hotel, and we sincerely hope that you and Mrs. Thompson may long be spared to spend many summers on Canadian soil and receive treatment from the hands of the public that a gentleman of your esteem so well deserves.
You can find copies of the original documents, and transcriptions, in the Library of Congress’s Bell collection: Do a search for “Roosevelt” and “Thompson.”
Thanks to Jocelyn Bethune for help sorting out this story. She wrote about the incident in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, during Black History Month of either 1998 or 1999.
Messaged up the ass – feedback
In response to my post on the Dexter government’s obsessive management of routine government communications, Bruce Wark writes:
When I arrived in Nova Scotia in October, 1986, as CBC Radio’s National Reporter for the Maritimes, I found the Nova Scotia government’s public relations system third rate. I had just come from six years covering the Ontario legislature and was used to dealing every day with a professional civil service and public relations officers who provided accurate information quickly and efficiently. In fact, I realized during my years at Queen’s Park that the Conservatives’ decision to create a professional (and de-politicized) civil service was one of the main reasons they held power continuously in Ontario for 42 years. Journalists and the public trusted government information.
The establishment of Communications Nova Scotia in 1996 represented a big step forward. Over the years, I have found CNS officers (many of them former journalists) to be efficient and trustworthy providing unbiased information even when they suspected that the journalist receiving it might be building a case against government policies. Ultimately, the public judges both those policies and the journalists who report on them. The basis for that public judgment has to be accurate and timely information untainted, as much as possible, by partisan government spin and filtered though professional communications officers who are not forced to run everything by a centralized political authority….
Governments which put obstacles in journalists’ way and try to spin them to death will eventually pay a price for their attempts to message reporters up the ass. The provincial NDP and the federal Alliance-Conservatives ignore this at their peril. Your commentary and Paul MacLeod’s reporting is an early warning to the neophyte, political boffins at NDP central.
This is a matter of degree. There’s nothing wrong with a government trying to insure consistency in the way it communicates with the public, but when this effort reaches the point where everything must to be cleared with a Central Committee, it’s unhealthy for a democracy.
The media shares some responsibility, given how reporters pounce on a politician or official who deviates even slightly from party or government line. In pouncing, reporters don the mantle of heretic-fighters and orthodoxy-enforcers, with the unwelcome effect of sanitizing political discourse.
As Michael Kinsley purportedly remarked, “A gaffe is when you tell the truth.” That is, it’s not a gaffe when a politician lies but when a politician unguardedly says what she really thinks. Neither the media nor the premier’s office should make it their business to punish such truthfulness.
After sending the words above to Contrarian, Wark’s indignation apparently continued to rise. At week’s end, he emailed the premier’s press secretary, saying:
[L]et me tell you straight up that this issue is not about media convenience or efficiency. It’s about the right to factual, public information from the civil service, untainted by partisan political spin.
What’s happened to the United States of America?
For all its foreign policy lapses, the United States has long stood as a beacon of individual freedom. The US Constitution and Bill of Rights constrain government action against individuals to a degree unimagined elsewhere in the world. Even the most criticized parts of the Bill of Rights, like the Second Amendment guarantee of the right ro bear arms, are, in William O. Douglas’s felicitous phrase, “designed to take the government off the backs of people.”
It is commonplace to observe that the September 11 attacks undermined those constraints.
In the run-up to Christmas, Glenn Greenwald, Salon’s tenacious legal affairs reporter, produced a series of stunning posts about the US military’s inhumane treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of passing a massive diplomatic cable trove to Wikileaks currently detained in solitary confinement in a two-meter by three-meter cell.
Since his arrest in May, Manning has been a model detainee, without any episodes of violence or disciplinary problems. He nonetheless was declared from the start to be a “Maximum Custody Detainee,” the highest and most repressive level of military detention, which then became the basis for the series of inhumane measures imposed on him.
From the beginning of his detention, Manning has been held in intensive solitary confinement. For 23 out of 24 hours every day — for seven straight months and counting — he sits completely alone in his cell. Even inside his cell, his activities are heavily restricted; he’s barred even from exercising and is under constant surveillance to enforce those restrictions. For reasons that appear completely punitive, he’s being denied many of the most basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, including even a pillow or sheets for his bed (he is not and never has been on suicide watch). For the one hour per day when he is freed from this isolation, he is barred from accessing any news or current events programs. Lt. Villiard protested that the conditions are not “like jail movies where someone gets thrown into the hole,” but confirmed that he is in solitary confinement, entirely alone in his cell except for the one hour per day he is taken out.
Remember, Manning hasn’t been convicted of anything. He is merely in pre-trial detention. A blog post by Lt. Col. David Coombs, Manning’s lawyer, fleshes out the picture:
Under the rules for the confinement facility, he is not allowed to sleep at anytime between 5:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. If he attempts to sleep during those hours, he will be made to sit up or stand by the guards….
PFC Manning is held in his cell for approximately 23 hours a day.
The guards are required to check on PFC Manning every five minutes by asking him if he is okay. PFC Manning is required to respond in some affirmative manner. At night, if the guards cannot see PFC Manning clearly, because he has a blanket over his head or is curled up towards the wall, they will wake him in order to ensure he is okay.
He is not allowed to have a pillow or sheets. However, he is given access to two blankets and has recently been given a new mattress that has a built-in pillow.
He is prevented from exercising in his cell. If he attempts to do push-ups, sit-ups, or any other form of exercise he will be forced to stop.
He does receive one hour of “exercise” outside of his cell daily. He is taken to an empty room and only allowed to walk. PFC Manning normally just walks figure eights in the room for the entire hour. If he indicates that he no long feels like walking, he is immediately returned to his cell.
When PFC Manning goes to sleep, he is required to strip down to his boxer shorts and surrender his clothing to the guards. His clothing is returned to him the next morning.
The New York Times picked up the story this morning, albeit in a blog post, not in the paper itself. The UN’s top torture official is now said to be investigating Manning’s case.
Find Greenwald’s initial post on Manning’s treatment here. A later post theorizes that the military is trying to break Manning down to obtain evidence of collusion with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Despite florid rhetoric directed against Assange (including repeated nonsensical demands he be charged with treason, a crime of which no non-citizen can be guilty), there is no credible basis for a charge against him.
When pollsters only call landlines
A US study by the Pew Research Center finds that pre-election polls favor Republican candidates when the pollster only calls landlines, and not cell phones. The gap appears to be growing as more people abandon land lines for cell service.
[S]upport for Republican candidates was significantly higher in samples based only on landlines than in dual frame samples that combined landline and cell phone interviews. The difference in the margin among likely voters this year is about twice as large as in 2008.
And then there’s Skype. This calls to mind the 1948 US presidential election, in which polls (and pundits) predicted a landslide for Republican Thomas E. Dewey, but Harry Truman won handily. The widely accepted explanation: fewer Democratic-inclined voters owned telephones.
To extrapolate this phenomenon to Canadian election polling would be to leap over various cultural and political chasms, but something similar could be happening here. There’s no reason to believe the accelerating switch to cell phones in Canada is evenly distributed across party lines.
Via TMP.
Body scan boogie – (cont.)
Contrarian reader Andrew Bourke is reconsidering a trip to Disney World after seeing this video of Transportation Safety Agency screeners in Chattanooga Tennessee manhandling an upset three-year-old.
(If you can’t see the video, try this link.)
The San Francisco Chronicle explains:
A TSA employee gave Mandy the pat down and she started screaming and kicking her legs… Why was Mandy searched in the first place? She started crying when she was asked to put her teddy bear through the X-ray machine. This made it difficult for her to walk calmly through the metal detector and she set the machine off twice, which meant she “must be hand-searched.”
Body scan boogie
Get ready for Opt Out Day:
For those using Flash-impaired Apple products, try here. From the clever Taiwanese animators, Next Media. Hat tip: This week in Google.
