Bart Hawkins Kreps's Open Salon Blog

Klondike Solitaire

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 23:09:19 -0400

YUKON TERRITORY, CANADA, 1990

Neither a high-stakes wager, nor a midnight ride to the Tombstones, were part of my plans that rainy Friday evening in Dawson City. When I knocked on the door of a cabin I had visited briefly a few weeks before, I sought only a warm place to sleep.

It was late September, 1990, and I was on my way home to Inuvik, NWT. Earlier that month, I had journeyed south to Whitehorse, hoping to patch up a troubled relationship. The trip had been a bust. A long week had passed, and the stiff shivers of flu set in, providing meagre distraction from the longing in my heart.

Cycling was my favoured mode of travel, but it was unrealistic to head back to the Mackenzie Delta, north of the Arctic Circle, on my own steam. Even if I’d been in good health, I wouldn’t have tried biking the entire Dempster Highway at the end of September. And I was not in good health, physically or financially. Lacking the cash for a plane ticket to Inuvik, I decided to pedal through the central Yukon, where the weather was still mild, and then hitchhike the last 500 miles to Inuvik.

The trip to Dawson City had gone smoothly, but the temperature that Friday evening was just above freezing, and I dreaded pitching my tent in the drizzle. So as soon as pedalled into town, I found the house of four heavy-equipment operators I had met just weeks before. They offered me a couch to sleep on, and I stepped in from the cold.

* * *

The miners were convened in a smoke-filled kitchen to discuss another week of working the sluices. Klondike gold is typically found in creek and river beds, and is recovered through a process called “placer mining. ” Muddy gravel is dug out of creek beds and washed, until only the flecks of heavy gold remain.

The first miners in Dawson City plied their trade by hand with shallow pans, but they were soon overtaken by big-money consortiums employing huge dredges. In the first decades of the 20th century, almost every creek bed in the region was tilled. Massive piles of tailings, which spilled out behind the dredges, still snake along beside the streams. When most of the gold appeared to be gone, the big mining companies left, too.

More recently, however, the price of gold has risen dramatically, making it worthwhile to sift through the tailings one more time. A small operator, equipped with a bulldozer and a tractor-powered pump, can work through the piles of tailings, and possibly recover enough gold to turn a profit.

My hosts worked most of the year for one small operation or another, tending sluices, moving equipment to new locations, and scouting piles that were open for re-washing. Sometimes they worked long hours and banked up their wages, and that night they were discussing the possibility of buying their own machinery.

Their lives weren’t all work, though. Books lay about amongst the over-flowing ashtrays and empty bottles. One had been published by the Theosophical Society in the 1920s. A new volume spoke about envisioning wealth, shaping one’s destiny through positive thinking. The books looked to be well-read, reminding me that in places where potentially fabulous wealth co-exists with arduous toil, the hard-bitten miner and the new-age mystic are often the same person.

I thumbed through a few books while sipping rye whisky, and my eyes grew heavy. One of the miners left the room; perhaps he, too, was ready to call it a night. I rejoiced at the prospect of curling up on the sofa and surrendering to sleep.

“Hey, do you think I’m lucky?” Fred walked back in waving a shotgun. “Think this gun is loaded?”

He held the barrel to his temple, glaring first at his housemates and then at me, before he pulled the trigger. The empty click ricocheted off the walls.

Fred was suddenly sullen – and his misery wanted company. “Who wants to gamble with me?” he asked with a menacing laugh.

I looked around and saw more firearms. But I also spotted some cards – and I placed my bet on a different game.

Now, I’ve never been much of a card player. In university, when my peers were honing their skills at five-card stud, I was busy in frivolous pursuits like philosophy. I had never even learned to shuffle a deck.

But I had been introduced to the Tarot in earlier travels. The ancient fortune-teller’s tool fascinated me, and I had tinkered with the classic Rider-Waite Tarot – the same version that lay on that Dawson City shelf.

As quickly as I dared, I reached for the deck and asked, “How about a hand of cards?”

The thought clearly intrigued my gun-waving host.

“You know how to read those cards?” Fred asked.

“I do,” I bluffed.

Fred hung his weapon on the wall, lit another smoke, and beckoned me to read his fortune.

Handing over the cards, I explained, “It’s important for you to shuffle the deck yourself, so that it’s your energy that goes into the deck. It must be your hopes and fears that make the cards fall into order. ” While he expertly riffled the cards, I prayed we’d be dealt a good hand.

“Okay, I’ll take the deck now. ” I methodically turned over the top 16 cards and arranged them in the Celtic Cross layout.

Only one card emerges from my foggy memory of that evening. I’d been hoping I’d see some of the “Major Arcana”, for immediate emotional impact. Perhaps “The Lovers,” or “The Magician,” or “The High Priestess”.

The deck obliged. I turned up “Death.”

The audience drew a single sharp breath as the Grim Reaper came into view. I tidied the cards while we all puffed soberly on cigarettes. Then I wove a story from the pictures before us, ending with the same homily I had heard in my very first Tarot reading.

“And here, we come to Death. Of course, this could be literal. It’s possible that Death is waiting just around the corner, your own death or the death of someone close to you. This card reminds us that Death will come, for sure, sooner or later. Death can be a gift, a relief from struggle, a prize that no one can take away from us.

“But Death might be symbolic. It might mean that a dream dies, and is replaced by something better. Death might mean a change that we don’t think we want – a change that results in even more life.”

The room was quiet as the sermon ended. The Tarot had worked its magic. The mood had changed, and the guns were forgotten.

“Christ! we’re out of booze!” someone announced. “Let’s go to the bar!” The others heartily agreed, and we sauntered into the rain.

It was a relief to get out of the house, but another drink had no appeal. I was gun-shy. I was spooked. I wanted another place to spend the night. As soon as we passed through the swinging doors of the nearest saloon, I excused myself to go to the bathroom. Slipping through a side door, I hurried back to my bicycle outside the cabin, and I pedalled away.

This was no time to look for an ideal camp site – any quiet hiding place would do. At the outskirts of town, the long, high windrows of tailings began. I turned onto a sideroad and found a more-or-less flat spot behind a rock pile.

But the night’s troubles weren’t over. As I hurried to erect my tent, one of the poles snapped, the jagged end ripping a hole in the rain fly. The tent still stood, but water dripped in steadily.

Curled up on my air mattress on the stones, I shivered myself to warmth – and told myself I must not straighten out, must not push the bottom of my sleeping bag into the puddle growing beyond my feet.

• • •

The morning dawned cloudy. I was hungry, but postponed breakfast, not wanting to linger behind the tailings pile in case a landowner came by. The Dempster Corner seemed a worthy first stop.

A truck-stop-hotel-restaurant occupies that intersection, at the foot of the gravel strip known as the Dempster Highway. I decided to spend a few of my last dollars on a hearty meal there. With that incentive – and a stiff breeze behind me – the 25-mile ride to the Dempster Corner passed easily.

The steak-and-eggs, hashbrowns, toast and coffee went down easily too. With hunger sated, it was time to try my luck at hitch-hiking. I took up my post at the end of the Klondike River bridge, next to the sign that says “Inuvik 735km. ”

There are only three towns along the Dempster Highway, and the first of them is 340 miles north of the Dempster Corner. The chances were excellent, I thought, that anybody going north was going a long way. No doubt at least one of the long-haul truckers would like some company.

But there weren’t any truckers, and only one other traveler was going to Inuvik. Shortly after I’d taken up my station, a young man pulled up in a small pickup camper with Massachusetts plates. He said he’d be glad to give me a ride, but he didn’t plan to arrive in Inuvik for three or four days. In fact, he only intended to go as far as Tombstone Campground that day; he wanted to spend the afternoon hiking the foothills of the Tombstone Mountains.

Foolishly, I turned down his offer. I was bleary-eyed from a short night of sleep, I was still feeling the effects of the flu – and I wanted one ride all the way to Inuvik.

As the day wore on, there were a half-dozen more passers-by, all of them going to favored moose-hunting areas just a short drive up the road. Hour by hour, that single ride to Inuvik seemed more remote.

By mid-afternoon I was restless. The thought of a four-day journey to Inuvik, in a warm, comfortable pickup camper, in the company of a new friend from Massachusetts, grew more attractive. He had said he was stopping at Tombstone Campground, eh? Forty-five miles north? If I pedalled hard for a few hours, I ï¬ÂÂÂÂÂgured, I could meet Mr. Massachusetts tonight, and ride in climate-controlled comfort tomorrow.

So at four in the afternoon, I pedalled north over the Klondike River bridge and left Dempster Corner behind.

The rain-washed gravel was rough and sloppy – but there were big hills to climb. With any luck, the higher elevations would bring colder temperatures, and the road would be nicely frozen.

I pedalled along in low gear for a couple of hours; things got worse. The road remained soft, but the air got just cold enough so the slop stuck to my tires and then congealed in ever thicker layers. When frozen silt jammed against the bike forks, I had to find a stick and knock off the mud to free the wheels, before creeping forward to collect another layer of icy muck.

At eight o’clock, I was tuckered out — and Tombstone Campground was hours away. But finally the clouds lifted, the temperature dropped, and the road became blessedly solid. As the moon and stars came out, with a fresh snow cover reflecting the night’s light, I picked up the pace, rolling up and down the hills in perfect quiet, moving steadily north, steadily higher, steadily closer to my rendezvous with Mr. Massachusetts.

Gradually the distant peaks of the Tombstone range came into view, their sharply chiseled faces softened by snow. Then a familiar sign appeared: “Tombstone Campground – 1 km.” With a burst of anticipation, I pedalled through the gate. The moon was high and bright over the fresh coat of snow … and there was not a single tire track or footprint in sight.

Mr. Massachusetts clearly had decided not to stop here. There wasn’t going to be a rendezvous, wasn’t going to be an easy passage to Inuvik. I had just pedalled through 45 miles of freezing mud to spend another night alone. The glories of this campsite – the whisper of a breeze through spruce needles, the mountains rising to meet the moon – these were mine to behold in solitude.

Wearily, I fired up a stove, melted snow, and cooked a supper of buttery porridge. By midnight, with bed rolled out atop a picnic table, I crawled into my sleeping bag.

There was no telling if the morning would bring disaster, good luck, the death of a dream, or a new beginning. But after my evening ride in crisp cold air, sickness had given way to the sweet ache of hard work. When sleep settled in, it was soft as the light on the Tombstones.

Thanks to Dawson City photographer Igor Plenicar for five of the photographs used in these illustrations.

Canada was complicit in prisoner abuse at Guantanamo: court

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:08:16 -0400

A Federal Court of Appeal in Canada ruled today that the Canadian government must seek the return of a Canadian citizen held in Guantanamo, due to Canadian officials' complicity in interrogating the man under duress.

Omar Khadr has been a US captive for a third of his life. Nearly killed in a fire fight with US forces in Afghanistan in 2002 when he was 15 years old, he was eventually brought to Guantanamo and finally charged with war crimes. Leaving aside the question of whether fighting back is a “war crime,” the claim that Khadr threw a grenade has been called into doubt.

While the Bush and then the Obama administrations have improvised with a new system of trials for alleged terrorists, Khadr's case has moved forward on rare occasions, only to be stalled indefinitely on other occasions. Meanwhile, more and more evidence has come forward of brutal mistreatment meted out to the captured child soldier, first in Afghanistan and then in Guantanamo.

The governing Conservative Party in Canada has resisted calls by human rights organizations and opposition parties, who want the Canadian government to formally request the return of Khadr to Canada.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has continued to insist that what he calls "legal proceedings" in the US against Khadr should be allowed to run their course, and only after the completion of these proceedings will he consider intervening. In April, a lower court ruled that the Canadian government must seek Khadr's return, but Harper appealed that ruling.

In today's decision, two out of three Justices cited the role played by Canadian officials who interrogated Khadr at Guantanamo while he was suffering the effects of sleep deprivation, and then shared the results of the interrogation with their American counterparts.

"The knowing involvement of Canadian officials in the mistreatment of Mr. Khadr in breach of international human rights law, in particular by interviewing him knowing that he had been deprived of sleep in order to induce him to talk, ‘opens up a different dimension' of a constitutional and justiciable nature,” the majority opinion states.

"While Canada may have preferred to stand by and let the proceedings against Mr. Khadr in the United States run their course, the violation of his Charter rights by Canadian officials has removed that option,” the Justices wrote.

The Canadian government still has another opportunity to wash its hands of the Khadr case and keep him in legal limbo – today’s appeal court decision can be appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Canada Day on the Klondike

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:06:35 -0400

July 1, 2008 – The sound of soft rain on our tent woke us on the morning of July 1st, and the showers continued long enough to make us consider staying in our comfortable campsite beside the Yukon River. But by mid-afternoon the rain slowed to a drizzle, and my son and I loaded our bikes and pedalled out of Carcross, heading north on the Klondike Highway towards Dawson City.

Little did we guess that the day's ride would last until midnight, and that we would be treated to an unconventional display of Canada Day fireworks.

The ride began, as usual, with a long ascent. (Most of the territorial campgrounds are located beside rivers, which in these parts always seem to be located at the bottom of valleys; is that just coincidence, or conclusive proof of Intelligent Design?) Our Canada Day climb soon had us comfortably warm in spite of the intermittent mists, and after an hour our muscles were limber and we were making good time. But the scenery proved too spectacular to allow us quick passage.

About 4 pm we reached the viewpoint for the Five Finger Rapids, justly billed as one of Yukon's most popular recreational attractions. The sun was beginning to emerge, and the strands of turbulent water glistened far below us. A rugged trail, which includes 230 steps in the Yukon Territory's longest staircase, winds down to the shoreline for a close-up view of massive outcrops of rock, dividing the river into five swift-flowing streams. Gulls and ravens appeared to have these islands to themselves, though interpretive signs explained that in years past, settlers had built a cable system from the shoreline to the rocks, so that paddlewheel steamboats could be winched safely through the rapids.

Five Finger Rapids, Yukon River (larger version of panorama here)

It was 5 pm when we got back to our bikes. We had only ridden 25 kilometers, and the next village was still 80 km up the road. But we had many hours of daylight left, and we set out confidently for Pelly Crossing.

As the evening wore on, the wind picked up from the direction of the setting sun: north. We worked harder, and moved slower. When the sun dipped behind the mountains, the temperature dropped, bottoming out at 5°C. Every half hour we stopped to put on more clothes – wool tights over our shorts, then long-sleeve shirts, then wind-pants, then jackets, finally even our wool caps. After each stop we were warm for a few minutes, and after the next downhill cruise we were shivering again. At two of the stops we found wild strawberries growing beside the highway. The tiny and succulent specimens of rubus arcticus warmed our spirits, but did little to warm our aching joints, either the 15-year-old joints or the fifty-something ones.

Just after sunset – about 11:30 – we came swooping down a curve right beside a large pond dotted with waterfowl. The birds were alarmed by something – perhaps our loaded bikes rattling down the bumpy road, perhaps the chattering of our teeth. The birds exploded up from the water, setting off a kind of reverse pyrotechnics, with hundreds of fluttering black dots rising against the purple and pink fire of the sky.

We were cold and hungry when we reached Pelly Crossing and spotted the campground sign in the twilight. We feared that after midnight on the summer's prime travel day, all the good tent sites might be occupied. But when we turned off the Klondike Highway into the well-equipped campground, we faced an unexpectedly difficult selection: every last one of the 200 campsites was still open.

Abdelrazik, Kafka, and United Nations Committee 1267

Mon, 8 Jun 2009 14:06:52 -0400

‘War on terror’ hypocrisies cross many borders

In October, 2003, Canadian citizen Maher Arar returned home to Ottawa and told his grim story of extraordinary rendition. Detained by the US at John F. Kennedy Airport as a suspected member of Al Qaeda, he was refused passage back to Canada, and sent instead to his birthplace, Syria, where he was interrogated and tortured for almost a year.

Upon his return, Arar’s case prompted a public outcry. The resulting Canadian-government commission of inquiry cleared Arar of any wrongdoing, criticized the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for passing erroneous reports to US authorities, and awarded Arar $10.5 million in damages. And the Canadian government resolved that this must never be allowed to happen again.

So Canadian officials worked hard to ensure Abousfian Abdelrazik could not come home to Canada to tell his story.

That’s the picture that emerges from a remarkable judgment delivered by Judge Russel W. Zinn in Federal Court in Ottawa last week. The judge found that Abdelrazik’s rights had been violated, and he ordered the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper to issue an emergency passport for Abdelrazik and to arrange for his travel back to Canada, to be completed within 30 days.

Most of the judgment concerns the Canadian Charter of Rights, but Judge Zinn also examines the United Nations Committee 1267 no-fly list, prompting him to state that “I add my name to those who view the 1267 Committee regime as a denial of basic legal remedies and as untenable under the principles of international human rights.”

While Zinn does not mention the Arar case, he does conclude that “by mid 2004 Canadian authorities had determined that they would not take any active steps to assist Mr. Abdelrazik to return to Canada and, in spite of its numerous assurances to the contrary, would consider refusing him an emergency passport if that was required in order to ensure that he could not return to Canada.”

So even while the Canadian government was apologizing to one citizen who had been imprisoned abroad in brutal conditions, without charges and due to mere suspicions which the Canadian government had fueled, the government was working behind the scenes to ensure that a victim of similar injustice would have to remain in the country of his captivity.

The arrest of Abdelrazik

Abousfian Abdelrazik was born in Sudan, and came to Canada in 1990 claiming refugee status. He had opposed the new Sudanese government of Omar al-Bashir, and had been jailed by that government in 1989. His refugee claim was accepted in 1992, and Abdelrazik went on to become a Canadian citizen in 1995.

While living in Montreal, he became acquainted with Ahmed Ressam. He subsequently testified for the prosecution in Ressam’s trial for plotting to blow up the Los Angeles Airport. He also knew Adil Charkaoui, a Morocco-born Canadian who was arrested in 2003 as “a danger to national security.” But as Zinn writes, Mr. Abdelrazik has never been charged with any criminal offence, terrorism-related or otherwise, in Canada or elsewhere in the world. There is no evidence in the record before this Court on which one could reasonably conclude that Mr. Abdelrazik has any connection to terrorism or terrorists, other than his association with these two individuals.”

Nevertheless, Abdelrazik says he was harassed by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in the days after 9/11. The suspicions of CSIS followed him out of the country. In March, 2003, Abdelrazik returned to Sudan to visit his ailing mother, and in September, 2003, Sudanese authorities arrested him. Judge Zinn found that “CSIS was complicit in the detention of Mr. Abdelrazik by the Sudanese authorities.”

His first imprisonment lasted 11 months, and included frequent beatings with a rubber hose, Abdelrazik says. In July 2005, the Sudanese Ministry of Justice exonerated him, in writing, of any affiliation with Al-Qaida. Nevertheless, just a few months later he was again imprisoned, for nine months, and he says he again endured torture.

After six years, two imprisonments, but no charges and no trial, Abdelrazik’s Canadian passport has long since expired. The Canadian government has reneged on promises to issue a new one, thereby rendering meaningless his Canadian Charter right, as a Canadian citizen, to return to Canada.

Franz Kafka and the UN no-fly list

In July of 2006, Abdelrazik was listed by the UN 1267 Committee as an associate of Al-Qaida.

The 1267 Committee owes its existence to UN Resolution 1267, which sets up a procedure for denying funds and travel rights to associates of Al-Qaida and/or the Taliban. As Zinn notes, “According to the Committee’s Guidelines, a criminal charge or conviction is not a pre-requisite to listing.”

Zinn was unable to determine which government had Abdelrazik added to the no-fly list, but there was strong evidence implicating the United States. (For example, on July 20, 2006, a United States Treasury Department press release referred to Abdelrazik's "high level ties to and support for the Al-Qaida network". The document also said "He has been identified as being close to Abu Zubayada, a former high ranking member of the Al-Qaida network …." Could this allegation have emerged during Zubayadah's 83 waterboarding sessions?) To this day, the Committee’s public listing says not a word about why Abdelrazik is on the list.

But for the Canadian government the 1267 listing appeared to offer a fool-proof method of keeping Abdelrazik in Sudan. In addition to being a no-fly list, a 1267 listing prohibits any financial aid to the listee. The Canadian government claimed that it could not provide any financial assistance, but that it would provide a temporary passport if the now-penniless Abdelrazik could show that he had a paid airline ticket.

That ploy was temporarily effective. But when Abdelrazik’s plight became widely known, a group of supporters emerged in Canada. Risking imprisonment under “anti-terror” legislation, 115 Canadians anted up for a plane ticket. The group included a former Solicitor General of Canada, Warren Allmand, and Stephen Lewis, former United Nations Special Envoy in Africa.

The Canadian government appeared to have no choice -- it had to break another promise. And so, on April 3, 2009, just two hours before Abdelrazik’s flight was to leave Khartoum, he received a one-sentence letter denying him an emergency passport.

The Canadian government then held to the claim that it would only grant a passport when Abdelrazik succeeded in having himself removed from the UN no-fly list.

By this point, the parallels to Franz Kafka’s The Trial had become glaringly obvious. Abdelrazik had no way of knowing who had accused him of ties to Al Qaida or what he was charged with doing -- but he was required to prove himself innocent. Indeed, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation produced a gripping radio documentary, interspersing passages from Kafka’s novel with a chronology of Abdelrazik’s ordeal.

The 1267 Committee’s guidelines say that a petitioner seeking de-listing “should provide justification for the de-listing request by describing the basis for this request, including by explaining why he/she no longer meets the criteria described in paragraph 2 of resolution 1617 ….” Zinn notes that “For a person such as Mr. Abdelrazik who asserts that he never met the criteria and was wrongly listed in the first instance, it is difficult to see how he can provide the requested justification, particularly when he has no information as to the basis for the initial listing.”

“It is a fundamental principle of Canadian and international justice that the accused does not have the burden of proving his innocence, the accuser has the burden of proving guilt,” the judge continues, before concluding that “The 1267 Committee regime is, as I observed at the hearing, a situation for a listed person not unlike that of Josef K. in Kafka’s The Trial, who awakens one morning and, for reasons never revealed to him or the reader, is arrested and prosecuted for an unspecified crime.”

But as bad as the 1267 rules may be, they specifically make exemptions for persons trying to return to their country of citizenship, as well as “where entry or transit is ncessary for the fulfilment of a judicial process ….” Thus Judge Zinn concluded that the Canadian government was merely using the 1267 no-fly listing as a pretext to deny Abelrazik a passport and a flight back to Canada. The Canadian government had thus violated Abdelrazik’s rights as a citizen. As a remedy, the Judge ordered that the government of Canada must issue an emergency passport, must assist in making travel arrangements, including making payment for a new airline ticket if Abdelrazik’s previous ticket is not honoured, report to the Judge within 15 days on the completion of such travel plans, and finally, prove to the Judge that they have complied by having Abdelrazik appear before him in a courtroom within 30 days. (This last condition not only indicates that the Judge is not willing to take the government’s word about Abdelrazik’s return, but ensures that the return is part of a “judicial process”, adding another reason why the UN no-fly listing cannot be used to keep him in Sudan.)

Is this the final word? The Harper government in Canada, like the Bush and Obama governments in the US, has proven stubbornly resistant to previously accepted concepts of fair play and due process. As in the US, Canadian legislators have mostly gone along with whatever extraordinary powers the executive branch claims. And so it has fallen to a string of court decisions to reassert such rights as habeus corpus, the right to know and answer to the alleged grounds for detention, or the right to return to the country of one’s citizenship.

If the past eight years are any guide, the Harper government is likely considering whether it will fight Judge Zinn’s decision.

Bipartisan lovefest in Toronto

Thu, 28 May 2009 17:05:01 -0400

All right, I’m a slow learner. Until I saw the ad in the newspaper, I really didn’t get it. I didn’t really understand that if the Bush administration torture architects are brought to justice, it won’t be because of the Democratic Party, but in spite of the Democratic Party.

The sorry record of the Democratic establishment during the Bush years should have given me a clue. And the continuation of this sorry record by Barack Obama should have clinched the issue. He has made it clear that he is not interested in accountability for crimes by the Washington elite. He’s tried to preserve the “state secrets” privilege to block lawsuits by torture victims, and threatened the government of Britain if they release information on the torture of a British inmate at Guantanamo.

Just last week, Democratic senators responded to Dick Cheney’s cross-country pro-torture tour, by joining the freak-out about having alleged terrorists held in American prisons. Not to be outdone in pandering to panic, the President pledged to develop a “legal framework” for locking up people indefinitely without trial. Clearly, not much has changed in Washington: when a Republican says “Stoop!” the Democrats just ask “How low?”

And yet ... as I idly flipped through the business section of yesterday’s Toronto Star, this ad took my breath away.

An “exclusive event” sponsored by a major financial institution. A cheerful, gentlemanly “conversation” between the leader of the torture administration and his Democratic predecessor, who happens to be the husband of the Secretary of State in the new administration. A chance for the corporate elite of Canada to bask in the reflected glow of power, way more power than anyone in Canada has ever held. And a chance for two wealthy men to walk away with a couple of hundred thousand dollars each.

When being a Washington insider pays that well, can we expect any of them, Republican or Democrat, to really rock the boat?

They might quibble on some policy issues – “did deregulation of the financial markets really turn out to be a good idea?” … “is torture really a useful form of statecraft?” But when the two speakers, and their audience, walk out of the Convention Centre tomorrow evening, they will share warm feelings about the system that has rewarded them so richly.

So thank you, TD Bank Financial Group. Your exclusive event really sucks, but your ad paints a clearer picture than anything else in the newspaper.