Canada

Reports of the Clintons' dirty politics tactics are mounting every day and it now involves not only officials within the White House but the Prime Minister of Canada as well.

Read and weep from The Globe and Mail :

Reporters were locked up there all day, examining the federal budget until they were allowed to leave once it was tabled in the House of Commons at 4 p.m.

Since the budget contained little in the way of headline-grabbing surprises, some were left with enough free time to gather around a large-screen TV to watch the latest hockey news on NHL trade deadline day.

Mr. Brodie wandered over to speak to Finance Department officials and chatted amiably with journalists — who appreciated this rare moment of direct access to the top official in Mr. Harper's notoriously tight-lipped government.

The former university professor found himself in a room with CTV employees where he was quickly surrounded by a gaggle of reporters while other journalists were within earshot of other colleagues.

At the end of an extended conversation, Mr. Brodie was asked about remarks aimed by the Democratic candidates at Ohio's anti-NAFTA voters that carried serious economic implications for Canada.

Since 75 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S., Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton's musings about reopening the North American free-trade pact had caused some concern.

Mr. Brodie downplayed those concerns.

"Quite a few people heard it," said one source in the room.

"He said someone from (Hillary) Clinton's campaign is telling the embassy to take it with a grain of salt. . . That someone called us and told us not to worry."

Government officials did not deny the conversation took place.

They said that Mr. Brodie sought to allay concerns about the impact of Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton's assertion that they would re-negotiate NAFTA if elected. But they did say that Mr. Brodie had no recollection of discussing any specific candidate — either Ms. Clinton or Mr. Obama.

CTV News President Robert Hurst said he would not discuss his journalists' sources.

But others said the content of Mr. Brodie's remarks was passed on to CTV's Washington bureau and their White House correspondent set out the next day to pursue the story on Ms. Clinton's apparent hypocrisy on the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Although CTV correspondent Tom Clark mentioned Ms. Clinton in passing, the focus of his story was on assurances from the Obama camp.

To say that Canadian government has been embarrassed is to say the least. Whomever leaked this conversation to CTV did it knowing they could use it to hurt Senator Obama. The diplomatic repercussions of this are not only unprecedented. The Canadian government believes it's illegal.

Editor's Note:
Promoted and post-dated by liza; who says this one is an instant classic and a serious must read.

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So, I had a conversation with Stinkapee. She wanted to know why the British had enslaved Black Africans, our ancestors and dragged them over here to work. I gave her a simple answer. I told her that they probably had Dursleys for parents.

I was talking to my counsellor when I realized that I was more accurate than I realized. The "parents" of the British, the influential people that Western historians would probably say came before the British were the Romans who invaded that tiny island way back when it was just a collection of warring tribes.

Does this sound familiar?

So, the ancestors of the Scots, the Irish, the Welsh, umm...there might be others, were just there minding their own business, painting themselves blue, having yearly rituals in the honour of the earth goddess, trying to jostle for better land, more food, fertile wimmin...of course this is a gross over simplification...

When along came the Romans sweeping across Europe, dominating, harming, "civilizing", everything in their wake as they stretched the boundaries of their state's reach.

These, warlike, patriarchal, dominating, authoritarian, violent people came with their values, spread not just their architecture, their styles of governance, their language (Romance languages), their official religion (eventually christianity was imposed by the Romans), but also spread extreme emotional dysfunction.

A poll conducted by BBC in 27 countries shows that Bush's idea of an "Axis of Evil" may get some international support. Problem is, according to world opinion, the US is part of that Axis of Evil...or perhaps Axis of Destabilization:

According to a poll made for the BBC, carried out in 27 countries, 56% of those interviewed see in Israel, the United States, Iran and North Korea, "the countries with the most harmful influence on the world". (Guysen.Isra×›l.News)

Checking out the BBC website, shows that Israel, Iran and the US are viewed as having a "mostly negative influence" on the world by more than 50% of people polled. North Korea does slightly better with 48% of people polled seeing them as having a "mostly negative influence." So the US is slightly better than Iran and slightly worse than North Korea in its influence on the world, it seems. Great job, Bush! The world, which loved us under Clinton/Gore now see us as about as much a threat to the world as Iran and North Korea thanks to Bush/Cheney.

Looking at it from the other end, Canada, EU collectively, and Japan top the list as having a "mostly positive influence" according to more than half of people taking the poll. It is interesting that Japan does so well given how much China, Taiwan and the Koreas hate them. Isreal's low rating is not surprising given their unpopularity in the Muslim world and the negative view of their war with Lebanon.