the new lyrics to Barbara Ann aside, didn't McCain back off from stopping the torture??  He started out against torture until he decided to support torture. 
 
What is this about a bad joke about Chelsea from McCain?   I know the Gibson did stop people from attacking her on his show although there were no stops on talking against the Clintons.  
 
 

What do you know about the FBI's international Server in the Sky Project?

are we concerned enough about our diminishing *freedoms*, *privacy & right to peaceful assembly?

perhaps the knee-jerk minutiae of the election coverage is less important than...
focusing on the issues upon which Busheviks engage to diminish our impact in Democracy.

to diminish our **right to secure elections** (can you say ARRIVE WITH FIVE ?)
to diminish our **ability to organize**
to diminish our **right to peaceful assembly without militarized dispersal.
There will be a very LONG LOOK by the Busheviks to see if there is *any fight left in us*.

EVERY PUBLIC mention of the SPP, WTO & cop 'direction' against peaceful assembly is...
...ONE LESS RUBBER BULLET
...ONE LESS chemical burn
...ONE LESS tazering
...ONE LESS protester who catches a beatdown from militarized cops who got freaked out by putting on that SWAT GEAR & hearing OUR government & corporate instructions to **get rid of those protesters**

Don't believe me? watch the brief video on the Swiss cop response to peace protesters @ the G8Aubonne Bridge Action. Watch the coverage of the Montebello SPP 2007 & the *national Canadian coverage* revealing how cops were *caught on video* using agent provocateurs caught inciting justification for a militarized response to PEACEFUL anti-SPP & peace protesters... which didn't stop them from gassing us, anyway.
what really happened in New Orleans housing protests? or during Katrina?
...the Republican NYC lockdown?
...WTO Seattle?
...WTO Miami? OAXACA?

the time grows short for us to fritter away Canadian & American Rights to Peaceful Assembly... let's be honest, we're gonna look like Mexico if they get their way. garsh, maybe that's why they had that SPP conference in CANCUN. Have you ever been to RURAL Yucatán? that's some freaking POOR & disenfranchized... & exactly what Busheviks want FOR ALL OF THE AMERICAS.

Returning to the scene of the crime: New Orleans to host 2008 SPP summit
January 29, 2008 , Posted by Stuart Trew

According to President Bush in his final State of the Union address last night, the next SPP summit will take place in New Orleans this April.

"Tonight the armies of compassion continue the march to a new day in the Gulf Coast," said Bush, referring to the record number of charitable and faith-based groups filling in where the U.S. goverment continues to pull out of social service provision and disaster recovery plans.

"America honors the strength and resilience of the people of this region. We reaffirm our pledge to help them build stronger and better than before. And tonight I'm pleased to announce that in April we will host this year's North American Summit of Canada, Mexico, and the United States in the great city of New Orleans."

At a press briefing prior to Bush's speech, Ed Gillespie said the President chose the location, "to demonstrate how this great American city of New Orleans is rebounding, and is resilient."

Resilient, sure, but according to an Associated Press article today: "Rent has increased by over 40 per cent since the disaster. About half of the homeowners who were promised money from the federally funded and state run Road Home program have yet to see their grants. And the Federal Emergency Management Agency's efforts to rebuild infrastructure have been mired in bureaucratic delays."

There is also the ugly fact that the levies in New Orleans might never have failed had it not been for Bush's invasion of Iraq, which after 2003 soaked up desperately needed flood-control dollars that should have gone to the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project.

The symbolism is overwhelming, as Naomi Klein can attest. Her most recent book, The Shock Doctrine, speaks at length about how in New Orleans, like in Iraq, the Bush administration outsources almost every normal government function, including hurricane relief, to the point where private companies soak up almost all of the relief cash, even charitable donations.

It's as if the government courts disaster in order to create "blank slates" on which to create private-sector paradises, suggests Klein in her book.

"One year ago, New Orleans's working-class and poor citizens were stranded on their rooftops waiting for help that never came, while those who could pay their way escaped to safety," wrote Klein in The Nation on August 29, 2006. "The country's political leaders claim it was all some terrible mistake, a breakdown in communication that is being fixed. Their solution is to go even further down the catastrophic road of 'private-sector solutions.'"

In other words, New Orleans is a perfect location for governmenet executives, top bureaucrats and big business leaders to gather to discuss a new corporate vision for North America through the SPP.

On her website in December, Klein quoted Kali Akuno, executive director of the People's Hurricane Relief Fund, from a clip out of a Democracy Now documentary about the recent police crackdown on citizens in New Orleans.

According to a description of the documentary: "The New Orleans City Council has unanimously voted to move ahead with the demolition of 4,500 units of public housing. Under the plan, the city’s four largest public housing developments will be razed and replaced with mixed-income housing. Hundreds of people were turned away from the City Council meeting. Police shot protesters with pepper spray and tasers."

"This is just one particular piece of this whole program," says Akuno in the film. "Public hospitals are also being shut down and set to be demolished and destroyed in New Orleans. And they've systematically dismantled the public education system and beginning demolition on many of the schools in New Orleans--that's on the agenda right now--and trying to totally turn that system over to a charter and a voucher system, to privatize and just really go forward with a major experiment, which was initially laid out by the Heritage Foundation and other neoconservative think tanks shortly after the storm. So this is just really the fulfillment of this program."

Canadian, U.S. and Mexican groups will be mobilizing to oppose the bigger experiment called the SPP when our leaders meet in New Orleans this April.

Click here to read a letter to Prime Minster Harper demanding a debate on the SPP, which was signed by Maude Barlow (Council of Canadians), David Suzuki, Ken Georgetti (Canadian Labour Congress), and Maher Arar and Monia Mazigh.

ACTION ALERT: No SPP summit in New Orleans

To read Naomi Klein's op-ed in The Nation on the last SPP summit in Montebello, called "Big Brother Democracy," click here.

700-170 Laurier Avenue West Ottawa, ON, K1P 5V5
Tel: (613) 233-2773; 1-800-387-7177
Fax: (613) 233-6776; inquiries@canadians.org

SPP Summit August 19-21, 2007

• Summit highlights
• Photo gallery
• Highlights from public forum
• 
  
• Backgrounders
• Multimedia
• Media

This is What Democracy Looks Like - the amazing documentary shot by over 100 activists & co-operatively created.
===

Waging the war at home: The Manley Report
January 23, 2008, Posted by Brent Patterson & Stuart Trew
In October last year, Toronto Star columnist Thomas Walkom wrote that the members of Harper's handpicked Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role in Afghanistan proved that the war is not about Afghanistan, "It is about the U.S." Four of the five appointees, "have been intimately involved with the problems of Canada-U.S. relations, and in particular with the campaign to convince Americans that Canada is not soft on terror," he wrote.

TW: has ANY American noticed yet that NATO is under strain **BECAUSE of US disproportional demands upon NATO allies in Afghanistan**?
no? has anybody noticed that Canada has been directed by the US Afghan NATO leadership to turn over Afghans to US-trained Afghan torture facilities? That all of NATO recognizes that Canada has been *abandoned* in Helmand Province? a place where Canadians take UP TO 6X the casualty & fatality proportional rates than US forces in Iraq?

?? what was the US MSM response when Canada decided they could *no longer obey Afghanistan's US-directed NATO leadership*? we're now being accused of not taking enough prisoners
well, you should... 'cuz its important... I mean, do you really believe the Busheviks lied about *everything but Afghanistan*? really? gee, does anybody find it funny that Tora Bora shook out the way it did? or how about Bhutto catching a freaking bullet after mentioning Bin Laden might not be the shit we've been sold?
seriously... do you believe that NATO is on a feminist rescue mission?
or a drug intervention?

its freaking NATO, people. & its falling apart.
Senlis Council: "Following US Policies Is Turning Canadian Military Operation In Afghanistan Into A Suicide Mission"

Senlis Council recommends replacing opium farming & encouraging economic support for Afghanistan to grow anti-malaria herb, Artemisin

Soldier killed in Afghanistan identified as Sapper Etienne Gonthier, 21, of PQ
By The Canadian Press, Thu.24.Jan.08
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The name of the soldier killed by a roadside bomb south of Kandahar on Wednesday has been released.

Twenty-one-year-old Sapper Etienne Gonthier died during a road-clearing operation. Two others were injured in the blast. Gonthier, a combat engineer born in Quebec City, was based in Valcartier, Que., with the 5ieme Regiement du Genie de Combat.

He is the 78th Canadian soldier to die in Afghanistan since the Canadian mission began in 2002.

The two injured soldiers have been released from hospital and have returned to duty.

Thank you for your time & consideration
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can be found @ ThisCanadian.com
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The term "conservative" is taking on the negative connotation "liberal" used to have.  Is it possible the Republicans have ceded the nomination to McCain and are now positioning him as the non-conservative to pull over the independent vote?  Republicans will paint the Dem as tax-and-spend liberal who is weak on security.  While McCain will be portrayed as a moderate who is strong on security.