They Couldn't Even Hang Him Decently

Immediately following the execution of Hussein, Iraqi officials assured the world that the procedure had been conducted properly and that Saddam had been treated with dignity.

It turns out that wasn't true. Someone used a cell phone camera to video the grisly event and the soundtrack shows Saddam was taunted and demeaned in the final minutes of his life. The witnesses mocked Saddam even as he was uttering his final prayers.

It's no skin off my nose but I'm not a Sunni. To the Iraqi Sunnis this adds profound insult to the injury of the victors' justice meted out to their own. Those stupid, gratuitous insults and provocations will now have to be paid for in blood. In Iraq there's no other way.

Hanging Saddam decently should have been a simple task. That the government couldn't even do that right bodes very poorly for the future of the country. It also does nothing to improve the safety of American soldiers who have to prop up this wobbly administration.

Of course the cell phone video is at large on the internet so those who will be seeking Shia victims will be able to stoke their fury anytime they please. Why was anyone allowed in their with a cell phone? That's just plain stupid, utterly incompetent.

Bush Dropping the Ball - Again

You might remember Richard Clarke, former White House anti-terrorism czar who couldn't get the time of day from the Bush administration before 9/11.

In an article in today's Washington Post, Clarke portrays a White House so totally obsessed with Iraq that other pressing issues are being ignored:

"National Security Council veteran Rand Beers has called this the "7-year-old's soccer syndrome" -- just like little kids playing soccer, everyone forgets their particular positions and responsibilities and runs like a herd after the ball.

"Without the distraction of the Iraq war, the administration would have spent this past year -- indeed, every year since Sept. 11, 2001 -- focused on al-Qaeda. But beyond al-Qaeda and the broader struggle for peaceful coexistence with (and within) Islam, seven key "fires in the in-box" national security issues remain unattended, deteriorating and threatening, all while Washington's grown-up 7-year-olds play herd ball with Iraq."

Clarke identifies 7 key security issues that Bush advisors are failing to address:

1. Global Warming
2. Russian Revanchism
3. Latin America's Shift Left
4. Africa's Wars
5. Arms Control Freeze
6. Transnational Crime
7. the Pakistan-Afghanistan Border Issue.

"As the president contemplates sending even more U.S. forces into the Iraqi sinkhole, he should consider not only the thousands of fatalities, the tens of thousands of casualties and the hundreds of billions of dollars already lost. He must also weigh the opportunity cost of taking his national security barons off all the other critical problems they should be addressing -- problems whose windows of opportunity are slamming shut, unheard over the wail of Baghdad sirens."

So, There's My Problem

Toxoplasma Gondii. I'm sure I've got it and you might have it too but, if you do and you're female, give me a call.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, 40% of us have got this parasite that turns men dumb and women, well really hot:

"A common parasite can increase a women's attractiveness to the opposite sex but also make men more stupid, an Australian researcher says.

"About 40 per cent of the world's population is infected with Toxoplasma gondii, including about eight million Australians.

"Until recently it was thought to be an insignificant disease in healthy people, Sydney University of Technology infectious disease researcher Nicky Boulter said, but new research has revealed its mind-altering properties.

"'Interestingly, the effect of infection is different between men and women,' Dr Boulter writes in the latest issue of Australasian Science magazine.

"'Infected men have lower IQs, achieve a lower level of education and have shorter attention spans. They are also more likely to break rules and take risks, be more independent, more anti-social, suspicious, jealous and morose, and are deemed less attractive to women.'

"'On the other hand, infected women tend to be more outgoing, friendly, more promiscuous, and are considered more attractive to men compared with non-infected controls.'

"'In short, it can make men behave like alley cats and women behave like sex kittens'".

Happy New Year! - I think, or maybe not

The Globalization of Organized Labour

Multinational corporations were quite successful at bringing organized labour to its knees. If they found labour demands unacceptable, they often just moved to another corner of the world more to their liking.

Now labour is fighting back - by turning multinational themselves:

"British, American and German unions are to forge a pact to challenge the power of global capitalism in a move towards creating an international union with more than 6 million members.
Amicus, the UK's largest private sector union, has signed agreements with the German engineering union IG-Metall and two of the largest labour organisations in the US, the United Steelworkers and the International Association of Machinists, to prevent companies playing off their workforces in different countries against each other.

"The move, to be announced this week, is seen by union leaders as the first step towards creating a single union that can present a united front to multinational companies.
Derek Simpson, general secretary of Amicus, said: 'Our aim is to create a powerful single union that can transcend borders to challenge the global forces of capital. I envisage a functioning, if loosely federal, multinational organisation within the next decade.'

"Simpson added that multinational companies 'trade off countries and workforces against each other' and that forging such solidarity agreements as have been signed with German and US unions is the best way to combat such practices."

Essential Reading for Harper, Hillier & O'Conner

It's entitled "FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency" and there should be a copy on the desk of each MP when parliament reconvenes.

There aren't many nations that have had as much experience at losing to insurgencies as the United States. That's why, when the Pentagon takes stock and comes up with what they were doing wrong, those new to the counterinsurgency business - such as Canada - should stand up and take notice.

I posted an item about FM 3-24 a couple of months back but The Economist recently published an article on it:

"These days, ...American commanders are reaching for the history books as they discover that high-tech firepower is of little use—and can often be counter-productive—in the streets of Baghdad. Some have sought inspiration in classics such as T. E. Lawrence's “Seven Pillars of Wisdom”, published in 1922, or the Marine Corps' rediscovered “Small Wars Manual” of 1940. On December 15th they got some official help in the form of a new joint army and marines field manual.

"FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency” makes awkward reading for those trained in the notion of out-manoeuvring and annihilating an enemy force. Now American troops must be “ready to be greeted with either a handshake or a hand grenade” and must be “nation-builders as well as warriors”. Under the new doctrine, fighting insurgents involves “armed social work”.

“Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction,” says the manual. The best weapon is sometimes none at all. The prime objective is not to kill as many insurgents as possible but to maximise support from the local population. Above all, troops must adapt quickly.

"Instead of isolating themselves in large camps and driving around in armoured vehicles, the manual advises American troops to live “close to the populace”, move on foot, sleep in villages and patrol by day and night. Each company should have a political as well as a “cultural” adviser. Platoons should assign their best soldiers to intelligence and surveillance, even at the cost of firepower. Forget the chain of command: decisions should be taken by consensus where possible.
Soldiering is only one strand. It must be entwined with others—including providing essential services, promoting good governance, building up local security forces and devising an information policy to counter insurgents' propaganda.

"The 282-page manual reads at times like a litany of the things America has done wrong in Iraq. But those arguing for withdrawal will find little solace. Insurgencies, it says, “are protracted by nature”. America and its allies must show the “ability, stamina, and will to win”.

"Moreover, counter-insurgency cannot be done on the cheap. It requires large amounts of manpower—some 20 to 25 members of security forces for every 1,000 civilians. The 483,000 combined coalition and Iraqi forces (of dubious quality and loyalty) fall well short of the 535,000 to 670,000 required to secure Iraq.

"If American commanders' response to Vietnam was to foreswear nasty small wars, their reaction to the fiasco in Iraq seems so far to be quite different: to learn to fight them better. The new manual is a first step, but America's military culture may stand in need of deeper change. A start might be to rewrite the first words of its “warrior ethos”, whereby every soldier declares: “I stand ready to deploy, engage, and destroy the enemies of the United States of America.”

What's the cardinal rule for Canada's mission in Afghanistan? Simple, you cannot do this on the cheap. Kandahar province has a population of 886,000 and an area of just under 21,000 square miles. For the counterinsurgency mission Canada fields a battle group of one thousand soldiers, or one rifle for every 20-square miles of bandit country.

Using the American recommendation of 25 security forces per 1,000 locals, we should be deploying a battle group of roughly 22,000. 22,000, not 1,000! Do the math Steve, you too Rick. Our force is less than 5% of the number required for effective counterinsurgency in Kandahar province.

Remember, the forces arrayed against our soldiers are probably the most-experienced and successful insurgents in history. They drove out the Brits twice and they mauled the Soviets until they left. These are not enemies we can afford to take lightly.

Oh yeah, just in case Steve or Rick or Gord are reading this post, they should check out the final release of FM 3-24 which is available, in its entirety, here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-24.pdf

Anyone else who is "gung ho" on the mission would do well to pore over this also.

Another Glimpse Into For-Profit Health Care

America's health care model is viewed enviously by those on the right here in Canada. That's why it can be helpful to have a reality check every now and then at just how well the system actually works in the United States. Today's LA Times reports on how American health insurers turn their backs on all but the fittest:

"Insurers have wide latitude to choose among applicants for individual coverage and set premiums based on medical conditions. Insurers say medical underwriting, as the selection process is known, is key to keeping premiums under control.

"'Our goal is to extend affordable coverage to as many people as we can,' said Cheryl Randolph, a spokeswoman for PacifiCare Health Systems Inc., a subsidiary of Minneapolis-based UnitedHealth Group Inc. 'But because of the medical underwriting, we do not accept everybody.'

"Consumer advocates see the practice as cherry-picking — a legal form of discrimination that is no longer tolerated in schools, public accommodations or workplaces — and a way to guarantee profits.

"'The idea is to avoid all risk,' said Bryan Liang, executive director of the Institute of Health Law Studies at California Western School of Law in San Diego.

"Jerry Flanagan, an advocate with the Foundation for Consumer and Taxpayer Rights, said it wouldn't take much to be left out of the private-insurance market. 'A minor asthma condition or a surgery 10 years ago that requires no further medical care is enough to get you blacklisted forever,' he said.

"As a result, some people forgo treatment so as not to tarnish their health records. Others withhold information from doctors or ask them to leave details out of their records. For those who are uninsurable, healthcare often is the chief reason they stay in or take a certain job.

"Claudine Swartz enjoyed running her own consulting business but had been rejected for individual insurance. After a scare over a benign cyst in her breast, the San Francisco resident closed her business and got a job with the University of California's health system, where she enjoys guaranteed coverage.The episode made her realize that without insurance, she would have been on the hook for catastrophic expenses if her diagnosis had been more serious.

"'I wasn't willing to take that risk,' said Swartz, 35. 'It's a real problem for people trying to be entrepreneurial and work on their own.'

"Uninsurable individuals pose a significant challenge for the state, which expects to spend more than $10 billion this year on people who lack adequate coverage."

Access to health care must be seen as a basic social need. Those who advocate a privatized health care regime or a mixed private/public model undermine that principle. Their arguments are intriguing until you take a look at the dark side of privatized medicine so readily on display south of the border.

Has Mugabe Finally Hit a Wall?

The name Robert Mugabe has become synonymous with "excess" and "abuse." For years he's thumbed his nose at the world while brutally repressing the people of Zimbabwe.

Recently there were reports that Mugabe had decided to extend his term in office, at first by two years and then, it seemed, by ten. Everyone just expected this to be rubber-stamped by his governing party, the Zanu-PF.

Turns out that didn't happen. The Zanu-PF delegates at the party's mid-December conference refused to pass the measure. As The Guardian reports, Mugabe may finally be running out of steam - and allies:

"Zanu-PF insiders say the stiff resistance within the party to Mugabe's proposal is the first sign of the vulnerability of the 82-year-old leader, who has been in power for 26 years. It is the first time a party conference has failed to adopt a resolution supported by Mugabe, who will succeed in amending the constitution only if his proposal is passed by the central committee.

"The party's rebuke to Mugabe exposes growing dissatisfaction with his continued rule. The two major factions within Zanu-PF vying to succeed Mugabe are led by Vice-President Joice Mujuru and former Speaker of the House Emmerson Mnangagwa. The bitter foes have set aside their differences to oppose Mugabe.

"'Neither side wants to see Mugabe extend his rule. They want elections in 2008,' said John Makumbe, political science lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe. 'They united against Mugabe at the party conference and they found that the owl has no horns. That is a Shona saying meaning that they found Mugabe to be a paper tiger. Mugabe is going to have a difficult time keeping his party in line in the coming year.'

"Meanwhile, Zimbabwe's rapidly declining economy has shrunk by nearly 50 per cent since the year 2000. Inflation is the world's highest at 1,100 per cent, unemployment is estimated at 80 per cent and life expectancy has fallen to 34 years for women, the world's lowest.

"Mugabe has also alienated his strongest ally, South African President Thabo Mbeki, and leaders from other neighbouring countries who do not welcome his continued rule, according to reports in South Africa. An estimated three million Zimbabweans - a quarter of the country's population of 12 million - have fled to South Africa and Zimbabwe's collapse has slowed economic growth across southern Africa."

When brutal tyrants, like Mugabe, fall out of favour with their own it rarely ends well for them. Things tend to get ugly as the boss clings on to what once was and his rivals struggle to pry his fingers off the levers of power. 2007 could be the year of Mugabe's obituary.

What They Buried With Saddam

When Saddam Hussein was lowered into his grave, he carried with him a lot of information that Washington and London are relieved to see buried.

In today's edition of "The Independent", Robert Fisk reports on how the West armed Saddam, fed him intelligence on his 'enemies', equipped him for atrocities - and then made sure he wouldn't squeal:

"The moment Saddam's hooded executioner pulled the lever of the trapdoor in Baghdad yesterday morning, Washington's secrets were safe. The shameless, outrageous, covert military support which the United States - and Britain - gave to Saddam for more than a decade remains the one terrible story which our presidents and prime ministers do not want the world to remember. And now Saddam, who knew the full extent of that Western support - given to him while he was perpetrating some of the worst atrocities since the Second World War - is dead.

"Gone is the man who personally received the CIA's help in destroying the Iraqi communist party. After Saddam seized power, US intelligence gave his minions the home addresses of communists in Baghdad and other cities in an effort to destroy the Soviet Union's influence in Iraq. Saddam's mukhabarat visited every home, arrested the occupants and their families, and butchered the lot. Public hanging was for plotters; the communists, their wives and children, were given special treatment - extreme torture before execution at Abu Ghraib.

"There is growing evidence across the Arab world that Saddam held a series of meetings with senior American officials prior to his invasion of Iran in 1980 - both he and the US administration believed that the Islamic Republic would collapse if Saddam sent his legions across the border - and the Pentagon was instructed to assist Iraq's military machine by providing intelligence on the Iranian order of battle.

"Iran's official history of the eight-year war with Iraq states that Saddam first used chemical weapons against it on 13 January 1981. AP's correspondent in Baghdad, Mohamed Salaam, was taken to see the scene of an Iraqi military victory east of Basra. "We started counting - we walked miles and miles in this fucking desert, just counting," he said. "We got to 700 and got muddled and had to start counting again ... The Iraqis had used, for the first time, a combination - the nerve gas would paralyse their bodies ... the mustard gas would drown them in their own lungs. That's why they spat blood."

"At the time, the Iranians claimed that this terrible cocktail had been given to Saddam by the US. Washington denied this. But the Iranians were right. The lengthy negotiations which led to America's complicity in this atrocity remain secret - Donald Rumsfeld was one of President Ronald Reagan's point-men at this period - although Saddam undoubtedly knew every detail. But a largely unreported document, "United States Chemical and Biological Warfare-related Dual-use exports to Iraq and their possible impact on the Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf War", stated that prior to 1985 and afterwards, US companies had sent government-approved shipments of biological agents to Iraq. These included Bacillus anthracis, which produces anthrax, andEscherichia coli (E. coli). That Senate report concluded that: "The United States provided the Government of Iraq with 'dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-systems programs, including ... chemical warfare agent production facility plant and technical drawings, chemical warfare filling equipment."

"Nor was the Pentagon unaware of the extent of Iraqi use of chemical weapons. In 1988, for example, Saddam gave his personal permission for Lt-Col Rick Francona, a US defence intelligence officer - one of 60 American officers who were secretly providing members of the Iraqi general staff with detailed information on Iranian deployments, tactical planning and bomb damage assessments - to visit the Fao peninsula after Iraqi forces had recaptured the town from the Iranians. He reported back to Washington that the Iraqis had used chemical weapons to achieve their victory. The senior defence intelligence officer at the time, Col Walter Lang, later said that the use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis "was not a matter of deep strategic concern".

"In 1989, Britain, which had been giving its own covert military assistance to Saddam guaranteed £250m to Iraq shortly after the arrest of Observer journalist Farzad Bazoft in Baghdad. Bazoft, who had been investigating an explosion at a factory at Hilla which was using the very chemical components sent by the US, was later hanged. Within a month of Bazoft's arrest William Waldegrave, then a Foreign Office minister, said: "I doubt if there is any future market of such a scale anywhere where the UK is potentially so well-placed if we play our diplomatic hand correctly... A few more Bazofts or another bout of internal oppression would make it more difficult."

"Even more repulsive were the remarks of the then Deputy Prime Minister, Geoffrey Howe, on relaxing controls on British arms sales to Iraq. He kept this secret, he wrote, because "it would look very cynical if, so soon after expressing outrage about the treatment of the Kurds, we adopt a more flexible approach to arms sales".

"The whole truth died with Saddam Hussein in the Baghdad execution chamber yesterday. Many in Washington and London must have sighed with relief that the old man had been silenced for ever."

Say What, Israeli Refugees in Canada?

One doesn't expect to find a story involving Canada when readin the Israeli paper, Haaretz. But there it was, an account of Israeli citizens seeking refugee status in Canada. According to the report, 679 Israelis sought asylum abroad in 2005, most of them in the True North:

"Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) has asked Israel's National Council for the Child for information on immigrant children in Israel. Canadian authorities want to know whether immigrant children in Israel are being harassed or abused, in order to evaluate political asylum cases.

"In 2005, 679 Israeli citizens sought asylum abroad, mainly in Canada. Some 200 requests were approved, mainly of citizens of the former Soviet Union who came to Israel but left claiming they were persecuted, because of their origin or religion.

"In a letter last month, the IRB asked the council whether it could provide examples of mistreatment of immigrant children; whether children of immigrants from the former Soviet Union were subject to harm at school or violence in their neighborhoods, and whether certain groups of immigrant children were more at risk of abuse than others. The Canadian authorities also sought to understand how the Israeli government has been responding to reports of abuse of immigrant children, and how effective their response has been thus far.

"The head of the Council for the Child, Dr. Yitzhak Kadman, said in response that official bodies do not have clear policies that put immigrant children at a disadvantage, but that these children encounter problems typical of an immigrant population. For example, the number of immigrant children involved in crime and substance abuse is proportionally high, and investment in education and welfare programs to deal with these crises is insufficient.

"Kadman further responded that immigrant children are not particular victims of violence or abuse in the schools. With regard to immigrant children as an at-risk group, he reported that children from the Central Asian republics have had an especially hard time adjusting, as do children arriving in Israel on tourist visas who do not have legal residency in Israel."

The Drawing Power of a Tyrant

What is so captivating about the death of Saddam Hussein?

He's a lead story in every newspaper, online new site and TV news broadcast. All Saddam, all the time.

Is there a "mission accomplished" element to it for Americans and others who supported the Iraq conquest? Does this man's death somehow justify the carnage of the past three years and of the years to come?

Is it that we're all voyeurs to a thoroughly grisly event? We sit in the comfort of our homes and offices pondering what it must be like to be Saddam this very minute, waiting for the hangman to appear?

Is Saddam already swinging on a gallows? Is he for the drop in a few hours? Will he meet his fate tomorrow or maybe the day after? Is it his death watch that captivates us?

Isn't it odd that we don't think of even more predictable deaths that will occur today. The men, women and children who will be in the wrong place when a car bomb detonates or when we drop a bomb on a suspected insurgent hideout or those who will be swept up off the streets, taken away to a place to be tortured then executed and finally dumped on some roadside? There are plenty of those people sitting in someone's custody right now going through the same mental anguish Saddam is experiencing right now.

Do we even think of all these others who will die today? Not really. Oh there'll be some tabulation in tomorrow's news as surely as the sun will rise. We may actually notice the number and say to ourselves, "Oh 25, not so bad compared to last week." 50 or 25 or 60 or more, almost all of them more deserving to live than the Butcher of Baghdad and we really don't give a tinker's dam about any of them.

No, Saddam is a celebrity and that means his execution matters. As for all the unknowns, their slaughter doesn't.

Wet Coast Worries

Okay, all you global warming disbelievers go back to your crayons. This isn't for you.

The breakup of the Ayles ice shelf on Ellesmere Island announced yesterday is the sort of thing that gets noticed by us coastal denizens. There are places not too far away from my home where a sea level increase of just a foot or two would have a truly major impact. How far off is that day?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not panicking. My home sits well back from the shoreline on high ground about sixty feet above current sea levels on low tide. At my age, I'll be gone long before the house even gets wet. But there are plenty of places I have to go that probably wouldn't survive even a modest increase in sea levels.

Make no mistake about it. Ocean levels have already risen. All three of New York's airports are subject to seasonal flooding. A once-inhabited island recently disappeared in the Bay of Bengal and there are plenty more that will soon follow.

We're now told that the Arctic will be ice-free and open to summer navigation within the next thirty to forty years. Time and again we've seen scientists surprised that changes are occuring much faster than they predicted.

So what lies ahead. It's estimated that a melt of the Greenland ice sheet would cause a sea level rise of 23-feet.

The good news is that most of Canada's ice shelves are already 90% smaller than when they were surveyed a century earlier. The bad news is that the remainder aren't just gradually melting away but are breaking up much more quickly than predicted.

The winter storms we've been having out here lately are a stark reminder of the reality of climate change. Massive concrete seawalls that have held back the sea and sand for decades are now being overwhelmed. Low-lying lands are flooding with greater frequency. It's pretty hard to deny what you can see with your own eyes.

How To Win in Afghanistan

How can we win in Afghanistan? That all depends on how you define "win."

At the moment we're taking a very broad approach which means somehow defeating the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Maybe we need to rethink that. The Taliban are really just another bunch of Islamists - Islamic fundamentalists - in a region chock full of Islamic fundamentalists.

Tackling Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan is one thing but the greater challenge to "the mission" NATO has taken on is the Islamist reality in neighbouring Pakistan which the Sydney Morning Herald notes could be our next nightmare:


"IT HAS more than twice as many people as Iran, six times more than Iraq, many primed for Islamic extremism by a legacy of poverty and illiteracy left by decades of misrule by corrupt secular leaders, civilian and military.

"It already has nuclear weapons, and ballistic missiles made with North Korean help. It shelters jihadists battling Western forces across its border, and fanatical cells training Muslim youth in Western countries to put bombs on buses and metros.

"If Iraq has turned into a nightmare for the US President, George Bush, think about Islamists gaining power in Pakistan, population 166 million, and their hands on its nuclear arsenal.

"Across the border in Afghanistan, 31,000 US, Canadian, European and Australian troops are fighting a resurgent Taliban in the country's south.

"The British-led forces can outbattle the Islamist fighters, but the constant fighting and presence of foreign troops is steadily undermining local support for the government of President Hamid Karzai. Frustratingly for the British and Afghan commanders, the Taliban are able to operate out of neighbouring Pakistan with little hindrance.

"The Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, is said to live in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's Baluchistan province, hold his "shura" or council meetings openly in the city, and train his fighters at two camps on the city's outskirts.

Before an attack by 1500 Taliban fighters in early September, the Taliban streamed across the border into Afghanistan cheered on by Pakistani border guards.

"Pakistan's President and army chief, Pervez Musharraf, has been confronted several times this year, by Karzai, the British and the Americans, who have supplied addresses and phone numbers for Omar and his cohorts in Quetta.

"Musharraf throws up unconvincing bluster. He claims that Pakistan has done all it can to prevent cross-border military activity, with its army losing 750 killed in campaigns since September 11, 2001, along its frontier with Afghanistan.

Yet Musharraf and his government are deeply ambivalent in their commitment to supporting the Western campaign, in return for which about $US4 billion ($5 billion) in US aid has flowed their way over the past five years.

"With the leaders of the country's two main secular parties, former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, in exile and opposing military rule, Musharraf relies on Islamists for domestic political support.

"Principal among these is the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party, which explicitly supports the Taliban and reinforces it with recruits from its madrassas (Koranic schools), and which the Pakistan Army and its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency helped join ruling coalitions in both Baluchistan and the North-West Frontier Province."

So there, in a nutshell, you have the core problem that the NATO mission cannot hope to overcome. Pakistan, 166-million strong, is the world's first Islamist nuclear power. So long as Islamic extremism prevails in Pakistan there can be no hope of defeating it in its impoverished and feeble neighbour, Afghanistan. Major Islamist tribes such as the Baluchs and the Pashtun don't even see the border between the two states.

Genuine, secular democracy in Kabul is a pipedream. If we cannot defeat the Islamists we need to find some terms on which we can deal with them. Can they be both accommodated and restrained? Can we drive a wedge between theocrats and terrorists? If not, are we prepared to fight Pakistan? How else can we hope to win in Afghanistan?

It's On - Maybe

Tensions between Islam's major sects, Sunni and Shia, are increasing as Iran stirs up the Middle East pot. Today these tensions just got worse according to the Associated Press:

"A top Saudi Arabian Sunni cleric on Friday declared Shiites around the world to be infidels who should be considered worse than Jews or Christians, the latest sign of increasing sectarianism in the Middle East.

"Abdul Rahman al-Barak, one of the top several Wahhabi clerics in Saudi Arabia and considered close to the Kingdom's royal family, also urged Sunnis worldwide to oppose reconciliation with Shiites. The Wahhabi stream of Sunni Islam that is followed in Saudi Arabia is conservative and views Shiites as heretics.

"'By and large, rejectionists (Shiites) are the most evil sect of the nation and they have all the ingredients of the infidels,' Abdul Rahman wrote in a fatwa, or religious edict, that was posted on his web site Friday.

"'The general ruling is that they are infidels, apostates and hypocrites,' he wrote. 'They are more dangerous than Jews and Christians,' he wrote in the edict, which Abdul Rahman said was in response to a question from a follower.

"Earlier this month, about 30 prominent Saudi Wahhabi clerics called on Sunni Muslims around the Middle East to support their brethren in Iraq against Shiites and praised the anti-American insurgency.

"Thousands of Iraqis have been killed this year in sectarian bloodshed between the majority Shiites and the Sunni Arab minority, who lost their dominance after the fall of Saddam Hussein."

For the West the issue is can we somehow avoid having to take sides? Is it in our best interests to simply get out of the way and watch from the sidelines?

Can We Wait Out Iran?

A form of Cold War is being played out in the Middle East today. Arrayed on one side are Israel, the West and various Sunni Arab states. Facing them are Iran and the Shia Muslim movement as well as Iran's proxies: Hezbollah and Hamas.

There are three reasons to fear Iran. One is its open hatred of Israel, at least among Iran's leaders. Another is Iran's persistent drive to acquire the ability to enrich uranium, a precursor to development of nuclear weapons. The third is Iran's drive to extend Shiite influence throughout the region, not only into Iraq but even into Lebanon, Palestine and Afghanistan. This Pan-Shiite expansion is often manifested in conflicts that destabilize areas of Sunni influence. Iran's approach isn't solely aggressive. It also pours massive amounts of money into reconstruction and development projects in regions it seeks to influence, if not dominate.

As David Rhode writes in The New York Times, Iran is running a mini-Marshall plan in neighbouring Afghanistan:

"Two years ago, foreign engineers built a highway through the desert of western Afghanistan, past this ancient trading post and on to the outside world. Nearby, they strung a high-voltage power line and laid a fibre-optic cable, marked with red posts, that provides telephone and Internet access to the region.

"The modernization comes with a message. Every 10 to 15 kilometres or so, road signs offer quotations from the Qur'an. "Forgive us, God," declares one. "God is clear to everyone," says another. A graceful mosque rises roadside, with a green glass dome and Qur'anic inscriptions in blue tile.

"The style is unmistakably Iranian.

"All of this is fruit of Iran's drive to become a bigger player in Afghanistan as it exploits opportunities to spread its influence and ideas farther across the Middle East. The rise of Hezbollah, with Iran's support, has demonstrated Tehran's sway in Lebanon, and the toppling of Saddam Hussein has allowed it to expand its influence in Iraq.

"Iran has been making inroads into Afghanistan, as well. During the tumultuous 1980s and '90s, Iran shipped money and arms to groups fighting first the Soviet occupation and later the Taliban government. But since the United States and its allies ousted the Taliban in 2001, Iran has taken advantage of the central government's weakness to pursue a more nuanced strategy: part reconstruction, part education and part propaganda."

Iran's Ambassador, Muhammad Reza Brahimi, claims Iran has no grand objectives in Afghanistan: "Our strategy in Afghanistan is based on security, stability and developing a strong central government. It not only benefits the Afghan people, it's in our national interest."

"Still, there are indications of other motives. Iranian radio stations broadcast anti-American propaganda into Afghanistan. Moderate Shiite leaders in Afghanistan say Tehran is funnelling money to conservative Shiite religious schools and former warlords with longstanding ties to Iranian intelligence agencies.

"And as the dispute over Iran's nuclear program has escalated, leading the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on the country just days ago, U.S. and Afghan officials claim Iranian intelligence activity has increased across Afghanistan.

"Iranian officials cast themselves as a counterweight to the U.S., which they say has mishandled opportunities to stabilize Afghanistan and Iraq.

"'U.S. policies, particularly under the current administration, have created a huge amount of resentment around the world,' said a senior Iranian official, who requested anonymity.

"'I'm not saying Iran is gaining power all over the world. I'm saying the U.S. is losing it fast.'

"Afghanistan, a fragile mosaic of ethnic and religious groups, has long been susceptible to intervention from more powerful neighbours. As the world's largest predominantly Shiite country, Iran is the traditional foreign backer of Afghanistan's Shiites, roughly 20 per cent of the country's population.

"During the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s, Iranian Revolutionary Guards financed and trained fundamentalist Shiite militias as well as Sunni fighters. In the civil war after the Russian withdrawal in 1989, Iran became a patron of the Northern Alliance, while Pakistan supported the ultimately victorious Taliban."

When the US conquered Iraq it had Iran sandwiched between US forces in Afghanistan to Iran's west and in Iraq to Iran's east. Now with Iraq perhaps hopelessly destabilized and Afghanistan very much in doubt, Iran has slipped these restraints.

What to do? Can the west afford another Middle East adventure? Probably not. The political will for it doesn't exist among Western constituencies. Voters in Western nations have lost confidence in their leaders' judgment and in their ability to win these sorts of wars.

There is another option and that's to simply contain Iran and wait it out. Some months ago the Asia Times ran an article claiming that Iran's oil reserves are fast running out. I checked that against sources such as the CIA Fact Book which seemed to openly dispute that conclusion. Recently, however, the story resurfaced via the Associated Press:

"Iran is suffering a staggering decline in revenue from its oil exports, and if the trend continues, its oil income could virtually disappear by 2015.

"That is according to an analysis published Monday in a journal of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Iran’s economic woes could make the country unstable and vulnerable, with its oil industry crippled, said Roger Stern, an economic geographer at Johns Hopkins University, the report’s author.

The key to outwaiting Iran almost certainly lies in containment and there lies the rub. Containing Iran would almost certainly depend on the existence of a unified, stable Iraq, an increasingly doubtful prospect.

"Iran earns about $50 billion a year in oil exports. The decline is projected at 10 percent to 12 percent annually. In less than five years, exports could be halved and then disappear by 2015, Stern predicted.

"The report said the country could be destabilized by declining oil exports, hostility to foreign investment to develop new oil resources and poor state planning, Stern said.

"Iran produces about 3.7 million barrels a day, about 300,000 barrels below the quota set for Iran by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

"The shortfall represents a loss of about $5.5 billion a year, Stern said.

“'What they are doing to themselves is much worse than anything we could do,' he said.

“'The one thing that would unite the country right now is to bomb them,' Stern said. 'Here is one problem that might solve itself.'”

What Would that Other George Do?

The Los Angeles Times asked scholars to consider what renowned military leaders from the past would have made of the quagmire George Bush has created in today's Iraq. They looked at the Iraq dilemma from the perspectives of Julius Caesar, Genghis Kahn, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.

Of the four, I found the Washington analysis the most interesting. Written by Joseph Ellis, a Pulitzer Prize winning historian and author of "His Excellency, George Washington" the assessment is genuinely eerie. Here are some excerpts from the article:

Ellis begins by asking Washington this question; "Can a powerful army sustain control over a widely dispersed foreign population that contains a militant minority prepared to resist subjugation at any cost?"

"Washington would recognize the strategic problem immediately, because it is a description of the predicament facing the British army in the colonies' War for Independence.

"And, more than anyone else, Washington's experience during the war as the leader of an American insurgency allowed him to appreciate the inherently intractable problems that faced an army of occupation in any protracted conflict.

"Until the winter of 1777-78 at Valley Forge, Washington thought of the war against Britain as a contest between two armies. When the British army presented itself for battle, as it did on Long Island in the summer of 1776, Washington felt honor-bound to fight — a decision that proved calamitous on that occasion and nearly lost the war at the very start. That's because the British had a force of 32,000 men against his 12,000. If Washington had not changed his thinking, the American Revolution almost surely would have failed because the Continental Army was no match for the British leviathan.

"But at Valley Forge, Washington began to grasp an elemental idea: Namely, he did not have to win the war. Time and space were on his side. And no matter how many battles the British army won, it could not sustain control over the countryside unless it was enlarged tenfold, at a cost that British voters would never support. Eventually the British would recognize that they faced an impossibly open-ended mission and would decide to abandon their North American empire. Which is exactly what happened.

"The implications for U.S. policy in Iraq are reasonably clear, and they pretty much endorse the recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group. Like the British decision to subjugate the American colonies, the Bush decision to democratize Iraq has been misguided from the start. The administration never appreciated the odds against its success, and it disastrously confused conventional military superiority with the demands imposed on an army of occupation.

"No man in American history understood those lessons better than Washington, who viewed them as manifestations of British imperial arrogance, which he described as "founded equally in Malice, absurdity, and error." If dropped into Baghdad, he would weep at our replication of the same imperial scenario. "

Thanks, George, we needed that.

The Risks We Run on Global Warming

Here's some food for thought on the likely impact of global warming on Western capitalism. These excerpts from an article by Anatol Lieven in today's International Herald Tribune.

"For market economies, and the Western model of democracy with which they have been associated, the existential challenge for the foreseeable future will be global warming. Other threats like terrorism may well be damaging, but no other conceivable threat or combination of threats can possibly destroy our entire system. As the recent British official commission chaired by Sir Nicholas Stern correctly stated, climate change "is the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen."

"The question now facing us is whether global capitalism and Western democracy can follow the Stern report's recommendations, and make the limited economic adjustments necessary to keep global warming within bounds that will allow us to preserve our system in a recognizable form; or whether our system is so dependent on unlimited consumption that it is by its nature incapable of demanding even small sacrifices from its present elites and populations.

"If the latter proves the case, and the world suffers radically destructive climate change, then we must recognize that everything that the West now stands for will be rejected by future generations. The entire democratic capitalist system will be seen to have failed utterly as a model for humanity and as a custodian of essential human interests.

"If this comes to pass, what will our descendants make of a political and media culture that devotes little attention to this threat when compared with sports, consumer goods, leisure and a threat from terrorism that is puny by comparison? Will they remember us as great paragons of human progress and freedom? They are more likely to spit on our graves.

"Underlying Western free-market democracy, and its American form in particular, is the belief that this system is of permanent value to mankind: a "New Order of the Ages," as the motto on the U.S. Great Seal has it. It is not supposed to serve only the short- term and selfish interests of existing Western populations. If our system is indeed no more than that, then it will pass from history even more utterly than Confucian China — and will deserve to do so.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anatol Lieven is a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington and the author, with John Hulsman, of "Ethical Realism: A Vision for America's Role in the World."

Gerry Ford Saw Through Iraq War Scam

In July, 2004, Bob Woodward interviewed former president Gerald Ford about George Bush's pretext for invading Iraq. Ford wasn't impressed with Bush, Cheney or Rumsfeld according to this interview published in today's Washington Post:

"In a four-hour conversation at his house in Beaver Creek, Colo., Ford "very strongly" disagreed with the current president's justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously. In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Cheney -- Ford's White House chief of staff -- and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford's chief of staff and then his Pentagon chief.

"'Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction,' Ford said. 'And now, I've never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do.'

"In a conversation that veered between the current realities of a war in the Middle East and the old complexities of the war in Vietnam whose bitter end he presided over as president, Ford took issue with the notion of the United States entering a conflict in service of the idea of spreading democracy.

"'Well, I can understand the theory of wanting to free people,' Ford said, referring to Bush's assertion that the United States has a "duty to free people." But the former president said he was skeptical 'whether you can detach that from the obligation number one, of what's in our national interest.'

"He added: 'And I just don't think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security.'"

And on the topic of Dick Cheney, Ford offered this assessment:

"He was an excellent chief of staff. First class," Ford said. "But I think Cheney has become much more pugnacious" as vice president. He said he agreed with former secretary of state Colin L. Powell's assertion that Cheney developed a "fever" about the threat of terrorism and Iraq. "I think that's probably true."

"Describing his own preferred policy toward Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Ford said he would not have gone to war, based on the publicly available information at the time, and would have worked harder to find an alternative. "I don't think, if I had been president, on the basis of the facts as I saw them publicly," he said, "I don't think I would have ordered the Iraq war. I would have maximized our effort through sanctions, through restrictions, whatever, to find another answer."

Villain of the Year - And the Winner Is...

Why, it's George Walker Bush. OMG! According to an AP-AOL poll, Bush is America's first choice as villain of the year:

1. If you were asked to name a famous person to be the biggest villain of the year, whom would you choose?

-George W. Bush, 25 percent

-Osama bin Laden, 8 percent

-Saddam Hussein, 6 percent

-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, 5 percent

-Kim Jong Il, North Korean leader, 2 percent

-Donald Rumsfeld, 2 percent

-John Kerry, 1 percent

Now, in fairness, the same guy topped the list of hero of the year.

2. If you were asked to name a famous person to be the biggest hero of the year, whom would you choose?

-George W. Bush, 13 percent

-Soldiers/troops in Iraq, 6 percent

-Oprah Winfrey, 3 percent

-Barack Obama, 3 percent

-Jesus Christ, 3 percent

-Bono, 2 percent

-Angelina Jolie, 1 percent

-Al Gore, 1 percent

-Arnold Schwarzenegger, 1 percent

-Colin Powell, 1 percent

-Mel Gibson, 1 percent

-George Clooney, 1 percent

-Bill Gates, 1 percent

-Donald Rumsfeld, 1 percent

There you have it.

The Great Strategerist Formulates a New Plan

Relax, he's not there yet. But, according to the man who calls himself "The Decider", George W. Bush, he's making real progress toward devising a new Iraq strategy. President Bush and his brain trust are working hard - real hard - on this problem at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. No word yet on whether Bush intends to return to Washington.

According to the Associated Press, Bush identified the focus of his deliberations:

"We've got more consultation to do until I talk to the country about the plan," he said. "The key to success in Iraq is to have a government that's willing to deal with the elements that are trying to prevent this young democracy from succeeding."

That's the key alright. The trick is what to do with a government that comprises the very "elements that are trying to prevent this young democracy from succeeding?" Hmmm - better ponder that one a mite.

We'll Get Back to You on That

Saddam Hussein's top lawyer is imploring world leaders to push to have his condemned client treated as a prisoner of war deserving protection.

Prisoner of war? What war? Saddam wasn't really in a war when he committed the crimes for which he's been sentenced to hang. Nice try but it just doesn't fit.

Right now Saddam remains in custody in an American military prison. He'll stay there until he's handed over to the Iraqis on the day of his execution. Why on earth Saddam wasn't handed over a long time ago is a mystery. Now the Americans will needlessly be directly connected to Hussein's execution.

Time to Cull the Herd

Okay, I wanted a big engine, Dodge Durango but settled for a VW Beetle. I've cut way back on my driving. I turn out my lights and keep my smallish house quite cool. I try not to waste too much water. Hey, I'm trying to do my bit.

Now it seems what I put in my fridge may be as environmentally important as the vehicle I drive. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has released a report entitled, "Livestock's Long Shadow" (available for $60) which paints a vivid picture of the impact of all those critters we want for our tables. Here's a commentary from the New York Times:

"Global livestock grazing and feed production use “30 percent of the land surface of the planet.” Livestock — which consume more food than they yield — also compete directly with humans for water. And the drive to expand grazing land destroys more biologically sensitive terrain, rain forests especially, than anything else.

"But what is even more striking, and alarming, is that livestock are responsible for about 18 percent of the global warming effect, more than transportation’s contribution. The culprits are methane — the natural result of bovine digestion — and the nitrogen emitted by manure. Deforestation of grazing land adds to the effect."

Easy answer? Forget it, there isn't one. This is a problem that is going to be with us until nature culls the herd - and I'm not talking about cattle.

When the Good Guys Are the Bad Guys

The idea of sending thousands of additional US soldiers to Baghdad to secure the city from Iraq's maurading militias would be a good idea if only American forces weren't working with those same thugs in one guise or another every day.

The government, the army, the police and the 145,000 gunmen with the Facilities Protection Services are heavily infiltrated by the militias and their sectarian leaders. With friends like these...

Consider this eye-opening account of what American forces are up against from today's The New York Times:


"The car parked outside was almost certainly a tool of the Sunni insurgency. It was pocked with bullet holes and bore fake license plates. The trunk had cases of unused sniper bullets and a notice to a Shiite family telling them to abandon their home.

“'Otherwise, your rotten heads will be cut off,' the note read.

"The soldiers who came upon the car in a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad were part of a joint American and Iraqi patrol, and the Americans were ready to take action. The Iraqi commander, however, taking orders by cellphone from the office of a top Sunni politician, said to back off: the car’s owner was known and protected at a high level.

"For Maj. William Voorhies, the American commander of the military training unit at the scene, the moment encapsulated his increasingly frustrating task — trying to build up Iraqi security forces who themselves are being used as proxies in a spreading sectarian war. This time, it was a Sunni politician — Vice Prime Minister Salam al-Zubaie — but the more powerful Shiites interfered even more often.

“'I have come to the conclusion that this is no longer America’s war in Iraq, but the Iraqi civil war where America is fighting,' Major Voorhies said.

For the American commanders their role is limited. They stay out of the civil war and instead intervene, when and where they can, to prevent atrocities against civilians. Of course, all the King's horses and all the King's men still can't help Iraqis being butchered at a rate of roughly a hundred each day. It is enough to know the numbers would be considerably higher without their presence.

How long can America babysit this civil war? What are the greater, regional risks of allowing the Shia/Sunni bloodbath to play itself out? It is claimed that Iran is already interfering on behalf of the majority Shiite population. How long before the Saudis intervene on behalf of their Sunni brethren and to staunch the current spread of Shia influence throughout the Arab Muslim world?

Can this civil war, if allowed to play itself out, end other than by ethnic cleansing in traditional mixed areas such as Baghdad followed by partition? If the Shiite and Sunni cannot co-exist in a unified Iraq, what hope is there of avoiding a breakaway of the Kurds in the north? If the Kurds take advantage of the chaos in the south to fulfil their historic dream of an independent Kurdistan, will Turkey and perhaps even Iran move against them?

Each question begets more questions of ever more complicated uncertainties and deepening instability. The worsening sectarian butchery in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities is the manifestation of destabilizing power vacuums that go back to the invasion when the Hussein administration was toppled and nothing was available to replace it.

There are so many issues interwoven in this civil war that it defies any clear much less good answer. One thing is obvious: Washington's vision for a future Iraq is not going to be realized by having American forces sitting on the sidelines and protecting the bleachers.

If He Spins Any Faster, He'll Burst

The tanks were rollin' and the guns were firin' and we had the buggers this time for sure. Or at least that's what Canada's military leaders and embedded journalists were joyously proclaiming to all and sundry just about a week ago. We had the Taliban this time, the same insurgents that somehow slipped through our fingers during Operation Medusa when we had them surrounded last September. This time the crafty devils wouldn't be so lucky. This time we really had them. This time it really was surrender or die, either way they were done for.

Here's how Bruce Hutchison of CanWest, with a patriotic thump of his chest, brought us the story three days before Christmas:

"HOWZ-E MADAD, Afghanistan -- There is no place to hide, and nowhere to run for hundreds of Taliban insurgents now squeezed into a box near here by NATO forces.

"They only have two options: Surrender, or attempt to fight their way out."Such is the situation in and around Howz-e Madad, a farming village 40 kilometres west of Kandahar city.

"Once tight-lipped about their objectives, and their chances of success, Canadian officers leading their army's effort in the campaign are practically boastful of its swiftness and its efficacy.

"This is the first time we've projected (this) much combat power forward," said Canadian battle group commander Lt.-Col Omer Lavoie. "(NATO) and Afghan forces are surrounding them, 360 degrees."

"The Taliban are hemmed inside 10-square-kilometres of mud fortresses and walled farm compounds, terrain that is well-suited to their guerrilla tactics but which also makes it difficult -- if not impossible -- to escape."As Lavoie noted with satisfaction, British and American troops sit approximately 10 kilometers south of Howz-e Madad.

"More British soldiers line the west, sealing that corridor, and Canadian combat teams rolled on Wednesday through Howz-e Madad."About 30 vehicles and hundreds of soldiers now hold the northern flank.

"To the east, running in a straight line to the Arghandab River, is impenetrable Route Summit, the 4.5 kilometre roadway established in September, during Operation Medusa."

So, where are all the prisoners, where are all the bodies of the dead Taliban? What if I was to tell you that, when it comes to certain Canadian colonels and media correspondents "on the scene", your guess is every bit as good as theirs? For, you see, a week ago they gleefully claimed to have 900 of these fanatics surrounded, boxed in. Now they can't find them.

I began worrying that this whole thing had, once again, been ginned up when the day following the initial estimate of 900 insurgents, it was revised downward to 400. Remember a few months back when we were told our people had won a massive victory over the Taliban, killing 80 or more of them? You might even remember when, several weeks later, they corrected that figure to 8. Mathematical error is the excuse they used for that one.

But I digress. What is the latest on Operation Falcon's Feathers or whatever they're calling this one? Turns out we can't find them. Now, according to the same Bruce Hutchison, the "surrender or die" guy, the fact that we can't find anyone to shoot is proof that we've won:

"Central to the operation is the release of material and financial assistance to local Afghans, in an attempt to stop men of fighting age from serving as Taliban mercenaries and help instead with the reconstruction of this war-torn region.

"That’s the official “hearts and minds” strategy behind Operation Baaz Tsuka, as devised by the NATO and Afghan coalition.

"To date, it seems to be working. Now two-weeks-old, the campaign has seen few head-on battles waged against the Taliban, and none involving Canadian troops.

"Boxed into a swath of territory 10 kilometres west of Mas’um Ghar, in Panjwaii District, and surrounded by a massive gathering of coalition war machinery, 700 to 900 insurgents seem indisposed to do more than launch the odd — and, to date, harmless — rocket attack.

"Canadians have not fired a single shot at enemy positions in Panjwaii District during Operation Baaz Tsuka.

"But Canadian troops have advanced, taking more ground from the Taliban and suffering no casualties in the process."

I guess so long as we can redefine the objective to match the result, we can declare great victory even when we come up empty handed. A two-week campaign that, despite massive superiority in men and firepower, hasn't engaged a ragtag enemy and we call that victory?

Saddam's Toast - So What?

Depending on who's right, the conquest of Iraq has claimed the lives of a few score thousand of innocent civilians or several hundred thousand. Now, Saddam is in line to join them. Actually, his fate was sealed a couple of years before the first American tank rolled across the border into Iraq.

Once 9/11 gave George Bush the flimsy pretense he needed to deceive the American people into supporting his illegal war of aggression against Iraq, Saddam was far too grave a threat to be allowed to live, even under a life sentence. He simply had to go and so he shall. Imagine the embarrassment he would pose were he allowed to speak candidly about the course of his relationship with the West.

But let's put this into perspective. Does the life of this unquestionable thug matter more than the life of one innocent child among the thousands of innocent children killed in this insane butchery? If you had the choice between sparing one six year old or pulling the handle to rid the world of this tyrant, what would it be? I know the answer to that question and you damn well do too. There's your perspective, your starting point.

I'll not argue clemency for Saddam. He doesn't deserve it. The sad reality though is that Saddam deserves to die every bit as much as each of those thousands of innocents deserved to live. How is it we're so much better with one issue than the other?

Time For Your Campaign Slogan Ideas.

Canada may have a general election within the next six months. The Libs are holding onto their lead in the polls. Stephen Harper's autocratic rule seems to have run its course but, even so, the outcome will be very close.

The Libs haven't been very effective with their campaigning lately. They just don't seem to get how to reach middle-Canada, that great majority within which the Liberal Party thrives.

Little Stevie has been very cautious not to show his true colours to the Canadian people but he's left enough of a trail that he can be vulnerable on it. Let's help the Liberal Party. Why not come up with campaign slogan ideas - free of charge - that the party can use in the next general election?

Starting today, I'll be posting ideas that come to me. Why not join in and post your own?

Kick Stephen Harper's Ass

Defeat David Emerson

or:

How 'bout Fortier?

Let's have an elected cabinet

before we worry about

an elected senate!

More Time, Not More Soldiers?

US Marine Corps Commandant, General James T. Conway, says what his force really needs in Iraq is more time instead of more soldiers. Conway, speaking to 2,500 troops gathered at Camp Fallujah said he's worried that US forces in Iraq are running out of time - with the American people.

"I fear there are two timelines out there. One is how long it's going to take us to do the job. One is how long the country is going to allow us to do the job. And they're not syncing up."

Poll after poll and the November elections have shown a sizeable majority of Americans have had enough of the Iraq war. Who can blame them? One general after another has promised them victory in a performance worthy of encyclopedia salesmen. Only one general, only one, Shinseki has told the American government and people the truth and put his job on the line to do that. The rest have been a succession of sycophantic flunkies long on promises but very, very short on results.

Those of us who remember the Vietnam fiasco have seen this game played out before. It's not so much the "blame game" that the inmates of the Bush asylum like to chant about when they fall into their catatonic stupor. It's actually a game of "dodge the blame" where, one by one, the culprits try to make the blame they've earned stick to others. Now it's the American people who are going to get it.

The American people have supported the Iraq war. Let's be honest, the American people have faithfully supported a number of Iraq wars. They supported the war to topple Saddam. They supported the war to neutralize Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. They supported the war to sever Saddam's ties with Islamic terrorists. They supported the war to liberate the Iraqi people. They supported the war to secure Persian Gulf oil from Saddam's domination. They supported Rumsfeld's war against the "dead enders" and Cheney's war against the terrorists. They supported the war to ensure Iraqis were able to vote for a government of their choosing.

The American people supported the wars they were asked to support even though those wars were often based on a tissue of deliberate lies and distortions. However, having obtained their consent - BY FRAUD - the White House and Pentagon leaders want to construe that as some sort of indefinite blank cheque to keep this shell game going until they can step aside and let someone else preside over the very failure they've already achieved.

If the American people aren't willing to be conned any more, blame them for America's defeat in Iraq. How perverse is that?

If the American people had been told the truth at the outset, they would deserve some blame for rejecting this war now. That, however, is not what happened. No, it's important that, this time, the blame remains with those who deserve it - a thoroughly dishonest and criminally negligent administration and a sycophantic general staff who put their careers above their duty to their soldiers and sat mute to allow this disaster to happen.

How Many Will Die For Saddam?

It's a foregone conclusion that Saddam Hussein will be executed very soon. His appeal from his death sentence conviction dismissed, Iraqi law seems to say he must be hanged within 30-days.

This is a curious law that seems to place execution ahead of considerations of justice. For example, what if the condemned's presence is necessary for the resolution of another court case? What if the government services have some further need of the person? The Iraq law doesn't appear to leave any judicial discretion in the matter. Your appeal is dismissed, you swing.

Of course when Saddam is dropped, his death will probably be the first of many triggered by his executioner. There is no shortage of Iraqis spoiling for a fight, including many Sunni. They're already at each other's throats and Saddam's death will afford just the sort of provocation needed for a wave of killings.

Then there's Saddam's old gang, the Baath Party. Since Saddam was toppled, the Baath Party has been outlawed and many of its leaders fled into exile. Now, on a web site believed to be run out of Yemen, Baathists are threatening to retaliate against US interests worldwide if Saddam is killed.

Appeals have gone out to the leaders of other Arab states to intervene on behalf of clemency for Saddam but it's not very likely that he'll be alive long enough for that to make any difference to the outcome.

A Sister's Plea for Her Soldier Brother

This letter from Emily Miller appeared in today's Washington Post. She writes of her brother who is on active duty in Iraq but it could as easily be written about any of our own soldiers in Kandahar:

"My brother told me that he takes his oath to defend the Constitution seriously and that he will fight and die if necessary to honor his commitment. When I asked him if he would be offended if I participated in activities opposing the war, he replied that it was not only my right but my obligation, and the obligation of all civilians opposing this war, to try to change bad policy. "Give us good wars to fight," he said.

"For the record, he believes that the war on terrorism is necessary to deal with real threats facing the United States. He is not convinced of what Iraq has to do with the matter, which puts him fairly well in the mainstream of American opinion.

"So it is terribly upsetting to me to hear that some people despair that there is "no point" to their soldier's death or wounding in the Iraq war. America does not have to be right in order for our soldiers' service to have meaning.

"What I find offensive is the idea that we have to "follow through" in order to give their deaths meaning post hoc. It is dreadfully apparent from the Iraq Study Group report that Iraq isn't going to have a democracy in any meaningful time frame. Even if this administration does everything perfectly, the best-case scenario is that we might maintain the barest outlines of order.

"Victory being out of the question at this point, the only democracy my brother is fighting for in Iraq is our democracy. The only constitution he is in Iraq fighting to defend is our Constitution. If my brother dies, it will not be for a mistake but rather because of his deeply held belief that the time it takes us as a people to figure out through democratic processes that we are wrong is more important than his own life.

"This places upon us an obligation. My brother and other service members living and dead have given us the sacred responsibility to use the democratic means we have at hand to bring judgment to bear on whether any given war is worth our soldiers' lives.

"It's not too late for us to honor the almost 3,000 U.S. service members who have died defending the principles of our democracy. It is morally imperative for us to honor our living service members and to do what is demanded of us by our democracy and by common decency. We have taken a small step by changing some of our leadership in Washington, but now it is upon us to follow through at home and demand accountability from our leaders.

"What are you, fellow citizens, willing to do to defend our Constitution? Will you dignify the sacrifices of our soldiers? Will you honor my brother's faith in our system? Will you let my brother or others die to eke out a slightly smaller disaster in Iraq? These are the questions we face in the wake of the Baker-Hamilton report.

"My brother is betting his life that you are not going to ask this of him. He has placed his trust in the idea that we will not ask him to die for anything less than the necessary defense of our democracy. Reasonable people may at one time have disagreed about the necessity of the Iraq war, but now that it has become abundantly clear from every quarter that we cannot win, will you be responsible for asking my brother to stay?

"My family begs of you: Do not ask this of him. Do not ask this of us. My brother is doing his constitutional duty. Now it is time for us to do ours."

Afghanistan Still Killing Within America

Afghanistan will always be tightly linked to the attacks of 11 September, 2001 on the World Trade Centre towers and the Pentagon. Sure the attackers themselves weren't Afghans but mainly Saudis however al-Qaeda operated out of Afghanistan with the acquiesence of the Taliban. For that the fundamentalist regime was driven from power.

The Taliban may be gone but Afghanistan is now responsible for a growing number of American deaths each year. The cause is the growing importation of top-grade, Afghan heroin into the United States.

Most heroin sold in the US is low-grade product brought in from Mexico. While the Taliban were in power and suppressing their country's opium trade, Afghanistani heroin accounted for 7% of the American supply. By 2004 that had doubled and a Drug Enforcement Agency report obtained by the LA Times suggests the amount coming in from Afghanistan to be significantly higher today.

LA County law enforcement officials believe the influx of high-grade Afghan heroin is responsible for the 75% increase in heroin overdose deaths in the past three years. Afghanistan now provides 90% of the world's supply of illicit opium.

Bunker Bush

The New Year approaches and it will bring a new day to Washington, one not to the liking of the frat boy president. Time and events have caught up to George W. Bush.

It's interesting to imagine what George Bush will come up with for his New Year's resolution. Of course to play that game you would have to put yourself in his position with all the events past and the looming prospects factored in. You have to dig yourself a hole, chin deep, and jump in and that's just your starting point. My guess is that you would wish the hole wouldn't get any deeper, that you could find a way to stop yourself from the constant digging. For George Bush, that might be pretty tough to pull off.

It's only natural for those who find themselves beset, surrounded, besieged to go on the defensive, hunker down and dig in. That appears to be pretty much what president Bush has decided to do now that he's facing the prospect of a Democratic congress where even a lot of Republicans are sharpening their skinning knives. Come January, George Bush is not going to have a lot of friends in Washington and those who do remain won't wield nearly as much clout to sustain him as they did before.

Looking back, the highlight of George W. Bush's presidency was not even of his own doing but that of a bunch of fundamentalist Islamic nutbars. Osama bin Laden catapulted George Bush to unprecedented popularity and influence. Guided by a vice president who believes the American presidency ought to resemble nothing so much as a monarchy, Bush sailed through five years ruling over a complacent congress almost by fiat. When presented with laws he didn't like, legislation that might restrain him, he simply scribbled "signing statements" on the bottom, exempting himself from their effect. His seizure of power was breathtaking although not many Americans noticed.



Five years that will be forever etched in American and world history. That marks the span of time in which a president fell victim to his own hubris and malignant advisors and toppled from unparalleled popularity and power into the very abyss of presidential derision. Five years in which he abused the support and sympathy of the world's leaders and peoples and turned his nation into a pariah in their eyes. Five years in which he exploited the weakness and fear of his people, often instilled in them by his own cabal, to strip them of their democratic and constitutional rights, to place himself above international and domestic law, and even to launch an illegal war, a war of aggression and of whim from which he cannot now retreat no matter the worsening failures that he cannot avoid. Five years in which he has destabilized not only the Middle East but also, to a lesser extent, Africa and Asia. Five years in which he has transformed his nation and the world into a darker, vastly more dangerous and volatile place. The man's very legacy is ruin.


Looking back on this, what must this frat boy see? I suspect he sees very little of what he has done. Accepting responsibility was never in his makeup. If it had been, he wouldn't have acted as rashly as he has so persistently since being given the presidency by a complaint court. He avoids reality by retreating into a bubble where all are excluded save those who say what he wants to hear.

George Bush has retreated to his bunker deep within which he can screw shut his eyes and chant his mantra of "victory in Iraq, victory in Iraq" as though the saying of it will make it happen.

What remains to be seen is how powerfully the Democratic congress will assault the bunker to winkle Bush to the surface. There is much they can do if they have the will which, sadly, is not assured. There are some who may be able to lob grenades into the bunker in the form of spending curbs, taxation impasses and enquiries that strip away the deceit, excesses and abuses that genuinely characterized the last five years of imperial rule. Theirs is a target whose lifeblood, his public support, has already largely drained away, leaving him weakened and vulnerable. What remains to be seen is whether the Democrats will have the courage to do the dirty work necessary to restore integrity to their nation's highest office and that, unfortunately, is a very open question.

And Then What?

Pakistan says it's going to build fences and establish minefields along parts of its border with Afghanistan. The Karzai government wasted no time dismissing the effort as an empty gesture.

Given accounts from US and NATO forces as well as Western and Asian reporters that Taliban insurgents already simply walk freely through border checkpoints this measure does indeed seem little more than window dressing.

Meanwhile, in Baghdad, Iraqi officials have confirmed that Saddam Hussein and two co-defendants have had their death penalty conviction appeals dismissed. Iraqi law requires the condemned to be executed within 30-days. This may be the end of the road for Sad Man. Oh dear.

This Is Rich

He sounds like a beauty pageant contestant telling the judges what she wants most is world peace and an end to hunger.

Peter MacKay, former leader and scuttler of a now extinct Canadian political party, says he wants to revive the Middle East peace process.

"I would love to, in some fashion, be able to facilitate a coming together and a discussion," MacKay told CTV in a report broadcast from Ottawa on Sunday. "And that's not to set unreal expectations – but I think we have to constantly try."

"We hope to, in some way, be able to reconstitute that discussion and perhaps find a niche where Canada can make a contribution" to the refugee situation, MacKay said.

Earth to MacKay. That "niche" you're looking for is the very one Canada spent years nurturing, the one your boss instantly torched months ago when he couldn't restrain himself from leaping straight into Israel's lap in the dust-up with Lebanon last summer.

It's nice Peter that you want to play "honest broker" but it's far too late for that now. Our credibility in that region is shot and we don't have the military or economic prowess there to get anyone to listen. Your government has placed us in America's back pocket. That's our niche now. Don't screw this up, Peter, the judges are watching.

Great Cranberry Sauce

A quick and easy way to really pick up your cranberry sauce. Substitute orange juice (with pulp if possible) for the water. Once the berries are cooked stir in the zest of one navel orange. It's an awesome addition.

Now, Merry Christmas!

the Mound of Sound

Caught Flat-Footed Around the World

The United States emerged from the Cold War as the world's sole superpower. Unfortunately it took that status for granted.

The US with its global-reach bombers and carrier battle groups thought itself safe because there was no place on earth that couldn't be attacked within 12 to 24 hours. It created a perception of a virtual empire and promptly began ignoring places like Afghanistan and most of Africa. Washington was blinded by its own might and failed to see tensions and threats mounting.

Then, as much to show the little countries American power as anything else, it invaded Iraq and quickly became trapped in the shifting sands. The Bush administration truly believed - for no plausible good reason and despite sage advice - that they could invade, topple Saddam and be out of the place within 60-days. It was foolhardiness on an epic scale. It exposed America's weakness to the very sort of warfare that little countries can usually wage. It revealed the true limits of America's military muscle.

America wasn't paying attention to the little lands but they were certainly watching America, watching and waiting. Jeffrey Gettleman, writing in the International Herald Tribune, reports that anti-Americanism is sweeping Africa:

"Somalia may be the place that best illustrates a trend sweeping across the African continent: After Sept. 11, 2001, the United States concluded that anarchy and misery aid terrorism, and so it tried to re-engage Africa. But anti-American sentiment on the continent has only grown, and become increasingly nasty. And the United States seems unable to do much about it.

"A number of experts on Africa trace those developments to a sense not of American power, but of its decline — a perception that the United States is no longer the only power that counts, that it is too bogged down in the Middle East to be a real threat here, and so it can be ignored or defied with impunity.

"American officials, for example, acknowledge that they are at a loss about what to do about the on-again, off-again Somali crisis, which cracked open last week when the two forces dueling for power blasted away at each other in their first major confrontation. In this case, there are a lot of reasons why many of the people don't like Americans, starting with the United States' botched efforts to play peacemaker in the early 1990s to its current support for Ethiopia, which is taking sides in Somalia's internal politics.

"But the broader issue playing out here — the sense that the United States is not the kingmaker it once was — goes beyond Mogadishu. It is Africa-wide. And it is based on a changed reality: the emergence of other customers for Africa's resources and the tying down of American military forces in Iraq have combined to reduce American clout in sub-Saharan Africa, even as the United States pumps in more financial aid than ever — about $4 billion per year — and can still claim to be the one superpower left standing."

"When Washington turned its glance away from Africa other nations saw their opportunity and moved in: China, various European states, Russia, even Brazil.

"'We learned that we don't need the Americans anymore,' said Lam Akol, Sudan's foreign minister. 'We found other avenues.'

"The ceaselessness of Baghdad's bloodshed has greatly undermined the United States' credibility, fanned anti-American feelings in Muslim regions like the Horn of Africa, and drained resources that might otherwise have been available to address other problems.

"'There is significant blowback coming from our catastrophic decisions in Iraq that is affecting our ability to do anything about Sudan or Somalia,' Mr. Morrison said."

America's delusion of its own power and influence has left it flat-footed around the world: South America, Asia, Africa and even Europe. Washington has to get Iraq off its back before it can even try to play catchup or risk being marginalized in areas very crucial to America.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf says his government isn't aiding the Taliban. He says the Taliban aren't moving freely across Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. He says all the troubles are in Afghanistan.

Why then are Western and Asian journalists regularly going to Quetta in Waziristan to interview Taliban leaders? Why are Taliban madrassas training insurgents in the Pakistan mountains? Why are Taliban fighters to be seen wandering openly and freely in Pakistan towns?

Why? Because General Musharraf is feeding us a load of nonsense. Why? Because he calculates that Washington won't interfere lest that tip this nuclear state into the hands of Islamic extremists. No one wants to be responsible for unleashing the "Islamic Bomb", an ominously loaded phrase that was coined in Pakistan after its weapons programme was first discovered.

Pakistan is being treated like nitro-glycerin, unstable and ready to explode if handled roughly. So Musharraf won't deal with the Taliban problem and we can't either, at least not until they bring their battle to NATO and American forces on their terms.

In the meantime Musharraf is allowed to utter silly assurances and nobody, except Hamid Karzai, is willing to call him a liar.

The Sadr Dilemma

Muqtada al-Sadr is giving Washington fits. The radical Shia cleric walked out of the faltering Iraq government, undermining the authority of Prime Minister Nouri Malaki. Sadr's Mahdi army is also believed to be instrumental in the sectarian violence plaguing Baghdad.

The US thought it had Sadr marginalized. It tried to divide the Shiites by persuading Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani to join a Kurd and Sunni governing coalition, effectively ostracizing Sadr. It didn't work. al-Sistani, probably realizing how badly that could backfire on him, opted for Shia solidarity and refused to play.

That effectively set the majority Shia against the minority Sunni and Kurds. The failed American gambit has provoked a backlash from Iraqi legislators angry at what they see as Washington's meddling. Sadr, his influence now bolstered by the collapse of this ploy, is returning to the Supreme Council where he's expected to renew demands for American troops to be withdrawn.

Garrison Keillor - A Perfectly Adequate Christmas Letter

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

I suspect we all get them - Christmas letters. Here's Garrison Keillor's take:

"I love reading Christmas newsletters in which the writer bursts the bonds of modesty and comes forth with one gilt-edged paragraph after another: "Tara was top scorer on the Lady Cougars soccer team and won the lead role in the college production of 'Antigone,' which, by the way, they are performing in the original Greek. Her essay on chaos theory as an investment strategy will be in the next issue of Fortune magazine, the same week she'll appear as a model in Vogue. How she does what she does and still makes Phi Beta Kappa is a wonderment to us all. And, yes, she is still volunteering at the homeless shelter."

"'Chad is adjusting well to his new school and making friends. He especially enjoys the handicrafts.' How sad for Chad. There he is in reform school learning to get along with other little felons and making belts and birdhouses, but he can't possibly measure up to the goddess Tara. Or Lindsay or Meghan or Madison, each of whom is also stupendous.

"I come from Minnesota, where it's considered shameful to be shameless, where modesty is always in fashion, where self-promotion is looked at askance. Give us a gold trophy and we will have it bronzed so you won't think that we think we're special. There are no Donald Trumps in Minnesota: We strangled them all in their cribs. A football player who likes to do his special dance after scoring a touchdown is something of a freak.

"So here is my Christmas letter:

"Dear friends. We are getting older but are in fairly good shape and moving forward insofar as we can tell. We still drink strong coffee and read the paper and drive the same old cars. We plan to go to Norway next summer. We think that this war is an unmitigated disaster that will wind up costing a trillion dollars and we worry for our country. Our child enjoys her new school and is making friends. She was a horsie in the church Christmas pageant and hunkered down beside the manger and seemed to be singing when she was supposed to. We go on working and hope to be adequate to the challenges of the coming year but are by no means confident. It's winter. God is around here somewhere but does not appear to be guiding our government at the moment. Nonetheless we persist. We see kindness all around us and bravery and we are cheered by the good humor of young people. The crabapple tree over the driveway is bare, but we have a memory of pink blossoms and expect them to return. God bless you all."

And a Very Merry Christmas to You All from The Mound of Sound

It May Not Be Much, But

It's a welcome change from a standoff that's caused nothing but misery in recent months.

Israeli President Olmert and Palestinian Abbas held a mini-summit last night aimed at easing tensions between the two states and, in particular, releasing funds to Palestine for badly-needed humanitarian purchases.

Olmert has agreed to release $100-million, about a fifth of the Palestinian monies Israel has withheld since Hamas was elected 10-months ago. Israel is dealing with Abbas directly in order to circumvent the Hamas-led Palestinian authority.

Now it remains to be seen how Hamas will react to the Palestinian president's moves.

A Global Warming Milestone

The name of the island is Lohachara not that many of us are going to remember it for long. We'll probably recall it as that little island off India, the first once inhabited island to disappear from the surface of the earth due to rising sea levels attributed to global warming.

Lohachara was a small island that supported a population of 10,000 in the Bay of Bengal near where the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers meet the sea. It is believed that other islands in the area will soon also be submerged displacing some 70,000 more islanders.

Several uninhabited islands have disappeared in recent years, notably in the South Pacific. Lohachara is unique because it was inhabited.

We Were Only Following Orders

That little phrase was brought to infamy during war crimes trials at the end of WWII. Now there's word the defence will be revived in the trials of 8 US marines charged with murdering 24 Iraqis including children and the elderly in the town of Haditha in November last year. From The Independent:

"'We're going to drag every single, two-star and full-bird colonel and general into this thing,' said Kevin McDermott, a California-based lawyer representing Captain Lucas McConnell, the commander of Kilo Company, which carried out the Haditha killings. The defence lawyers say their clients were following official policy on the rules of engagement.

"In all, 24 Iraqis, including six children, several women and an old man in a wheelchair, were killed in Haditha as the Marines responded to the death of a colleague in a roadside bombing in November 2005. Only five of the dead Iraqis have been identified as militants, while the rest appear to have been innocent civilians.

"Many critics have argued that the Haditha incident might have been written off as business as usual, were it not for graphic Iraqi documentation of the massacre that made its way into Time magazine last spring. The military initially claimed, erroneously, that the roadside bomb killed 15 of the Iraqis, and nominated Staff Sgt Wuterich for a medal for bravery.

"Responding to the charges against his client, Mr McDermott said the top brass was well aware of what had happened, but condemned it only after it became glaringly public. 'A lot of lieutenant colonels and colonels and generals knew what happened that day, and nobody said, 'let's do a thorough investigation of what happened', he said. 'By the end of the day, [my client's] superiors recognised the situation was so significant that they brought in air support.

'There were Harriers dropping 500lb bombs on buildings. If they're dropping 500lb bombs without knocking on the door first, how can you argue the troops on the ground did anything wrong?'"

It's an almost inevitable recipe for disaster: conventional armies fighting insurgencies often in the midst of residential areas full of civilians. It's a lot like using a sledgehammer to drive a picture hook into a wall and then wondering why the broken plaster is all over the floor. the worst part is this reality isn't new, we've seen this before. We know this stuff happens and we know the many reasons why.

Were these marines only following orders? Does it even matter?

Nazi Archives Thrown Open

For half a century the International Tracing Service has been the repository of millions of documents revealing the horrid details of the Nazi's death camps.

Now these archives are finally being opened for inspection and the passage of time hasn't done anything to quell the grotesque and heinous misery they relate. An AP reporter has had a chance to take a first look:

"The "pyramid" ranged from death camps such as Auschwitz at the top, to secondary and tertiary detention centers. There were 500 brothels, where foreign women were put at the disposal of German officers, and more than 100 "child care facilities" where women in labor camps were forced to undergo abortions or had their newborns taken away and killed - usually by starvation - so the mothers could quickly return to work.

"The earliest prisoners were communists, Social Democrats, Jehovah's Witnesses and other political opponents, as well as homosexuals and common criminals. The Final Solution, which ultimately would claim 6 million Jewish lives, had not yet begun.

"Survivors have described the camps in agonizing detail, recounting unbearable suffering and calculated brutality. But historians have long sought to know more about the inner workings of the camps, hoping to draw on the Germans' own firsthand accounts and paperwork.

"Couched in patronizing and dehumanizing language, documents from the earliest camps foreshadow a system that would define the word "genocide." They show that years before the mass-scale killings began at death camps such as Auschwitz, the intellectual groundwork of viewing categories of humanity as subhuman was already in place.

"The records include two camps previously known to the Washington researchers, but about which few SS documents were available. Sachsenburg and Lichtenburg in eastern Germany were among the first sites opened in early 1933, but were closed in 1937 when the system was restructured into larger camps that housed tens of thousands of prisoners. Afterward, both served briefly as women's camps.

"The ITS files will be a boon to the researchers in Washington, who are compiling a seven-volume encyclopedia of all known sites where "undesirables" were detained, tortured, put to work or killed. The first volume is in the final editing stage - probably too late to take advantage of the Bad Arolsen archive.

"Project director Geoffrey Megargee said the museum team gathered fragmentary evidence from different sources to assemble the list.

"'Most historians didn't have a grasp of the scope of the whole universe of camps and ghettos,' he said. 'Each of them knew their own little slice.'

"When they began work six years ago, Megargee said the researchers estimated 5,000 to 7,000 sites existed. "Based on our research, it is now clear that there were over 20,000 such sites in Germany, in German-occupied territories and in the states allied with Nazi Germany," he said."

It will probably take many years for most useful information to be harvested from these documents. In the meantime we'll be greeted with glimpses into a dark and monstrous side of human nature. As you read these accounts ask yourself if it could happen here.

Today's Booming Slave Trade

If you're interested in this problem, check out the articles at The Independent:

http://news.independent.co.uk/appeals/indy_appeal/article2087546.ece

In Defence of Jimmy Carter

Robert Fisk does not duck controversy. That's why it was not terribly surprising to read his defence of Jimmy Carter and his book "Palestine, Peace not Apartheid" which has received heaping scorn from just about every paper in North America. It has earned the former president a cornucopia of epithets including the inevitable "anti-semite."

Writing in The Independent, Fisk dissects the controversy:

"I picked up Jimmy Carter's new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid at San Francisco airport, and zipped through it in a day. It's a good, strong read by the only American president approaching sainthood. Carter lists the outrageous treatment meted out to the Palestinians, the Israeli occupation, the dispossession of Palestinian land by Israel, the brutality visited upon this denuded, subject population, and what he calls 'a system of apartheid, with two peoples occupying the same land but completely separated from each other, with Israelis totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving Palestinians of their basic human rights'.

"Carter quotes an Israeli as saying he is 'afraid that we are moving towards a government like that of South Africa, with a dual society of Jewish rulers and Arabs subjects with few rights of citizenship...'. A proposed but unacceptable modification of this choice, Carter adds, 'is the taking of substantial portions of the occupied territory, with the remaining Palestinians completely surrounded by walls, fences, and Israeli checkpoints, living as prisoners within the small portion of land left to them'.

Critics of Carter and his book like to spout furious indignation at his supposed link between Israel and the apartheid government of South Africa. Once again, Fisk brings up some inconvenient facts:

"But in this context, why, I wonder, didn't The New York Times and the other gutless mainstream newspapers in the United States mention Israel's cosy relationship with that very racist apartheid regime in South Africa which Carter is not supposed to mention in his book? Didn't Israel have a wealthy diamond trade with sanctioned, racist South Africa? Didn't Israel have a fruitful and deep military relationship with that racist regime? Am I dreaming, looking-glass-like, when I recall that in April of 1976, Prime Minister John Vorster of South Africa - one of the architects of this vile Nazi-like system of apartheid - paid a state visit to Israel and was honoured with an official reception from Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, war hero Moshe Dayan and future Nobel prize-winner Yitzhak Rabin? This of course, certainly did not become part of the great American debate on Carter's book."

I don't believe there is any shortage of anti-semitism in the United States or Canada but I also don't believe for one minute that the ranks of anti-semites include Jimmy Carter. This is just another "anti-semite" smear job used to silence legitimate and constructive criticism of Israel. For the sake of our society we have to stand up to this venomous nonsense.

Looking for that Last Minute Christmas Gift?

If you just can't find the right gift for that pot dealer in your family, give him (or her) Barry Cooper's DVD "Never Get Busted Again."

Cooper is a retired narc from East Texas who made more than 800-drug arrests in his career. He produced the DVD out of the goodness of his little Lone Star heart because he thinks the war on drugs, especially on marijuana, is counter-productive.

Now give Barry his due. He's made it plain that his tips are only for pot dealers. Heroin or crack or coke dealers are not allowed to watch his DVD, never, ever, ever and that's final.

While few have yet watched the video it apparently is jam packed with tips such as whether coffee grounds really work as decoys, how to dodge narcotics profiling and how to fool canines every time.

Let's face it, Barry is out to make a few extra bucks in his golden years. Hard to guess how many copies of this DVD he's going to sell especially given that people who run and peddle drugs likely don't have too many qualms about burning bootleg copies.

Talk About Spoiling the Christmas Spirit!

Bummer man! Some as yet unnamed guy in Bakersfield, California just couldn't get "into" the Christmas spirit. But he completely lost it when the local school board decided to change the name of the winter and spring breaks to Christmas and Easter respectively.

To get back at those miserable school trustees, the guy staged a protest where he set fire to a Christmas tree, an American flag and a revolutionary flag. As a special twist he then set fire to himself.

When a deputy showed up, Mr. Bozo poured gas over his head. It seems the fumes spread to the nicely roasting Christmas tree nearby and the guy caught fire. Luckily the deputy grabbed a fire extinguisher and put the guy out. Oh, by the way, the inflamed protestor was carrying a sign that read "f__k the religious establishment."

Guess whose getting a lump of coal in his stocking this year.

Damn Your Ignorant War

The gloves are off. In this corner, the Archbishop of Canterbury. And in this corner, Tony Blair and George Bush.

Archbishop Williams has lambasted Blair and Bush, saying their "ignorant" policies in Iraq have endangered Christians in the Middle East. He said that Muslims now tend to see all Christians as supporters of the "crusading West." By the way, that's not a good thing if you're hanging out in a Muslim country.

"This Christmas, pray for the little town of Bethlehem, and spare a thought for those who have been put at risk by our short-sightedness and ignorance," Williams wrote in an article for the London Times newspaper.

Williams, who is not shy of controversy, has long been a critic of the Iraq war, saying there was no moral basis for military intervention.

He said the consequences of Anglo-American foreign policy have been the erosion of good relations between the Muslim and Christian communities and made Christians an increasing target for Muslim extremists.

"One warning often made and systematically ignored in the hectic days before the Iraq War was that Western military action ... would put Christians in the whole Middle East at risk," wrote Williams.

Meanwhile President George Bush got in a few spiritual licks of his own. In his Saturday radio spot, he urged Americans to pray for their troops in Iraq. He also told US soldiers in Iraq not to fret, victory is just around the corner.

Iraq - Shiites Closing Ranks

ali al-Sistani

in a moment of levity

It began as an attempt to isolate radical Shiite leader, Moqtada al Sadr, and create a coalition of Sunni, Kurds and Shia under Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani and, for a while, it seemed to be working. al Sadr seemed to be breaking, talking about returning to the Iraqi government and reining in his Mahdi army.

Then something went wrong. It seems the deal's off. al-Sistani has chosen Shiite unity over national unity.

After being rebuffed by the elderly cleric, government officials went courting to al Sadr. If he returns it won't be as a broken force as the US and governing coalition leaders had hoped. Sadr's support (his movement holds 30-seats in the government) was critical for prime minister al-Maliki, himself a Shia. Without Sadr's votes, Maliki's government was deadlocked and incapable of advancing its legislative agenda.

So long as the Shia remain unified, Iraq remains under their dominion and the Sunni remain increasingly outnumbered and vulnerable. And that's where Saudi Arabia comes in.

Artizans

Steve Bell, The Guardian

Times Of London

The Ugly Face of Right Wing Intolerance

This ignorant son of a bitch is Virgil Goode, Republican congressman from the great state of Virginia.

This unrepentant bigot in the best Southern tradition wrote a letter to his constituents earlier this month expressing his fury that Minnesota Democratic Representative, Keith Ellison, intends to be sworn in on the Koran when he becomes the first Muslim congressman in American history.

Goode told Fox News he wants to limit legal immigration and end "diversity visas," which he said let in people "not from European countries" and from "some terrorist states."

In his letter, Goode warned that if Americans "don't wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran."

Ellison told CNN that he could trace his ancestors to Louisiana as far back as 1742. "I'm about as American as they come," said Ellison, who converted to Islam in college.

Radio host Dennis Prager, who has said Ellison should quit if he can't be sworn in with a Bible, was criticized Thursday by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

Prager is on the museum board, and critics sought his ouster. The board executive committee didn't go that far but called Prager's view "antithetical to the mission of the museum as an institution promoting tolerance and respect for all peoples regardless of their race, religion or ethnicity."

Take a good look at the ugly face of today's Republicans, the good old boys of the Deep South. Then take a look at our own radical right-wing and ask yourself if they're all that much better.

"I Have No Future"

"No tengo futuro.” That's how Jeb Bush replied to Spanish-speaking reporters about his political ambitions after he steps down as Florida governor next month.

"I have no future." Jeb didn't bother adding that any aspirations for higher office he might have once held were pretty much doomed thanks to the accomplishments of his little brother since he's been in the White House.

Another Trip for Demjanjuk

John Demjanjuk. Think about the name. Let it settle in and try to remember.

Alright. 25-years ago John Demjanjuk was big news when the retired Ohio auto worker was arrested, stripped of his US citizenship and extradited to Israel where he was sentenced to death after being found to be the Nazi concentration camp guard "Ivan the Terrible."

The death sentence was set aside by the Israeli supreme court after records from the former Soviet Union showed another man was probably the infamous Treblinka guard. Upon being released Demjanjuk returned to the US where his American citizenship was restored in 1998.

Four years later his citizenship was stripped again when the US Justice Department showed that Demjanjuk had worked for the Nazis as a guard at three concentration camps.

Now Demjanjuk is fighting deportation to his native Ukraine. His appeal of a deportation order has been dismissed. It seems he continues to fight to stay in the United States.

The Real Clash of Civilizations

It's hard to tell just where this is going but America's destabilization of Iraq is leading to a clash of civilizations drawn on Persian versus Arab, Shia versus Sunni lines. At the core of it lie Iran and Saudi Arabia.

In Palestine and in Lebanon the two camps have been waging a proxy war, each supporting its own along the Shia/Sunni divide. Hezbollah is Shia, al-Qaeda is Sunni.

In Saudi Arabia today, Saddam Hussein is becoming associated with keeping the Shia genie in the Iran bottle. Toppling Saddam let that genie out to unite with Iraq's majority Shia and fundamentally shifted the balance of power in the Persian Gulf region.

Now, according to an article in the International Herald Tribune, the Persian threat is on the lips of many in Saudi Arabia:

"Saudi newspapers now openly decry Iran's growing power. Religious leaders have begun talking about a "Persian onslaught" that threatens the existence of Islam itself. In the salons of Riyadh, the "Iranian threat" is raised almost as openly and as frequently as the stock market.

"'Iran has become more dangerous than Israel itself,' said Sheik Musa bin Abdulaziz, editor of Al Salafi magazine, a self-described moderate in the Salafi fundamentalist Muslim movement that seeks to return Islam to its roots. 'The Iranian revolution has come to renew the Persian presence in the region. This is the real clash of civilizations.'

"Yet a growing debate here has centered on how Iran should be confronted: Head on, with Saudi Arabia throwing its lot in with the full force of the United States, as one argument goes, or diplomatically, having been offered a grand bargain it would find hard to refuse.

"Many Saudis have also grown openly critical of the country's policy on Iraq, citing its adherence to a U.S.-centric policy at the cost of Saudi interests.

"More pessimistic analysts here said the country has lost significant strength and stature in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, even as Iran, with its populist, anti- U.S. agenda, has reaped the benefits.

"'The Saudis made a big mistake by following the Americans when they had no plan,' said Khalid al-Dakhil of King Saud University. 'If the Saudis had intervened earlier and helped the Sunnis they could have found a political solution to their differences instead of the bloodshed we are seeing today.'

"Last week, a group of prominent Wahhabi clerics and university professors called on the government to begin actively backing the Sunnis, noting that 'what Iraq, as a country and a people, has gone through in terms of a Christian-Shiite conspiracy preceded by a Bathist rule is one chapter in the many chapters of the conspiracy and an indicator for the success of the plan of the octopus which is invading the region.'"

There's no question that the Saudis have been pushing Washington hard in recent weeks. They've warned that a US pullout from Iraq might leave them no choice but to aid the country's Sunni minority in the ongoing conflict. They've also warned that, unless the US stops Iran from developing a nulear weapon, Sunni Arab states in the region may get involved in a little nuclear research of their own.

Iran is passing up no opportunity to expand its influence beyond its borders in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. Achieving this comes largely at the expense of Arab Sunnis. Something has to give.

Dion's Numbers Improving

Those who know him like what they see.

A Decima Research poll shows that, while many Canadians still don't know Stephane Dion, those that do see him favourably. According to the Toronto Star:

The Decima Research poll suggests Dion is still an unknown quantity to many Canadians. Still, 43 per cent said he has "the potential to be an excellent prime minister of Canada one day."

"Almost one-third – including roughly one-third of NDP, Bloc Québécois and Green party supporters – would like to see Dion win the next election.

"'Voters are mostly showing an open mind towards Mr. Dion, with more optimism than cynicism about how he will turn out,' said Decima CEO Bruce Anderson.

"Negative perceptions of Dion were somewhat more likely in his home province of Quebec than in Ontario, the other key electoral battleground.

"Still, 43 per cent of Quebecers (49 per cent of Ontarians) thought he has the potential to be a great prime minister and 31 per cent (32 per cent in Ontario) would like to see him win the election."

"At Least We Can Say We Tried"

They're crooked, rotten through and through, but we're going to help make their villainy easier, more efficient. The fact that they're driving ordinary Afghans over to the side of the Taliban doesn't seem to matter to our military leaders. We've already taken sides. Here's Christie Blatchford's account:

"Yesterday, the battle group handed over a brand-new vehicle checkpoint to the Afghan National Police at Howz-e-Madad. Constructed overnight by engineers from the British 28th Engineer Regiment, the checkpoint now allows the ANP to actually divert suspicious cars or trucks to a secure area for a search. It was welcomed by ANP District Police Chief Aka Abullamrasol, who immediately asked for another such checkpoint at Zhari, a few kilometers away.

"The checkpoint should make the village safer and villagers less vulnerable to the intimidation tactics of the Taliban, Charles Company Commanding Officer Major Mathew Sprague said yesterday, but the real question is whether the ANP, a force rife with corruption will use it properly.

"'At least we can say we tried,' Major Sprague said with a shrug. Interpreters had already told him that the reason the police like the checkpoint is that it will make it easier for them to extort bribes from passing motorists."

Yes, Major Sprague, you tried and the Taliban are undoubtedly appreciative of your efforts. Ignoring realities on the ground, such as the corruption of the Afghan police and their predation of the locals, is self-defeating.

By the way Mat, the Taliban don't mind. According to Western reporters who've travelled with them, the insurgents simply pay their bribes to the checkpoint cops and sail on through unchallenged and unmolested. After all, cops getting into gunfights with the Taliban is bad for business.

Unbelievable!

A Damn Fine Woman

She's Victoria Hale, a woman who threw away the American Dream because she needed much more. She was profiled in the latest edition of Spiegel:

"Victoria Hale's story began nine years ago in San Francisco, at DNA Drive Number One at the headquarters of a company called Genentech. Genentech, a legend in the industry and in the United States, develops drugs using genetic manipulation, and when it was founded in 1976 it was the first company whose researchers played God, essentially giving evolution a kick start. The company attracted and continues to attract the best and the brightest, the ambitious and the devout, from all over the world.

"...in the summer of 1998, Victoria Hale went to her boss and told him that, as much as she appreciated everything Genentech had done for her, she was resigning. Her boss was surprised, and so were her colleagues, and her family was speechless. Why was she throwing away her career?

"The global pharmaceutical industry spends about €90 billion a year on research, and 90 percent of this enormous sum is used to treat the illnesses and minor discomforts, cosmetic and erectile problems of less than 10 percent of the world's population. Of the 1,556 drugs that were invented and marketed worldwide between 1975 and 2004, only 21, a paltry 1.3 percent, have been used to treat diseases that primarily affect the poorest people in the world.

"In Africa, Asia and South America -- the world's poverty zones -- almost three million people die every year of tuberculosis and malaria, and about 170,000 are ravaged by diseases that are virtually unknown in the more affluent regions of the world. Chagas's disease, for example, claims 13,000 lives each year. Sleeping sickness kills 50,000, dengue fever 21,000, bilharziosis 15,000 and black fever 60,000 annually. Next to malaria, black fever is the second-most severe parasitic disease.


"These were the numbers and facts that prompted Hale to quit her job at Genentech. She felt that by continuing to work at the company she would have made herself complicit in developing drugs almost exclusively for the world's more affluent citizens. To this day, she can only conjecture why she was the one who was so affected by this sense of injustice. Perhaps it had something to do with her childhood. Hale was a sickly child, often bedridden, who spent an inordinate amount of time in doctors' waiting rooms. Perhaps it was precisely because she had suffered so much herself that she could no longer ignore the suffering of others.

"Hale spent the next year traveling to conferences in Europe, North America and Asia. She spoke with experts, with epidemiologists, searching for the right infectious disease, searching for the solution to her problem. She wrote lists to keep track of her thoughts. Malaria was too big, and the financing would be impossible. The same applied to tuberculosis. Sleeping sickness was already being addressed by the aid organization Doctors Without Borders.

"Finding the right killer wasn't an easy task.

"After about a year, Hale's savings and those of her husband, about $100,000, had been spent. She took out a loan for $315,000. Her husband agreed, even though he had doubts about his wife's prospects for success.

"In the fall of 1999, at a conference in Antwerp on drug resistances in tropical diseases, Hale found her infectious disease -- and the corresponding cure.

"The speaker, a physician named Shyam Sundar, knew more about Black Fever than anyone else. He had been fighting it for more than 20 years. Hale approached Sundar after his presentation. She was impressed by his outrage over an injustice that leaves most people cold. She saw something of herself in this Indian doctor.

"Black fever, or visceral leishmaniasis, always begins with a bite from a tiny insect, the sandfly, a bite victims rarely even feel. Jokhran Bhagat, a farmer and father of two sons, was one of these victims.

"A female sandfly pierced Bhagat's skin and drank his blood to feed its eggs. It left behind a small, dot-shaped bite mark and a few inconspicuous single-celled organisms that entered Bhagat's body through the puncture site. The sandfly's bite marked the beginning of an invasion.
The intruders slowly drifted along Bhagat's bloodstream waiting to be noticed. In its chosen host, the human body, this parasite's survival strategy is to be attacked and encased by phagocytes, or "devouring cells." But the parasites, instead of being digested by the human immune system's killer commandos, establish a foothold inside those devouring cells and use them as a site to breed and transform themselves. Once the phagocytes have served their purpose, the parasites burst out to conquer new cells.

"A few days after the sandfly bite, Bhagat complained that he felt unwell and developed a fever. By this time the parasites had developed a flagellum, or means of propulsion, and were heading for his bone marrow, liver and spleen. They continued to replicate relentlessly, attacking healthy cells and intact organs and transforming them into production sites for armies of microorganisms.

"Bhagat's fever began to rise. He became weak and lost his appetite. After nine months his body capitulated and became grotesquely swollen, and Bhagat died in pain.

"The only drug that was effective, inexpensive and devoid of serious side effects was paromomycine, but it was unavailable. That was the reason for Sundar's outraged speech at the Antwerp conference.

"Paromomycine was developed in the mid-1950s by an Italian company, Pharma Italia, not as a treatment for Black Fever but as a general purpose antibiotic. Its life cycle followed that of many drugs. It was sold successfully for a number of years but was eventually displaced by newer, more effective drugs.

"In the mid-1980s, researchers discovered that paromomycine could be a suitable cure for Black Fever. But no one was interested in paying for the expensive tests and studies needed to ensure that paromomycine could be used safely and reliably to treat Black Fever. The dying continued in Bihar.

"Hale spent a week in India before returning to San Francisco, where she set up an office in her house to begin her fight against the rest of the world. She had found her epidemic and her drug.

"In the global humanitarian aid business, roles are clearly defined. The job of aid organizations is to submit requests and distribute aid. The pharmaceutical industry produces and supplies the necessary drugs and equipment -- when it can and when it is willing to do so.

"But the industry is rarely willing, because in most cases it is the companies that bear the costs. Most of them prefer to shun the expense. So do aid organizations, who tend to confine themselves to distributing the drugs the companies hand them.

"Hale's plan was to expand the system by adding a third factor -- herself.

"She wanted to establish an aid organization that operates like a pharmaceutical company or, to be more precise, like a non-profit pharmaceutical company. The desire to help, and not to earn profits, would be the company's driving force. Hale wanted to build a company that would do what she believed the industry ought to be doing.

"Hale called her non-profit organization the Institute for OneWorld Health, dubbing it the "first non-profit pharmaceutical company in the United States." She developed a business plan and sent it to potential donors.

"One of her letters ended up on the desk of Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, a multi-billionaire and the world's biggest philanthropist. Gates liked the idea and sent Hale a check for $4.7 million as a first installment. That was the beginning. Once the man who spends almost as much of his own money on fighting poverty as the World Health Organization had expressed his confidence in Victoria Hale, others followed, including the Chiron Foundation, the investment bank Lehman Brothers, the Skoll Foundation and many others.

"Hale established her company, began searching for office space and hiring employees, first 10, then 20 and finally 50. She needed them to ensure that the approval procedure for paromomycine satisfied international standards. It was a bureaucratic nightmare, and to tackle the task Hale enlisted the help of the World Health Organization (WHO).

"A large-scale program to attack black fever is scheduled to begin next year. The Indian government, which is coordinating the attack, has publicly announced its goal of eradicating the disease in India by 2010. The target date for eradication in neighboring Bangladesh and Nepal is 2015.
In a multi-pronged approach, an insecticide will be used to control the sandflies, local doctors will distribute the medication and the three countries' governments will subsidize prices. The treatment will likely consist in a combination therapy that will include both paromomycine and impavido.

"This time it seems as though there will be no losers, only winners who will be forced to share the spotlight. For once, here's a story that looks set to have a happy ending. "

Luftwaffe Over Afghanistan

According to Spiegel Online, Germany's Luftwaffe is answering NATO's call to provide Tornado bombers and reconnaisance aircraft to the mission in Afghanistan. The request has apparently been approved by the German government.

The Spiegel story also offered a window into the current state of the Afghan capitol, Kabul. Our media focus on where Canadians are fighting, in Kandahar province. If the rest of the country is mentioned at all, it tends to be dismissed as "behind the lines", well out of danger. Apparently not:

"German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung's trip to Afghanistan could have been one grand photo op. Picture him joining his soldiers to drink mulled wine, as Germans are fond of doing before Christmas. Or think of the elaborately decorated Christmas trees in the headquarters of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) on Great Massoud Road in central Kabul. But German soldiers will be celebrating Christmas this year without their defense minister.

"Jung cancelled his trip to Afghanistan on Monday. The weather there was so bad that the politician's twin-engine Transall transport aircraft wouldn't have been able to fly over the 5,000 meter (16,404 feet) mountains north of Kabul, the Defense Ministry in Berlin reported.

"But that was only half the story. The other half is that security experts feared for their boss' life. The daily status reports from the armed forces' operational headquarters indicate an unacceptably high threat for the minister to travel.

"The situation in Kabul is more dangerous than it has been for a long time. Taliban fighters have gotten a foothold into the city's suburbs and are gradually infiltrating the Afghan capital from there. The city's southern districts have become a "gateway" for suicide attackers and armed fighters, according to a confidential report issued to Jung. Together, those facts paint a "picture of a staging and deployment area in the vicinity of the capital," that could impact "negatively on the security situation."

Taliban fighters in Kabul? Insurgents staging and deploying into the capitol? Odd that Canadian reporters haven't mentioned this because it puts the current status of the insurgency in a completely different light. Kabul, we've been told, was supposedly safe for Hamid Karzai and his troubled, fledgling government. Apparently we're not getting the whole story.

Last Charge of the NeoCon Brigade?

"Choosing Victory, A Plan for Success in Iraq." According to Asia Times, that's the title of a Powerpoint presentation formulated by the neocons and bought lock, stock and barrel by George Bush.

"Drafted hastily - it currently exists only as a PowerPoint presentation - by its two main authors, AEI fellow Frederick Kagan and the former vice chief of staff of the US Army, General Jack Keane, as an alternative to the report of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG) headed by former secretary of state James Baker and former congressman Lee Hamilton, it is called "Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq".

"The title is apparently chosen deliberately to counter one of the ISG's core messages: that there is "no magic bullet" - least of all a military one - that can save what most analysts in Washington believe is the biggest US foreign-policy debacle since at least the Vietnam War.

"'Alone among proposals for Iraq, the new Keane-Kagan strategy has a chance to succeed,' declared this week's Weekly Standard, which, like the AEI fellows involved in the 'Victory' project, was a major champion for going to war in Iraq."

So this is why George Bush has rejected or overridden the advice of his generals. The neocons have grabbed his ear again. Theirs is the only message Bush has heard that speaks of victory rather than defeat. By the way this is Fred Kagan, Bush's warfighting genius:

"Fred, cleanup in aisle 6, cleanup in aisle 6"


"'According to all the talk in Washington, the 'plan' whipped up by AEI's Fred Kagan is likely to be mostly implemented by President Bush when he stops stalling about his policy in Iraq,' said Pat Lang, the former chief Middle East analyst at the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, who has warned that, if implemented, it would likely lead to "Stalingrad on the Tigris".

"'A 'surge' of the size possible under current constraints on US forces will not turn the tide in the guerrilla war,' warned Lang, who noted, along with many other experts in the past month, that the reinforcement of thousands of US troops in Baghdad since last summer had actually increased the violence there.

"'Those who believe still more troops will bring 'victory' are living in a dangerous dream world and need to wake up,' he added, conceding, however, that it may appeal to Bush for that very reason. 'He wants to redeem his 'freedom agenda', restore momentum to his plans, and in his mind this might 'clear up' Iraq so that he could move on to Iran.'"

C'mon George, wake up, wake up.

Even the Washington Post Gets It

The Washington Post gets it. Why don't Bush and Blair and Harper?

The NATO mission in Afghanistan has about four months to get ready for an offensive by a regrouped and revitalized Taliban-led coalition that's currently massing in North Waziristan, Pakistan. The time to strike this enemy is now because they're going to be much harder to deal with once they cross over to our side of the border. Someone needs to ratchet up the pressure on Musharraf, now.

"THREE MONTHS ago the Pakistani government struck a deal with pro-Taliban leaders in the district of North Waziristan, bordering Afghanistan: It agreed to abandon military operations, withdraw the army and release prisoners in exchange for promises that the militants would cease cross-border attacks and disarm the foreign terrorists in their midst. That the extremists would not respect the accord, and that attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan would increase rather than decline, obviously seemed likely at the time. Yet President Bush, ever indulgent of Pakistan's autocratic ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, accepted his promises. "When the president looks me in the eye and says the tribal deal is intended to reject the Talibanization of the people, and that there won't be a Taliban and won't be al-Qaeda, I believe him," Mr. Bush declared when he met Gen. Musharraf at the White House on Sept. 22.

"As senior administration officials now acknowledge, Gen. Musharraf's assurances were empty -- as they have been many times before. According to multiple independent reports, Waziristan has been thoroughly Talibanized, and the fundamentalists are spreading their influence through adjacent border districts. Cross-border attacks and the deaths of American soldiers that they cause are up significantly. Al-Qaeda is reliably reported to be operating training camps in North Waziristan with the help of scores of foreign militants who are schooling recruits in suicide bombing and the use of improvised explosive devices. According to a stunning report in the current edition of Newsweek, they are also preparing Western citizens who could carry out major terrorist attacks in Britain or the United States.

"...the situation in Pakistan's border areas is starting to look a lot like eastern Afghanistan before Sept. 11, 2001. President Bush and Mr. Negroponte ought to be asking themselves if they are repeating history by tolerating the situation. They need not do so: The United States has provided Gen. Musharraf strategic cover and billions of dollars in military and economic aid since 2001. In return it should have the right to demand that he abandon his separate peace. Action must be taken against Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in Pakistan before spring, when another major offensive against U.S. and NATO forces can be expected unless the enemy bases and supply lines are disrupted."

Help Wanted - Trigger Pullers and Yes-Men Generals Needed, No Experience Necessary

What do you do when you've screwed everything up? Why not try more of the same?

George Bush has finally acknowledged that America is "not winning" in Iraq. His answer is to send in a few thousand more troops. It was all going so well until his generals went public saying it would be helpful if he first identified a mission for these new troops. Tough to argue with that one so now George has gone back to the drawing board to dream up some reason to order a troop surge to Iraq.

Back when George Bush insisted America was winning in Iraq he also routinely claimed he was deferring to the judgment of the professionals, his generals. Now that he's given up the business about winning it seems he's not reluctant to substitute his genius for the generals' either. After all, who would know best how to fight terrorists and insurgents, all in the midst of a civil war - Bush or a bunch of generals? According to the Washington Post, it's all very confusing:

"At a Chicago news conference in July, for instance, Bush said he would yield to Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Iraq commander.

"'General Casey will make the decisions as to how many troops we have there,' Bush said, adding: 'He'll decide how best to achieve victory and the troop levels necessary to do so. I've spent a lot of time talking to him about troop levels. And I've told him this: I said, 'You decide, General.'

"By yesterday, however, Bush indicated that he will not necessarily let military leaders decide, ducking a question about whether he would overrule them. 'The opinion of my commanders is very important,' he said. 'They are bright, capable, smart people whose opinion matters to me a lot.' He added: 'I agree with them that there's got to be a specific mission that can be accomplished with the addition of more troops before I agree on that strategy.'

"A senior aide said later that Bush would not let the military decide the matter. 'He's never left the decision to commanders,' said the aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so Bush's comments would be the only ones on the record."

Bush's "go to guy", General John Abizaid has announced his retirement only days after stating that more troops wouldn't help in Iraq. His departure leaves the way for Bush to sidestep his critical and inconvenient service chiefs and find himself a nice "yes man" to fill Abizaid's shoes.

Still, growing the military by 30-40,000 combat soldiers, "trigger pullers" in modern parlance, will take at least five years to achieve, even after lowering standards for enlistees.

"It's so frustrating to me we have to be four years into a war with the Marine Corps and Army on the verge of breaking that we decide we need more Army and Marines," said retired Maj. Gen. Robert Scales, former commandant of the Army War College.
___

You Can Believe Him When...

Did you know that Stephen Harper has always accepted the scientific evidence of global warming? Were you aware that he gets the whole GHG thing?

If you didn't, that's probably because you've been listening to Harper's heel-dragging, reality-dodging spin that has left just about all of us dizzy over the past few years.

Harper not only buys the global warming thing, but he wants to make it his government's first priority. WTF?

In year-end interviews, this unmitigated liar denied that he every disputed the greenhouse gas issue. The Toronto Star, however, dragged this out of their archives:

"At a news conference in the Senate foyer a week ago, Harper said in defence of his environmental plan: 'As we implement our clean-air agenda, the focus is a little different than the other parties. They focus only on so-called greenhouse gases and ignored smog entirely.'

"Back in the 2004 election campaign, Harper said of climate change: 'The science is still evolving.'

"And in September 2002, Harper said this when asked about the "greenhouse effect:" 'It's a scientific hypothesis, a controversial one and one that I think there is some preliminary evidence for. ... This may be a lot of fun for a few scientific and environmental elites in Ottawa, but ordinary Canadians from coast to coast will not put up with what this (Kyoto accord) will do to their economy and lifestyle, when the benefits are negligible.'"

Remember this clown's pitch for "intensity based" GHG policy?

But it's all talk anyway. You'll know he means business when he cracks down on the Athabasca Tar Sands. Don't hold your breath - you may just need it someday.

This Melt is Serious

These days we like to use China and India as global warming whipping boys. Why should we clean up our GHG emissions unless they do the same? Their position, that they'll clean up when they see the very nations that have largely created this mess take the first steps - well, that's just so uppity it doesn't deserve our consideration.

Actually China and India are taking global warming very seriously because it poses a looming and serious threat to both. They've teamed up to chart the status of remote Himalayan glaciers. The glaciers feed two river systems that provide water to agriculture regions that feed a sixth of the world's population.

''The melting of the ice sheets and the glaciers is a crisis in the Himalayas,'' said H.P.S. Ahluwalia, who runs the Indian Mountaineering Foundation, which is organizing the expedition with China's Institute of Geology and Geophysics.

''In three to four decades these rivers that feed more than a billion people in our society and adjoining countries will become seasonal rivers,'' Ahluwalia said.

"Eerie Calm"? No Christie, It's "Insurgency 101"

It's the Battle of Panjwai, Round 2. The first Battle of Panjwai was fought in September under the name "Operation Medusa." We kicked those Taliban asses or at least we would have if they didn't just gather up their weapons and walk away, straight through our lines. No matter. Operation Medusa drove the Taliban out of Panjwai district for good. Okay, maybe for a week.

So we've got'em this time. Round 2, Operation Falcon's Summit. This time it's the Brits and the Americans and us. They're gonna get it now. Or maybe not.

In this morning's Globe, mission cheerleader Christie Blatchford reports that our forces have moved into place "without a shot being fired." Christie doesn't know what to make of this and, she claims, neither do the unit commanders for whom, "...the calm that greeted them was almost unprecedented and even spooky."

I'm sorry Christie, I should have explained. This is an insurgency and, so long as they hold the initiative, the insurgents decide when they will offer battle and when they will deny battle. If they're not where we expect to fight them that means two things: (a) they're able to deny battle and therefore (b) they hold the initiative, not us. That means that the bad guys will probably be content to let us occupy this little nest of vipers until we leave, empty handed. Or maybe it just means that they all got the plague and died or took up watch repair or maybe the aliens got'em or who knows?

Bush Glued To Iraq, Afghanistan Left To Its Fate

It seems not a day passes without some Western or Asian reporter filing a story relating the Taliban's massive build up in Quetta in preparation for their Spring offensive. Even the Los Angeles Times has a staffer, Laura King, over in the badlands keeping an eye on the automatic weapons fire echoing from behind the walls of the madrassas.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Strange Loner, the Texas Shrub, has made it obvious that he's planning on winning his war of whim in Iraq, even if that means breaking his own army. That's not what we need to hear from this guy. But, then again, this is a leader of the free world who has made just about every wrong move possible since his office towers were attacked in 2001. He's a rollicking barrel of screw-ups. How did we put ourselves in a position of having to depend on a bozo like this?

Oh, did I mention that we're dependent on Mr. Bush? Yeah, sorry. NATO doesn't have remotely enough soldiers in Afghanistan to even secure the countryside much less fight off a skilled and determined aggressor steeped in the knowledge of how to kick foreigners out of their country.

Even if Canada did have another 10-12,000 soldiers that would be needed to defend Kandahar province, we don't have the means to get them on the scene in time to be useful. Don't worry about that last part, we don't have the soldiers anyway. No, for us it'll be a "come as you are" party with the same 2,500 soldier force (1,000 strong battle group) we've deployed already.

That means we may well need a massive infusion of American troops on very short notice if this spring offensive proves even marginally effective. Now, where are we going to get those? Can we count on a president for whom Afghanistan isn't even on his radar screen?

It's too bad George Bush doesn't read newspapers.

It's Official - the Middle East Is Doomed!

For a guy who's supposed to be fairly bright, Stephen Harper can sure say some pretty stupid things.

Don't tell Hamas, make sure word doesn't leak out to Hezbollah, but Stephen Harper says Canada will not talk with "genocidal" Islamic groups. Says Little Stevie:

"We will not solve the Palestinian-Israeli problem, as difficult as that is, through organizations that advocate violence and advocate wiping Israel off the face of the Earth. ...We are not going to sit down with people whose objectives are ultimately genocidal."

I guess this must be the Leader of an emerging Energy Superpower talking. That much bluster and swagger simply has to come from someplace. Look Stevie, settle down. "We" as in you and me and Canada aren't about to "solve the Palestinian-Israeli problem." You, as prime minister, have no clout at all with Hamas or Hezbollah and certainly even less with Israel.

After having trampled on the "honest broker" mantle that Canada once tried to maintain, Harper sided wholeheartedly with Israel in its invasion of Lebanon and stayed that way despite Israel's excesses and war crimes. Only one side in that little scrap was going to be recognized as having committed war crimes and that sure wasn't Israel as far as Harper was concerned.

Now this jumped up hick pronounces with unbridled grandiosity that he's made it "clear to allies in the region" that Canada is prepared to talk to the various sides of the issue, just not those he doesn't want to talk with. I'm sure they're all waiting with baited breath to hear from Stevie or for another star to appear in the night sky.

It Was Bound to Happen

It's the marriage of genetic engineering and an insanely lucrative cash crop - marijuana.

Mexican troops have encountered a new, hybrid marijuana plant that can be cultivated year round and is resistant to pesticides.

The new plants, known as "Colombians," mature in about two months and can be planted at any time of year, meaning authorities will no longer be able to time raids to coincide with twice-yearly harvests.

The hybrid first appeared in Mexico two years ago but has become the plant of choice for drug traffickers Michoacan, a remote mountainous region that lends to itself to drug production.

Yields are so high that traffickers can now produce as much marijuana on a plot the size of a football field as they used to harvest in 10 to 12 acres. That makes for smaller, harder-to-detect fields, though some discovered Tuesday had sophisticated irrigation systems with sprinklers, pumps and thousands of yards of tubing.

Maybe it's time for us to rethink our policies on pot. The problem is bound to get bigger and we're not beginning to keep pace with it.

Call It What You Will, It's Still Needless Death

Climate wars, wars of sustenance, before long we'll probably settle on one or two names for what is becoming an increasing tragedy - wars fought by small groups or tribes over inadequate resources without which they may perish.

It's a phenomenon being closely followed by the United Nations as it spreads, initially in Africa. The Christian Science Monitor reports on Uganda's Karimojong herders:

"It's been a bloody first half of the dry season in Uganda's Karamoja region. October to February is the time when grass turns brittle, mud dries and cracks, and competition for scarce resources increases. More than 40 people have died in recent weeks in fighting between Karimojong warriors and the Ugandan Army in the arid northeast of the country.

"The semi-nomadic Karimojong are pastoralists who protect their cows, violently if necessary. The warriors are well armed and this has put them on a collision course with Uganda's government. But the recent clashes are a symptom of more universal problems.

"As elsewhere in Africa, the population in eastern Uganda continues to grow as the environment deteriorates, putting more and more pressure on a land that grows ever drier. At a United Nations conference on climate change held in neighboring Kenya last month, environmentalists warned that Africa would bear the brunt of global warming.

"With more people forced to share fewer resources, experts warn that conflict will increase. 'Climate change will hit pastoral communities very hard,' says Grace Akumu, executive director of environmental pressure group Climate Network Africa. 'The conflict is already getting out of hand and we are going to see an increase in this insecurity.'

"Ms. Akumu argues that, while pastoralists who live in arid regions will suffer, it is the Western countries who are to blame, especially the United States, which refuses to sign on to global protocols to reduce greenhouse gases. 'Pastoralists are the losers - they are not responsible, but they feel the impact of climate change the most. The blame lies squarely at the doorstep of America.'

"A well-established small-arms trade has sprung out of the regional insecurity, with guns flowing in from neighboring Sudan and Somalia. All this means Karamoja is well stocked with weapons and prices are falling: in the 1970s, a gun cost 60-150 cows, by 2004 it had fallen as low as two cows (roughly $100).

"The government estimates that there are up to 40,000 weapons in Karamoja - one for every 24 people - and violent struggles are common. During the first six months of this year, 568 people died violently in Karamoja, many more were injured."

Get used to this. This is just the start of a phenomenon that's going to claim countless lives throughout Africa and other parts of the world for the next several decades. After a while this will get as boring as the daily death tolls in Baghdad. Before you know it, you won't even notice.

Bush Still Intent on "Victory in Iraq"

Well, it's not like he hasn't had plenty of advice to the contrary, but President George Bush made in clear today he's still dreaming of victory in Iraq.

“I believe we are going to win. I believe that — and, by the way, if I didn’t think that, I wouldn’t have our troops there. That’s what you got to know. We’re going to succeed.”

I suspect what this really means is that Bush intends to succeed in keeping America's army tied down in Iraq so that his successor can take the heat for pulling them out.

Bush warned that continuing the occupation “would require difficult choices and additional sacrifices because the enemy is merciless and violent.” Naturally the sacrifices he has in mind are to be borne at the footsoldier level, not the taxpayers. Requiring a sacrifice of the most advantaged taxpayers by scrubbing the tax breaks for the rich simply is not on. It just wouldn't be right to ask the wealthy to sacrifice when the cost of the whole war is going to be shouldered by a future generation of lowly wage earners anyway.

KGB Orphans?

According to the online newsjournal, Embassy, the Russian spy recently nabbed in Montreal may have been a KGB orphan, one of many sleepers left behind with the collapse of the Soviet Union:

"A former Canadian spy doubts that a Russian man arrested in Montreal and deported last month for allegedly spying in Canada for the past 10 years was a government agent.

"Janice Cowan believes that in a day and age where economic spying has taken precedent over the state-sponsored military surveillance, the man could be a rogue KGB agent hiring out his skills to private entities for his own personal benefit.

"'I just can't see, in 1995, somebody actually planting him there,' Ms. Cowan said. 'He probably was at one time with the KGB. I'm sure, living in Montreal, he was using his spycraft.'

"'But maybe it was going to companies and finding out information, or maybe having information already that he could give to them. Somebody found him useful and he used that training to make himself some money.'"

"In her fast-paced book,"A Spy's Wife", Ms. Cowan explains how military attachés assigned to Moscow and other Soviet cities performed their jobs both before and after the Iron Curtain fell. While Western spies continued collecting information because no one knew what would happen next, dozens of KGB agents who had been working abroad were cut off from resources and contact. Many went rogue, using their skills in other ways.

"'There's so many of them,' she said. 'They fell like dandelion seeds all over the world and they've been hired by somebody who's really, really rich.'

"One hint that this may have been the case with the man arrested in Montreal was his initial decision to fight efforts to have him deported, Ms. Cowan said. The man eventually reversed his decision, but it raised questions.

"'It seemed strange that he was going to fight deportation,' she said. "'I thought: 'That's really strange for a spy. Why isn't he just happy to go home?' I sort of agree with the Russian ambassador in that he wasn't connected to anyone.'"

It all makes sense. If this guy was a KGB orphan, it explains why the Canadian government simply wanted to send him home instead of throwing him in prison.

Test Your Israeli/Palestinian IQ - Haaretz

Can there be another conflict on God's green earth which in the space of a few generations has generated two entire new cultures, two entire new identities, each at war with the other, each dismissing the validity of the other, the rights of the other, the very authenticity of the identity the other is trying so vigorously to hang onto?

There are those on both sides, propagandists, fanatics, columnists, who insist that their own side is the sole heir to antiquity, the sole claimant to the property and the history of the Holy Land, the sole injured party, the sole heroic player.They believe it with everything they have.The best part, of course, is that they tend to believe that anyone who sees things differently is deluded. A victim of self-deception.

In view of this complex reality, how can you know truth from self-deception - Here's a simple self-test that may help:

1. True or False: One side is regularly condemned internationally for war crimes it is alleged to have committed. The other is shielded, left to commit them at will.

2. True or False: One side desecrates holy places. The other respects religious shrines, and the right of all to worship as they choose.

3. True or False: One side can be trusted to observe negotiated peace accords and agreed cease-fires. The other side violates them at will.

4. True or False: One side takes care to abide by the terms of peace agreements and cease-fires, until such time as the other side blatantly violates them.

5. True or False: One side has learned the lessons of the Holocaust. The actions of the other side are reminiscent of those who perpetrated it.

6. True or False: One side has a legitimate historical claim to territory of the Holy Land, being direct descendants of its ancient inhabitants. The claims of the other do not stand up to factual inspection.

7. True or False: One side repeatedly launches attacks which kill innocent civilians. The actions of the other are acts of legitimate self-defense.

8. True or False: One side genuinely seeks peace. The other side truly wants the land on its own terms, and is prepared to continue to kill people on the other side as long as its actual desires are unattained.

9. True or False: News media are over-sympathetic to one side only.

10. True or False: The people who support and speak for the other side are either lying or self-deceived.

HOW TO SCORE: Count 10 points for every "True" answer, none for every "False."

If you scored 0 - 20: Chances are that you still harbor a secret belief in the eventual possibility of peace. Chances are that you are reluctant, at this point, to reveal this to anyone.People on both sides are sure to tell you that you are deceiving yourself.

If you scored 30 - 50: Chances are you once harbored a belief in the eventual possibility of peace. Chances are that you have stopped discussing this with people on the other side. People on your side will now tell you that you have finally come to your senses.You are on your way to self-deception.

If you scored 60 - 100: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict makes perfect sense to you. You are a victim of serious self-deception. Unbeknownst to you.

A Spring Offensive in Afghanistan?

It's hard to know if they're serious but there have been several accounts in the past two months warning of a major offensive by the Taliban planned for the Spring.

If it happens at all, it might be part of a larger, general uprising against the Kabul government by a coalition that unites the Taliban, the Mujahadeen, the drug lords and ordinary peasants acting out of nationalism or grievances against the government security forces.

This general uprising threat is particularly grave for the NATO mission because it would be so decentralized as to tax, if not overwhelm, NATO's already undermanned forces in Afghanistan. You simply can't be everywhere in a country as large as Afghanistan with the limited number of soldiers available to NATO.

The reality of a general uprising, however, may be just a Taliban dream. When the Viet Cong launched their nationwide attack during Tet, 1968, they also predicted a mass uprising by South Vietnamese angry at their government. The uprising never materialized and US and South Vietnamese forces were eventually able to crush the Viet Cong to the point where they never returned as a significant threat to South Vietnam.

The Asia Times published an article today describing what the Taliban has in mind:

"The battle lines have been drawn on the Afghan chessboard for what is likely to be a decisive confrontation between foreign forces and the Taliban-led tribal resistance. Both sides have fine-tuned their strategies, have engaged their pawns, and are poised for action. The Taliban's efforts are focused on next spring, after the harsh winter weather eases, while North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces aim to "nip this evil in the bud", using the province of Kandahar as their strategic base.

"From there, they want to contain and encircle the Taliban in their bases all over southwestern Afghanistan, according to a source familiar with NATO who spoke to Asia Times Online on condition of anonymity.

"Central to this plan is the use of air power, even though the Taliban have come down from the mountains and entrenched themselves in civilian populations in carefully chosen pockets. They also have a headquarters in the rugged mountains of Baghran Valley in Helmand province.

"To date, the Taliban have mostly engaged their pawns against NATO, with key leaders based safely in the tribal belt between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Once the final push starts, though, they will move to the fringes of the southwestern Pashtun heartland, Baghran, in preparation for the removal of President Hamid Karzai's administration in Kabul.

"Maulana Jalaluddin Haqqani, head of the Taliban's military operations in Afghanistan, is in the Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan - a virtually independent region in Taliban hands. The one-legged former Taliban intelligence chief Mullah Dadullah is also in Pakistani territory, shuttling between South Waziristan tribal area and border areas near Pakistan's Balochistan province and southwestern Afghanistan.

"Haqqani and Dadullah, on the instructions of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, are talking to tribespeople in southwestern and southeastern Afghanistan to smooth the path for the Taliban taking control. The Taliban are pledging to share everything with the tribes, including land, power and resources.

"This process is still ongoing and, according to people close to the Taliban, once it is completed the Taliban will call for a full mobilization of troops and Mullah Omar will go to Baghran to command them personally in the push to Kandahar and ultimately Kabul.

"Legendary former Afghan premier and mujahideen Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who operates near the Pakistani side of the Afghan Kunar Valley, has become involved in his own agenda, causing a bone of contention between the Taliban and Hekmatyar's Hizb-e-Islami Afghanistan (HIA). Hekmatyar has been considered an important player in the Taliban-led insurgency.

"Hekmatyar has steadily regrouped his men, from within Parliament to the mountain vastness of Afghanistan. Most of the bureaucracy in southeastern Afghanistan, including Paktia, Paktika, Khost, Kunar, Nanaghar, Logar and Ghazni, is dominated by former HIA members who remain in contact with Hekmatyar.

"At the same time, Hekmatyar has successfully rallied his guerrillas around Jalalabad, Khost, Kunar and Paktia. However, Hekmatyar's ties with such people as Gul Agha Sherzai, the governor of Nangarhar, and previous association with Karzai stop him adopting an all-out offensive. (Hekmatyar has on several occasions been wooed by Karzai to help break the Afghan deadlock.)

"It appears that Hekmatyar, well aware that in the eventuality of an armed national uprising or Taliban victory he will play second fiddle to Mullah Omar, is jockeying to be in a position to help foreign forces achieve a safe exit from Afghanistan, in return for which he would want the leading political role.

"In these circumstances, once an uprising began, Hekmatyar would be in a straight race with Mullah Omar to reach Kabul and seize control of it.

"Once all issues between tribal leaders and the Taliban have been hammered out, Mullah Omar will move to Baghran, the northernmost district in Helmand province. It is the last Pashtun-speaking district in the southwest before one gets to the neighboring Persian-speaking western provinces, such as Ghor.

"Baghran has always been an important hub for the Taliban, serving as a rallying point to mend differences between Tajik commanders and pro-Taliban Pashtun commanders. After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Baghran remained one of the few strongholds of the Taliban and all top commanders, including Mullah Omar, took refuge in its mountains.

"During the 10-year Soviet occupation of Afghanistan starting in 1979, Soviet troops withdrew from Baghran in the early days and never regained a foothold there, and it became the headquarters of the mujahideen. Its isolated and inhospitable terrain makes it a perfect base, and it has many escape routes through the mountain passes."

It is hard to know what to make of these Taliban pronouncements. They've been speaking openly with journalists, including some Westerners, for quite a while now. As demonstrated at the battles in Panjwai a few months ago, they're no longer simply using guerrilla tactics and will sometimes stand and fight even against superior NATO firepower.

We'd be foolish to dismiss these warnings of a spring offensive.

Blame the Jet Stream?

The Chicago Tribune today warned readers to brace themselves for a powerful Christmas day storm driven out of the Pacific by a massively-powerful jet stream:

"...the potential for a second powerful storm, which could take shape late this weekend in the Gulf of Mexico then swing north toward the Midwest Christmas Day and night (Monday and Monday night) is linked to the future movement of a pocket of powerful 230 mph jet stream winds observed Tuesday over the Pacific. Winds of that strength, even at jet airplane altitude, are rare and have major meteorological implications. A 190+ m.p.h. speed max produced last week's crippling Pacific Northwest storm which sent hurricane strength winds roaring through the region's mountains and set a new Montana wind record of 165 m.p.h. at Snowslip Mountain in Glacier National Park last Wednesday. The new, even stronger speed max aloft is to drop surface pressures precipitously in the western Gulf of Mexico when it arrives there Sunday."

And, as the Times of London explains, this very same jet stream, coupled with an unusually warm Atlantic ocean, is to blame for northern Europe's bizarre winter weather:

"This year, the summer and autumn were unusually hot, boosting the warmth on the surface of the sea. A strong flow of southwesterly wind has swept over that sea and blown that warmth across western Europe. The driving force behind that flow has been a vigorous jet stream. This river of wind a few miles high is created by cold Arctic air colliding with subtropical air. At this time of year the Arctic air moves farther south, setting up a greater clash and driving the jet stream faster.

"For several weeks the jet stream has been at speeds of more than 200mph and taking direct aim at Europe, driving depressions and warm air deep into the Continent. Why it has taken such a direct course, and why it is so fast, is less certain."

Stormy Weather

Here on Vancouver Island we're bracing for our fourth major windstorm in a week. Today's not supposed to be quite as bad as the past - winds of 80 km./hr. - but that's bad enough. It's certainly enough to send more trees, some of them weakened by the earlier storms, crashing down. It's plenty to cause more massive power outages. It's more than ample to bring down fences that were merely damaged before.

There are so many trees down in Stanley Park that officials are hoping they can get the damage cleared away in time to re-open the landmark by summer.

Around the planet, we're getting used to strange weather conditions. Australia is now in year five of record droughts. As the Times of London reports, even the Russian Bear is getting the winter off this year:

"Traditional scenes of pristine snow and ice have given way to rain and muddy grass from Reykjavik to Moscow as unseasonably warm weather puts a damper on festivities.
Russians normally revel in the bitter harshness of their winters, but the warmest December since 1879, when records began, has left Muscovites despairing about a lack of snow to see in the new year.

"Moscow experienced a record winter high last Friday of 9.3C (48.8F), far above the average of -5C. The city received a light dusting of snow yesterday for the first time this month, but it was not expected to stay on the ground for long. Temperatures are predicted to rise above freezing again before the weekend. This winter is in stark contrast to last year, when temperatures in the capital plunged to -40C in the coldest winter since 1940.

"Nature is equally confused. Flowers and herbs have bloomed unexpectedly, while mushroom picking — a pastime about which Russians are fanatical — has been possible in the forests outside Moscow.

"Even Siberia is not immune, though here “warm” is a relative term. Temperatures in Novosibirsk, Western Siberia, have risen to -3C, well above the average of -16C.

"Many of Europe’s capital cities should be well in the grip of winter by this time of year, but Riga, Vilnius, Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, Vienna and Sofia are all wondering where the snow is — as are the Continent’s ski resorts.

"The forecast is similar for Norway and Denmark, and even Iceland is struggling to live up to its name: Reykjavik is forecast to be 10C over Christmas, with heavy rain."

I'm dreaming of a green Christmas. I just hope I won't have to spend it fixing that damned fence again.

A Thirst for Answers

There was a time when we almost always came up with answers to our problems. We identified something that seemed wrong, tossed about a couple or even a few plausible solutions, and then picked the one we found most suitable.

We're not coming up with answers any more. At times it seems that we're actually working very hard to avoid finding answers to the problems of the day.

Iraq: no good answers. Afghanistan? No good answers. Global warming? Nothing workable on the table yet. Overpopulation? Why even bother? Resource depletion? Don't bother me now, I'm busy. Land mines, starvation, disappearing ice packs, air and water pollution, ethnic and religious conflict - it's all too much.

Are we really out of answers? No. We've just run out of the political will to acknowledge the answers and the social and moral will to accept them.

Maybe it's just that today's problems look so big and, in fairness, some of them are. A lot of what is surfacing to endanger us today and in the future is rooted in generations long past. We're brought up, conditioned, to take responsibility for our own acts and even that's not an easy sell. Having to take responsibility for the misunderstandings or ignorance of those now long gone is tougher yet.

The problems in much of the Middle East today can be blamed, in part, on decisions taken in the colonial era to accommodate the interests of colonial powers. Who is going to pay the price for that because it remains very much outstanding? We're not even looking very hard for answers. Pointing fingers and laying blame is a convenient way to distract attention and leave the mess for future generations.

Think we're not preparing to dump problems like the Middle East on those to come? Think again. We'll try to control the troubles, keep the situation ticking over and get by with as little inconvenience as possible. George Bush has already sluffed off the cost of his ill-conceived war on terror to be borne by future generations. He cut taxes, logged huge deficits and borrowed funding from foreign lenders. Irresponsibility of galactic proportions. This is not the mentality needed to tackle grave threats.

Hardly a day passes that the scientific community's concensus on global warming and climate change doesn't strengthen. One by one their predictions and timelines are shown to have been too conservative. During the Cold War the US spent 4 to 10% of GDP annually to hold communism at bay. Today it cannot muster the resolve to spend 1% of GDP to combat global warming. To the contrary, it's leader howls with outrage at the indignity of his economy having to bend ever so slightly to effectively curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Answers are meaningless until they're given life through decisions. We're not accepting answers or even looking for them. Hence there's nothing to decide, no action required. The problems, however, don't merely drift along. They grow and gather speed. Eventually they become so large and so powerful that they shatter our indifference. Then, and only then, we are left to draw upon a shrunken list of atrophied solutions only to find that we have squandered the initiative and, with it, any real hope of finding good answers to intractable dangers.

America's Biggest Cash Crop

Endless fields of corn, seas of golden wheat, no forget those. America's numero uno cash crop is pot, marijuana, call it what you will.

US production is reported to have increased tenfold in the past twenty-five years and marijuana is now worth more to its producers than corn and wheat combined to other America farmers.

"Despite years of effort by law enforcement, they're not getting rid of it," Mr Gettman told the Los Angeles Times ahead of his report's publication yesterday in The Bulletin of Cannabis Reform. "Not only is the problem worse in terms of magnitude of cultivation, but production has spread all around the country. To say the genie is out of the bottle is a profound understatement."

Figures issued by the State Department and other government agencies show marijuana production increased from an estimated 2.2 million pounds in 1981 to at least 22 million pounds. Some estimates put the current crop as high as 50 million pounds.

President George Bush has a zero tolerance policy on marijuana, including medical marijuana, but his policies have done little to curb production or use.

"The fact that marijuana is America's number-one cash crop after more than three decades of governmental eradication efforts is the clearest illustration that our present marijuana laws are a complete failure," said Rob Kampia, executive director of Washington's Marijuana Policy Project.

Paul Martin was right to move to decriminalize limited possession of pot. It is here to stay and turning moderate users into criminals simply makes no sense.

Tony, You Blew It

The West is awash in 'think tanks', many of them thinly-disguised loudspeakers for hard ideologies. There are a few, however, that are both intelligent and intellectually honest. One of the best of the best is Britain's Chatham House.

Chatham House has now issued a report that passes judgment on a decade of British foreign policy under Tony Blair and it's not flattering for the PM. The paper gives Blair fairly good grades for his achievements during the Clinton years but an "F" for pretty much everything he did after George Bush seized the presidency.

While the report said there had been qualified successes in Mr Blair's first term, the decision to provide diplomatic cover for Mr Bush's decision to invade Iraq was the defining moment of his foreign policy and premiership.

"It will shape his legacy - for better or for worse - for many years to come," it concluded.

As so often with British prime ministers, Mr Blair thought unwavering public support for the US would bring private influence and lead to changes in US policy favouring British interests, but this had not happened.

Mr Bulmer-Thomas, author of the report, said there had been an "inability to influence the Bush administration in any significant way, despite the sacrifice - military, political and financial - that the United Kingdom has made".

Given the Byzantine complexity of Washington politics, it was always unrealistic to think that outside powers - however loyal - could expect to have much influence on the US decision-making process, he said.

"The bilateral relationship with the United States may be 'special' to Britain, but the US has never described it as more than 'close' ... Tony Blair has learnt the hard way that loyalty in international politics counts for very little," the report said.

It said there was no evidence that British pressure was responsible for Mr Bush's announcement that the US would accept a two-state solution in the Middle East, because this was simply a restatement of policy under the Clinton administration.

The report added that, whoever was the prime minister in future, there would "no longer be unconditional support for US initiatives in foreign policy".

I Hope They'll Stand Still and Listen

It's like that Fed-Ex commercial where the two guys are stymied on how to get a parcel to Germany. We're taking another shot at Panjwai, this time to win their minds. How are we going to go about that? Let's use massive aerial bombardment.

A few months back, Canadian General David Fraser led a force on what was called "Operation Medusa" to cleanse Panjwai of the Taliban and bring it back under the control of the central government. When the dust cleared we got the usual "Mission Accomplished" verdict. The bad guys were gone - driven out. We'd killed hundreds upon hundreds of them, the bodies were - I guess somewhere? We were on a roll and the bad guys were on the run and running out of time.

Reality check. We're back in Panjwai again, this time with a load of Brits,Americans and others to boot. What happened to Medusa? As the Toronto Star's Oakland Ross writes:

"Initially considered a major blow against the Taliban, last September's Operation Medusa proved to be a short-lived victory, as the radical Islamic rebels soon filtered back into this mountain-walled, grape-growing region, the main hotbed of their political support, a short distance west of Kandahar city."

"Code-named Operation Baaz Tsuka – or Falcon Summit in the Pashto language spoken here – the current offensive was launched Friday and is aimed at forging a rift between leading Taliban insurgents and their local supporters, who may well be tiring of the conflict."

"NATO planners hope the strategy will help to pacify this beautiful but troubled region, bristling with warriors and flanked by craggy mountain ranges that patrol the horizons to the north and south, like twin trains of granite elephants."

"Rather than descend upon local villages in full fighting mode with cannon ablaze, coalition forces aim to coax their adversaries into submission rather than kill them.

"They are hoping to entice wavering Taliban adherents to put down their weapons and instead accept peace offerings in the form of cargo containers stuffed with Yuletide treasures – farming implements, cooking oil, seeds for planting and other necessities of life, all scarce commodities in this war-ravaged territory.

"Wherever the offer is spurned, however, coalition forces are prepared to respond in more bellicose fashion, training their weaponry upon Taliban fighters while trying to avoid civilian casualties."

And, as we all know, nobody is more moved by Yuletide treasure than a Muslim peasant, right? And, of course, the fighters who put down (bury) their weapons and help themselves to an armful of farming implements, won't ever go back to those weapons and their old ways once the foreigners have left, right?

Of course we could just stay in Panjwai. We probably have enough soldiers to secure the entire district and keep the Taliban from returning. We can reclaim Panjwai for the Kabul government. Of course that would mean letting the rest of Kandahar province fall under the influence of the Taliban. No, scratch that idea.

A Better Way - Beyond Baker-Hamilton

The International Crisis Group has presented a bold, even startling set of proposals to stabilize Iraq.

The ICG report contends that Washington must go far beyond the Baker-Hamilton, Iraq Study Group, recommendations if Iraq is to be salvaged.

The first recommendation is to transform the peace effort into a true, multilateral process involving all five permanent members of the Security Council, Iraq's six neighbour states, and all parties to the current sectarian conflict, not merely the existing government and security forces.

With all these parties or 'stakeholders' aboard, the second recommendation calls for prolonged, forceful diplomacy:

"...This is not a military challenge in which one side needs to be strengthened and another defeated. It is a political challenge in which new consensual understandings need to be reached. A new, more equitable and inclusive national compact needs to be agreed upon by all relevant actors, including militias and insurgent groups, on issues such as federalism, resource allocation, de-Baathification, the scope of the amnesty and the timetable for a U.S. withdrawal."

The third, and perhaps most critical, recommendation calls for a complete overhaul of American foreign policy in the Middle East:

"A new U.S. regional strategy, including engagement with Syria and Iran, end of efforts at regime change, revitalisation of the Arab-Israeli peace process and altered strategic goals. Mere engagement of Iraq’s neighbours will not do; Washington must clearly redefine its objectives in the region to enlist regional, and particularly Iranian and Syrian help. The goal is not to bargain with them, but to seek compromise agreement on an end-state for Iraq and the region that is no one’s first choice, but with which all can live."

A Crisis Group spokesman acknowledged the recommendations will be a tough sell with the current US administration:

“There is abundant reason to question whether the Bush administration is capable of such a dramatic course change. But there is no reason to question why it ought to change direction, and what will happen if it does not."

Harper, If You Have an Ounce of Sincerity, It's Time to Stand Up for Canada

Maher Arar, an innocent Canadian tortured by American extremists. Or is he something else?

After being freed from American rendition and torture, Canada appointed Mr. Justice Dennis O'Conner to enquire into just what had happened and why. He considered the evidence and completely vindicated Mr. Arar.

Now, Canada has been a willing and faithful partner in Washington's "war on terror." We've even sent our soldiers to Afghanistan as part of a NATO effort to try to sort out the mess left in the wake of George Bush's insane desire to conquer Iraq instead of finishing the job there.

Upon Mr. Arar's return to Canada we call an enquiry but our lead partner in their war on terror, the US, refuses to co-operate. They torture a Canadian citizen and refuse to provide any explanation of why.

Our enquiry exonerates Mr. Arar but the US won't apologize. Instead the American ambassador, treating Canada like some irrelevant minion, says his country has some secret assessment of Arar that presumably justified this outrage - only they have no intention of revealing it to us.

Wait just a goddamned minute. These morons, who have set the Middle East ablaze with their lunacy, torture one of our citizens, claim they have reason to continue to suspect him, refuse to divulge why they're afraid of him and, being stupid enough to assume these jackasses are right, aren't willing to share that with us?

The moral to this story: You play ball with us (in assisting our "War on Terror") and we'll stick the bat up your ass.

That weasel Harper came to power boasting about his party's fervour to "stand up for Canada." Okay Steve, this is where the rubber meets the road. This is where you need to get up off your Tory lardass and actually stand up for Canada.

It's time to tell the Americans, who we're serving so dutifully, to either put up or shut up. If they have information that we're not worthy of receiving that Maher Arar is some sort of terrorist threat, they are leaving us vulnerable to a known threat. What sort of partnership is that? If there is reliable information that Arar is in league with the bad guys, why are we being put through this charade.

On the other hand, if the Americans are, once again, blowing smoke up our backsides, it's time to stand up for Canada by standing up for Mr. Arar and telling these loudmouth bullies that they can either start dealing with us honestly and openly or we're leaving their war on terror tea party.

Has Fidel Stepped Down?

There has been intense speculation in recent weeks that Cuban President Fidel Castro is terminally ill. Cancer is the most common ailment in the rumour mill.

US Congressmen visiting Havana have been assured by Cuban officials that Castro is neither terminally ill nor has cancer but Democratic Representative William Delahunt says he's been told that the Cuban dictator is finished and won't be returning to lead his country.

Delahunt says that control of Cuba has definitely passed to Fidel's brother, Raoul.

Ahmadinejad Repudiated?

Moderate candidates have taken an early lead in Iran's local elections. Opponents of President Mahmoud Amhadinejad are poised to take control of councils across Iran.

Incomplete results released by Iran's Interior Ministry show the winners tend to be moderate conservatives opposed to Ahmadinejad's radical reform movement.

A freelance journalist said, "After a year, Iranians have seen the consequences of the extremist policies employed by Ahmadinejad. Now, they have said a big 'no' to him.''

The Trouble with Bombs

Modern air superiority is a truly awesome power, especially to friendly troops when they're outnumbered. Being able to call in airstrikes on an enemy can make all the difference in winning and in the casualties our soldiers have to take in order to win.

Airpower is a blunt tool. Although targets can be hit with real precision, the killing zone of these weapons too often makes that precision meaningless for non-combattants who just happen to be in the general proximity of the target.

A fundamental tenet of guerrilla warfare is for the insurgents to mingle with the general population. Dress the same, look the same, make it difficult if not impossible for the conventional or government forces to tell the guerrillas from the civilians. The bad guys can not only hide among them but they can maneuvre through them at will. This tactic also makes it difficult if not impossible not to kill civilians in the process of attacking insurgents.

The bad guys get to use the innocents as camouflage, as conduits to come and go unmolested and also to get the government forces to turn its weaponry on the very people they're supposed to be protecting.

The families of those killed or maimed may curse both sides but, above all else, they remember who dropped the bomb on their loved ones.

An insurgency is a political war. The guerrillas set the rules and it is the guerrillas who hold the iniative. We can condemn the insurgents for using civilians as human shields and can blame the civilians for allowing the insurgents to exploit them. Maybe that's good for easing our collective conscience at the sight of the carnage from our aerial devastation but it is meaningless to the war we have to fight.

We rely on heavy air support because we're forced to rely on it. That's the unavoidable price of waging war on the cheap, of fielding a force far too small to hold its own without the assistance of aerial bombardment. Our salvation is also our defeat. From the Christian Science Monitor:

"...with so few boots on the ground, the increased reliance on air power has led to thousands of civilian deaths. The devastating air offenses are undermining support for the Afghan government, say human rights workers and Afghan officials, and are turning public opinion in the four southern provinces of Afghanistan against NATO forces, who took command of the south from the US in August.

"US aircraft fired more bombs in the first six months of this year than in the first three years of its campaign against the Taliban, according to figures released by the Pentagon.

"President Karzai's meeting last Tuesday of NATO and US generals, ambassadors, and Afghan ministers in Kandahar - southern Afghanistan's largest city and a former Taliban stronghold - was an attempt to examine better methods for tackling the insurgency and curbing civilian deaths.

"But even as top military officials met, NATO troops posted at a checkpoint in Kandahar shot and killed a local tribal elder who was driving a motorbike. The man had failed to heed warning signals as he drove to the meeting with Karzai.

"The Tuesday visit came three days after Karzai wept openly on national television about his helplessness to protect the Afghan people from US, NATO, and Taliban violence.

"'We can't prevent the coalition from bombing the terrorists, and our children are dying because of that,' he said with tears in his eyes during a speech to mark International Human Rights Day, Dec. 10. At the Kandahar meeting, Karzai saved some of his harshest criticism for his Pakistani neighbors, a country he says has been actively helping the Taliban.

"NATO's strategy has eroded support for its mission as well as for Karzai - nothing could be more telling than Karzai weeping and complaining about NATO killing Afghan civilians," says Sam Zia-Zarifi, Asia research director for Human Rights Watch.

"By providing much-needed financial aid for the families of victims killed by airstrikes, the Taliban has been able to garner support in the southern provinces, says Sarah Holewinski of the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), a Washington-based human rights group.

"'If NATO doesn't find a way to win the trust and support of the Afghan people, the Taliban will,' she says. 'In fact they already are.'

"Fighting against Taliban insurgents who are dressed in civilian clothes and hidden among the civilian population is a difficult task. But the sharp escalation in violence has many southern Afghans asking whether NATO troops are making their lives safer or, ultimately, more dangerous.

"Many Afghans in Kandahar say that they would prefer NATO convoys to avoid the city, because they act as magnets for suicide bombs and the NATO soldiers tend to shoot indiscriminately into crowds."

Aerial bombardment in civilian areas can help NATO win battles but it might well cost them the war.

If Afghanistan Isn't Ready for Democracy - Why Prop Up Karzai?

I know this is going to sound like heresy but why are we banging our heads against a wall trying to rescue democracy in Afghanistan? Why don't we just find a strongman of our liking, someone who has the strength and stomach to put the Afghan tribes into line, give him money and guns to defeat the Taliban and get the hell out of there?

We first have to give up the tattered illusion of a democratic Afghanistan. Sure you can get Afghans to vote but there's a lot more to democracy than voting. They have to choose a democracy over tribalism and they're not making that choice. They have to want freedom and equality for the female half of their population and that's a complete non-starter. Now, don't take this the wrong way (it's not you, it's them) but they're not going to embrace a national, democratic government anytime soon.

That's not to rule out all progress. A benevolent dictator could do wonders for the place, so long as we accept that he'll have to be pretty brutal at first to get things sorted out. He'll have to crush the insurgency, he'll have to put the warlords in their place, he'll have to suppress the opium trade. Notice I say "he". That's no accident, this place isn't going matriarchal this century or next.

The sad truth is we can't save Karzai. We don't have the manpower and we don't have the stomach for the brutal mayhem that would take. What do we really want out of Afghanistan? I'm thinking we want a place that won't tolerate al-Qaeda or other Islamist fanatics. Maybe we should just settle for that.

Just What is Israel Doing in Gaza?

There are some people who want you to know. They're former Israeli soldiers who served in Gaza and they're not at all proud of what their army did and is doing there. The Toronto Star interviewed one of them, Yehuda Shaul, who spent over a year in Gaza guarding Israeli settlers:


"He recounted the moment when, three months before being released from the army, he was alone and wondering what he would do upon returning to civilian life.

"It struck him, he said, that he had become "a monster," doing things that were not right. "It was a frightening moment."

"He spoke to fellow soldiers. "They were feeling the same: `Something's rotten here.' Israelis don't know what goes on here, and we must tell them.'"

"Within three months of being discharged in March 2004, Shaul and friends mounted an exhibit, Bringing Hebron to Tel Aviv. It had powerful photos and video testimony by 64 soldiers showing and describing the treatment meted out to Palestinians by the troops as well as some of the settlers.

"There were pictures of Palestinians bound and blindfolded. There was a photo of a settler carrying an assault rifle with a decal on the magazine clip: "Kill 'em all, Let God sort 'em out." Another was of graffiti on a wall: "Arabs to the gas chamber."



"Other soldiers who had served in the West Bank and Gaza came forward. More photos were gathered, as well as about 400 audio and video testimonies.

"In them, soldiers talk about the total power of the occupiers over the occupied — throwing Palestinians out of their homes; making them stand for hours for disobeying the curfew or trying to bypass a checkpoint or even smiling or arguing at the wrong time, Shaul said.

"We can play with them. This is the mindset from which everything flows."

In Hebron, Shaul manned a machine gun. "It can shoot dozens of grenades a minute up to a distance of about 2,000 metres. We'd shoot 40 or 50 a day ...

"We had three high posts, two where we had kicked the Palestinian families out of and the third was a Palestinian school which we had closed down.

"The idea was that anytime they shoot, we shoot back.

"But the machine gun is not an accurate weapon. You just shoot in the direction of the target ... We have no idea how many we killed. I hope no one."

"Shaul said some acts "flow from being afraid or being bored. You are there eight hours a night at the post. You just aim and shoot the water tank."

"Or, "when you drive your tank or your APC (armoured personnel carrier), you bump into a streetlight. As you turn a corner, you bump into a wall. It's fun ... It's all about you. Nothing else matters ... Palestinians are no longer human."

At Least it Rhymes

A lot of pundits like to compare the mess in Iraq with the American experience in Vietnam in the 60's and 70's. In many ways, however, it more closely resembles an earlier disaster, one that began in 1899.

Roughly 108-years ago, the US conquered the Philippines in the course of the Spanish-American war. A Guardian report shows how eerily similar that debacle was to what's going on today:

"The US took the Philippines in 1899 - part of what its then Secretary of State, John Hay, called 'a splendid little war'. The previous regime (in this case, Spanish-run) was quickly vanquished, with the shock and awe of superior weaponry. War had begun over American claims that a weapon of medium-sized destruction was used by the Spanish to destroy the USS Maine in Havana harbour, an accusation later considered dubious.

"Republican President, William McKinley, stated he had prayed for guidance, and the divine advice was to 'uplift and civilise' the Philippines. The Americans expected a welcome from the Filipinos, and indeed the US was seen as a liberator by many - initially. But US occupation became increasingly unpopular and a protracted guerrilla war developed. During the conflict, more than 4,000 US troops died and several hundred thousand Filipinos lost their lives during the occupation.

"An outcry swelled over civilian deaths and over US treatment of Filipino prisoners, including a torture used known as 'the water cure' (a technique similar to the 'water boarding' Vice President Dick Cheney defended as a practice in Guantanamo). Some GIs were reprimanded. Military morale fell. When a leader of the insurrection was captured and executed, some thought this would end the violence - it did not.



"The Americans enjoyed an overwhelming advantage in military technology, but Filipinos fought using what they had to hand. Muslim islanders, called to jihad, launched suicide sword attacks in crowded streets. Christian islanders also resisted, but there was conflict between the faiths. Those co-operating with the US were often threatened or assassinated.

"The US war with the Spanish had been planned for months, with a media campaign focusing on the barbarism of Spanish rule. But the Americans had not done their research on the people, nor did they have any detailed plans of how to administer the country. The US organised elections, but was disappointed with the politicians who emerged. It spent millions of dollars improving infrastructure, but won over few hearts and minds. Back home, enthusiasm for the war eroded. Celebrities and intellectuals voiced opposition. The media began to turn, despite the US military offering preferential treatment to journalists who gave favourable coverage. Even big US businesses that were close to the White House started to lose faith in the supposed commercial opportunities the occupation might offer. Eventually this was reflected in the polls and by 1912 the Democrats won control of both houses of Congress, ending years of Republican domination.

"The US decided to leave the Philippines in 1916, granting the islands independence as soon as a stable government could be formed. This proved harder to achieve than expected, for fear the country would descend into chaos. The Second World War intervened and sovereignty was handed back to the Filipinos only in 1946."

In other words, it took the Japanese conquest of the Philippines in 1941 to create conditions that allowed the US to bow out five years later. Here's another interesting quirk not included in the Guardian piece: both Bush and his political guru, Karl Rove, have consistently looked upon McKinley, the president whose ambitions led to the occupation of the Philippines, as their role model.

"There are important differences between Iraq and the Philippines a century before. But also surely there's been a wasted opportunity to learn lessons, by an America that, for all its virtues, does not enjoy examining the past. Mark Twain, who stood up against the Philippine occupation, wrote that, if the past does not repeat itself, it at least rhymes."

Too Weak To Talk

A core recommendation of the Iraq Study Group calls for Washington to open talks with Iran and Syria for help in resolving the insurgency and civil wars in Iraq. President George Bush wasted no time in saying "no way" to that one.

Why should Bush refuse to talk? Talk is free, isn't it? Well, there's the rub.

Talking with Iran and Syria would be, in fact, a process of negotiation. The US would be trying to get these nations to help out with its own problems in Iraq. Now, from the moment he climbed onto the saddle and raised his sabre in the air, George Bush has been condemning these two countries and freely making threats of what lay in store for them if they didn't play ball, Washington style.

How can George Bush go to leaders he's repeatedly villified to ask for their co-operation? He can't. His Mesopotamian misadventure has undermined his credibility, has sapped his political capital. Tehran and Amman aren't extending any overtures to Bush because they see no need to make accomodations, at least not gratuitiously. If there are any deals to be made, Washington will have to go to them - on bended knee, bearing plenty of favours and inducements. Even then they could well turn down the offers, if only to cause Bush and America further embarrassment while enhancing their own stature in the Muslim world.

It doesn't matter that George Bush is the author of his own misfortune, he's simply too weak to talk.

Taming Iraq's Sunni Insurgency

Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki has invited former Iraqi army officers to join the new Iraqi army. These Sunni Baathists are widely believed to have formed the insurgency after being fired by then proconsul Bremer.

It's hard to imagine many taking up the offer, particularly those who've been leading the Sunni insurgency. They would be coming back to an army under the control of a Shia-dominated government. They would also, undoubtedly, be expected to work against the insurgents and that wouldn't sit too well for their relatives back in the Sunni regions.

It seems to be an offer too loaded to accept. Imagine if Lincoln had invited General Lee's officers to return to the Union army. I can't see that this is a much more attractive deal.

All CanWest, All the Time

The people of British Columbia are in the stranglehold of CanWest news service. There are two major dailies in Vancouver - the Sun and the Province - both CanWest properties. Victoria has the Times Colonist - again, CanWest.

If you live on Vancouver Island, it's a CanWest blanket that includes just about every community paper too such as the Alberni Valley Times and Alberni Valley Pennyworth, the Nanaimo Daily News and Nanaimo Harbour City Star, the Campbell River Courier-Islander and the Campbell River Port Hardy North Islander, the Comox Valley Echo and the Cowichan Valley Citizen plus, on the west coast, the Tofino-Uclulet Westerly.

Atop that we get Global National, Global BC and CH Vancouver Island television.

So, what's my beef? It's the oppressive extent of the concentration of media ownership and cross-ownership (tv/newspapers) out here that gives CanWest and its right wing views a near monopoly.

The media serve democracy by presenting the populace with the most diverse range of views and information. When an organization like CanWest is allowed to become so universal it strangles diversity and allows the owner's views to dominate, unchallenged.

Asper has been criticized for the iron fist with which he controls CanWest's editorials. It's time this cabal was broken up and Asper was forced to divest. No media compnay should be allowed to have more than a single newspaper or television or radio station in any given market. When there's only one voice democracy suffers.

Michael Crichton Unhinged

He argues that global warming is pure myth. He's a virtual rockstar to the global warming denial community, especially those who've come to think "Jurassic Park" as something other than fiction.

What are we to make of Michael Crichton? Well for starters, he's a creepy, sleazy old tirebiter as evidenced by the disgusting hatchet job he did on one of his critics. From The Independent:

"Anyone tempted to disparage Michael Crichton, the author of science fiction novels such as Jurassic Park and Airframe, should be aware of the dangers. However constructive the criticism, it's possible the writer will use the pages of his next book to strike back - and he is prepared to strike below the belt.

"Last week Michael Crowley, a senior editor at The New Republic, a weekly political magazine, claimed he had become the victim of a "literary hit-and-run" in the pages of Crichton's newest tome, Next.

"Crowley's crime was to pen an article in March highlighting Crichton's well-known disdain for anti-global warming activists, who he accuses of hyping climate science to back their cause, as well as the influence he allegedly wields in the White House.

"'In his career,' Crowley wrote, 'Crichton has relentlessly propagandised on behalf of one big idea: that experts - scientists, intellectuals, reporters, and bureaucrats - are spectacularly corrupt and spectacularly wrong.'

"'The Bush administration has put this critique into action, trampling the opinions of scientists, exorcising economists, muzzling the press, and stifling State Department wonks.

"'Crichton, in other words, primed America for the Bush era,' he wrote, going on to note that after the release of State of Fear in 2004, Crichton was invited by a presidential aide to meet George Bush and had expounded his anti-intellectual cant to anyone who would listen on Capitol Hill.

"In Next, Crichton has written a 431-page novel about genetic engineering run amok, filling his pages with modified apes chattering in German and parrots capable of holding conversations. But on page 227, the author strays into paragraphs seemingly included purely for retaliation.

"He introduces a new figure who is apparently completely superfluous to the wider plot, curiously called Mick Crowley. His manhood is of unusually small dimensions and it has been places it should not have been. To avoid any confusion, the fictional Crowley is a political writer who went to Yale. Which describes the real Crowley too.

"Crowley's doppelganger is on trial for raping his sister's two-year-old son after 'experiencing an overwhelming urge to have anal sex' with him.

"Elsewhere, he refers to his Crowley as a spoilt heir to a pharmaceutical fortune, a "dickhead", a "weasel" as well as "that political reporter who likes little boys".

"The real Michael Crowley has responded by way of a riposte in the 25 December issue of The New Republic and is already on its website under a link entitled "Michael Crichton, Jurassic Prick".

"He suggests that the author has tried to employ a doctrine called "the small penis rule" whereby it's safe to attack someone by way of a proxy literary figure who is under-endowed on the grounds that no one will ever publicly acknowledge that the guy is them .

"Crowley said he was "strangely flattered". "If someone offers substantive criticism of an author, and the author responds by hitting below the belt, as it were, then he's conceding that the critic has won."

Decisions, Decisions - Will Layton Prop Up Harper?

The planets have realligned in the heavens, bad news for Jack Layton.

Layton's NDP has tanked in recent polls, losing supporters to Stephane Dion. There's talk of toppling the Harper government in the New Year. That's bad news for Stephen Harper and Jack Layton.

Layton was instrumental in allowing Harper to get into office, will he become Stevie's bumboy to keep him there?

Layton's gambit in toppling the Martin government hasn't played out too well for the NDP. The Liberal Party under Stephane Dion is flexing its muscles as only the Libs can do - pushing right and left. A lot of progressives aren't happy with Harper and a lot of the left has been turned off by Layton's bumbling.

A quick election threatens Harper and Layton. Both desperately need to regroup and that will take time. It would be damning evidence of rank opportunism but if Jack Layton wants to preserve his own political future, he may have to throw in with Stephen Harper. Wouldn't that be delightful? Martin had to go but Harper stays? Yeah, sure Jack.

Breaking the Chain of Appeasement

It works like this: Bush appeases Musharraf, Musharraf appeases Waziristan, and Waziristan appeases the Taliban which then besets Afghanistan.

What ever happened to that nonsense about "you're either with us or you're with the terrorists"? You're not supposed to be able to be with both and yet that's the dilemma of Pakistan today.



Pakistan is ruled by a strongman who is also, in many ways, incredibly weak and vulnerable. President General Musharraf's hold on power is tenuous and subject to the whims of his fellow officers and intelligence agency. He knows there are people and groups who are waiting for the chance to kill him. They've already tried and they've come close.




The tribes of Waziristan have very divided loyalties. They're more apt to consider themselves Balochs and Pashtuns first and Pakistanis only reluctantly. They don't hold much love for the Arab jihadis, al-Qaeda, but the Taliban are kith and kin.

Here's how the International Crisis Group sees the problem:

"The military operations Pakistan has launched since 2004 in South and North Waziristan Agencies to deny al-Qaeda and the Taliban safe haven and curb cross-border militancy have failed, largely due to an approach alternating between excessive force and appeasement. When force has resulted in major military losses, the government has amnestied pro-Taliban militants in return for verbal commitments to end attacks on Pakistani security forces and empty pledges to cease cross-border militancy and curb foreign terrorists.

"The government reached accords with pro-Taliban militants in April 2004 in South Waziristan and on 5 September 2006 in North Waziristan. These were brokered by the pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F), the largest component of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), the ruling six-party religious alliance in Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) and Musharraf’s coalition partner in the Balochistan provincial government. Following the September accord, the government released militants, returned their weapons, disbanded security check posts and agreed to allow foreign terrorists to stay if they gave up violence. While the army has virtually retreated to barracks, this accommodation facilitates the growth of militancy and attacks in Afghanistan by giving pro-Taliban elements a free hand to recruit, train and arm.



"Badly planned, poorly conducted military operations are also responsible for the rise of militancy in the tribal belt, where the loss of lives and property and displacement of thousands of civilians have alienated the population. The state’s failure to extend its control over and provide good governance to its citizens in FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas] is equally responsible for empowering the radicals. The only sustainable way of dealing with the challenges of militancy, governance and extremism in FATA is through the rule of law and an extension of civil and political rights. Instead, the government has reinforced administrative and legal structures that undermine the state and spur anarchy."

It's hard to believe that Musharraf has escaped US pressure to shut down these Taliban strongholds. Washington must understand that there is only so far that their ally in the war on terror can go without himself being deposed by the dangerous Islamists lurking in the wings. When it comes right down to it, keeping Musharraf in place and coping with the Taliban problem may be seen as preferrable to Muslim extremists getting control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

Blair Questioned by Cops on Cash for Honours

The Times of London

Repeat After Me

Ehud's so good, you can't see him move his lips.

Just what does Italian leader Romano Prodi think about Hamas? You'll have to ask Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

TV cameras yesterday caught Olmert feeding Prodi his lines before their joint press conference in Rome. The Independent:

"In the footage, taken by a cameraman for Israel's Channel 10 TV, the two men are seen - apparently unaware they are being filmed - conversing yesterday about what to say at the press conference, held during Olmert's visit to Rome.

"Olmert tells Prodi that he should mention the international community's demands that the Hamas-led Palestinian government recognise Israel, renounce terror and respect signed peace agreements.

"Olmert also asks Prodi to mention Israel's status as a Jewish state, implying that he rules out a key Palestinian demand that millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants be allowed into Israel, changing its demographic balance and possibly making Jews a minority.

"I have heard you say something about the Jewish state," Olmert prompts Prodi.

"At the press conference, Prodi obliged. 'Every peace process must go through a renouncing of violence, recognition of the state of Israel, recognition of past agreements and, I must add, also the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state,' Prodi said.

All the Trouble in the World for Blair & Bush

Poor old Tony Blair. The way things are going, he'll be lucky if he doesn't get a boatride through Traitors' Gate.

It looks as though Tony was lying trough his teeth about Iraqi WMDs in the run-up to the invasion and conquest. Here's the scoop from The Independent:

"The Government's case for going to war in Iraq has been torn apart by the publication of previously suppressed evidence that Tony Blair lied over Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

"A devastating attack on Mr Blair's justification for military action by Carne Ross, Britain's key negotiator at the UN, has been kept under wraps until now because he was threatened with being charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act.

"In the testimony revealed today Mr Ross, 40, who helped negotiate several UN security resolutions on Iraq, makes it clear that Mr Blair must have known Saddam Hussein possessed no weapons of mass destruction. He said that during his posting to the UN, "at no time did HMG [Her Majesty's Government] assess that Iraq's WMD (or any other capability) posed a threat to the UK or its interests."

"Mr Ross revealed it was a commonly held view among British officials dealing with Iraq that any threat by Saddam Hussein had been "effectively contained".

"He also reveals that British officials warned US diplomats that bringing down the Iraqi dictator would lead to the chaos the world has since witnessed. "I remember on several occasions the UK team stating this view in terms during our discussions with the US (who agreed)," he said.

"''At the same time, we would frequently argue when the US raised the subject, that 'regime change' was inadvisable, primarily on the grounds that Iraq would collapse into chaos.'"

"Mr Ross's evidence directly challenges the assertions by the Prime Minster that the war was legally justified because Saddam possessed WMDs which could be "activated" within 45 minutes and posed a threat to British interests. These claims were also made in two dossiers, subsequently discredited, in spite of the advice by Mr Ross.

"His hitherto secret evidence threatens to reopen the row over the legality of the conflict, under which Mr Blair has sought to draw a line as the internecine bloodshed in Iraq has worsened."

"Just Keep a Straight Face, Tony"

If Tony Blair lied Britain into the Iraq War, it's pretty obvious that George Bush lied Congress and the American people into this also. This isn't an impeachable offence, it's treason - treachery on a grand scale that has set the whole Middle East on fire. It's a betrayal of the British people and the American people and it's a betrayal of the NATO nations who've had to shoulder the fight against the Taliban because of these damned lies.

Stevie Stammers Over Environment

Stphen Harper wants parliament to let him keep governing so he can sort out the mess he's made of the Tory's environmental policy. Mr. "So-called Greenhouse Gases" himself has obviously heard he alarm bells ringing in his head that he's in serious trouble on this issue.

Harper is like Bush. He screws up and wants to start over again. His principles from last month go into the rotary file while he finds new principles on Ebay.

Here's his problem. Nothing is dearer to Stephen Harper than Alberta. His adopted home province, Alberta, is expected to soon edge out his original home province, Ontario, as Canada's main greenhouse gas emitter. Cracking down on GHG emissions means lowering the boom on Alberta and that means that province's bountiful tar sands.

Is Harper going to choose Canada over Alberta? What are the chances? If his government does last long enough to throw on a layer of green makeup, it'll probably be just a lot more shuckin' and jivin' replete with ambiguity and weasel words. He's been around long enough to show us that's the way he does things.

There are some serious political consequences to going green particularly when you head the party that's the natural home to global warming deniers. More time? No way.

Making Nice - Libs and Greens

According to the Toronto Star, the Green party is cozying up to the Dion Libs.

"In separate news conferences on Parliament Hill yesterday, new Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion and Green Leader Elizabeth May, who was elected only a few months previously, appeared to be signalling that their two parties could work together.

"May was the most explicit, saying that Dion's election as Liberal leader this month will help her party because realism dictates that the Greens, with no seats in Parliament yet, need to work with a mainstream, established Canadian political force.

"She appeared to rule out that possibility with Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and had only faint praise for New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton on this score.

"'Although many Canadians, myself included, yearn for the day of a Green party majority government, we simply don't have time,' said May, after praising Dion's achievements on the environment, especially a plan for Canada to live up to its commitment under the Kyoto climate-change protocol.

"'He's certainly the best the Liberals had on offer,' May said. 'He was a very, very good environment minister.'"

May's deferential endorsement is a real boost for Dion. The one who must be really licking his wounds today is Layton whose NDP has been tanking in the polls.

A Major NATO Development Mission in Panjwai

NATO forces, together with Afghan army units, are massing in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province for... well for what isn't exactly clear.

While the force was under the command of Canadian General David Fraser, the focus was mainly on combat missions against the Taliban. Fraser's Dutch replacement, Maj-Gen. Ton Van Loon, wants to put more effort into reconstruction and infrastructure projects.

“The main aim of Operation Baaz Tsuka is to work together with tribal elders and district leaders to provide vital assistance and targeted development directly to the people of Zahre and Panjwaii districts,” said Maj.-Gen. Ton Van Loon, head of Regional Command-South for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

Tribal elders and district leaders were extensively consulted in the buildup to the operation, which was planned jointly by Afghan security forces and ISAF, Van Loon said.

A report in the Toronto Star quotes Canadian commander, Lt.-General Mike Gauthier, as saying the Canadian force will have to make do with its existing force which he said is undermanned for the task of controlling Kandahar province.

Distrust Fuels Homegrown Terrorism

"Public perceptions of corruption, inequity and fear are the driving force behind support to terrorist organizations.''

The curse of Afghanistan again. Actually, no. This comes from US Army Colonel, David Sutherland, trying to explain why tribals in his area of Baqouba are turning violent. From The Guardian:

"Tribal leaders and some political groups in the strife-ridden Iraqi province of Diyala are turning to terrorists and insurgents for protection rather than trust Iraqi soldiers and police, the commander of U.S. forces in that area said Friday.

"'This sort of unity only worsens the sectarian divide and encourages further violence,'' said Col. David Sutherland, commander of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division.

"He said he is trying to turn that around by putting Iraqi police through more rigorous training, placing more U.S. advisers in the Iraqi army and police units and through Iraqi efforts to recruit a police and army force that better reflects the sectarian makeup of Diyala, which is about 55 percent Sunni, 30 percent Shiite and 15 percent Kurd.

"Currently the Iraqi security forces in Diyala are predominantly Shiite, Sutherland said."

A One-Two Punch?

It's probably only coincidence. It's gotta be coincidence. Surely it's only coincidence, right?

Japan's new government, sort of like "Canada's new goverment" has taken a certain hard turn to the right, toward nationalism, not like the old kind that brought us all together sixty years ago but in the same direction.

Part of this effort has been to upgrade Japan's self-defence force from a department into a full-blown ministry. That was done today.

Slipped in alongside the military's upgrade was legislation requiring Japanese schools to boost students' patriotism.

"The new education law will allow children to acquire a good understanding of their heritage and become intelligent and dignified Japanese,'' ruling party lawmaker Hiroo Nakashima said during the upper house debate.

"Critics, however, attacked the move as harkening back to Japan's war-era education system, in which children were instructed to support the country's imperialist military and sacrifice themselves for the emperor and nation.

"The government is putting the future of Japanese children at risk and turning Japan into a country that wages war abroad,'' said Ikuko Ishii, a Communist Party lawmaker.

"The upgrading of the Defense Agency under the Cabinet Office to a full ministry passed Parliament without significant opposition, propelled by deep concern in Japan over North Korean missile and nuclear weapons development.

"The upgrade, to be effected early next year, gives Japan's generals greater budgetary powers and prestige - a reversal for a military establishment that has kept a low profile since being discredited by Japan's disastrous wartime defeat.

The call for more patriotism in the schools coincides with a push by some local governments to crack down on teachers and students who refuse to stand for the national flag or sing an anthem to the emperor at school ceremonies.

Nukes, They're All the Rage

George Bush long ago announced his intention that America have a new generation of nuclear weapons. North Korea has since tested a device and we're told that Iran is working on its own. The Arab states, including America's allies, have said they'd like to experiment with 'peaceful' nuclear technology. And now it's Russia, a nation that's rapidly sliding back toward its totalitarian roots.

The Guardian reports that Russia wants to spruce up its missile arsenal, replacing the old single, warheads with multiple warheads, sort of like putting a racing engine in the old Chevy.

Czar/President Vladimir Putin says the deployment of Topol-M missiles on mobile launchers was a ``serious step forward in strengthening Russia's defense capability.''

Gunmen Kidnap Dozens in Baghdad - What Else is New?

It grates at me. I read the headlines that tell me this many dozens died here or so many dozens were kidnapped there and, every morning, it's a macabre count of how many dozens of bodies the authorities in Baghdad come across.

It grates at me because I read it and then look for something interesting. SNAFU - situation normal, all f__ked up! What is the deathometer up to now - 100 a day? Who knows? We're only getting reports out of Baghdad and, as the Iraqi Study Group report shows, we're only getting some of that at best.

I guess what troubles me most is how little this has come to trouble me. It might as well be a weather report - storm fronts looming. The darker part is that I know we all feel pretty much the same, that we've become hardened to this business. I guess what I really find frightening is not knowing how much less I can actually care as this madness drags on.

Earlier today I posted excerpts of a story from The Independent about the brutal horrors being inflicted on kids in Gaza. The post prompted a comment from someone calling himself "Ex_NDIP" who proclaimed:

"A society that trains their kids by 3 years old to hate . . . and then graduates them to bomber school by 16, with the promises of virgins and groceries is a society deemed to failure.The poor so-called Palestinanians have broken every treaty, foiled every attempt by Israel to make any kind of peace. Your writings are pure drivel . . . "

Is this what we're really becoming?

Breast Cancer Rates Fall 15% in US

The New York Times reports the most common form of breast cancer dropped 15% from August, 2002 to December, 2003.

The newly released report from American researchers gives cause for optimism but still awaits comparison to results from other countries such as Canada.

The researchers believe the drop is probably tied to the decision of many women to drop hormone therapy for symptoms of menopause after a study suggested the hormones could cause an increase in breast cancer.

William & Harry - Just Let It Be

Princes William and Harry have called for an end to all the wild speculation about the circumstances surrounding the death of their mother, Princess Diana.

A statement from Clarence House last night said:

"Prince William and Prince Harry are extremely grateful to Lord Stevens and his team for the thoroughness and professionalism they have shown during their investigation, and trust that these conclusive findings will end the speculation surrounding the death of their mother Diana, Princess of Wales."

It seems, however, that nothing will put an end to Mohamed el-Fayed's conspiracy theory that Diana and his son died as the result of an MI6 plot. He dismissed Lord Stevens' report as a "smokescreen."

Fayed has vowed to continue to pursue his suspicions, "Whatever it's going to cost me, if it costs me the last penny in my purse, I'm not going to rest until I get the gangsters."

No Rush for Election

Stephane Dion isn't going to jump the gun. In slamming the Harper government as "secretive and ideological," he said the Liberals are preparing for an early election but would prefer time to work on their platform and raise a war chest.

"I plan to make sure that Canadians know the difference between the Conservative approach to champion their narrow ideological agenda that plays to their socially conservative base and our approach to economic prosperity, social justice and environmental sustainability,” Dion said.

"We have a government, as I said, that is so at odds with Canadians, so frustrated to not be able to implement its right-wing agenda, it may put us in an election at any time,” Dion said. “The Liberals and the other two parties have difficulties to agree with anything this government is proposing, so it’s a bit of a dysfunctional situation.”

The House of Saud Twists Washington's Arm

The Saudis are pushing Washington pretty hard these days.

First came the warning that, if the US pulls out of Iraq, the Saudis might fund the Iraqi Sunnis in a war against the Iraq's Shia. The message to the Bush administration seems to be clear, "rethink this all you like, just don't get any ideas about leaving."

On the weekend there was a report that Arab gulf nations are looking at getting into the "civilian" nuclear energy business. The message this time seemed to be "deal with Iran or we're all going to get nukes."

Then there was a report accusing the Saudis, along with American ally Egypt, of joining the usual suspects of bad actors in aiding the Islamic rebels in Somalia. The message this time? Who knows but you can bet there is one and it's aimed at Washington.

Plainly, the Saudis have issues with Washington. George Bush has unleashed a wave of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East that, if unchecked, threatens the grip on power of America's ruling elite allies. The little lark in Iraq has greatly empowered the rival Shia/Persian camp in southern Iraq as well as Iran. If the US leaves it adds a huge power vacuum atop the several other power vacuums its actions have already created.

I think the House of Saud is sending a plain message to Bush: "You broke it, don't even think about leaving until you fix it and "it" means, above all else, Iran." A tough spot for a guy who once thought he was going to call all the shots.

Lifting the Curse from Gaza's Kids

This isn't going to be easy reading. It's The Independent's account of what it means to be a child living today in Gaza:

"It doesn’t take an air strike, or a telephoned warning that Israeli bombers are on the way, to terrify the war-weary children of Gaza. Heightened surveillance is enough to cause nightmares. Lasers glow red in the night like the eyes of wild beasts. An enemy spy drone, like a pale fish-shaped balloon, hovers high overhead to eavesdrop and snap photos. Heaps of fresh rubble cast weird shadows. And sonic booms – louder than a crack of thunder – trigger dread whenever F-16 fighter jets fly low.

"In Gaza’s grim conditions, mothers find it hard to tell if their offspring are crying out of fright, pain or misery. But when normally bickering brats fall silent, it’s the first sign of mental scars from being constantly scared.

“Dozens of children in every school show clear signs of trauma,” said Hosam Sheikh Youssef, a seasoned social worker leading a workshop for professional counsellors in Rafah, southern Gaza. “We must treat thousands of cases.”

"The Welfare Association, one of three charities supported by the Independent’s 2006 Christmas Appeal, runs community psycho-social outreach programmes that help Palestinian families cope with the relentless conflict in the Gaza Strip. They are not allowed to flee to safety in exile because the Israelis usually seal the borders, and social collapse is a genuine risk.

“You can tell the children who need help,” said Mawahib Ali Muhdi, a teacher a teacher attending the Rafah training course. “Some jump at the slightest noise, whether it’s a helicopter lifting off or a dropped knife. Others become slow learners. They tune out and lose focus, as if they do not want to feel anymore. And if these children ever sense that their teachers are even a little afraid, they start to scream.”



"No sane child can remain unaffected by the mayhem of Gaza Strip. Playmates frequently are killed or maimed: at last count, Israeli guns had slain 88 Gazan children and wounded another 343 since mid- June, about one quarter of the total casualties of the back to back Israeli offensives. And women – mostly mothers or grandmothers – accounted for at least 29 of the civilian deaths and 108 injuries. Factional feuds and inter-clan battles felled a dozen more Palestinians in the crossfire.

"The densely-packed enclave is, in effect, the world’s largest prison. One third of the 1.4m people already live in cramped refugee camps. Chronic shortages caused by international boycotts against the democratically-elected Hamas government left tens of thousands of trapped families to deal with thirst and hunger. There’s not much comfort eating from empty cupboards. And they drink from contaminated taps.

"After months of indiscriminate Israeli bombing and shelling, thousands of Gazan families have been forced to abandon destroyed flats. Some unlucky ones were even compelled to quarter enemy Israeli soldiers in their own homes and lock their own kin away in a single basement room."

The Israelis and the Palestinians have been unable, unwilling to settle their differences for the better part of half a century. The barbarity goes on and adds fuel to the many other fires that blaze across the Middle East.

The West created Israel, it's time for the West to intervene. We need to impose a just solution and that means forcing the parties to accept a return to Israel's pre-1967 borders. That means forcing both parties. No negotiation, no fiddling.

To pull this off will take a large peacekeeping force, adequate to effectively separate the two sides, and that force will be needed probably for decades, at least one and perhaps even two generations. It will also require the West to commit a vast amount of aid to Palestinian reconstruction and rehabilitation.

We can do so much more lasting good in Gaza and the Occupied Territories - good for both sides - than we can ever dream of achieving in places such as Afghanistan.

Argue the fine points to your heart's content, we cannot allow another generation of children to grow up in the nightmare of the world's biggest prison.

Afghanistan Minus Taliban Still Equals Disaster

The depth and breadth of the cancers riddling Afghanistan really aren't known to us. You don't read about them in our newspapers. Lord knows our politicians won't raise them, that is if they knew about them. Our generals are in full blown cheerleader mode so they won't get into this stuff. NATO's leaders are too busy telling you we're winning to let this reality get in their way.

The hard fact is that, even if we were able to completely wipe out the Taliban tomorrow for all time, it wouldn't save Afghanistan. It wouldn't.

Getting rid of the Taliban won't get rid of radical Islamic fundamentalism, only their variety of it. The same sort of radical fundamentalism is embraced by the guys we've accepted as our allies, the Northern Alliance leaders and their people. It's the very way of life of this place, not some aberration introduced by the Taliban.

If you still hold any illusions about what NATO is doing and can do for Afghanistan, you need an eye-opener. Here's a good place to start:

www.rawa.org

RAWA is the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan. They'll show you the true face of Afghanistan, not just in the south but in the north.

Go to their site. Click on "news archives" and read away until you've had a stomach full. Once you've opened your eyes, this debate looks entirely different.

Oh Man!

Just what in hell is a 90-year old guy doing on a motorcycle anyway?

You may remember an unfortunate incident a couple of days ago where a Canadian soldier fired a warning shot at a motorcyclist who was getting too close for comfort. The round ricocheted, killing the rider. According to the CanWest News Service:


"Believed to be at least 90 years of age - making him one of Afghanistan's oldest citizens - Abdul Rahman was the president's former primary school teacher.

"He was the oldest member of Kandahar's provincial assembly and a noted political scientist.

"Rahman enjoyed paying the president impromptu visits, according to his brother-in-law, who spoke to CanWest News Service outside a crowded mosque where the dead man was being mourned yesterday.

"Rahman was famous for riding around Kandahar city on his battered motorcycle, despite his advanced age.

"He was apparently trying to drop in, unannounced, as Karzai directed a summit on security issues at the governor's palace when he was shot Tuesday afternoon.

"Rahman drove straight through an initial security cordon, travelling at "a high rate of speed," Canadian military officials said.

"It seems likely local police had recognized Rahman, and had allowed him to pass.

"He then approached a second barrier, closer to the palace, and continued forward despite verbal warnings.

"A Canadian soldier guarding the venue then fired a single warning shot. The bullet ricocheted off the pavement and struck Rahman, according to Canadian Lt.-Cmdr. Kris Phillips.

"It is not known when Karzai became aware his former teacher had died, and he has offered no public comment.

"But a military source said Canadian officials are now aware Rahman was "someone important."

Now, What's the Punchline?

Do we call it the Afghan Study Group? Gordon Smith, a former deputy minister of Foreign Affairs and director ofthe Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria, wrote an analysis piece in today's Globe entitled "The Afghan mssion needs a major overhaul."

Smith, we are told, heads a group that will produce a report sometime in the spring on Canadian policy on Afghanistan. Let's hope it doesn't come with 79 recommendations.

You'll have to wait a few months to read the report but a precis of its findings seems to have been the bulk of Dr. Smith's article in today's Globe:

- Canada is in Afghanistan to "help stabilize the country, strengthen governance, and improve the lives of Afghans"

- "We are not meeting our objectives and, indeed, cannot, if we remain on the present course."

- "Warlords and tribal leaders exercise enormous power outside of Kabul." The central government is weak and riddled with corruption, unable to deliver basic, public services.

- The opium trade is at an all-time high and funds both the warlords and the Taliban. The West has no effective strategy to deal with this problem. Karzai simply suggests we cut the demand for heroin on our streets. Hey, that's an idea.

- The Taliban are resurgent. They are gaining support in Pakistan. Efforts to prod Pervez Musharraf to crack down are nearly futile because, "his government does not, and cannot, control the frontier areas." (nota bene)

- Once the Bush administraton took its eye off the ball and turned its head toward Iraq, "the moment was lost." "NATO forces are inadequate in number and hobbled by national restrictions on where and how they may be used."

- Canada's reconstruction efforts are held back because we can't deliver them in the areas where our troops are deployed. It is not secure where our troops are situated, ergo no reconstruction there. Maybe we should add this chore to the already formidable tasks borne by our soldiers.

- Neither "steady as it goes" nor "get out before it gets worse" is acceptable.

And Gordon Smith's solution?

We need a serious debate.

Sure, let's chat. The time for this debate was well before the Harper ploy to extend 'the mission' to 2009. NATO has held its debate, in Riga and we know how well that went. There's not really much left to debate.

We do need to answer a couple of questions. For starters, is the Karzai government mortally wounded? Has it failed to consolidate its powers, has its authority been so widely usurped, has it so lost the support of the Afghan people outside of Kabul that it has gone past the point of no return? If conditions in that country have changed so much that we're now left merely to fight "against" something instead of "for" something, we're just another bunch in a long list of useless occupiers.

Here's another question we need to answer. How many times have foreign armies fought this sort of counterinsurgency/borderline civil war and won? What are we doing so much better that this one is going to work where all before it have failed?

My MP is James Lunney, a throwback to the Reform Party. Before the sham debate on "the mission", I sent him a list of questions I thought needed to be asked and answered. I expected that would go nowhere. I sent the same questions to Ujal Dosanjh. Same treatment.

If the Afghan study group's answer is to hold another debate, they'll be even less helpful than the Baker/Hamilton study.

How the US Army Sees Baghdad

This is a US Army map of Baghdad published in the Times of London. The safe areas are in white - oh forget it, there aren't any.

Gone But Not Forgotten - Pinochet Lives On in Some

Torture, secret prisons and disappearances - we'll always remember Augusto Pinochet for that. The more things change...

Today we've got - why, we've got torture, secret prisons and disappearances and the CIA is involved this time too. The Guardian reports on how the old is new again:

"When the Bush administration brought 14 of its most highly valued terrorism suspects to Guantánamo Bay from secret prisons in various countries in September, the US president himself acknowledged for the first time the existence of a network of CIA prisons. This was intended to close a chapter that had become embarrassing to Washington. The US practice of illegal kidnapping known as "extraordinary rendition", and the secret detention and torture that was part of it, had - after more than four years - finally become a scandal condemned by many European politicians, UN officials and international lawyers, as well as US-based human-rights groups.

"But, as a new report from the British monitoring group Cageprisoners reveals, the men held in Guantánamo Bay are only the tip of the iceberg: thousands more are hidden elsewhere, outside the law. The "war on terror" is taking a terrible toll on Muslim families and societies through a vast programme of secret detention and torture.

"Since January 2002, when the first Muslim men were flown from Afghanistan to Guantánamo, an estimated 14,000 men have been held. They have been hidden in prisons, army barracks, holes in the ground, private houses, hotels and schools. Those responsible for them have been in overlapping chains of command, including the US department of defence, the CIA and the national intelligence services of many countries, such as Britain.

"The Cageprisoners report is a meticulous record of information cross-correlated from the testimony of numerous released prisoners in many countries and of lawyers such as Clive Stafford Smith and his team at Reprieve, who represent some of the men in Guantánamo and have been able to talk to them. But Stafford Smith's own statement that as many as three-quarters of the men in Guantánamo have never seen a lawyer, and that the Guantánamo men represent only 4% of all those imprisoned in the war on terror, is a chilling reminder of just how little outsiders have been able to penetrate this dark, illegal world.

You Know You're a Loser When...

Ask Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco.

The Monroe Chamber of Commerce in northeastern Louisiana held a charity auction.

The last item up for bids was dinner with the governor. Bidding started at $1,000 but no takers. Five hundred bucks - no dice. The dinner finally went for one dollar, the bid of a regional chairman of Capital One bank.

Needless to say, Capital One wasted no time in apologizing to the state's chief lawmaker and paid the $1,000 starting bid. As for the Capital One banker, he won't be going to the governor's mansion.

Governor Blanco is still battling Washingto