The recent Canadian federal elections should be an ominous warning to the Americans who have recently felt that fleeing to Canada might be a good alternative to living under the Bush Regime.

To many Americans, Canada seems like a place with more sensible public priorities, where most tax money doesn't get pissed away on military spending, so more public funds are available for public health care and education. Those who have any interest in Canada have also realized that recent Canadian governments have refused to capitulate to the Bush Regime's pressures to support the War on Iraq and oppose the Kyoto Accords on Global Warming. That makes Canada seem like a good alternative to the United States.

What most Americans don't appreciate is that Canadian government is not a popular democracy the way that US government at least pretends to be. Historically, Canada was set up as a colony, to be run by and for international investors (originally British, now multinational), with just enough pretense of local democracy to keep the populace tame, with governmental structures set up so that the wishes of international investors could trump the interests of local voters at any time.

In Canada there is a parliamentary system in which elected politicians vote in party blocks, allowing politicians to occasionally (and safely) make breaks based on constituent pressures, but their jobs aren't on the line with voters, because when elections happen they can hide behind their party caucus rather than being held personally responsible.

In Canada the main options in recent decades have been Conservatives (similar to Republicans, selling out to similar multinational corporate interests), Liberals (similar to Democrats, selling out to similar multinational interests), the New Democrats (representing corporate labor unions, and a little more influential than the Green Party in the United State, allowing them to split votes away from the Liberals), and a French-nationalist party in Quebec. Puke.

Although Canada has a long and dishonorable history of political corruption, the low point of Canadian politics happened with the election of the Conservative regime headed by Brian Mulroney approximately a quarter century ago. At the time, the major election issue was the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a thoroughly obnoxious scam for neo-colonialism that allowed multinational corporations to have even more rights than Canadian corporations (then avoid taxes by transferring profits and jobs out of the country). Moreover, NAFTA allowed multinational corporations to sue local, regional, and national governments for possible lost profits if they enacted any legislation that set priorities for local jobs or environmental priorities.

If Canadians were allowed a direct vote on NAFTA, it never would have been approved. Instead, the Conservatives under the leadership of Brian Mulroney were elected, because even though the Liberals and NDP got most of the popular vote, they split it in ways that allowed the Conservatives to run Parliament, which they did on behalf of American Express and the other multinational interests that gave them campaign funds.

In the decades since then, the right wing split into two parties - the traditional Conservatives and a Reform Party (equivalent to the Republicans' extreme right wing of Christian fundamental nuts). For the past dozen years or so, splitting neo-con votes between Conservatives and the Reform Part (the way that the Liberals and NDP have split votes) allowed the Liberal Party to stay in power. But in Canada's recent elections the right wing's political parties re-united so its votes were no longer split.

On January 23, 2006 the Conservative Party was elected with a minority government in Parliament. What does that mean? For starters, it means that the Conservatives don't have a majority in Parliament, and can't ram through any legislation they want without the approval of at least one minority party. For the past year of so, minority parties kept a Liberal party minority government in power on a short leash, and it's hopeful that the leash will be even shorter on the recently-elected conservative government.

It seems like the major reason for electing Conservatives is disapproval of Liberal political corruption. America's Tom De Lay would be right at home in Canada's Liberal party, which has as little pubic accountability as Texas. Canadian voters perceive the allegedly leftist (actually under the control of labor unions for multinationals) NDP as too socialist, so they were propagandized into voting Conservative as an alternative to political corruption (as if Conservative politicians weren't all corporate pimps).

There were national elections in Canada on January 23, 2006. The Conservative Party elected a minority government in such a way that they could pass legislation in Parliament only with the approval of minority parties. So what does that mean?

My first hope is that it means the Tories can't get away with most of what was the Conservative Party's election platform, which most Canadians don't want and Americans wanting to flee to Canada should damn well fear. The Canadian electorate got rid of the corrupt Liberals without carefully considering the terrible things the Conservatives might do. A minority government was elected because a majority of Canadians disapproved of the Tory agenda, and perhaps politicians from the other parties can keep them from doing anything too egregiously evil until there's another election.

Canada's new Prime Minister is Stephen Harper, despite most Canadians puking and gagging on such a possibility. The American translation might be having someone like Dan Quayle becoming President. Stephen Harper has publicly favored a lot of positions that most Canadians object to, like becoming more of an American colony with more public spending on the military, and specifically the brain-dead Star Wars nonsense (which seems like blatant political corruption to benefit military contractors). Stephen Harper favors the same Christian fanatics that get uptight about the killing of unwanted fetuses, but don't object to unselectively killing lots of people who have already been born whenever the Bush Regime wants to drop a bomb.

At least in the way it played out in Canadian mass media, it seemed to be an election where the choices were between a corrupt Liberal Government and the Conservatives, who had a Quayle-like candidate for Prime Minister, and also made a campaign promise to reduce sales taxes. Sales taxes are the most regressive form of taxation in Canada (and the rest of the world). Vested interests that finance corrupt politicians usually want low and middle income interests to pay more taxes and wealthy interests to pay less, so there are relatively more sales taxes (paid by poor people when they need to buy toilet paper) and more tax deductions for rich people to play golf and buy SUVs. Having lower sales taxes also means having more of the economy stay within a local or national economy, rather than being exported with outside investments by wealthy interests. Reducing sales taxes seems contrary to everything the Conservative Party has stood for, and seems likely to be among the first campaign promises it will break.

Harper's Conservatives get their policies from right-wing think tanks with agendas of reducing socialistic spending on public health care and social services in favor of tax breaks for wealthy interests and increasing socio-economic stratification. A top priority is destroying the public health care system most Canadians favor and replacing it with a privatized system that Canadians don't want, but somehow this election was spin-doctored away from such issues.

If the American public really wanted to go to the trouble and expense of imposing its alleged ideals of democracy on another country, it needn't go as far as Afghanistan or Iraq, because Canada is nearby, and would welcome a system of government in which multinational interests at least didn't screw local democracy so badly.

--Tony Formo Rather than participating in the Draft and Nam, Tony lived in Canada from 1968-99, when he moved back home to Seattle. Since then he's continued to follow Canadian politics.

Ballistic Test Contradicts Cheney's Explanation of Shooting

Some people think the one about the Vice President shooting a man is over – but they, like most of the reporters covering this story, probably don't know much about hunting, because the wound evidence, which cannot be manipulated, flatly contradicts Dick Cheney's explanation.

Here's what happened, taken from more than a dozen sources--the press, sheriffs reports, and independent tests--you be the judge.

To begin with this is what Republican Big Shots think bird hunting is: Riding in a jeep behind guides on horses working a dozen dogs looking for bobwhite quail on the 80 square mile Armstrong ranch.

It's almost sunset, February 11. The dogs point. The guides, using radios, call up the shooters--walking up in a line, from left to right, is Pamela Pitzer Willeford, Ambassador to Lichtenstein, then Cheney, and on the right, Harry Whittington, Austin attorney.

Cheney wears snake skin boots and has a Perazzi designer shotgun, which can cost $400,000. (The company motto is: "Rule the Roost) He's only been a bird hunter for 11 years, or since he was chosen by Anne Armstrong to lead Halliburton. A friend says "Hunting keeps him balanced." In a weekend shoot at a game farm, he killed 70 pheasants.

Okay, so the bobwhites flush. Pam Willeford and Cheney each get one. Harry Whittington hits a double.

Moments later, according to Willeford, a second covey flushes. Cheney swings to his right and behind him, 180 degrees, doesn't see Whittington in flame-orange vest and flame-orange cap and fires, hitting him so hard that Harry is knocked flat on his back.

Everyone converges on the victim. Cheney limps over--he's been relying on a cane lately and says: "Harry, I had no idea you were there."

Harry doesn't respond.

From 100 yards to the rear, ranch hostess and lobbyist Katharine Armstrong, who would later claim to be an eye-witness, comes up from the jeep. As do the Secret Service and Cheney's physician assistants.

They wrap Harry in blankets to avert shock, load him in the VP's ambulance, three of the party jump in, but not Cheney, and off it goes to Kingsville Hospital.

An aide to the vice president immediately calls the national security situation room and is patched through to Andrew Card, White House Chief of Staff, who calls Karl Rove.

Armstrong and Cheney head back to the ranch and take Rove's call.

Local county deputy Captain Charles Kirk, who hears about the accident on his scanner, is prevented from entering the ranch.

Sheriff Ramon Salinas III calls a former deputy, Romero Medellin, now working on the ranch and is told it's a minor accident. The Secret Service calls Salinas and he agrees to interview Cheney the following morning.

The victim arrives at the Kingsville hospital where physicians take a quick look and immediately air-ambulance him to the trauma center at Corpus Christus Memorial Hospital.

A doctor there says later, "We knew from the get-go that Whittington had some birdshot near his heart."

Armstrong, Cheney and the remaining guests have a roast beef dinner, and Armstrong says, retire for the night about 11.

At eight the next morning the Chief Sheriff Deputy Gilbert San Miguel is let in the gate, searched and escorted to Cheney, who shakes his hand.

"He was very, very disturbed," San Miguel says.

On the third try, after 11 a.m., ranch owner Armstrong reaches a Corpus Christi Caller Times' reporter "she trusts" and tells this story: "Whittington," she says, "was sprayed by itty-bitty pellets" after "he didn't do what he was suppose to do.... He failed to announce he was returning to the group." But, now, "He's fine, sitting up and laughing."

She says such birdshot sprayings are frequent occurrences. (According to the Texas Wildlife, they happen every year to one in 26,250 license holders.)

The story is out at 1:48 p.m., Sunday.

Vice Presidential spokeswoman Mary Matalin declares Mr. Cheney: "didn't do anything he wasn't supposed to do."

On Monday, Cheney mentions it to the President. On Tuesday, Whittington has a minor heart attack. On Wednesday, the local paper's editor, Libby Avert, says: "We got the quail-hunting accident story the way dedicated journalists have tracked down news for years – through strong, consistent old-fashioned reporting."

(In other words, they answered the phone.)

While the local paper swallowed the story whole, the New York Times kept choking on the bones. They missed the time of the accident, confused the Armstrong and King ranches, misnamed the first hospital, called a spokesman for the second hospital a doctor when he wasn't, said the pellets were BB size when they were half that, and initially gave the distance between Cheney and Whittington as 30 feet before correcting it to 30 yards.

On that last point, though, they were probably closer to being correct the first time.

I've been bird hunting for over 50 years and know a score of hunters, none of whom have ever shot anyone. The best hunter we know around here is a Coupeville logger named Bobby Bailey, who we consider our Daniel Boone. I asked him if Cheney's explanation made sense.

"A shot from that small of a gauge, that's a _ once load...They don't even make a magnum for it...passing from the side through the sternum --that's skin, blubber, and into the heart muscle ...seems like quite a long stretch to me. But, heck, I don't know. Why don't you hang a roast in a tree and test it?"

So I did. My gun, a 20 gauge, is a step larger than Cheney's, and shoots a shell packed with 25% more shot and powder. Reports have Whittington wearing, besides the fluorescent orange vest, a shirt and light jacket.

I only put one shirt on Chuck Roast. I shoot from exactly 30 yards, at which point the shot has lost half its energy. Results: six shot leave marks on the shirt, but only two enter the roast, and then only about 1/8th of an inch.

Whittington was hit at least seven times on the face, more pellets hit his shooting glasses with enough force to blacken both eyes, and other shot went into his neck, right shoulder, and rib cage. The doctors said that "Between seven and 200 birdshots" are in his body.

All the ballistic evidence--penetration, pattern tightness, and number of shot--strongly argue that the Vice President was considerably closer than 30 yards from Harry. More precise testing probably would be conclusive. (Another test by Alex Jones concludes Cheney was 15 to 18 feet away)

But perhaps the most flagrant inconsistency and one that no one in the press has mentioned, is that Willeford, Armstrong and Cheney all say that Harry Whittington came up unexpectedly on the right side of Cheney – which means the victim's left side would be facing Cheney. But Whittington was hit on the right side.

While all the wound evidence contradicts Cheney's explanation, what actually happened, without further tests and information, is speculative.

But here are two more plausible scenarios. Maybe Whittington was leaning down to pick up his bird when another bird flushed and Cheney tracked it around and back and somehow mistook poor Harry Whittington for Bob White... or maybe the bird flew between them. Harry turned to watch the flight, but didn't shoot because good hunters don't shoot their partners, but Cheney only saw his target.

"I think Cheney just shot him," says Bailey, "he's never shown he cares what happens to anybody else as long as he gets what he's after."