Word is, the reason recent heavy rains in the Lower Mainland have essentially shut down the city’s fresh water supply for going on a week now is because the GVRD a few years ago chose to begin allowing clear-cut forest-harvesting operations adjacent to the water reservoirs, an act critics at the time said would lead directly to contaminated drinking water whenever there is a rain storm. The measures of turbidity in the water supply this week are, according to water authorities, the highest ever recorded. But it isn’t turbidity caused by turbulence in the reservoir; it’s caused, this time, by muddy runoff from clearcut land surrounding the reservoir. Sources tell The Republic that technicians could watch the cloud of dirty water move across the reservoir toward the pipes at least a day before residents found their kitchen taps spewing brown, coliform-infested muck. The contaminated drinking water supply shut down cafés up and down Commercial Drive—until enterprising café owners like Marino at Abruzzo Café quickly arranged to have pipes installed to suck water from bottles hastily delivered behind the barristas’ counter. Buon lavoro!

Have they no shame?

Tony Blair announced on an Al Jazeera television interview with David Frost that the joint US-UK invasion and occupation of Iraq is a disaster. He was asked by journalists whether the comment amounted to appeasement, and media commentators indicated the comments were “seen as an olive branch to other states in the Middle East and his critics at home.” But that’s only because those journalists don’t read. What Blair actually meant, which he made very clear later in the same interview, is that the disaster is that suffered solely by his own and American occupation troops. “It is completely absurd to say” the word “appeasement” he re-iterated. He further made clear that the cause of the disaster to British and American occupation troops was not in any way their unwelcome presence on foreign soil, but rather has been brought about by “those who have an extreme and perverted and warped view of Islam,” and, more intriguingly, those “who want to create war.” Critics and supporters both agree on one thing: the US-UK war on Iraq was a war of choice—the historical record is unmistakable in showing that Blair and Bush wanted to create war—just not the one their troops are now suffering in. To the neighbouring nations of Iraq, in particular the leadership in Iran and Syria, Blair said, “If you act in breach of your international obligations, then it is our part to stand up to you.” He earlier cited “al Qaeda with Sunni insurgents on one hand, Iranian-backed elements with Shia militias on the other,” as the cause of troubles for British and US troops, a view not shared by any credible commentator. What experts insist is in fact confronting them is almost entirely domestic resistance to harsh and brutal British and American military occupation. It is an odd charge Blair leveled at Iran and Syria: it was American and British disregard toward clearly-stated international obligations that led to their war on Iraq in the first place.

Just click your heels, Jean

Michaelle Jean, appointed by the Canadian parliament to represent the Queen of England to Canadians, as though Canadians need the Queen of England instead of our own head of state, has found yet another place elsewhere in the world besides Canada in which she reports she “feels like I’m home.” Earlier this year, the stand-in for the Queen of England visited Haiti, where she reported feeling at home. (She is originally from Haiti, which she left as a young girl.) This week, Jean visited Algeria. “I can’t explain it,” the Haitian-born representative of the British head of state, and one time supporter of Quebec independence, said on arrival in Algeria, “but I feel like I’m home here.”

We support death

In making an argument to deflect criticism of Canada Pension Plan investment decisions, a senior vice-president of the CPP, Donald Raymond, flatly contradicted himself. In a rebuttal to a Vancouver Sun article about how the CPP is deeply invested in tobacco and weapons companies, Raymond state that “it is worth noting that if we were to divest (the Plan of those questionable investments), we would give up the opportunity to have an influence on company performance.” Later in the same article, to deflect a different criticism, he notes “that in 1997, it was decided that the CPP Investment Board should have an ‘investment only’ mandate and was not to pursue any other agenda.” So which is it? Does the CPP use its equity stake in weapons and tobacco companies to influence their behavior, or does the CPP pursue no agenda beyond investment performance alone? If it follows its government-mandated directive and pursues no objective beyond blind return on investment, then its investments in weapons and tobacco firms cannot be defended on the grounds that the CPP stake in them can help influence those companies’ behaviors. The CPP must divest the Canadian public of our interest in these death-dealing companies forthwith. The CPP currently has just over $100 billion to invest, or not, in private companies here and abroad. A decision to divest itself of investments in weapons or tobacco companies would be major news in the investment communities, and would negatively affect those companies in significant ways—certainly more than remaining quietly invested in them would. The Republic first drew attention to CPP investments in top-end weapons companies and tobacco companies three years ago, but we’re guessing Raymond missed that article.

It’s 40 to 1 in our favour

Between October of 2001 and January of 2005, US warplanes dropped 884 bombs on Afghanistan. But between June and October of this year alone, the US has dropped 987 bombs on that devastated country, a nearly nine-fold increase in its rate of bombing. Though figures are hard to come by and are not reliable, a rough estimate suggests the Afghan civilian death rate per US bomb has remained steady at about 4 per bomb. But occupation forces’ death rates, including Canadian soldiers, has dropped from about 0.2 per bomb to about 0.1 per bomb, suggesting that the new, much heavier, rate of bombing by US planes is having its intended effect of protecting the lives of foreign occupation forces on the ground, including Canadians. While this newspaper certainly mourns the deaths of Canadian soldiers in general, it is worth noting by all Canadians, particularly those who have publicly voiced their support for continued Canadian deployment to the occupation of Afghanistan, that the hugely increased US bombing campaign of the last five months, which has saved an estimated 87 foreign occupation lives, has at the same time cost the lives of an estimated 3,500 Afghan civilians. Put another way, 40 Afghan civilians are sacrificed to US bombing runs for every one foreign soldier (Canadian or otherwise) saved by the bombing. And that just isn’t hockey.

You bunch of #@&% squids!

“We concluded the war was justified, a position we now regret,” says a November 11 Globe and Mail unsigned editorial. But there is no apology, not to Canadians whom the newspaper misled, not to policy makers whose thinking was invariably influenced by the editorial board’s terrible mistake, and certainly not to any single one of the million or so Iraqis dead as a direct result of that unjustified war that the Globe and Mail fully supported till this month. What that self-revered bunch at the Globe and Mail—including publisher Phillip Crawley, Editor-in-chief Edward Greenspon, and senior editors Sylvia Stead, Neil A Campbell, Colin MacKenzie, John Stackhouse, Cathrin Bardbury, and David Pratt—lacked then, and still lack today, is courage. They failed to show the courage to counter the absurd claims of Iraqi WMD and ties to terrorism being made by the White House five years ago, and they fail to show any courage today in taking the lead in apologizing to those hurt by the war they themselves backed. Take responsibility for your decisions, and apologize, you bunch of #@&% squids! (Lots of ink, no backbone, get it?)

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