Spot the Differences

SPOT THE DIFFERENCES. One is honest, courageous, a real warrior, ferocious yet selfless, the ideal Canadian general. The other is ...well, he's "the other", right? You choose.

Being Progressive

This is one of those articles that "restoreth" the soul. This is the elixir for progressives:

http://verbena19.wordpress.com/

Making Sense of Insanity - More Than Meets the Eye?

This is a follow up to the next post that outlines an account in Asia Times that claims Pakistan has decided to actively support the Taliban in this year's Spring Offensive.

At first blush the claim sounds insane. Why would Pakistan betray the US and NATO to help topple the shakey Afghan government of Hamid Karzai? Why would Pakistan help the Taliban?

When things such as this don't seem to make any sense it's sometimes helpful to step back and see the situation from the other side's perspective and then factor in contemporaneous events, especially those that also don't seem to make any sense.

Take, for example, Dick Cheney's bizarre trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan yesterday. For some reason - and there had to be some reason - the media were sworn to secrecy about the trip until after Cheney was flying out of Pakistan. Even then, reporters were required to describe Cheney's comments as coming from a "senior White House official." Read the comments he made, statements that clearly identify the speaker as Cheney himself, and try to make some sense of that.

Think about what happened when Cheney arrived at Bagram air base after Kabul airport was closed due to snow? In short order there was a suicide bombing at the gate that killed upwards of two dozen people. The Americans claim that, despite claims to the contrary, Cheney wasn't targeted because no one could have known he was in Bagram. The same people who knew the departure of his flight - Pakistan's air traffic control - certainly knew his flight had been diverted to Bagram. Some people certainly knew and a bombing followed in short order. My simple mind can come up with about four possible ways the two could be connected and I'm pretty sure you can craft some scenarios of your own. I don't think the bombing actually targeted Cheney so much as it sent a message.

Consider the take that the reporters were first given about Cheney's message to Musharraf - a stern "warning" to play ball or else. Consider the Pakistan foreign ministry's prompt press release afterward proclaiming that Pakistan was not about to be dictated to by any country.

Take those five facts together - the secret trip, the ridiculously concealed briefing source, the "warning" and the angry Pakistani response, the Bagram bombing. Now, try to make some sense of those events. Put them together, take them apart, figure out how they all fit together - and they do, in some way or another.

Dick Cheney has shown that he can do sinister things, openly deceitful things, even vicious things but has he ever shown himself to do blatantly irrational things? No. Naive, idelogically hidebound, even stupid, yes. Less than shrewd? Never. So what was behind the bizarre events of his trip yesterday? There is a lot more to this than meets the eye. That's obvious.

Add in a few other ingredients such as Karzai's corrupted and likely fatally wounded government. Factor in the emerging dominance of the former Northern Alliance warlords, the same group Pakistan opposed during the Afghan civil war when it backed the Taliban. Then fit in the growing influence of India, Pakistan's principal rival and threat, in Afghan affairs. Add to this Bush's weakened position at home and abroad, rejected by the American people, his party rejected by the American voters, his military trapped and exhausted in Iraq. Then consider NATO, its members divided as never before in the alliance's history, indecisive, woefully understrength and confused.

Toss in the reality that the West has a demonstrated inability to feed the meat grinder of an insurgency for the decades it would clearly take to sort out the Afghan troubles. Find a Western country where these wars remain popular. I'll bet that Musharraf has done that calculation a long time ago.

Never underestimate the nuclear factor. Pakistan has amassed an arsenal of nuclear weapons and the missile systems to deliver them. Can the West afford to see Musharraf ousted and radical Islamists take over in his place?

Add in the factor of Pakistan's own Pashtun and Baloch people, their abiding support for the Taliban and their unwillingness to see their cousins in Afghanistan fall to a coup by default to the northern tribes. These tribes in Waziristan are already a huge problem for Islamabad. How much worse would that become if the already wobbly Pakistan government was seen to acquiesce in suppression of their kinfolk in Afghanistan?

Watching Afghanistan fall to the Tajik and Uzbek warlords (no friend of Pakistan) thanks to a hapless Karzai and a hesitant and weakened US and the NATO alliance in disarray, may be more than Pakistan (and not just Musharraf) can bear. Options that are available this year may be foreclosed the next. Whatever control and influence Islamabad may be able to exert over the Taliban may be fleeting. Pakistan may be gambling that this is the best possible time, for it and the Taliban, for a Taliban uprising to remove Karzai and install a regime more acceptable to Pakistan than the looming alternative.

Islamabad may have done the math and decided that the circumstances on the ground - Karzai, the northern warlords, the US, NATO, the Pashtuns and Balochs, the Uzbeks and Tajiks, al-Qaeda and Iraq, even Iran and Hezbollah - give Pakistan a better than even chance of calling our bluff, the best chance it's ever likely to have.

Whatever the reality, one thing is clear. There's an awful lot going on here, stuff that we should be hearing about from Hillier and Harpo, that puts our soldiers in Kandahar at grave risk. Whatever that may be, we don't have the luxury of much time to mull this over before the Spring Offensive begins in a few weeks.

ARE WE ALREADY AT WAR - WITH PAKISTAN?

The following article, if true, is extremely disturbing. It claims that Pakistan has betrayed the West and is now in league with the Taliban in their mutual goal to topple the Karzai government and set up, in his place, a pro-Pakistan, Taliban-Warlord coalition regime.

It is not apparent whether Pakistan president Musharraf is even a party to the purported deal or whether this is being done behind his back by Pakistan's powerful military intelligence service.

The usually reliable Asia Times reports that Pakistan has agreed to provide logistical support to the Taliban. The purported pact is intended to extend Islamabad's influence into southwestern Afghanistan and significantly strengthen the insurgency in its bid to capture Kabul.

"...Mullah Dadullah will be Pakistan's strongman in a corridor running from the Afghan provinces of Zabul, Urzgan, Kandahar and Helmand across the border into Pakistan's Balochistan province, according to both Taliban and al-Qaeda contacts Asia Times Online spoke to. Using Pakistani territory and with Islamabad's support, the Taliban will be able safely to move men, weapons and supplies into southwestern Afghanistan.

"The deal with Mullah Dadullah will serve Pakistan's interests in re-establishing a strong foothold in Afghanistan (the government in Kabul leans much more toward India), and it has resulted in a cooling of the Taliban's relations with al-Qaeda.

"Despite their most successful spring offensive last year since being ousted in 2001, the Taliban realize they need the assistance of a state actor if they are to achieve "total victory". Al-Qaeda will have nothing to do with the Islamabad government, though, so the Taliban had to go it alone.

"Taliban commanders planning this year's spring uprising acknowledged that as an independent organization or militia, they could not fight a sustained battle against state resources. They believed they could mobilize the masses, but this would likely bring a rain of death from the skies and the massacre of Taliban sympathizers. Their answer was to find their own state resources, and inevitably they looked toward their former patron, Pakistan.

"Al-Qaeda does not fit into any plans involving Pakistan, but mutual respect between the al-Qaeda leadership and the Taliban still exists. All the same, there is tension over their ideological differences, and al-Qaeda sources believe it is just a matter of time before the sides part physically as well.

"Ever since signing on for the US-led "war on terror" after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US, Pakistan has been coerced by Washington to distance itself from the Taliban. The Taliban were, after all, enemy No 1 for harboring Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda's training camps.

"So when the opportunity arose, Islamabad was quick to tap up Mullah Dadullah. This was the perfect way in which Pakistan could revive its contacts in the Taliban and give the spring uprising some real muscle, so the argument went among the strategic planners in Rawalpindi - in fact, so much muscle that forces led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would be forced into a position to talk peace - and who better than Pakistan to step in as peacemaker and bail out its Western allies?

"The 2006 spring offensive was veteran mujahideen fighter Jalaluddin Haqqani's show. Nevertheless, the main areas of success were not Haqqani's traditional areas of influence, such as southeastern Afghanistan's Khost, Paktia and Paktika. The Taliban secured major victories in their heartland of the southwest, Helmand, Zabul, Urzgan and Kandahar. And their leader was Mullah Dadullah, whose men seized control of more than 12 districts - and held on to them.

Pakistani strategic circles are convinced that as a proven military commander, Mullah Dadullah will be able to work wonders this spring and finally give the Taliban the edge over the Kabul administration and its NATO allies.

"This, ultimately, is Pakistan's objective - to revive its role in Kabul - and Islamabad is optimistic that Dadullah's considerable diplomatic skills will enable him to negotiate a power-sharing formula for pro-Pakistan Afghan warlords.

The article claims that, with help from the Pakistan military, the Taliban have been able to signficantly upgrade their Russian-made surface to air missiles with American sensor technology:

"The Taliban acquired these missiles in 2005, but they had little idea about how to use them effectively. Arab al-Qaeda members conducted extensive training programs and brought the Taliban up to speed. Nevertheless, the SAM-7s, while useful against helicopters, were no use against the fighter and bomber aircraft that were doing so much damage.

"What the Taliban desperately needed were sensors for their missiles. These detect aircraft emissions designed to misdirect the missiles.

"And it so happened that Pakistan had such devices, having acquired them from the Americans, though indirectly. The Pakistanis retrieved them from unexploded cruise missiles fired into Afghanistan in 1998, targeting bin Laden. They copied and adapted them to fit other missiles, including the SAMs.

"Now that the Taliban and Pakistan have a deal, these missiles will be made available to the Taliban. Much like the Stingers that changed the dynamics of the Afghan resistance against the Soviets, the SAMs could help turn things Mullah Dadullah's, the Taliban's and Pakistan's way."

And We're Paying These Bozos?

The National Post ran an item today headlined "Quit whining, diplomats tell MPs." It's an account of how two diplos told Canadian MPs to start acting like they had a pair.

First up was NATO spokesman James Appathurai who told the Commons defence committee that Canada had really bolstered its clout at NATO by its active participation in Afghanistan. Okay, fair enough.

Appathurai also said Canada should stop harping on about its casualties in Afghanistan:

"Canada is not bearing the burden alone when it comes to casualties," he added. "Over a dozen NATO countries have lost troops in significant numbers. I can tell you we have the flag down in front of NATO headquarters on a regular basis.... These sacrifices are being made by everybody and in all zones, in the north, the west, and the capital and the east and the south."

It's not that the sacrifices aren't being made by others, it's that a disproportionate share of them are being borne by the countries whose forces are in the southern war zone. His crack was probably a bit out of line but it paled compared to the stuff spewed out by our home grown guy,

Chris Alexander, the UN's deputy special envoy to Afghanistan and Canada's first ambassador to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban.

Alexander must have spent too much time listening to the White House speeches because he yarded out just about every specious argument they've used to prop up their inept war on terror. First up, we can't leave Afghanistan because we've spent a lot of money there already:

"The billions of dollars spent in the past five years assisting Afghanistan would 'go up in smoke,' while the very existence of NATO and the UN would be threatened if the West withdrew, he said."

Next was the standard Bush line about how we can't leave without dishonouring the 40-Canadian soldiers who've already died over there:

"And most tragically, none of us around this table would be able to explain to the families of the 44 Canadians who have lost their lives in Afghanistan what the purpose of that sacrifice was."

So, Chris, is losing another 40 or 240 going to make that better? What is your threshold? How many dead would make you happy or would justify the first 40?

The most despicable line trotted out by Alexander was the one about leaving would be "giving comfort to the enemy."

Later Mr. Appathurai chimed in with his own nonsense, claiming that the issue of why Canada is in Afghanistan is not up for debate:

"There is no controversy in any serious discussion," he told a luncheon audience of diplomats, military and non-governmental organizations. "Anyone who calls that into question is not being serious."

Sorry Jimmy, there is controversy aplenty. The corruption of the Karzai government is controversial. The corruption of Afghanistan's security forces is controversial. The oppression of Afghanistan's women is controversial. The spreading power and influence of Afghanistan's warlords within the Kabul government is controversial. That country's narco-economy is controversial. The role of Pakistan and the growing involvement of Iran is controversial. The place is one huge controversy and that makes the issue of why Canada is there and what we're achieving controversial and demanding of serious discussion.

There's a reason why these guys don't touch on these problems and how they undermine NATO's efforts in Afghanistan. Unless the controversies are ignored they might just lead to serious discussion by genuinely serious people and that's the last thing Alexander and Appathurai need.

What To Do, What To Do?

Okay, it looks like we're getting pretty much everyone onside about the reality of Global Warming. It's real, it's happening and it's going to get worse. It isn't going to get any better in our lifetimes, our kids' or their kids' either. The best we can do at this point is whatever is in our power to prevent it from getting any worse than necessary while we work on reversing the causes of this climate change and even that modest goal is going to be a herculean task.

We're going to have to learn to do things differently. Part of that means we're going to have to get smaller, consume less. Sooner or later that's going to mean carbon-rationing. That will mean no more unnecessary gas guzzlers (some, a few, will still be needed); smaller houses (no more heating empty three-car garages), more efficient energy use (flourescents, etc.) and some restructuring in the way we produce and deliver goods and services. A lot of these things mean sacrifices we aren't going to like but quite a few of them aren't really going to bother us or deprive us nearly as much as we might first imagine.

An inernational research team released a report today on what can be done to mitigate global warming - to fend off the worst effects. From the LA Times:

"The scientists from 11 countries urged sweeping conservation measures to hold the expected increase in temperatures to no more than an average of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit — less than half the expected increase if emissions of greenhouse gas and soot continue unabated.

"Based on two years of study, the scientists called for bold actions, including carbon taxes, a ban on conventional coal-fired power plants and an end to beachfront construction worldwide.

"The researchers were financed by the nonprofit United Nations Foundation and the 60,000-member research society Sigma Xi.

"With its emphasis on policy recommendations, the panel's effort marks a shift in the international politics of pollution and climate change, analysts said. Researchers are no longer debating whether human-induced global warming is genuine, but have begun the painstaking process of negotiating international agreement on what to do about it.

"They urged stricter fuel efficiency standards, as well as fuel taxes, registration fees and rebates that favor more efficient transportation, which today is responsible for 40% of the world's carbon emissions.

"A 20-fold improvement in car efficiency is well within existing technology, they said. Moving freight by rail instead of truck could also cut emissions substantially.

"The researchers also recommended the expanded use of biofuels to reduce dependence on the oil that accounts for one-quarter of the world's CO2 emissions. They endorsed broader use of nuclear power, if it can be made safer. Energy research budgets worldwide ought to triple, they said.

"In addition, the scientists called for improved designs of energy-efficient appliances, office equipment and "greener" commercial and residential buildings. Taken together, the heating, cooling and lighting of buildings accounts for about 30% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.Most tellingly, the panel called for a ban on any new coal-fired power plants that cannot be equipped to capture and store the carbon dioxide they emit.

"All told, the U.S., China and India plan to build about 850 coal-fired plants over the next decade, which by environmentalists' calculations would pump as much as five times more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than international control measures aim to eliminate.

"No matter what people do to reduce soot or curtail emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, the world will continue to warm somewhat, and people will have to adapt, the researchers said.

"To minimize the hazards of rising sea levels and more powerful storms, the group called for a worldwide ban on beachfront construction near existing high-tide lines.

"To reduce the effects of climate-related disasters, such as floods or prolonged droughts, the panel urged better international emergency response measures, warning that there may be as many as 50 million environmental refugees by 2010."

Disreputable Politics - Fearmongering

The Bush administration may be inept at everything else but it has shown itself the ultimate master of fearmongering. At their peak, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice even Powell had the American people and their Congress so terrified that the administration was able to write its own ticket utterly liberated from America's vaunted system of "checks and balances."

While all this was going on, our own Harpo watched his American Idols in utter fascination. He absorbed every lesson about spin and deception, the tricks of sleight of hand, and, above all, the power and political advantage to be had from fearmongering.

Harpo has even learned the language of George Bush, right down to "cut and run" and "stay the course" and "support the troops."

In the recent battle to extend extraordinary police powers to fight terrorism, our Furious Leader didn't hesitate to resort to the ultimate scumbag tactic of smearing the opposition as soft on terrorism for insisting these measures lapse. You have to be a bit of a degenerate to stoop that low.

What about these extraordinary police powers? Have the Libs now left Canadians exposed to terrorism, their police stripped of an essential weapon in the fight against Islamist extremism?
That certainly is the pitch of the fearmonger Harpo but Jeff Sallot, writing in today's Globe and Mail, shows the prime monster was merely blowing smoke:

"What's changed in five years? Even immediately after the 9/11 attacks, many MPs were never convinced that authorities needed the extraordinary powers of preventive arrest and investigative hearings.

"Liberal MP Irwin Cotler, a law professor and civil-liberties crusader, says he swung back and forth on the issue. It was one of those questions on which people of good will could honestly disagree.

"'It's a judgment call,' he said.

"He and many other MPs insisted on building procedural safeguards into the Anti-Terrorism Act. The extraordinary powers, for example, could be used only with the explicit approval of a federal or provincial attorney-general. Police and judges couldn't go off willy-nilly on their own, holding people and interrogating them.

"Even with these safeguards, many MPs worried that once the powers were on the books, it might be impossible to get rid of them even if experience showed that they were never needed. Thus, a five-year sunset provision was included in the legislation, specifying that the powers would lapse unless the House and the Senate renewed them with a parliamentary resolution.

"As it turns out, the powers were never invoked in the past five years. The RCMP report they have quietly disrupted several terrorism plots in that time without ever arresting anyone.

"However, two other terrorism cases have attracted attention. An Ottawa man, Momin Khawaja, was arrested here and charged with conspiracy in a plot that was being hatched in Britain. He is alleged to have offered to build a bomb trigger for the British conspirators.

"The other high-profile terrorism allegations -- also still before the Ontario courts -- involve 18 men. Last year, police rounded them up in the Toronto area and charged them.

"If the police and security agencies are correct, they've successfully foiled more than a dozen plots without ever resorting to the extraordinary arrest and investigative powers."

I'm sure Harpo and his far-right government would love to turn Canada into a police state but now that's not going to happen. Unlike the Democrats in the US, the Liberals took a stand and held their ground against Harpo's smear campaign to label them soft on terrorism and unwilling to protect Canadians.

If you're not sure what kind of a lifeform Harper is, this little episode speaks volumes. He's a fearmongerer, completely uninhibited when it comes to manipulating his own people and preying on their vulnerabilities.

All Dressed Up and No Place to Go

This is another story about "the myth of Canadian peacekeeping." Those who won't be happy unless Canada's soldiers are shooting at somebody and getting shot at in return - the red meat gang - like to point to Canadian peacekeeping doldrums of the past decade to prove their own myth, that the image of the Canadian peacekeeper was never more than a myth anyway.

What really lay behind Canada's decade of military slumber? Oh yeah, that's right, it was a national emergency. Don't remember that? Try to go back to Canada as it was when Jean Chretien took over from Brian "Big Pockets" Muldoon. We were broke and getting even broker faster than the country, our country, could stand.

The Canada we have today is in many ways a much better country than the Canada left by the previous conservative government. It's so much better that, today, Harpo can splash money around in the hundreds of millions of dollars. He cavorts bare arsed, rolling in the legacy of a guy named Paul Martin.

Despite General Rick Hillier's griping about a decade of darkness, the Canadian Armed Forces, like the rest of Canada, had to make do without while the Liberals pulled the country's fat out of the fire. It wasn't Hillier or MacKenzie or any other damned general that rescued Canada from that emergency and they were smart enough while that rescue mission was underway to keep their mealy mouths shut.

We had to put the military- and just about everything else - on the back burner for that decade so that we could restore the country, including the military, sooner rather than later. Lord knows if we'd just carried on in the Mulroney tradition, Hillier might be collecting shopping carts in some mall parking lot today.

So, yes, Canada did undergo a hiatus in its peacekeeping efforts and for longer than we should have but that hardly makes the country's tradition a myth. Now it's time to shatter the myth about the myth. We can save a lot more lives and do a lot more good in other spots around the world than we'll ever achieve in Afghanistan.

Here's another myth that needs to be shattered, the myth that we're all partners in America's "war on terror." At best, NATO has become America's Foreign Legion, enablers of its dysfunctional foreign policy and incompetent military adventurism. Why are so many NATO countries so reluctant to get dragged into Washington's 5+ year Afghanistan screw-up? Could it be because they see what Ottawa isn't willing to see?

It's time for a thorough debate on the future role to be played by Canada's military. If we're going to be America's water boy let's be honest about it and equip our forces properly so they can be the best water boys around. If we want our forces to maximize the good they can achieve, let's explore those options also. Before we consign it to the dustbin, let's go back and take a hard look at the peacekeeping option again.

Green Up Your Cellphone

If you're one of those people who likes custom ringtones for your cell you might want to try something new. Go to www.biologicaldiversity.org . They have free ringtones of endangered and rare species. They've got 40 ringtones to choose from and they run the gamut from owls and macaws to wolves, toads and beluga whales. Imagine what your friends will think when they hear a toad croaking in your pocket. And they are free.

This is Just Way Too Weird - Even For Cheney

Dick Cheney has completed his whirlwind trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan. It was an odd trip, one in which the media were sworn to secrecy until Cheney left Pakistan. Major American news services knew where Cheney was and where he was going, they even had reporters on Cheney's flight. They just couldn't let out so much as a hint that the veep was going to Pakistan.

That, however, wasn't the really weird part. It came from a briefing on Cheney's plane on which the official who briefed reporters may only be called a "senior administration official."

The senior administration official, whose identity is not to be divulged, was, of course, the Dickster himself, something obvious from the remarks he made:

"'Let me just make one editorial comment here,' the official said. 'I've seen some press reporting says, `Cheney went in to beat up on them, threaten them.' That's not the way I work. I don't know who writes that, or maybe somebody gets it from some source who doesn't know what I'm doing, or isn't involved in it. But the idea that I'd go in and threaten someone is an invalid misreading of the way I do business.

'I would describe my sessions both in Pakistan and Afghanistan as very productive. We've had notable successes in both places. I've often said before and I believe it's still true that we've captured and killed more al-Qaida in Pakistan than anyplace else. And I think we're making progress in Afghanistan.'"

Has Dick Cheney lost his mind? Reporters can't mention his name but he gives his identity away quite freely in his remarks. Maybe the Dickster has gone off the deep end.

Bring on La Nina

El Nino is over, fini, or at least so we're told by officials of the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration. The El Nino weather pattern is associated with unusual warming in the eastern area of the mid-Pacific. La Nina, the ugly stepsister, is triggered by cooling of the equatorial Pacific region.

La Nina spells possible trouble, particularly to southern parts of the US. It typically means more hurricanes in the Atlantic, fewer in the Pacific, less rain and more heat for the already drought-stricken South, and a milder spring and summer in the north, Lautenbacher said. The central plains of the United States tend be drier in the fall during La Ninas, while the Pacific Northwest tends to be wetter in the late fall and early winter.

La Nina conditions are typically milder than El Nino's heavy rainfalls and landslides.

A World of Turmoil and Zeroes

I don't like round numbers very much, especially when a politician pulls one out of the hat that's followed by seven or eight zeroes. Once you get into that many zeroes it's pretty obvious that the number you're being given is a political number not a factual number.

Take the number 200,000,000 or two hundred million. That's the amount Stephen Harper has come up with to fund six or seven priorities for Afghanistan. Now, what do you think the chances are of costing out six or seven things, adding up those costs and coming out with a 2 and 8 zeroes?

No, $200,000,000 is a number picked out of the air, plain and simple, and that's a political number. Once you start rounding off figures in the tens of millions of dollars, you're talking political numbers. This isn't even rounded off to the nearest million. Let's hope it's rounded off to the nearest ten million. If not, it's even a bigger political number than I'd feared.

Spending that's not defined by actual cost projections is one thing but priorities that are shaped by political numbers awash in zeroes make me wonder whose purposes are actually being served. Anything with eight zeroes in it is a grandstanding number, a photo-op number, and there's nothing that Harpo likes more than a good photo-op where he can grandstand.

I think Harpo may be getting the Kabul Virus. It's an infection that swells the organs north of the eyebrows. The symptoms are inconsistency of purpose, incoherent policy, myopia and a thorough state of confusion. It's not just Harpo who's been stricken. This is contagious.

In the past year the NATO forces have had - what - four commanders? A Canadian, then a Dutch General, then a Brit and now an American. Each has arrived with his own playbook. Some want to fight. Some want to emphasize reconstruction. Some want to negotiate local ceasefires. Each comes in with a "fresh" approach.

Four conflicting approaches and the worst - or best part of it is that they're all right, every one of them. We have to fight. We have to rebuild. We have to negotiate. Each of those guys is correct and because they're all right we come to the hidden truth - we can't do all these things because we only have a small fraction of the troops necessary for the challenge we've taken on.

You can't have coherent policy without the resources required for coherence. Absent those resources, commanders have to pick and choose what their priority will be and that leads to inconsistency which, in turn, leads to incoherence, myopia and confusion.

Confusion? You bet. We're still getting all the nonsense about how we're liberating Afghan women when, in reality, the guys we're propping up want the country to return to medieval feudalism - when just down the road from the Canadian base, girls as young as 12 are in prison because they refused to let their fathers sell them to other old men, when women legislators are threatened with rape inside parliament and can only visit their constituencies concealed in burqas lest they be killed.

We're still getting the crap about how we're protecting the people when it's the government's security services that are their main predator and when the people distrust their government so much that they take their complaints and disputes to the Taliban insurgents for judgment and justice.

We're still getting the garbage about democracy when the Karzai government has been infested with warlords and thugs who grant themselves amnesty for their atrocities, take all the plum posts and rake enormous profit from the land they impoverish.

We're barely able to keep the insurgents from toppling the rotten government in Kabul. We went over there to take the fight to the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Wouldn't it be terrific if that's all we really had to do to save Afghanistan? But we can't save the women and girls of Afghanistan from their menfolk. We can't save the peasants and farmers from their police and the warlords and drug lords. We can't save Hamid Karzai from the thugs and butchers who have insinuated themselves into his government and have spread their control and influence like a rampant malignancy.

What, then, is there left to save? Is it any wonder that all we can come up with are political numbers?

The Assault on Freedoms

Many of us see Britain as the birthplace of our modern civil rights and freedoms. It all began with Magna Carta Libertatum, the great charter of 1215, that first provided the King could be subject to the Rule of Law. From that evolved the English Common Law that most of the English-speaking world, America included, embraces today.

The first decade of the third millenia may eventually become known as the retreat from civil liberties, civil rights. Notions such as secret surveillance, indefinite detention without charge or trial, and the demise of habeus corpus mark the evolution of a relationship between governments and their peoples that would have been considered outrageous just a decade ago. Australia, Britain, the United States and even Canada have used the war on terror as a pretext to strip away the constraints on government.

Now the Brits are toying with the idea of abandoning the principle of "reasonable cause" to allow UK police to stop motorists at random to demand breath samples. This would gut both the right to privacy and the right to be protected against unreasonable searches by the state.

Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety director Rob Gifford said the move would be a deterrent. "Giving police this power will make many people think they have a greater chance of being caught."

This smacks of trampling on historic and fundamental rights for the sake of convenience. Rights out never to be abridged except when that is absolutely necessary to achieve a critical purpose and there is no other solution.

Peter Brookes, Times online

Stumbling Over Poppies

The Telegraph has reported that the poppy eradication programme in Helmand province is collapsing under the weight of corruption:

"A 500-man Afghan police force backed by American private security contractors and two helicopter gunships began work in the drug heartlands two weeks ago aiming to destroy 22,000 hectares before April's harvest. In two weeks, only 1,200 have been ploughed.

"A policeman provided a detailed account of systematic corruption within the force. 'The only people [whose crops are] being eradicated are those without money or connections,' said the man, who cannot be named for his own safety. 'On the eradication force, this is being called 'the season to make money'."

"Powerful local landowners were bribing officials at a rate of about £500 per hectare. A hectare produces about £3,500 worth of opium.

"This year's effort is regarded as a crucial test of the Kabul government's ability to tackle the drug problem after previous years ended in disaster amid similar tales of corruption.

"If the campaign fails in Helmand, which produced 40 per cent of the country's opium last year, then British officials admit that US-led pressure for a radical campaign of aerial spraying of poppy next year will become irresistible.

"'The local police are worse than us at taking bribes,' said the police officer, who was recruited in Kabul. 'But every officer from the highest to the lowest is doing their best to take bribes.'"

The Telegraph: Take Heart Taliban

British newspapers don't think much of our chances to "win" in Afghanistan. The leftist journals such as The Independent posit that, thanks to six years of neglect, the Afghan campaign is probably already lost.

You might expect sterner stuff from a right-of-centre paper like The Telegraph, Conrad Black's old broadsheet. Well it might not be as fatalistic as The Independent but today it published an article on, "Two reasons for the Taliban to take heart" namely our inability to force Musharraf to move effectively against al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in Pakistan and the West's pathetic and corrupt poppy eradication programme in Afghanistan:

"The Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence has been heavily involved in Afghanistan since the 1980s, when it trained tens of thousands of mujahideen to fight the Soviet occupation. The army has made it clear that it no longer wants to undertake large-scale offensive operations in the tribal agencies, thus the reliance on deals with local leaders. And, despite his strongman image, General Musharraf lacks the authority to override his defence establishment and seal the border.

"Mr Cheney and Mrs Beckett are no more likely to change this situation than the many Western politicians who have preceded them to Islamabad with the same intent. That means that American, British, Canadian and Dutch forces in the south and east will continue to face an enemy with a bolt-hole across the border. An insurgency with that luxury is very hard to defeat.

"The Taliban will also take heart from the corruption which is undermining the poppy eradication campaign in Helmand. The original intention was to cover 22,000 hectares in a province which accounts for about 40 per cent of national production. That has now been revised downward to 7,000 hectares, amid evidence that, through bribery and intimidation, the rich and powerful are avoiding destruction of their crops. There could be no more effective recruiting advertisement for the Taliban, who will argue that nothing better can be expected from a corrupt Western-backed government."

Japanese Xenophobia

If there's one xountry that defines "xenophobia", it's Japan. The nation shut itself off to the rest of the world for four centuries and even today takes pride in its ethnic purity. It's a fertile garden for sowing paranoia, something not lost on a senior official of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party who has warned that his country could become "just another Chinese province" within the next 20 years if Beijing's military development continues at its current rapid rate.

It's hard to imagine anything that could send a greater chill into the Japanese people than the idea of being taken over by China. There remain enormous tensions between the two countries over Japanese atrocities against the Chinese during World War II. The notion of China getting its own back has to be terrifying to many Japanese.

Japanese MP, Soichi Nakagawa, is quoted by the Kyodo news agency as warning, "If something goes wrong in Taiwan in the next 15 years we [Japan] might also become just another Chinese province within 20 years or so." Nakagawa claimed Beijing was seeking hegemony in Taiwan "and beyond."

He later told reporters in Tokyo: "If Taiwan is placed under its complete influence, Japan could be next. That's how much China is seeking hegemony."

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang raised suspicions about the timing and nature of the outburst. "China's military expenditure per capita is 7% of that of Japan," he said. "Meanwhile, it claims that China is a threat. We should question: What is the real purpose and motivation behind these claims?"

"Of the People, By the People, For the People" - A Quaint Notion?

In that one phrase, Abraham Lincoln summed up what most of us think should form the basis of democracy. The government should, at least in a general way, do our bidding, balancing the realities of leadership and democratic principle with the popular will. It is a balance that seems to have been somewhat forgotten in the ascendancy of the far right.

Remember Preston Manning and his "grassroots" approach to government. MPs would consult their constituents and vote accordingly? Preston probably took the balance too far to the vox populii side which can, if unchecked, lead to a form of mob rule and yet it was a forceful recognition of the legitimate role of public opinion in government.

From Manning to Harper, what a contrast. There'll be none of that grassroots nonsense for Harpo. He has all the opinion, all the vision he needs - his own. He's probably the most top down autocrat we've had in a prime minister in more than half a century.

Look at Harpo's American Idol, George Cheney-Bush. He has ignored the popular will from the day he was sworn in. He's abused his power to benefit a very small segment of the American population and he's placed the welfare of powerful corporations over the public interest at every turn. How did he get away with that? Oh yeah, he and his bald-headed partner spread fear around as far and as thick as they could spread it and used their Global War Without End on Terror to scare voters into keeping them (albeit just barely) in power. That served as a formula to wage a class war on the American people, a war that the people are just beginning to understand.

Bush has "corporatized" his democracy, a key trait of fascist government. His people have repeatedly expressed their support for universal health care but they're not going to get it at the expense of the health care insurance industry. The American people want access to cheaper prescription drugs but they won't get that so long as Big Pharma throws so much money at Congress and the White House. Bush's people want an end to the wars he's so ineptly waged, especially the war in Iraq, but their administration is now trying to provoke war with Iran. Bush has even privatized war by hiving off ordinary military functions in highly profitable deals with private contractors, outfits like Haliburton and Kellog, Root and Brown.

It's time the pendulum began to swing the other way, away from the autocratic bent of the Bushes and Cheneys and Harpers and Howards. We need leaders who will lead, not by dictate but by persuasion and genuine leadership. That will require an end to extremist partisanship, the sort that rejects progressive government. Maybe it's time to bring back the Progressive Conservative party.

Changing Course in Afghanistan

"We do not use the word 'win'. We can't kill our way out of this problem."

That sums up the thinking behind a change in tactics by British forces in Afghanistan. According to The Guardian, it's more of a "let's make a deal" approach to counterinsurgency.

"Officials say the new tactics are to identify "Talibs who are sick of fighting" and persuade them to rejoin their tribes and benefit from the human rights laws and state structures being set up in the country. Captured fighters may also be offered alternatives to incarceration, while more deals will be sought with tribal elders.

"They hope increasingly to damage the Taliban without relying on a shooting war, a tactic which has often proved counter-productive in the past, notably when Nato air strikes kill civilians. 'We are convinced most people do not support the Taliban and want to take a route through it,' said one source. British officials distinguish the Taliban from al-Qaida, describing it as a 'more fluid' organisation.

The British say the new approach recognizes the opportunity to approach the Taliban differently than al-Qaeda:

"An official familiar with British policy on Afghanistan described the difference this way: 'The Taliban is not a homogenous group. It is a mixture of characters - criminals, drug dealers, people out of work. There is a wide variety of different people. The Taliban pays them to carry out these attacks so there are ways to tackle the problem, to split off the disillusioned.'

In addition to their tactical heresy, the British also part company with the Americans on dealing with Afghanistan's drug trade:

"British officials are worried about the consequences of US proposals to eradicate Afghanistan's opium poppy harvest, which include spraying the crops from the air, a policy it adopted in Colombia.

"The fear is that tough anti-narcotic measures now would alienate poor farmers who have no alternative livelihood and drive more Afghans into the hands of the Taliban. Such a policy would further endanger British troops, military commanders say. 'The Americans are more impatient than we are,' said one official, adding that the immediate priority should be to target and disrupt 'convoys and laboratories and medium value drugs traffickers'.

Cheney Stands Up to the Taliban

I think they clearly try to find ways to question

the authority of the central government.

Striking at Bagram with a suicide bomber, I suppose,

is one way to do that. But it shouldn't affect

our behavior at all.

- Dick Cheney

Man, that sounds pretty brave. "Shouldn't affect our behavior at all"? Hey Dick, it couldn't affect your behaviour more. You zip in and out of places unannounced with even the press corps sworn to the utmost secrecy.

To make a long story short, Cheney had a drive-by visit to Pakistan yesterday where he purportedly chewed out Pervez Musharraf. He left Islamabad for a flight to Kabul where he was to meet Hamid Karzai, possibly to chew him out too. Kabul airport was snowed in so Cheney diverted to the US air base at Bagram.

The Taliban got word that Cheney was at the base and wasted no time getting a suicide bomber to the front gate where he killed an undetermined number of American and coalition soldiers along with some Afghan and Pakistani truckers waiting for clearance to enter the base. Cheney was safely inside the base and was in no danger. After the explosion he was hustled into a bomb shelter so he could think up bold things to say.

Canada's Own Roadmap

It seemed as though some American papers took more interest than our own in the Supreme Court of Canada's unanimous decision against indefinite detention without trial. It was on the web sites of prominent American newspapers at least as quickly as it showed up on their Canadian counterparts' sites. Today the decision was the basis of the New York Times lead editorial:

"The Canadian justices rejected their government’s specious national security claim with a forceful 9-to-0 ruling that upheld every person’s right to fair treatment. “The overarching principle of fundamental justice that applies here is this: before the state can detain people for significant periods of time, it must accord them a fair judicial process,” Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote.

"The contrast with the United States could not be more disturbing. The Canadian court ruling came just days after a federal appeals court in Washington ruled that Congress could deny inmates of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp the ancient right to challenge their confinement in court. The 2006 military tribunals law revoked that right for a select group who had been designated “illegal enemy combatants” without a semblance of judicial process.

"In late January, Canada created another unflattering contrast with United States policy when it offered a formal apology and financial compensation to Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was a victim of Mr. Bush’s decision to approve open-ended detentions, summary deportations and even torture after 9/11. Mr. Arar was detained in the United States and deported to Syria, where he was held for nearly a year and tortured.

"Instead of apologizing to Mr. Arar, who was cleared of any connection to terrorism by a Canadian investigatory panel, Justice Department lawyers are fighting a lawsuit he has brought in this country, using their usual flimsy claim of state secrets. The Bush administration still refuses to remove Mr. Arar from its terrorist watch list.

"The United States Supreme Court has ruled twice in favor of Guantánamo detainees on statutory grounds, but it has yet to address the profound constitutional issues presented by American practices, including the abuses Congress authorized when it passed the Military Commissions Act. Such a showdown does not seem far off, but Congress also has a duty to revoke or rewrite the laws that have been abused in the name of national security, starting with the 2006 tribunals law.

"Lawmakers have only to look to the Canadian court for easy-to-follow directions back to the high ground on basic human rights and civil liberties."

Really Worth Checking Out

There's a terrific piece about the realities and perils of trucking in remote parts of Canada that can only be reached by truck in the winter. They realize what global warming means:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/26/AR2007022601335.html

The Downfall of Chavez?

If you can judge by the past, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez may have just signed his own death warrant.

Chavez has signed a decree to seize oil projects run by foreign oil companies in Venezuela's Orinoco River region. Among the companies are names such as British Petroleum, Exxon, Chevron, Conoco and Total.

The foreign oil companies will have four months to negotiate settlements and new deals if they want to remain in the existing projects as minority partners. The oil companies are estimated to have about $17-billion invested in the Orinoco projects. While Chavez has paid fair prices for previous takeovers, it's unclear whether he'll be willing or even able to do the same on this initiative.

Chavez has said he doesn't want the foreign oil companies to leave, just accept becoming minority partners.

Cheney Skulks In - And Out - of Pakistan

Since the conquest of Iraq we've gotten used to "surprise" visits by White House big wigs, surprise being clearly intended to minimize the threat of someone downing their aircraft or laying in wait for them with a roadside bomb.

Today's visit to Pakistan by vice president Cheney, however, took things one giant step further. The news media were sworn not to mention anything about it until Cheney had safely left the country. That degree of ultra-secrecy was apparently necessary for Cheney to show his face in Islamabad and he only stopped by for a grand total of three hours.

For a guy who wrangled an astonishing five, that's FIVE draft deferments while the Vietnam War was underway, it's pretty obvious that Cheney is crazy about war as long as he's not the one he's sending to the places where the bullets are flying. The man is a damned Chickenhawk, always has been.

But Cheney's distaste for actually having to defend his country - in person - doesn't stop him from talking tough. He's a true warrior when it comes to talking tough, especially from a Fox News studio.

He was talking tough over lunch with Musharraf today. Cheney made it plain that if Mushy didn't start getting serious about all those al-Qaeda running around Pakistan, why he might have to unleash the Democrats on him. Hmmm, let me see. bin Laden attacked New York and Washington in September, 2001, right? US forces had bin Laden run into the hills of Tora Bora by November, 2001, right? Since then his al-Qaeda operation has set up shop in Pakistan, right? So, now, in February, 2007, Cheney decides to lower the boom on Musharraf, right?

Cheney has waited for five and a half years, until his administration has made a complete mess of two Middle East wars and is weakened and despised at home and around the world - he's waited until now to twist Musharraf's arm - right? And then he has to threaten Musharraf with the Democrats?

Cheney's chair was still warm when Pakistan issued its public response, “Pakistan does not accept dictation from any side or any source.” I think that's a diplomatic way of saying "..and don't let the door hit you on the ass on your way out - Dick."

The Lesser of Two Evils

George Bush secretly funding Sunni Arab extremists? Islamist groups that hate America and are sympathetic to al-Qaeda, the very outfit that started this whole Middle Eastern fiasco are now okay with the White House?

According to Seymour Hersh writing in the latest New Yorker, that's precisely what's happening. Sure it was the Sunni al-Qaeda that bombed embassies and a warship and destroyed the World Trade Centre. Sure it was the Sunni Taliban that allowed al-Qaeda to base itself in Afghanistan. Sure it was the Sunni Saddam that led the US to invade and occupy Iraq. Sure it's been the Sunni insurgency that has mainly targeted US troops in Iraq. Sure it's Sunni fundamentalists, in and out of the government, that threaten Pakistan's ruler, Musharraf, and could potentially wind up with that country's nuclear arsenal. Sure - but so what?

Hersh reports that in America's war against Islamic theocracies, the Shia are now seen as the greater threat, leaving the Sunnis, by default, as America's new allies:


"After the revolution of 1979 brought a religious government to power, the United States broke with Iran and cultivated closer relations with the leaders of Sunni Arab states such as Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. That calculation became more complex after the September 11th attacks, especially with regard to the Saudis. Al Qaeda is Sunni, and many of its operatives came from extremist religious circles inside Saudi Arabia. Before the invasion of Iraq, in 2003, Administration officials, influenced by neoconservative ideologues, assumed that a Shiite government there could provide a pro-American balance to Sunni extremists, since Iraq’s Shiite majority had been oppressed under Saddam Hussein. They ignored warnings from the intelligence community about the ties between Iraqi Shiite leaders and Iran, where some had lived in exile for years. Now, to the distress of the White House, Iran has forged a close relationship with the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

"The key players behind the redirection are Vice-President Dick Cheney, the deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, the departing Ambassador to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador), Zalmay Khalilzad, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national-security adviser. While Rice has been deeply involved in shaping the public policy, former and current officials said that the clandestine side has been guided by Cheney.

"In the nineteen-eighties and the early nineties, the Saudi government offered to subsidize the covert American C.I.A. proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Hundreds of young Saudis were sent into the border areas of Pakistan, where they set up religious schools, training bases, and recruiting facilities. Then, as now, many of the operatives who were paid with Saudi money were Salafis. Among them, of course, were Osama bin Laden and his associates, who founded Al Qaeda, in 1988.

"This time, the U.S. government consultant told me, Bandar and other Saudis have assured the White House that “they will keep a very close eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.”

"Patrick Clawson, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, depicted the Saudis’ coöperation with the White House as a significant breakthrough. “The Saudis understand that if they want the Administration to make a more generous political offer to the Palestinians they have to persuade the Arab states to make a more generous offer to the Israelis,” Clawson told me. The new diplomatic approach, he added, “shows a real degree of effort and sophistication as well as a deftness of touch not always associated with this Administration. Who’s running the greater risk—we or the Saudis? At a time when America’s standing in the Middle East is extremely low, the Saudis are actually embracing us. We should count our blessings.”

"The Pentagon consultant had a different view. He said that the Administration had turned to Bandar as a “fallback,” because it had realized that the failing war in Iraq could leave the Middle East “up for grabs.”

“'It seems there has been a debate inside the government over what’s the biggest danger—Iran or Sunni radicals,' Vali Nasr, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who has written widely on Shiites, Iran, and Iraq, told me. 'The Saudis and some in the Administration have been arguing that the biggest threat is Iran and the Sunni radicals are the lesser enemies. This is a victory for the Saudi line.'

"Martin Indyk, a senior State Department official in the Clinton Administration who also served as Ambassador to Israel, said that 'the Middle East is heading into a serious Sunni-Shiite Cold War.' Indyk, who is the director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, added that, in his opinion, it was not clear whether the White House was fully aware of the strategic implications of its new policy. 'The White House is not just doubling the bet in Iraq,' he said. 'It’s doubling the bet across the region. This could get very complicated. Everything is upside down.'”

Another Warning On US Debt

Tensions between the United States and China have never been good during the Bush administration's tenure. It began just months after the US Supreme Court annointed Bush president when an American reconnaisance plane collided with a Chinese fighter sending the Chinese plane into the sea below.

Differences over Taiwan, Chinese rearmament, and China's growing influence in the Middle East and Africa haven't had much impact on trade and financial dealings between the two countries. For years, China has been the major buyer of America's foreign debt and now holds close to a trillion dollars in US securities and reserves.

That has led University of California business professor, Peter Navarro, to warn of a growing strategic threat posed by China, one that doesn't involve weapons but is potentially more powerful. Writing in the Christian Science Monitor, Navarro says China is amassing a very real mercantile weapon and its aimed right at the US:

"Today, as a result of its currency manipulation, China has become the largest monthly net buyer of US securities. More than two-thirds of its massive and highly undiversified $1 trillion in foreign currency reserves are estimated to be invested in US bonds. China will very shortly eclipse Japan as America's largest creditor. And its foreign currency reserves are projected to double within a few short years.

"Here's the clear and present danger: What may have started out as a simple mercantilist currency gambit for China to sell its exports cheap and keep imports dear has morphed into a powerful weapon to hold off any effective US response to China's unfair trade practices. And make no mistake: Such practices run the gamut from a complex web of illegal export subsidies and currency manipulation to rampant piracy and woefully lax environmental, health, and safety standards.

"...any time that the Bush administration or Congress threatens any kind of significant and tangible action – as opposed to simply beating its chest – China can now credibly threaten to stop financing US deficits and start dumping greenbacks.

"Some say that the Chinese would never take such an action because it would hurt them as much as Americans. But it's Beijing's view that the Chinese people are far tougher and better able to withstand any economic shock than Americans who've grown soft living the good life – and they are probably right. Chinese officials also take a far longer view of strategic action. So if a "dump the greenbacks" strategy needs to be implemented to break the back of a rising American protectionism, to secure Taiwan, or to achieve any other strategic goals, sobeit.

"In the next five years, as China's foreign reserves hurtle toward the $2 trillion mark (and perhaps as China begins to allow its currency to appreciate somewhat), the Chinese government and its many state-run enterprises will be in a very strong position to go on an acquisition binge for US companies.

"So what, you say? Corporations bearing the flags of countries such as Germany, Japan, and France regularly shop for US assets, and no harm has come of it.

"This is very different. China's "buying of America" will be largely financed and orchestrated by the Chinese government – not corporations. This means China's acquisition binge will be far more strategic from a policymaking, rather than from a profitmaking, perspective. The likely result: a rapid acceleration in the transfer of sensitive technology, as well as the outsourcing and offshoring of US jobs. Ironically, as more US companies offshore their production – and as more fall into Chinese hands – there will be fewer voices to lobby against China's mercantilism.

"To protect against these dangers, Congress must pass a comprehensive bill. The US trade representative and commerce secretary must have freer rein to seek relief from Chinese mercantilism in forums such as the World Trade Organization. More broadly, the Bush administration must work with the many other victims of Chinese practices around the world – from Brazil and Mexico to Europe – to take a much harder line in trade negotiations.

"Absent prompt action from Washington, the US will lose this undeclared trade war without firing a shot."

Is America's Borrowing Binge Coming To An End?

For many, many years the American economy has depended on the willingness of foreigners to buy US debt. Foreign lenders have propped up America's enormous, balance of trade deficits and its government's borrowing. It didn't really matter. The money was cheap and the lenders needed the US as much as it needed them - or at least that was how the story went. Every now and then there would be speculation as to what might happen if the foreign lenders changed their minds and stopped financing US overspending but there wasn't much sign of that happening.

Now, according to Bloomberg News, that may be starting to change as foreign reserve banks diversify their holdings by investing in euros and pounds rather than dollars:

"'Central banks are open to saying they've been diversifying to improve returns and reduce exposure to any single currency,' said Sean Callow, senior currency strategist at Westpac Banking in Singapore. 'There's no doubt that when they say 'diversification' they mean selling dollars.'

"Diversification of official reserves could make it more difficult for the United States to fund its current account deficit, the broadest measure of trade in goods and services, and cause yields on U.S. Treasury bonds to rise. The dollar accounted for 65.6 percent of the world's currency reserves in the third quarter, according to the International Monetary Fund.

"The U.S. current account deficit widened to a record $255.6 billion in the third quarter of last year, according to the Commerce Department.

"When a country runs a deficit in the current account, it relies on overseas investment to offset a shortfall in savings. Net purchases of U.S. stocks, notes and bonds by investors from abroad fell to $15.6 billion in December, the lowest in almost five years, according to the Treasury Department.

"Nineteen of the 47 central banks surveyed had cut their share of dollars, with 10 saying they had increased holdings of the U.S. currency. Twenty-one respondents said they had increased their reserves of euros, compared with seven who said they had reduced their holdings of the single currency."

Why should we care? Because the United States is our key trading partner. It buys the majority of our exports. Its financial health therefore impacts directly on our own. The strength of the American dollar also impacts on our ability to export to the US.

Kissinger Calls for Talks

More advice that George Cheney-Bush isn't going to want to hear.

Henry Kissinger has called for an international conference to decide the future of Iraq. He says there's no other way:

"If America fails to achieve its immediate objectives — if terrorist camps or terrorist regimes emerge on the soil of Iraq, backed by its huge oil resources — no county with a significant Muslim population will be able to escape the consequences: not India, with the second largest Muslim population in the world; not Indonesia, with the largest; not Turkey, already contending with incursions from the Kurdish portion of Iraq; not Malaysia, Pakistan or any of the countries of Western Europe; not Russia, with its Muslim south; nor, in the end, China.

"If the Iraq war culminates in a nuclear Iran (as an indirect consequence) and an Islamic fundamentalism that can claim to have ejected Russia from Afghanistan and America from Iraq, a period of extreme turbulence verging on chaos is unavoidable, and it will not be confined to the Middle East. A threat to global oil supplies would have a shattering impact on the world economy, especially the economies of the industrialized countries.

"...what is most frequently debated is whether diplomacy should be invoked at all. The administration, following one strain of American attitudes towards diplomacy [the neo-cons], has implied that it is not yet ready to negotiate over Iraq — especially not with Iran and Syria, which are accused of fomenting the conflict and stirring up the violence.

"The political framework needs to be created by countries with a stake in the outcome. These would include the permanent members of the Security Council; Iraq's neighbors; key Islamic countries like India, Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia; and major oil consumers like Germany and Japan.

"These countries have many conflicting interests, but should have a common concern in preventing jihadist fanaticism from driving the world towards an ever-widening conflict.

"The international conference should be the occasion, as well, to go beyond the warring factions in Iraq to moving toward a stable energy supply. It would be the best framework for a transition from American military occupation. Paradoxically, it may also prove the best framework for bilateral discussions with Syria and Iran.

"American military policy in Iraq must be related to such a diplomatic strategy. Unilateral withdrawal on fixed timetables, unrelated to local conditions, is incompatible with the diplomacy described here."

There's a certain beauty to Kissinger's proposal but its questionable whether the Bush administration, it's credibility at home and abroad in tatters, could initiate such a conference even if it chose to try. A lot of lines have been drawn and interests already defined and it would take a strong America to sweep those aside. That's not to say the international approach isn't worth trying but is there any reason to believe that Bush is willing to take that step?

My Great-Great Grandfather Owned Your Great Grandfather

Strom Thurmond and Al Sharpton, there's an odd couple for you.

The late senator Thurmond had been a segregationist when he ran for a presidential nomination in the 50's. Sharpton is, of course, a colourful and outspoken champion of black civil rights. So, what could these two possibly have in common?

Thurmond's ancestors owned Sharpton's ancestors, that's what. Geneaological searches reveal that a distant cousin of Thurmond's had owned Coleman Sharpton, the reverend's great-grandfather.

Musharraf In Trouble at Home

Poor old Pervez, he's getting it from all directions. George Bush is demanding that he crack down on al-Qaeda while his own people are giving him hell for being Bush's puppet.

Hundreds of female students from an Islamic seminary in Islamabad have occupied a public library demanding that Musharraf rebuild a half dozen mosques the government destroyed because they were built on illegally seized lands and dozens more demos are planned.

According to the LA Times, the protest is about a lot more than a handful of mosques:

"...the dissident Muslim cleric who appears to have masterminded the protest has parlayed it into a broader challenge to Musharraf's authority, at a time when the president is under growing Western pressure to act against Islamic militants who find sanctuary in Pakistan.

"'People are angry that Musharraf is a puppet of America,' said Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who together with his cleric brother, Abdul Aziz, runs the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, which adjoins the girls' seminary and the library. 'That is the heart of the matter.' Pakistani authorities view the mosque as a hotbed of radicalism, and orders are out for the arrest of both clerics.

"The confrontation is playing out against the backdrop of some of the most stringent state precautions in years against suicide bombings by Islamic militants in Pakistan, which have claimed scores of lives since the start of the year. Attackers have targeted the capital's international airport, a luxury hotel, a courtroom and various security installations.

"The mosque protest appears to be an explicit warning to Musharraf against bowing to Western demands that he reform the country's network of more than 13,000 madrasas, or religious schools. Many are known to have direct links to militant groups that have been staging attacks both in Pakistan and abroad, and have sent fighters to battle North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops across the border in Afghanistan.

"The young women now say they will not abandon their protest until Sharia, or Islamic law, is imposed throughout Pakistan.'That is the only way that this will end,' said Amna Adeem, a 20-year-old protester wearing a black veil that left only her flashing brown eyes uncovered. Like many of the seminary students taking part in the sit-in, she is from Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, which is far more religiously conservative than Islamabad, the relatively cosmopolitan seat of government."

As though he didn't have enough problems with appearing to be a puppet of Washington, Dick Cheney made a surprise visit to Musharraf today to pressure for a crackdown in the tribal lands. Cheney's timing, and judgment, are astonishing.

A Not Too Serious Warning to Musharraf

The New York Times reports that George Bush is sending a stern warning to Pakistan's president Musharraf - start cracking down on al-Qaeda operations within Pakistan or face a cut off in aid by the Democrat-controlled congress.

Like previous dealings the message refers to al-Qaeda and seems to make no mention of the Taliban. Whenever he's pushed, Musharraf makes a few, token strikes on al-Qaeda compounds and arrests a few of its leaders in Pakistan cities and then the business winds down.

Why leave out the Taliban? Because they're the "home team" of the Pashtuns, slightly more of whom live in Paksitan than Afghanistan. The Pashtuns and Balochs occupy the ungovernable tribal lands adjacent to the Afghan border including Waziristan.

A military campaign against the Taliban could easily turn into a civil war with the Pashtuns and Balochs and that could be fatal for the vulnerable Musharraf. There have already been two assassination attempts against the Pakistan president. It is quite possible that, if Musharraf was assassinated or toppled, he could be replaced by an Islamist regime and the idea of Islamists with nuclear weapons and North Korean missile technology is a prospect that Washington doesn't even want to contemplate.

Musharraf is the cork that keeps the genie of the Islamic Bomb safely inside the bottle. What that means is that the Afghanistan situation is basically insoluble. We can't defeat the Taliban because we can't bring enough pressure on Musharraf because we can't risk having Pakistan's nuclear arsenal fall into the hands of Islamists. Game, set and match.

No one understands this reality better than Afghan president Hamid Karzai. He's regularly sending out overtures to the Taliban, the very same Taliban we're over there supposedly to fight to protect - why Mr. Karzai and his thoroughly corrupted government.

We can't allow the Taliban to return to Kabul because, after all, they tacitly allowed bin-Laden's al-Qaeda to operate from their territory. Okay, fair enough, but then we have to take a kid glove approach, even send hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, to Musharraf who is tacitly allowing al-Qaeda to operate from his territory.

The logical disconnect to all of this is astonishing. We're not bringing security to Afghanistan because we can't eliminate the Taliban bases in Pakistan, we're not bringing anything resembling true democracy to Afghanistan because Karzai has allowed warlords and thugs to infiltrate his government and security services, we're certainly not liberating the women of Afghanistan from brutal oppression because the countryside has reverted to fundamentalist feudalism, so just what are we doing in Afghanistan?

Our Green Harpo - That Scam Didn't Last Long

It always had to come down to the tar sands. That was where Harpo had his dream of Canada as an "energy superpower" and where he had to draw his line in the tar. Oh he could claim he had done a 180 and now embraced the global warming issue but it was at the Athabasca Tar Sands that Harpo would face his "put up or shut up" moment. Now its time for our Furious Leader to come clean.

A report in this morning's Globe claims the Harpo boys are going to allow substantially more greenhouse gas emissions from the tar sands in the future. It shows the Reform Conservative government is going to stick with the discredited, intensity-based, Bush/Cheney approach to the tar sands, ignoring the fact that Canadian GHG emitters are already producing way too much of the stuff and need to be cut back, way back.

What it comes down to is money, or as Harpo likes to refer to it, "the almighty dollar." He doesn't care about the almighty dollar when it comes to trade with China but he very much cherishes the almighty dollar when it comes to the filthy business of producing artificial oil for American SUVs.

Nine out of Canada's top 15 GHG emitting companies are in Alberta. These nine are involved with the tar sands. In terms of trying to halt the onset of global warming, this is where the rubber meets the road.

The report referred to by the Globe came out just before Christmas. That means there could, just possibly could, be a different treatment of the tar sands in the policy Baird is to unveil before the end of next month.

A Pentagon Revolt?

According to the Times of London, a number of American generals are prepared to resign in protest if their commander in chief, Dick Cheney (or his ventriloquist's dummy, George), moves to launch a war against Iran.

"'There are four or five generals and admirals we know of who would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran,' a source with close ties to British intelligence said. 'There is simply no stomach for it in the Pentagon, and a lot of people question whether such an attack would be effective or even possible.'

"A British defence source confirmed that there were deep misgivings inside the Pentagon about a military strike. 'All the generals are perfectly clear that they don’t have the military capacity to take Iran on in any meaningful fashion. Nobody wants to do it and it would be a matter of conscience for them.'

“'There are enough people who feel this would be an error of judgment too far for there to be resignations.'

"A generals’ revolt on such a scale would be unprecedented. 'American generals usually stay and fight until they get fired,' said a Pentagon source. Robert Gates, the defence secretary, has repeatedly warned against striking Iran and is believed to represent the view of his senior commanders.

This spreading discontent would go a long way to explaining the actions of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, last week when he directly contradicted White House claims that the top Iranian leadership was inolved in sending weapons to Iraq to be used against US forces. Pace may have been rushing to avert a showdown between his top generals and the White House.

"Hillary Mann, the National Security Council’s main Iran expert until 2004, said Pace’s repudiation of the administration’s claims was a sign of grave discontent at the top.

“'He is a very serious and a very loyal soldier,' she said. 'It is extraordinary for him to have made these comments publicly, and it suggests there are serious problems between the White House, the National Security Council and the Pentagon.'

"Mann fears the administration is seeking to provoke Iran into a reaction that could be used as an excuse for an attack. A British official said the US navy was well aware of the risks of confrontation and was being “seriously careful” in the Gulf.

"The US air force is regarded as being more willing to attack Iran. General Michael Moseley, the head of the air force, cited Iran as the main likely target for American aircraft at a military conference earlier this month.

Secular Democracy

Writing in today's Times, Michael Portillo makes the case for shunning politicians too tightly bound up with their God:

"I worry because men of power who take instruction from unseen forces are essentially fanatics. Blair is filled with a self-confidence and self-satisfaction that are dangerous. They were evident last week as he refused to take responsibility for anything that has happened in Iraq since America and Britain occupied it. Those who look for judgment not from the electorate or parliament or a free press but from God release themselves from the constraints of democracy.

"If today the Church of England is wishy-washy and middle-of-the-road, that is no accident. It is the long-term result of Elizabeth’s design. Britain has benefited enormously from a weak clergy that has mainly remained aloft from politics. Britain’s established church, headed by the monarch, has made few demands of our leaders or people.

"When Blair correctly cites tolerance as one of Britain’s defining virtues, he should recognise that we owe it to those wise rulers who over centuries insisted on separating religion from politics.

Blair, "...was deeply uncomfortable when Jeremy Paxman asked him whether he and President Bush prayed together. If the answer was “no”, the prime minister was open to a charge of hypocrisy. Why wouldn’t two practising Christians share a moment of communication with their maker? If the answer was “yes”, the British electorate would be terrified. Not surprisingly he refused to answer.

"Britons should worry that religion and politics could again be bound together. If moderation and secularism have been overturned in parts of the Muslim world, why should not the same thing happen in Christian societies? Bush aroused that fear unwittingly when he referred to the war against terror as a “crusade”. The remark evoked a return to religious warfare by Christians under the banner of the cross. The idea is not so farfetched given that the president has also said that God had told him to “end the tyranny in Iraq”.

"In other societies theocrats, religious leaders or fanatics citing holy texts dictate violent actions. That constitutes the greatest threat to world peace today. For the first time since the Glorious Revolution of 1688, mainland Britain is menaced by religious violence, now committed at the behest of Al-Qaeda.

"But if our political leaders cite faith as their political guide, then how do we distinguish ourselves from the religious extremists who wreak havoc in our world? It may seem harmless to “do God” a little in an essentially moderate country like ours. But once you claim that He is judging you or telling you what to do, there is no logical defence against another who claims that his God is instructing him to blow up discotheques or fly planes into buildings. If one God sent the Americans into Iraq, why shouldn’t another insist that by every means it be defended against infidel attack?

"My guess is that historians will look back on the early 21st century in puzzlement. How was it possible, they will ask, that man had such deep scientific understanding but clung so tenaciously to his gods? Why did western politicians think that doing God (even a tiny bit) was an electoral or strategic asset? "

The Last Stand of Conrad Black

We're just weeks away from the start of the fraud trial of Conrad Black, a case that led one observer to note, "Black has taken a huge gamble. He could end up dying in jail."

The Observer has a pretty good assessment of Black and how he got where he is today:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,,2020867,00.html

A British Take on Tony's Withdrawal from Iraq

The British seem to begrudgingly endorse Tony Blair's decision to get British troops out of Iraq. Even the Telegraph supports the move although not the result:

"The British people have shown a lot of patience. Four years is surely enough time to set a successor regime on its feet. Yet, as Douglas Hurd writes on this page - and we support his call for an inquiry into how we got into this mess - little has gone as hoped. Life, liberty and property are less secure now than in the latter days of Saddam. The occupation has served to radicalise Muslim opinion, not only in Iraq, but throughout Europe and the Middle East. The overthrow of the Ba'athists and the Taliban in Afghanistan removed anti-Shia powers on Iran's flanks, while making a direct confrontation with the ayatollahs politically and logistically impossible. Britain's standing has plummeted: America is resented, but we are resented and despised, viewed as Washington's trailing hyena.

"Yet there comes a point when we exhaust our utility. We tried working with the existing police. That failed. We tried scrapping the army and starting anew. That failed, too. If it is not in our power to create a better society in Iraq, there is no point in hanging around."

Britain Under Seige

If Eliza Manningham-Buller can be believed, and I think she can, there are between 1,600 and 2,000 British-based, Islamist terrorists preparing to launch a wave of attacks. Ms. Manningham-Buller is the Director-General of Britain's MI5 intelligence agency.

The Sunday Telegraph reports having seen the document, entitled "Extremist Threat Assessment" which predicts a substantial increase in terrorist attacks in Britain in 2007. The report speaks of 200 known networks involved in at least 30-plots.

The report notes the resurgence of al-Qaeda throughout the Sunni Muslim world and warns Afghanistan is expected to supercede Iraq as a venue for terrorists planning Jihad against the West.

"Two years ago, western intelligence said that al-Qaeda was virtually a spent force, disrupted by counter-terrorist operations around the world."

Warming Up to New Pathogens

They're not actually new, they're just new to some of their surroundings. They're bacteria and parasites that are expanding their reach as the planet warms. This is already happening. The World Health Organization estimated that in 2000 about 154,000 deaths around the world could be attributed to disease outbreaks and other conditions sparked by climate change. 154,000 and that's six years ago.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the earth has already warmed enough to bring trouble to northern regions from Sweden to Alaska. Bacterial blooms in Alaskan inlets have forced producers to change the way they raise and harvest shellfish. Sweden, meanwhile, is trying to cope with the northern migration of encephalitis-bearing ticks. What researchers are finding is that even incremental increases in temperature are expanding the distribution of bacteria, bugs and weeds.

The US Department of Agriculture has been testing how increasing CO2 levels affect weeds. They're testing ragweed with CO2 levels predicted for 2050. One researcher is quoted as saying, "It's like feeding a hungry teenager."

The Christian Right Comes Up Empty-Handed

A group of powerful Christian conservatives that calls itself the Council for National Policy is disappointed at the current slate of candidates for the Republican presidential nomination. Their trained seal has less than two years remaining in office and they can't find another one with a weak mind and a strong back.

The council is a secretive organization whose members include James C. Dobson, Jerry Falwell and Grover Norquist. They recently had a closed-door meeting at Florida's Amelia Island. At the meeting they decided that McCain, Guilliani and even Romney weren't nearly far enough right for their liking. You have to be swinging from the end of the branch for these folks which is why they seem so very fond of our own Harpo. The New York Times reports these extremists are worried, very worried:

“'There is great anxiety,' said Paul Weyrich, chairman of the Free Congress Foundation. 'There is no outstanding conservative, and they are all looking for that.'

"Mr. Weyrich, a longtime member of the council, declined to discuss the group or its meetings. The council’s bylaws forbid members from publicly disclosing its membership or activities, and participants agreed to discuss the Amelia Island meeting only on the condition of anonymity.

"For eight years and four elections, President Bush forged a singular alliance with Christian conservatives — including dispatching administration officials and even cabinet members to address council meetings — that put them at the center of the Republican party.

"But in the aftermath of the stinging defeats in the midterm elections, and with discontent over the Iraq war weighing heavily on the public, some Christian conservatives worry that they may find themselves on the sidelines of the presidential race."

Gee, I can see their point. This could just lead to separation of state and religious fanaticism. Where would we be then?

Oh yeah, just a reminder. Harpo himself addressed the Council for Religious Extremism when they showed up in Montreal back in 1997. Here are a few things he told his American pals about us and about his movement:

On the Canadian people:

"It may not be true, but it's legendary that ifyou're like all Americans, you know almost nothing
except for your own country. Which makes youprobably knowledgeable about one more country
than most Canadians."

On the NDP:

"The NDP could be described as basically a partyof liberal Democrats, but it's actually worse thanthat, I have to say. And forgive me jesting again (about theological references), but the NDP is kind of proofthat the Devil lives and interferes in the affairs of men."

"Some people point out that there is a small element ofclergy in the NDP. Yes, this is true. But these are clergywho, while very commited to the church, believe that it made a historic error in adopting Christian theology."

And then on to those Evil Papists:

"For historic reasons I won't get into, the Liberal party gets the votes of most Catholics in the country,including many practising Catholics. It does have a significant Catholic, social conservative element which occasionally disagrees with these kinds of policy directions. Although I caution you that even this Catholic social conservative element in the Liberal party
is often quite liberal on economic issues."

And a real big swipe at those pinko, Progressive Conservatives:

"...before the Reform Party really became a force in thelate '80s, early '90s, the leadership of the Conservative party was running the largest deficits in Canadian history. They were in favour of gay rights officially, officially for abortion on demand. Officially - what else can I say about
them? Officially for the entrenchment of our universal, collectivized, health-care system and multicultural policiesin the constitution of the country."

And on his natural home, the Reform Party:

"The Reform party is very much a modern manifestationof the Republican movement in Western Canada, the U.S.Republicans started in the western United States."

Harpo Called Out - By Suzuki

It's about time. Our Furious Leader has been called out into the street to defend his beloved tar sands and the notion that he's become an instant convert to environmentalism. David Suzuki yesterday told a gym full of Calgary elementary school kids and their parents that, when it comes to the environment, Harper is, well, a fraud.

The only thing he cares about is getting re-elected with a majority government," Suzuki said, adding any of the PM's pledges to preserve the environment are cynical ploys to that end.

"I don't believe there is a green bone in Harper's body - he has never, ever indicated he cares about the environment."

"Albertans have always had the highest standard of living in the country. Why do you need all this out-of-control expansion of the oilsands. It's insanity ... it's crazy."

The Athabasca Tar Sands (no, they're not "oil" sands) have been the 800 pound gorilla of Canadian politics. When it comes to pols, Libs included, there's a genuine reluctance to anger Alberta (and Washington) by pointing out the obvious.

I suspect Harpo will lay low on this one and wait for it to go away or hope that it grows into a Suzuki-Stelmach fight that he can duck until he sees his numbers in the next election. Either way, Harper has been tagged as a fraud and ducking this one is a clear admission of that.

Cheney - No Consensus on Man-Made Global Warming

I suppose from someone of the stature of Dick Cheney, it's all you could expect.

The Vice-President gave an interview today to ABC News, during which he expounded on his views of global warming:

"I think there's an emerging consensus that we do have global warming. You can look at the data on that, and I think clearly we're in a period of warming. Where there does not appear to be a consensus, where it begins to break down, is the extent to which that's part of a normal cycle versus the extent to which it's caused by man, greenhouse gases, et cetera.

"But I think we're going to see a big debate on it going forward. But it's not enough just to sort of run out and try to slap together some policy that's going to "solve" the problem."

Hey Dick. "Consensus" means general agreement and even someone as intellectually dishonest as you has to accept that there is indeed a consensus on the man-made, greenhouse gas questions. Even among your government's own scientists there is a clear consensus.

Can this guy ever tell the truth?

Rotten To The Core

As far as we're concerned, we wish it would just go away. Hamid Karzai's goverment is awash in war criminals. They're warlords who butchered tens of thousands of Afghan civilians in the course of that country's civil wars and who now sit in government voting for their own pardons.


Does anybody find it curious that we don't hear a peep about this from Bush or Cheney much less our Furious Leader, Harpo? Nope, nothing to see here, now move along. We might occasionally criticize the corrupt cops but all we have for Karzai and his parliament of cutthroats is praise.


Human Rights Watch has some eye-opening insights into the murderous thugs who've now morphed into Afghanistan's government:

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/12/11/afghan14826.htm

http://hrw.org/reports/2005/afghanistan0605/

While you're there, check out their video on cluster bombs. It too is an eye-opener:

http://www.hrw.org/

It's hard not to feel some sympathy for Hamid Karzai. The US put him in power and then forgot about him. There was no one around to give him the muscle needed to keep the warlords at bay so that Afghanistan could have a decent parliament, one that could claim some legitimacy. We didn't so now it's much easier to pretend there is no problem, that Afghanistan has a government that will bring the country real democracy.

Another Thought on Cluster Bombs

The campaign to ban cluster bombs is long overdue. These weapons were developed to take out large enemy formations massed on battlefields. That sort of conventional war seems to have become a rarity, replaced by low-intensity wars, guerrilla war and insurgencies.

Cluster bombs have no place being used against small groups or dispersed targets in the midst of civilian areas. Aerial bombardment generally against civilian areas needs to be banned.

We've come to be a bit deluded about the notion of "precision guided munitions" and their vaunted surgical strikes. The only thing precise about a 2,000 lb. bomb with a laser guidance system is the guidance system. When that bomb hits, it is neither precise nor discriminate. Its blast wave will kill anyone within hundreds of feet, completely indifferent to age, gender or culpability. It also tends to transform the survivors into our avowed enemies.

Those who resort to using cluster bombs should be held accountable for going back in and clearing all the duds, the unexploded bomblets, when the fighting ends. Kids are still being blown to bits in Laos from cluster bomblets the Americans left behind after losing Vietnam. How can we call a country that will deliberately leave that mayhem in its wake to claim innocent lives for decades afterwards our ally, our friend? It is nothing short of monstrous.

Fundamental Justice Rules, Sorry Harpo

9-zip. The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled, unanimously, against the government's claimed right to be able to detain terrorism suspects indefinitely without trial. Sorry Harpo, but Canada isn't going to be reverting to medieval feudalism like your idols in the US.

The SCC suspended its judgment for a year in order to allow parliament to restructure the offending laws.

Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin said the security certificate regime offends the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a pronouncement that is sure to send hundreds of Canadian rednecks frothing at the mouth in inidignation. She upheld the quaint notion that, if the government wants to detain somebody for a lengthy period, it has to accord them a fair judicial process. Talk about a half-baked, pinko idea, eh?

Steve Bell, The Guardian

Flying In The Face of Reality

Today's Guardian has a feature story, "Paving America", on the flood of Americans to Arizona. It protends an environmental calamity to come:

The state has the fastest growing population in the country, recently overtaking Nevada, which held the title for 19 years. In 1950 there were 750,000 Arizonans; in 2000 there were almost 5 million and in 2020 there are projected to be 7.4 million.

Phoenix, the state capital that lies about 50 miles east of the White Tank mountains, is the fastest growing city in America. It covered 17 square miles in 1950; now it sprawls over almost 500, an area larger than Los Angeles.

"Thousands descend every year on Arizona, led by baby-boomers reaching retirement. They come mainly from other parts of the US - from California where land is increasingly expensive, and the midwest, where the winters are severe. And each new arrival is looking to build a castle in the desert, the epitome of the detached, individualistic and car-dependent American dream.

"For residents ...the attractions are palpable: more space for their bucks, eternal summers and fulfilment of what remains of the west's original frontier spirit.

"But the costs are high too. Arizona's water table is being depleted as a result of homes being built on pristine desert rather than on agricultural land already used to grow thirsty crops such as cotton and alfalfa. Air quality is suffering from dust thrown up from developments and car exhausts, and highways are clogged with commuters travelling to and from the desert communities. In Phoenix, widening one of the main intersections to 24 lanes, 12 in each direction, has been mooted.

"'At what point do we just stand up and start screaming?' said Wellington Reiter, dean of Arizona State University's design college, who has been involved in creating a light rail system - a first step towards public transport.

"But he fears the pace of growth in the opposite direction, comparing the carbon footprint (the amount of greenhouse gas emissions caused by each person every year) of Phoenicians: 1,400kg, with that of the people of Hong Kong: 50kg.

"Environmentalists tried unsuccessfully to introduce tougher restrictions on development in Arizona in 2000. Sandy Bahr of the state's Sierra Club said the unlikely alliance between developers and farmers hoping to make a fortune by selling their land for housing complexes proved too powerful.

"'The policy-makers are burying their heads in the sand. Our whole economy is based not just on growth, but on rapid growth,' she said.

"With the American population passing 300 million, and projected to reach 400 million by mid-century, Arizona is the most extreme example of stresses being played out across the States. America is being paved over. Some estimates suggest that more than half of the built environment that will exist in the US in 2025 will have been constructed since 2000."

With peak summer temperatures that already reach 46C and are expected to climb higher yet simply surviving in this region is astonishingly energy intensive. Most of the year you don't need much in the way of heating but you do consume terrific amounts of energy for air conditioning, irrigation and transportation, all to live in a place which has no sustainable water supply.

Fighting Cluster Bombs

Canada has joined 45-other nations in approving a declaration calling for a treaty by 2008 to ban the use of cluster bombs. Our representative joined it, it seems, because the Oslo meeting held no formal vote and the declaration basically has no teeth.

Now we should watch and see what Harpo does to stop these horribly misused weapons. Will he speak openly against them? Will he castigate countries that use them - far off nations like the US and Britain? Will he demand that the US clean up the millions of unexploded cluster bomblets that still litter the Laotian countryside? Or will he, once again, stay true to form as our Furious Leader and "arse-licker of Satan" and stay conveniently mute?

Still just joining in was a good, first step - if we mean it.

Stepping Back from War with Iran

There is great tension today over a looming, military showdown between America and Iran. The US is building up its naval forces in the Persian Gulf and prepping for a massive air war against Iran's nuclear and military infrastructure. Despite how incompetently he's managed both wars he's launched so far, Bush seems to have nothing in his playbook except more war. However, Abbas Milani, director of Iranian studies at Stanford and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, believes the conditions are right for a peaceful resolution - if - the American people and their Congress can hold the Frat Boy in check:

"...what the unilateral and increasingly quixotic American embargo could not do in more than a decade, a limited United Nations resolution has accomplished in less than a month. And the resolution succeeded because few things frighten the mullahs more than the prospect of confronting a united front made up of the European Union, Russia, China and the United States. The resolution was a manifestation of just such a united front.

"While the combination of credible force, reduced oil prices and a United Nations resolution has worked to create the most favorable conditions yet for a negotiated solution to the nuclear crisis, any unilateral American attack on Iran is sure to backfire. It will break the international coalition against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear adventurism; it will allow China, Russia and even some countries in Europe to legitimately side with the mullahs; it will lead to higher oil prices and an increase in Iranian government revenues; and finally, it will help revive the waning power of the warmongers in Tehran.

"Those convinced that only the combination of credible might and diplomatic pressure will work worry rightly that the Bush administration, frustrated by its failures in Iraq and goaded by hawks in Washington, will do to Iran what it did to Iraq. In confronting Saddam Hussein and the threat of his weapons of mass destruction, the Bush administration insisted that amassing an armada in the Persian Gulf was necessary to frighten Mr. Hussein into submission. But once the armada was in place, they used it to carry out a long-ago planned invasion of Iraq.

"Today, many worry that the plans for an invasion of Iran, too, were made long ago, and that the armada is there to make possible either another Gulf of Tonkin resolution or an Iranian act of provocation against American forces, which could then serve as an excuse for an attack on Iran.

"War and peace with Iran are both possible today. With prudence, backed by power but guided by the wisdom to recognize the new signals coming from Tehran, the United States can today achieve a principled solution to the nuclear crisis. Congress, vigilant American citizens and a resolute policy from America’s European allies can ensure that this principled peace is given a chance. "

This is Rich

Dick Cheney - in Australia - criticizing China's arms buildup and questioning China's peaceful intentions. Cheney has to have American Exceptionalism rammed pretty far up his ass to spew that sort of sanctimonious hypocrisy.

China's total military budget, even expanded as it is, comes out to a very small fraction of the increase in America's military spending under George Bush - a small fraction. Just where does this bald-headed, draft-dodging, war-mongering, lying and dissembling, piece of garbage get off? The world will be so much better off when we get this type of slime out of office.

By the Company We Keep

All of us are known by the company we keep. Our mothers teach us that when we're kids and then spend close to two decades trying to keep us out of the wrong company.

Nations, too, are known by the company they keep. Other nations in the world watch and form their own judgments of states based in part on their allegiences. That's a troubling aspect of George W. Bush's Global War Without End on Terrorism. We've signed on and, since then, we've remained utterly mute to our prime ally's excesses, its outrages and its crimes. It's no excuse that there are plenty of excesses, outrages and crimes on the other side. We hold ourselves to a higher standard but we're quite willing to look the other way when our key ally sullies those standards.

A trial begins later this month in a Miami courtroom. On trial is Jose Padilla arrested at Chicago's O'Hare airport in May, 2002, branded an "enemy combattant" and hauled off to endure four years of torture so vile that one of his guards now calls him "a piece of furniture."

The US government has predicatably objected strenuously to any evidence being presented of Padilla's torture but the judge has stood up to them and will allow it in. Naomi Klein writes about the upcoming trial in The Nation:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070312/klein

Coalition Meltdown

The "coalition of the willing" that has aided the US in its occupation of Iraq is shrinking - rapidly. Britain is beginning the draw down of its forces that could lead to a complete withdrawal next year. Denmark is leaving, along with a number of others.

Italy, Spain, Ukraine, Japan and New Zealand have already withdrawn their troops. Poland is planning to leave and the withdrawal option is under review in Romainia.

South Korea is pulling half of its forces out by April and may withdraw the remainder by year's end.

Two other allies, Australia with 1,400 troops and Bulgaria with 155, intend to stay on for the time being at least.

"An Eye the Size of a Dinner Plate"

It's not the elusive "giant squid" but at half-a-ton, the Colossal Squid specimen caught by New Zealand fishermen is plenty big in its own right.

Weighing in at 450 kg., the mature male easily outdistances the only other complete Colossal ever caught, a female that weighed only a third as much.

At the moment the squid is on ice as the fishermen head to Wellington where scientists will examine and preserve it.

Iraq's Dirty War

Jihadists using civilian women and children as human shields against US firepower:

" ...A woman and three small children emerge uncertainly from behind a building, little more than a shack. They stare at the approaching armour. After a few seconds they retreat from view; then the process is repeated. The third time they emerge, a fighter is crouching behind them with a rocket-propelled grenade aimed at Jankow's Bradley. The group disappears.

"There is a long pause, a moment of excruciating moral conflict for the soldiers and for the gunner in particular.

"Not to shoot would be to imperil their own lives or those of their colleagues, both American and Iraqi. To shoot would be to risk killing civilians who have been shoved in front of their guns to shield insurgent fighters.

"Suddenly, the decision is made, announced by the Bradley opening fire with four rounds from its 25mm gun, blasting a large hole in the corner of the building. Three bodies fall into view.
For a sickening few seconds it seems inconceivable that the woman and her children are not among the dead. A silence descends on the vehicle. But the bodies are those of men."

Read the entire Guardian story here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2018528,00.html

They're At It Again - More Bogus Intelligence

It sounds like the same scam the US ran on the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq only this time the bogus intelligence is being fed to the IAEA inspectors in Iran.

The latest IAEA report on Iran reveals that the intelligence on Iran's nuclear facilities provided to UN inspectors by US spy agencies has turned out to be largely unfounded. Like their UNSCOM predecessors, the IAEA inspectors dutifully followed these leads to find out they led to nothing.

This is not to excuse Iran. The report clearly found Iran defiant of a UN Security Council ultimatum that it freeze its nuclear programme. However, Washington's marching orders are no longer being accepted unless it first passes a "credibility test."

The UN inspectors, however, have found plenty to report. From The Guardian:

"One of the "outstanding issues" listed in yesterday's report involves a 15-page document that appears to have been handed to IAEA inspectors by mistake with a batch of unrelated paperwork in October 2005.

"That document roughly describes how to make hemispheres of enriched uranium, for which the only known use is in nuclear warheads. Iran has yet to present a satisfactory explanation of how and why it has the document."

The Musharraf Factor

In today's Christian Science Monitor, Brahma Chellenay, professor of strategic studies at the privately funded Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, argues that the fight against Islamic terrorism can't be won without first restoring democracy to Pakistan.

"The fight against international terrorism cannot be won without demilitarizing and deradicalizing Pakistan. That's what makes Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's latest move so worrisome.

"Now, without drawing international attention, Musharraf has unveiled a plan that will make Pakistan's greatly awaited elections a farce. Under this plan, the outgoing parliament and four provincial legislatures would "elect" him to a new five-year term as president in the fall, before he oversees national polls a few months later. Five years ago, Musharraf orchestrated another charade – a referendum – to extend his self-declared presidency.

"Musharraf's maneuver is the latest in a long series of broken promises to return his country to democracy. And it does not bode well for Pakistan's central challenge: moving away from militarism, extremism, and fundamentalism, and toward a stable, moderate state.

"Musharraf's sinking popularity has spurred speculation that he might declare a state of emergency to smother vocal opposition. But the more power he usurps, the more dependent he becomes on his military and intelligence. That limits his ability to sever their cozy ties with extremist and terrorist elements.

"A dictatorship that is part of the problem has ingeniously presented itself to the outside world as part of the solution. The scourge of Pakistani terrorism ema- nates not so much from the Islamist mullahs as from generals who reared the forces of jihad and fathered the Taliban and Al Qaeda-linked groups such as the Lashkar-i-Tayyaba. Yet by passing the blame for their disastrous jihad policy to their mullah puppets, Musharraf and his fellow generals have made many outsiders believe that the key is to contain the religious fringe, not the puppeteers.

"Musharraf perpetuates the self-serving myth that his rule helps prevent an Islamist takeover. But military rule would persist in the event of his sudden death.

"Until the military's viselike grip on power is broken and the rogue Inter-Services Intelligence agency is cut to size, Pakistan is likely to remain a common thread in the investigations of most acts of international terrorism.

"In the absence of open elections, military rule has created a pressure-cooker society. What Pakistan needs is a safety valve – true democratic participation that would empower the masses and decide issues at the ballot box.

"Jihad culture is now deeply woven into Pakistan's national fabric. Unraveling it won't be easy. But it is essential. Heavy-handed rule from Musharraf – or any other general – won't eliminate Pakistan's extremist elements. The development of a robust civil society – though painful in the short term – will aid democracy, marginalize radicals, and bring Pakistan back from the brink.

"Some may think that Musharraf's scheme to stay enthroned is a necessary evil in the service of a greater good. That's half right: It is evil, but it's not necessary. The West needs to exert pressure on him to show real courage – and to bring real reform – by holding himself accountable to voters and making coming elections an honest affair."

Sitting on the Fence on Cluster Bombs

This is what cluster bombs do to kids.

In Oslo, Norway, 48 nations have signed a declaration calling for a total ban on cluster bomb munitions by 2008.

The resolution says that the bomblets dispersed by cluster bombs, which can litter a countryside for years, cause "unacceptable harm."

The U.S., China and Russia oppose the ban and did not send representatives to the meeting. Australia, Israel, India and Pakistan also did not attend. Foreign minister Peter MacKay indicated that Canada would send a representative as an observer only.

Canada is not believed to have joined as a signatory to the declaration, which would seem to be in keeping with our Furious Leader's global outlook.

Cluster bombs are essentially cannisters packed with hundreds of smaller bomblets which are dispersed over wide areas. It is estimated that between ten to thirty per cent fail to explode on contact and remain live and lethal for years afterward endangering civilians, too often children who step on them or pick them up.

Israel is known to have used cluster munitions against residential areas of Lebanon last year.

In Southeast Asia, it's estimated that 60% of cluster bomb victims are kids.

Learning to Live With Reality

It's only human nature for us to see places from a generational perspective. We adapt to places based on how they've been for the past generation or two.

Florida is a great example. It has a hurricane cycle. For a couple of decades the incidence of hurricanes diminishes. Then they return again, in full force. Florida's population has grown tremendously in recent decades, a period of hurricane retreat. That period seems to be ending. Now, houses are being damaged by hurricanes before they're completely rebuilt from a previous hurricane.

The reconstruction, of course, was funded by insurers who now refuse to write hurricane insurance. Governors or Washington can declare disaster zones and send some funds but not on a continual basis. Eventually places must become economically unviable places to live.

Even more devastating than hurricanes, however, are severe droughts. The American southwest has been experiencing a multi-year drought evident in the levels of the Colorado River. Lake Mead, pictured above, shows a "ring around the bathtub" effect from falling water levels. This has caused real alarm.

The Colorado River Compact, negotiated among several states in 1922, relied on water flow records going back about three decades. They assumed an annual flow of about 16.4 million acre-feet. Now it turns out the Colorado River's historic norm is closer to 13 million acre-feet per year and even less during sustained drought.

The Canadian prairie is also susceptible to severe drought. Here again we've taken a generational perspective on the region. The 20th century was unduly wet for the Canadian prairie, sort of a freak condition. However, it allowed a thriving agriculture to take hold and, along with it, settlement of villages, towns and cities.

We've already had droughts that caused Alberta ranchers to dispose of their herds, sometimes down to their breeding stock.

These areas have been settled on the assumption of a continuation of a status quo that never really was the status quo. This means new solutions must be found to counter the effect of drought on water resources. That's not easy to do.

When the people of Saskatchewan and Alberta settled the prairie lands no one had "mega-drought" in mind. Yet that region has been afflicted by these phenomenon regularly in the past. These are droughts that persist from 40-to 60-years at a stretch. There was a mega-drought in 1300 and another around 1600. What happens when the next one arrives, perhaps accelerated by global warming?

A drought of two or even three-generations in duration could easily undermine the viability of prairie habitation. Vast swathes of the prairie, including a number of cities, could become unlivable.

This isn't fantasy. It's a reality that led former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed to write a lengthy op-ed piece in the Globe & Mail a few years back urging that Canada not let the genie out of the bottle by permitting the sale of fresh water to the US. Lougheed argued that we're going to need that water for the survival of the prairie - Alberta and Saskatchewan. He envisioned a water transpotation grid, mainly canals, to feed water to the prairie by diverting it from running off into the oceans instead.

I think the global warming problem is going to teach us that, if our societies are going to survive, we're going to have to stop thinking generationally, accept the realities of nature and her cycles of storms, mega-droughts and massive earthquakes, and begin to adapt our lives for what will be needed in centuries to come, not merely a couple of generations.

Fealty or Stability - We Have to Choose

Iraq and Afghanistan have proven or are proving a fundamental flaw in American nation-building: unrealistic expectations.

It all began with the hubris on which the Project For The New American Century was constructed. P-NAC, the neo-con Montessori, had a vision of a world transformed by American economic and military might. It envisioned the creation of "wedge" nations in the Middle East, transformed into American mini-clones - secular, free enterprise, liberal democracies, with democratic constitutions and the rule of law, pro-West, and pro-Israel - little bastions among a sea of lesser nations by whose mere presence the others would, in turn, be transformed until the whole region was a shimmering mass of mirror-images of American democracy.

This philosophy became embedded in the Bush administration's approach to both Afghanistan and Iraq. It arrogantly assumed that the populations of these countries were ready and willing to adopt such sweeping reformation. This became Washington's delusion, one to which it still clings, the very essence of quagmire.

The Bush administration thought it merely had to topple the existing regime, pronounce the arrival of reformation and leave the details, the execution of the dream, to the locals. This was an assumption built on indifference, ignorance and the tragic belief in American exceptionalism.

Bush enabled the Northern Alliance to rout the Taliban. Then, his work done, he left a legion behind and prepared to move on to Iraq. Iraq was, likewise, supposed to be a hit-and-run, drive-by conquest. Defeat the Iraqi army, topple Saddam, put your own folks in power and split - six months at the outside. No need for 300,000 soldiers because there was to be no occupation. That wouldn't be necessary.

Five years after the 9/11 attacks Afghanistan is still unstable with an insurgency that now risks morphing into a civil war; Iraq is in the throes of civil war and at risk of partition; and al-Qaeda is resurgent and spreading with its leadership, notably bin Laden, still alive and well. This is more than a net sum loss.

It is the Bush administration's inability to shake its delusion that condemns these tragedies to continue, unresolved. The Bush/Cheney/neo-con cabal cannot and seemingly will not accept anything less than fealty from their doomed experiments. Stable governance and peace simply won't do, there isn't enough return in it.

The Bush regime is crippled by denial, still struggling for a goal beyond its reach while refusing to grasp accomplishments it can achieve. It's like a boy treading water while clutching a bag of gold that he refuses to let go. He can drop the gold and make it to the safety of the beach but he won't and so he sinks, winding up with neither the gold nor the beach.

Why should we care? Because the Western nations are all being dragged into this delusion, expected to play their part in one disaster or the other. We're constantly being hectored about carrying our weight as though we have some obligation to perpetuate this fantasy.

It would be terrific if this could all be turned around by adjusting expectations but it can't because the whole, miserable venture has been shaped by those very expectations and this state of denial has had too many years to take its toll. Are we to start again, sweep the slate clean? Do we invade Kabul, turf out Karzai and the warlords, arrest or destroy the corrupt security forces? That would seem to be child's play compared to the challenges of Baghdad.

No, we have to become realistic. There are too many forces in play in both of these countries that managing the overall conflicts is beyond our grasp. What is the purpose in fighting one war if everything we hope to achieve can be negated by other struggles beyond our influence? It is as purposeless as it seems.

Perhaps we should inventory our (Washington's) expectations and whittle them down to what can be achieved while having the courage to admit what is beyond our means and circumstances to achieve. Imagine what that would mean. It would mean giving up the idea of imposing secular democracy, of our concept of the rule of law, of the liberation of the peoples, especially their women, and the reversion of Afghanistan to medieval feudalism and Iraq to either tribal, mini-states or unified, strongman rule, out of which, eventually, they will find their own liberation.

What do we really need from these countries? I think we should be content with stability and effective governance. Modest as those goals sound, they're far ahead of where we are today. What's the point of having the people of Afghanistan vote for a government that is too often meaningless to them or even despised by them? How long can we allow the ongoing turmoil in Iraq to destabilize the entire Middle East? We've already wasted far too many years. It's time to set a new course, time to head for the safety of the beach.

Getting Out of the Ditch

David Ignatius wrote a terrific op-ed piece in today's Washington Post about how America has run off the road and is now mired in a ditch in the Middle East:

"During the Doha conference, speakers put into words the attitudes summarized by the poll numbers. Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a fiery Sunni preacher who appears regularly on al-Jazeera, said that America acted as if 'some people were created to lead and others to be led,' and that America had 'lost the trust and confidence' of Muslims. Well, okay, he's notorious for his anti-American and anti-Israeli views. But I heard the same thing from Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League, who said Arabs were 'losing confidence in the U.S. role' as a peace broker.

"And my friend Rami Khouri, who is one of most balanced journalists in the Arab world, warned that a broad popular front is emerging to challenge American hegemony. Iraq 'discredits what America tries to do in the Mideast,' he said. Khouri explained that Arabs admire Hezbollah because it represents 'the end of docility, the end of acquiescence.'

"You don't have to agree with these Muslim critics to recognize that the anger they express represents a serious national security problem for the United States. That's what President Bush seems not to understand in his surge of troops into Iraq, his bromides about democracy and his strategy of confrontation with Iran. It isn't a tiny handful of people in the Arab world who oppose what America is doing. It's nearly everyone.

"To get out of the ditch, America must change its Iraq policy, soon. That doesn't mean pulling out of Iraq quickly, as many Democrats in Washington seem to favor. I found few people here who thought a quick American pullout made sense. But it does mean shifting the American focus -- so that we are talking with Iraq's neighbors and negotiating with the Iraqis on a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops. Tellingly, the one American who got loud, sustained applause here was Chris Kojm, a senior adviser on the Baker-Hamilton Report.

"And to get back on the road, for real, America must broker a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. I winced when I heard Prime Minister Olmert say last weekend in Jerusalem that 'the American and Israeli positions are totally identical' on the terms for recognizing a Palestinian unity government. The Israelis are right in insisting that Hamas must recognize Israel's right to exist. But how to get there? What if Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had responded: America is a mediator in this conflict. Its positions are independent of either side, and it is willing to talk to all parties to achieve peace."

Sadly, the US will probably have to wait for a fresh, intelligent president before any of this wisdom will ever sink in.

Einstein Was Really "Well Endowed"

Researchers think they've figured out why Einstein was such an Einstein. The team from Lausanne University has identified a previously unknown role for a type of brain cell of which Einstein was particularly well endowed, the glial cells.

The glial cells were thought to just hold neurons together but now they seem to be instrumental in brain activity by transmitting messages around the brain.

About 20-years ago UC Berkley scientists ran a comparison between a sample of Einstein's brain and the brains of some deceased (I hope) doctors. The only difference found was that Einstein had a lot more glial cells.

Don't You Just Wish

If you've got a mortgage, a car loan, an oustanding credit card balance, you're going to love this one.

The board of the Bank of Japan has voted 8-1 in favour of raising the nation's interest rate. Okay, wait for it. They're actually doubling the interest rate, that's right doubling it. It's going up to... exactly one half of one percent. That's right, the massive increase will leave the Bank of Japan interest rate at 0.5%.

You have to understand the way the Japanese economy is structured to make sense of this sort of thing and that's way too complicated for something like a blog. But, for the last several years the lending rate has been nearly 0%. It was bumped up in July to 0.25% and now, in a display of unbridled confidence in the restored strength of the Japanese economy, it's 0.5%. Calm down, it's probably not going to go much higher.

Talibani to Blair - Goodbye Tony

Iraq's president sees the looming departure of British forces from his country as a genuinely positive development. Jalal Talibani says the British departure will serve as a catalyst to Iraqi security forces "to stand on their own feet."

The British withdrawal may offer a blueprint to Washington on how and when to get US forces out of Iraq. The political will at home to continue the war is gone and the pressure to end it is growing.

The lead editorial in today's Guardian supports Blair's decision:

"Britain is nevertheless right to withdraw, because its forces have become part of the problem. Winston Churchill's solution to the problem of difficult wars was to declare victory and then leave, and that is more or less what Mr Blair tried to do when he announced the proposed troop reductions in the Commons yesterday."

As for Blair's claims of "mission accomplished", the paper noted, "...this is a case of being able to declare the mission fulfilled only by constantly redefining and reducing it."

"Britain's soldiers will come home, but the Iraqis have to stay. Britain and America began by offering them liberation. The best that can be done for them now is to find a little extra time, but even that will be limited. We cannot do much more, we cannot do better. The prime minister is right when he says that the next chapter in Basra's and Iraq's history will be written by Iraqis. That passes the responsibility to them, but it should not take away from Britain's responsibility for the chapter that is closing."

Meltdown - Again - In the Horn of Africa

The glimmer of hope for a stable, peaceful Somalia is dimming rapidly. The nation appears about to relapse into the state of anarchy that has plagued it for 16-years.

There was hope for a reborn Somalia in December when the forces of the transitional government, backed by soldiers from Ethiopia, drove Islamist forces out of Mogadishu. Defeated but far from destroyed the rebels transformed themselves into an insurgency that the government is simply far too weak to contain.

Clan warfare appears to be the norm today in Somalia. Much of the unrest is blamed on the authoritarian leader, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, a former warlord himself. The transitional president has failed to reach out to the clan heads, leaving himself isolated and eroding his popular support.

Much of the northeast quadrant of Africa has descended into chaos from Somalia to Sudan, Chad and the Central African Republic. Peacekeeping forces from the African Union have been unable to control insurgents, terrorists and bandits that have beset the region.

The deaths and displacement of civilians in these countries has been truly catastrophic but the West has shown no interest in intervening, probably because we're all tied up with George Bush's garden party in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Global War Without End on Terror. Hey, this is terror too and on a much grander scale than anything that has or may befall the Middle East! Oh, I forgot - these are Africans. What was I thinking?

A New Atrocity on the Streets of Baghdad

Iraqi militants have begun to use chlorine gas as a weapon against civilians in the Baghdad area. Today a bomb was planted beneath a chlorine tanker truck. The explosion killed nine and sent over 150 people hit by the chlorine cloud to hospital. This is the third time chlorine has been used in conjunction with bombings.

In another incident, a pickup truck carrying cannisters of the gas exploded, killing 2 and sending 32 to hospital. Chlorine gas can be lethal if inhaled. Fortunately the terrorists don't seem to have figured out how to disperse it effectively.

The Shiite neighbourhood of Sadr City received another car bombing. Some locals are blaming the American soldiers for driving the Mahdi Army underground thus stripping them of the militia that had been defending them.

How Did We Come to Own this Damn War?

Canada's role in Afghanistan is vague to the point of being blurry - and deliberately so.

Are we there to see this war through or are we there for just a couple of years? Who knows? That's a really fundamental question but the answer is that no one knows. How the hell do you get into a war without a clear understanding on that point?

Are we trying to fight a war on the installment plan? Is this all going to be decided during another sham debate in 2009? Have we got some other nation lined up to take over Kandahar province if we leave in 2009 or are we effectively stuck there without either adequate resources or clear committment? Do we now "own" this damn war?

With Hillier and Harper in command we're drifting along in a rudderless ship. On behalf of his soldiers who are over there risking their lives, Hillier ought to be demanding answers to all of these questions and more. Asking politicians to make fundamental decisions that he needs taken falls well short of the line of crossing over into the political sphere. Generals are supposed to ask their civilian masters for orders and direction and answers when they need them.

Because no decision has been taken to actually leave in 2009 our chances of being over there indefinitely grow as each month passes. Our military is already stretched thin and we're rotating our soldiers through combat assignments in Afghanistan and elsewhere far too often. If we're in Afghanistan indefinitely, we're going to need to expand our army - now. As I understand it, that's not going very well at the moment.

Is Afghanistan going to become our all-consuming obsession? Are we going to turn our back to the world in places where our soldiers could actually do more good? If not, how many more soldiers are we going to need, how are we going to recruit them and how are we going to fund all that?

There's already discussion of a major draw on Canada's military for the 2010 Olympic games in BC. How do we handle that committment and keep the Afghan mission going?

Most importantly, what is our exit strategy for Afghanistan? We've had the likes of Lewis MacKenzie aping George Bush to proclaim that "as they stand up, we'll stand down" but how long are we willing to wait for the Afghans to stand up so we can leave?

We seem to be running this war on cruise control and maybe it's time that changed.

I'll Bet He Won't See Another

Zimbabwe's Mugabe regime has banned all protests while the boss celebrates his 83rd birthday. Mugabe and wife, Grace, shown above, could barely conceal their joy at the event.

Zimbabwe set another first last week. Its inflation rate that had been languishing in the 1300 percent mark the week before shot up to a respectable 1600 per cent. Gradually Mugabe's state apparatus is falling apart. His soldiers and police officers continue to go AWOL.

The government reportedly has been skimming civil servants' wages and strongarming businesses for contributions to cover the cost of Mugabe's birthday celebrations. Meanwhile famine and disease is sweeping the country.

The price of bread shot up 136% yesterday alone. Four loaves equal an average farm worker's monthly wage.

Mugabe defiantly refuses to step down. One diplomat is reported to have said, "Mugabe, he's like King Canute, ordering the sea to go back."

I'll bet Mugabe will never see his 84th birthday. Tyrants of his kind usually get assassinated. Unfortunately, toppling Mugabe won't do much to help the people of Zimbabwe.

Behind the Brit Withdrawal

George Bush hails Tony Blair's decision to begin withdrawing British troops from Iraq as a sign of real success but then again he would, wouldn't he?

An analysis in today's Telegraph suggests the Brits are looking to leave because they're done as much as they can and that falls far short of any future guarantees for the people in Basra:

"It is now over to the Iraqi security forces to prove that the last four years of training and experience has been sufficient for them to hold the line against the inevitable onslaught as various factions vie for power.

"The local police and border guards can largely be discounted as unreliable, penetrated by insurgents and substantially influenced by Iran.

"Indeed the manipulation of Tehran can be found permeating the highest echelons of Basra society.

"The police will essentially follow whoever proves to be the strongest leader as we enter the conflict’s next stage.

"All that stands in the way of the local militias’ rule of terror is the 10th Division of the Iraqi army.

"If the 10th Division can hold the line against the warring tribal factions, who are mainly fighting for control of smuggling and the bigger prize of the south’s huge oil reserves, then the billions of pounds and 132 British lives would not have been in vain over the last four years.

"But if the writ of Baghdad central government fails in Basra, a quick and bloody round of civil war will follow.

"Certainly the 200,000 Sunnis living in the area along with the tiny Christian population will face ethnic cleansing at the hands of the Shia majority.

"Then the various Shia factions will turn on themselves before the strongest side emerges. This will probably be someone from the Mahdi army, loyal to the troublesome cleric Moqtada al Sadr.
"The 2,500 British troops in the city can also expect much greater violence as the insurgents target them in a battle to prove who is strongest - measured in terms of foreign soldiers killed. "

The report warns that we won't hear much of future carnage in Basra. The place is simply too dangerous for reporters to visit.

The reality is inescapable. Without restoring peace to Basra and security to southern Iraq, Tony Blair is "cutting and running" at least by the definition of that harped by Bush and Cheney over the past three years. The only saving grace is that Tony hasn't mentioned that he'll be getting the rest of the British contingent out by 2008 at the latest.

Meanwhile Dick Cheney is proclaiming to anyone who'll still listen to him that he wants American forces to leave Iraq "with honour." Wait a second, "peace with honour," where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, that was the line from Kissinger and Nixon before that last helicopter lifted off from Saigon.

Judiciary Fires a Shot Across Harper's Bows

The Canadian Judicial Council is standing up to Harpo and his effort to undermine the independence of the judiciary in our country.

The council, following former Chief Justice Antonio Lamer and others, has told the megalomaniacal Harpie that it sees real problems in our Furious Leader's decision to stack juicial advisory committees with government appointees. As a clear sign of just how pathetically ignorant Harper is about the judiciary, he's planning on putting cops and laypeople - but only those of his own ilk of course - on these committees to stack the deck.

Pointing out the obvious, that loading the committees with Harpo clones kind of undermines the intended independence of the committees, the Judicial Council drew a clear line in the sand, "The Canadian Judicial Council accepts, despite these changes to the Advisory Committees, that judges can continue to participate in the deliberations of the Advisory Committees, but only if the principle of judicial independence is respected and judicial candidates are recommended strictly on the basis of merits."

If the judges walk out of the advisory committees it will completely gut their authority and leave Harpo exposed as a two-bit pol who would be much better suited to a place like Mississippi than Ottawa.

Time For Tax Cuts?

A measure of Harpo's sincerity on global warming can be found in his finance minister's disclosure of further tax cuts in the budget the government will table next month.

If the government does plan to tackle GHG emissions this is the time for it to be filling the government's coffers, not emptying them. The job it has pledged to undertake isn't going to be cheap, far from it.

Like almost any major initiative, tackling global warming is going to take regulations and incentives. It cannot succeed unless the private sector and the general public can be brought to support it. Without achieving an adequate level of support from industry and the public, what remains except punitive legislation?

Cutting CO2 emissions requires sacrifice from all sectors of society. The impact of that sacrifice is going to vary considerably. There are some industries, for example, that may require temporary help in the forms of loans or grants to convert systems and adopt new technologies to cut their GHG emissions. It's not realistic to expect companies that are already marginal to meet GHG targets without some assistance.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's talk about tax cuts and other aspects of his budget suggests the global warming issue isn't even on his radar. If Harpo was sincere about this it would be obvious in Flaherty's priorities.

You Asked, So Here It Is

I've been challenged by the anti-Kyoto types who visit this website to come up with the names of IPCC scientists. It seems that, until someone gives them actual identities, they'll construe the IPCC as some dark conspiracy to dupe the public about global warming.

Let's put this nonsense to rest. If you want identities, you can start here:

Contributing authors for WG1:
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/558.htm

Reviewers for WG1:
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/559.htm

I realize you're not going to bother to follow this up. If you were genuinely after names and credentials you would have made the simple effort to find this information yourself. You didn't which suggests you're more interested in your own delusions than getting to the facts.

By the way, for those who swooned at the Fraser Institute's ludicrous response to the IPCC report, check out the rebuttal posted at www.realclimate.org . You'll see how cheaply FI holds its own reputation.

The Word from Inside Iraq, Surge a Bust

The Baghdad "Surge" has won a big, thumbs down in today's editorial in the Iraqi online news site, Azzaman:

"Iraqis hoped that the cells of terror and violence will be dealt a heavy blow in the early days of the operation, but the course of events shows that most probably the opposite is happening.

"This operation like the ones preceding it is lame and has no proper legs to stand on.

"It emanates from the wrong proposition that Iraq’s complicated crisis can easily be solved through military means - a ‘surge’, in U.S. words, in the number of troops on the streets of Baghdad.

"Militias, insurgents, terrorists, or criminal gangs, accused of spreading terror in Iraq, know exactly how to utilize the operation for their benefit.

The editorial suggests that Iraqi PM Maliki is exploiting the surge:

"The Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government is itself tainted with sectarian strife and squabbling.

"Even the operation is sectarian in approach as it has so far targeted certain areas of the capital and left others untouched.

"Maliki appears, according to certain reports, to have notified the militias and leaders of certain factions, like the Mahdi Army of Moqtada Sadr of the objectives and aims of the operation.

"As a result, many believe that Sadr’s militias, accused of some of the most horrific sectarian killings, will escape the campaign unscathed."

If You Were Stephen Harper

How would you do it? How would you kill the public demand for action on global warming?

I don't believe for a minute that Harpo sees Kyoto as anything but a diabolical socialist scheme. Let's face it, our Furious Leader only turned green when he realized his anti-Kyoto crusade could forever wipe out any chance for him to get a majority government.

So, bowing to the inevitable, the Reform conservative became an overnight environmentalist, right? Yeah, right.

Say what you like about the guy, Harper is a shamelessly cynical man propelled by sharp political skills. Like his American Idol, he knows that saying one thing and doing another can pay off rather well.

So you've now positioned yourself as a global warming champion to bring yourself into line with public opinion. At this point you've got two choices - either deliver or persuade the public they really don't want you to deliver after all.

How do you go about killing the public outcry for action? There'll always be some clamour but it's enough if you can get the majority to come alongside.

You could always resort to the tried and true tactic of the right - fear. Tell the public wild tales about what Kyoto would do to them. Paint them a picture of living in mud huts with no lights or heat. Then come up with something you call an alternative plan, something riddled with ambiguity and escape clauses, something that will get you through the next election without having to rein in your buddies in Big Oil. A one-two punch - fear and confusion. That should do it.

I think Harpo's overnight, poll-driven conversion is a scam and, if that's right, what he comes up with will simply be a follow-on scam.

What do you think? How do you think he's going to handle the global warming issue?

Just So You Know

One of the problems besetting Afghanistan's future is the power of the country's warlords. Many of them are known to have criminal and drug associations, some are outright thugs. But the president, Hamid Karzai, is able to keep his office only with their support.

The map above shows how much of Afghanistan is under warlord rule. This map is about three years out of date. The red part, representing the Taliban, would be rather larger today.

Blanket Amnesty for Afghan War Criminals

The upper house of parliament in Kabul has passed a bill that would grant amnesty for war crimes committed in Afghanistan over the past 25-years. All that's needed now is the signature of Hamid Karzai and it will become law.

The resolution, which has been condemned by the United Nations and international human rights groups, was passed by the lower house Jan. 31 and covers the mujahedeen leaders who led the anti-Soviet resistance in the 1980s and plunged Afghanistan into civil war in the early 1990s. Many of them sit in parliament.
Senators on Tuesday approved the same resolution by a 50-16 majority, Nekpai said.

"Unfortunately, the majority of the lower and upper houses of parliament are warlords and people with blood on their hands," said Nafas Gul, a female senator for Farah province who voted against the resolution. "It's a betrayal of the rights of Afghans."

While You Were Tied Up in Afghanistan

Storm clouds are appearing on the horizon for Darfur. The African Union, echoing a United Nations report, warns that Janjaweed militias are massing north of the West Darfur capital.

The Janjaweed militias are drawn from local, nomadic Arab tribes and are blamed for most of the killing in Darfur. Western sources say the Sudanese government has been using the Janjaweed as auxiliaries to fight Darfur rebels and suspected civilian sympathizers.

An African Union sources was quoted as saying, "They are massing (north of el-Geneina) ... They have vehicles with machineguns on top and they're Janjaweed. We can't say what their intentions are."

The source declined to give numbers, but described the forces gathered as a "huge amount of personnel", with pick-up trucks, camels and horses.

The Sudanese military says the Janjaweed are massing merely to leave the area, not to fight.

Is Airbus Spinning Out of Control?

Airbus, the European jetliner manufacturer, has run into some stiff turbulence that has led some to speculate the company may be about to break up.

The company which is Boeing's main competitor has had a succession of troubles since problems began surfacing with its A380 super-jumbo project. The double-decker A380 has encountered a number of technical setbacks that have already delayed deliveries by up to a year.

Airbus has recently been experiencing tensions among its principal shareholders over restructuring plans. Now the German group is rumoured to be discussing whether the company should be broken up.

The company is currently headed by a Frenchman, Louis Gallois, who has formulated a plan by cost-cutting and improved efficiencies involving more outsourcing and the sale of some Airbus factories. Integral to the plan was the development of a new aircraft, the A350.

German shareholders voted down Gallois' plan, apparently angry that German plants would receive only 10% of the A350 work compared to 35% for the French.

It seems that all Airbus partners want some downsizing. They all want to see the company rationalized. They just don't want their own national interests to bear the pain. With the Germans fearing a Gallic plot, however, salvaging Airbus may be very, very difficult.

Goodbye to Thomas Edison?

Thomas Edison is best remembered for inventing the incandescent light bulb. 125-years later his invention may be on the way out. What's wrong with Edison's light bulb is that it's terribly energy inefficient.

Australia, which is usually the source of global warming criticism, has announced that it may ban incandescent light bulbs and require they be replaced with compact, flourescents instead.

Legislation to restrict the sale of the old bulbs could reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by hundreds of thousands of tons and cut household lighting costs up to 66%, Environment Minister Malcom Turnbull said. Australia produced almost 565 million tons of greenhouse gases in 2004, officials say.

Putin Turns the Heat Up

Coming from Vladimir Putin's Russia it's a threat that has to be taken seriously.

Poland and the Czech Republic have infuriated the Russian president by agreeing to allow US anti-missile rockets to be based in their countries. Yesterday they got a terse warning that their decision could make them targets for a Russian missile strike.

Poland and the Czech Republic, both once part of the Warsaw Pact but now members of NATO, don't seem to have been intimidated by the threat.

Surgin' & Stumblin' in Baghdad

A key factor in the loss of confidence in the war in Iraq has been the succession of claims of victories that turn out to be flat out wrong. From the deck of an aircraft carrier to the streets of Baghdad, these gaffes have undermined the credibility of the Bush administration in the eyes of the American people.

When George Bush bought the neo-con pitch one more time and ordered the troop surge in Baghdad, skeptics questioned whether it would merely present the insurgents and terrorists with more American targets to attack.

After getting off to a slow and shakey start the surge proceeded and was quickly heralded as a great success by the Maliki government as the death rate of Baghdad civilians plunged to a mere 10 a day. Wow, it seemed to be working.

What was actually happening was that the militias and the insurgents and the terrorists were pausing to take the measure of this effort. They needed a few days to locate the weaknesses and work out how to exploit the vulnerabilities.

One of these vulnerabilities was the tactic of establishing neighbourhood outposts where squads of American soldiers would be based to provide security for the locals. Prior to this the US forces mainly ran patrols and then retired to the safety of their garrisons.

The outposts are compounds consisting of a few buildings that are reinforced with sand bags and concrete barriers to form small forts at key points within Baghdad neighbourhoods. Their main vulnerability comes in being isolated from other American forces. That leaves them tempting targets for hit and run attacks.

This came home to roost yesterday. An outpost north of Baghdad in the town of Tarmyia was attacked, essentially swarmed by insurgents. One or more suicide bombers crashed their cars into the compound. After the explosions other insurgents brought the outpost under small arms fire. The result was two US soldiers dead and 17-wounded.

Will the surge succeed? Probably not. This wasn't the idea of military commanders in Iraq. It was the brainchild of Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute that was embraced by president Bush. It is George Bush substituting his judgment for that of his generals. That doesn't sound like a formula for success.

The real question is what does America do if the surge fails to halt the sectarian violence in Baghdad? There is no Plan B. This may be a "make or break" moment in Bush's war of whim against Iraq.

Meanwhile the US forces haven't been able to come to grips with the Shiite militas, including Sadr's Mahdi Army. They've gone to ground, left town or found some safe place to lay low while Iraqi security forces and the US army battles the Sunnis and al-Qaeda. The failure to neutralize the Shiite militias may come back to haunt Bush, especially if he launches air strikes against Shiite Iran.

Back to the Dictionary

Whenever you read something Conrad Black penned, it's a safe bet you'll be heading to the dictionary in the process.

Today's Globe has an account of an $11-million defamation suit being brought by Connie against Tom Bower, author of Conrad & Lady Black, Dancing on the Edge.

Lord Conrad of Crossharbour claims the book defames him and also does a real job on his wife, Barbara Amiel who, according to the Statement of Claim, is depicted as, "grasping, hectoring, slatternly, extravagant, shrill and a harridan."

Okay, so what's a harridan? Well one dictionary defines it as a "fierce, ill-tempered woman who is always scolding and disapproving." Synonyms: "shrew" and "hag".

In a newspaper retort last fall, Black wrote that Bowers "key-hole, smut-mongering side-piece portrayal of my wife as a man-eating sex maniac prior to her marriage to me is disgusting."

What Would a Harper Majority Look Like?

Today's Globe and Mail reports that Stephen Harper is gaining popularity among Canadians, leaving him far ahead of the other leaders, notably Stephane Dion.

Stevie has shown, time and again, that he's willing to abandon most of his principles, to "do what it takes" to win a majority government.

We've seen what Harpo looks like as an opposition leader. We've seen what he's been willing to become as a prime minister in a minority government. What we haven't seen is what sort of Stephen Harper we would be treated to if he won a majority.

Reading Harper's words from the past it's impossible not to see an extremist, right-wing philosophy. He's kept that in the closet for the last couple of years and has done everything he can to make himself look positively liberal.

Has Stephen Harper changed, has he really discarded his extremism? What do you think?

Harpo Embraces AIDS Research

Leopards don't change their spots but snakes sure do shed their skins and so does our Furious Leader, Harpo. His old scales were damaged when he refused to attend the World Aids Conference in Toronto. The two-legged viper looked positively homophobic. There's one you can't afford to have hanging around your neck with an election looming.

What to do? How 'bout throwing some of that cash the Libs conveniently left you for a photo-op about AIDS?

The Harpster got with the programme yesterday announcing federal funding to the tune of $111-million to help build a research facility and assist researchers looking for a vaccine for AIDS. The Gates Foundation is topping that up with a further $28-million.

Our leader described the quest for an AIDS vaccine as one of the "greatest scientific challenges of our time." I guess that's why he left the funding initiative until he had an election in the wings.

Let's see - he's now getting the Quebec "nation" thing and he's now getting the global warming thing and he's now getting the AIDS thing, so what's next? Stay tuned to see Harpo shed his next skin.

Green, Fat and Happy

Canada's anti-Kyoto crowd, basically the Reform conservative party and its faithful, wail furiously that genuinely fighting global warming would be the country's financial ruin. I think that's something they picked up from the Fraser Institute or was it Fox News?

Not so, says Sir Nicholas Stern, the British economist who costed out the relative costs of tackling the problem versus neglecting it.

Stern chose the Toronto Stock Exchange to speak with Canadian reporters yesterday, saying, "...most reasonable assessments ... would come to the conclusion that the costs of action are far less than the costs of inaction. ...The costs of inaction have to do with the risks which we put ourselves in from doing very little about climate change."

His year-long study concluded that cutting GHG emissions by 30% by 2050 would cost one per cent of global, GDP. The cost of failing he estimated at up to 20% of GDP. In other words, Stern is convinced that effectively fighting global warming is a no brainer.

Speaking of "no brainers", Stern's comments undercut the dire warnings of our Furious Leader, Harpo, and his Enviromin, John Baird, that even trying to meet our Kyoto committments would devastate the Canadian economy. Fearmongering is no longer acceptable.

Don't Want to Know, Mate

It's a bit much when one head of state can't get a word with the head of state of a neighbouring nation. Yet that's just what happened to the prime minister of the island nation of Tuvalu when he asked for a few minutes of Australian prime minister John Howard's time to chat about a little climate change issue.

The "issue" is that Tuvalu is being submerged beneath rising sea levels. A spokesman for the government of Tuvalu said it's the second time in six years that the country has asked to speak to the Australian leader and got the cold shoulder.

A spokesman for another Pacific island state that faces submergence in coming decades, Kirabati, said that his country would also like to talk to Howard about their crisis but hasn't bothered because he's "not sympathetic to the issue."

Australia is rich in coal which it relies upon as an export and to power its electricity generation system. Until very recently, Howard, like our own Harpo has been a global warming heel-dragger. The last thing the little troll from down under wants to deal with are those who fall victim to global warming.

The Face of Terrorism

Meet Miles Cooper (above), the Cambridgeshire schoolkeeper arrested on suspicion of being behind a series of letterbombs that has left nine injured.

"A neighbour, Keith Bailey, 65, said Mr Cooper was 'the last person in the world I would have thought would be arrested over something like this.'

"He added: 'Mostly all we do is say hello. That's about all you ever get from Miles, he is a very quiet sort of boy.'

"Sources described the arrest as 'very significant' and confirmed that it was in connection with the whole series of bombs."

The View from Germany - A Renewed and Destabilizing Arms Race

People who claim that George Bush's legacy is going to be Iraq are pretty short-sighted. Twenty years from now we may see his true legacy as the fracture, if not complete breakdown in postwar multilateralism.

The next US president's challenge is going to be undoing as much of the damage caused by his predecessor as possible. He or she is going to have to struggle with Iraq, global warming, terrorism, nuclear proliferation and a foreign policy that has profoundly destabilized the world. Taken altogether, it's a Herculean task made even more difficult by America's trade, deficit, debt and tax imbalances. The next president will inherit an America left with little goodwill abroad; few unquestioning allies and a host of hostile nations, many of them of its own creation.

Among the next president's most urgent challenges will be defusing the arms races that Bush unilateralism has triggered. The US, China, Russia and India are all reaching for their guns. Smaller countries are following suit. This has to be stopped and then reversed and the only path to that is a return to multilateralism.

Arms races are fear-driven. The actions of one nation or group of nations make another, rightly or wrongly, feel insecure, inferior and threatened. This is exactly what Bush has done, time and again. He departed from international law to wage pre-emptive war, illegal war, a war of aggression based on a toxic brew of delusion and outright deceit. He put his name to the astonishingly bellicose "Bush Doctrine" which enshrines America's right to further pre-emptive war against any nation or group of nations who offend American supremacy by rising to a level considered by America to rival its own military or economic might.

George Bush has placed war over peace as America's priority and the world has taken notice. China has launched a major campaign of rearmament, seeking to develop its own generation of sophisticated weaponry to bolster its regional security. India too is matching its own economic ascendancy with military expansion. Now it is Russia's turn.

The US sought to consolidate the end of the Cold War by needlessly expanding its flagship military alliance, NATO, to Russia's very borders. Now George Bush has pursued his goal of an anti-missile defence system positioned as close to Russia's borders as Poland. He has announced his intention to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons. He has increased his country's already astronomical military budget by over 60%. He has driven Russia into a corner.

These aren't the acts of a man seeking peace but of a bully demanding submission.

The German newspaper, Der Spiegel, warns that Russia is responding quite predictably:

"US tanks are already capable of destroying many Russian tanks from ranges at which their Russian counterparts are not even capable of striking their adversaries, while the US's Stealth bomber, currently matchless in the world, is virtually invisible to radar systems.

"Similarly, US troops are capable of observing and attacking their enemies while escaping detection themselves using remote-controlled cameras mounted on drones. And the crews of American attack submarines can locate virtually any other ship in the world's oceans using advanced sensors, without exposing themselves to danger.

"But Washington has achieved its greatest gains precisely in an area once considered successfully defused as a result of arms control efforts. American long-range missiles are now so precise that experts believe that a US first strike could destroy Moscow's nuclear capability. In a recent article in Foreign Affairs, US experts Keir Lieber and Daryl Press described the end of the strategy of 'mutually assured destruction,' which has preserved the balance of power and prevented nuclear war since the 1960s.

"In contrast, Russia's fleet of missile submarines has been reduced to a mere nine vessels. The country now only has bombers stationed at two airbases, and the absence of an early warning system leaves the Russian aircraft almost completely vulnerable to a surprise attack. The same applies to the mobile launchers for Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missiles, which now hardly ever leave their hangars -- hangars which the Americans have in their sights.

"Russian Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov complains that the US defense budget is '25 times as large as Russia's.' To at least partially close this gap, he presented an ambitious modernization program to the lower house of the Russian parliament last week. Under the plan, Russia would build 50 new strategic bombers, eight nuclear submarines, dozens of new missile silos, more than 50 mobile Topol-M missiles and four military satellites by 2015.

"The Americans plan to expand their global missile defense system by adding up to 10 ground-based interceptors in Poland and an early warning system in the Czech Republic. Bush has assured Putin that the purpose of the missile shield is to defend against "irresponsible states" and the "growing threat from the Middle East" -- and that it is not directed against the Russians.
But the Russians, convinced that the missiles based in Poland could shoot down their missiles in the event of a conflict, are vigorously opposed to the US's "encircling" strategy. "

"Washington's actions show signs that the US is 'partially losing touch with reality,' writes Germany's Süddeutsche Zeitung: No one in the West had enough imagination to realize Putin might actually interpret the missile shield on his borders as a provocation.

"In Washington, on the other hand, Putin's Munich speech is more likely to bolster the arguments of those who have long warned against a new threat coming from Russia. Sources say that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has never trusted Putin, a former KGB agent, and influential Senator John McCain has been calling for a tougher stance on Russia for years. Indeed, when the Russian president launched into his verbal attacks at the Munich conference, McCain, who was seated only a few meters away from Putin, became visibly enraged.

"From the standpoint of the White House, the self-confident Russian's list of sins is gradually becoming intolerably long, not because of fears of a direct Russian military threat but because Moscow is seeking allies among the US's enemies. Russia's delivery of advanced surface-to-air missile defense systems to Iran is seen as an especially serious offence.

"And hardliners in Washington see themselves vindicated by Putin's offer this week to help the Saudi royal family develop a nuclear program -- proof, they say, that a new conflict between the former arch-rivals is unavoidable."

We can only hope that the next US president has the wisdom to prevent this nascent Cold War from developing into a self-fulfilling prophecy. America's allies need to stop being complacent handmaidens. The time has come for an intervention, putting Washington back in touch with reality. We all need America to return to the community of nations.

Diesel Unveils Its "Global Warming Ready" Collection

They pretty much speak for themselves:

BUSHSH_T

You gotta give it to the guy, he's got the nerve of a canal pony.

George Bush likes to summon up the ghost of Harry Truman, making plainly tortured comparisons between himself and the man from Missouri.

Now, the Washington Post reports, he's comparing his Global War Without End on Terror to America's Revolutionary War:

"Standing before the Mount Vernon mansion and sharing the stage with an actor dressed as Gen. George Washington, Bush said Washington's Revolutionary War leadership inspired generations of Americans "to stand for freedom in their own time."

"'Today, we're fighting a new war to defend our liberty and our people and our way of life. And as we work to advance the cause of freedom around the world, we remember that the father of our country believed that the freedoms we secured in our revolution were not meant for Americans alone,' Bush said.

"He once wrote, 'My best wishes are irresistibly excited whensoever in any country I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom,"' Bush said."

War Against Iran? Count On It.

That's the gloomy assessment of Gary Younge writing in today's Guardian. He writes that all the predictable signs are showing up again.

"'A man with a conviction is a hard man to change,' wrote Festinger in his book on the cult, When Prophecy Fails. 'Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts and figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.'

"George Bush is a man of conviction and clearly a hard man to change. When reality confronts his plans he does not alter them but instead alters his understanding of reality. ...he stands with a tight band of followers, both deluded and determined, understanding each setback not as a sign to change course but as further proof that they must redouble their efforts to the original goal.

"And so we watch the administration's plans for a military attack against Iran unfold even as its official narrative for the run-up to the war in Iraq unravels and the wisdom of that war stands condemned by death and destruction. As though on split screens, we pass seamlessly from reports of how they lied to get us into the last war, to scenes of carnage as a result of the war, to shots of them lying us into the next one.

"'It is absolutely parallel,' Philip Giraldi, a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist, told Vanity Fair magazine. 'They're using the same dance steps - demonise the bad guys, the pretext of diplomacy, keep out of negotiations, use proxies. It is Iraq redux.'

"The administration, of course, denies this. Despite the fact it has ordered oil reserves to be stockpiled and has just sent a second aircraft carrier as well as more patriot missiles and minesweepers to the Gulf, they swear these allegations are groundless. Robert Gates, the new defence secretary, recently insisted: "I don't know how many times the president, secretary [of state Condoleezza] Rice and I have had to repeat that we have no intention of attacking Iran."

"The sad fact is Gates can say it as many times as he likes because no one believes him. In April 2002, Bush told Trevor McDonald: 'I have no plans to attack [Iraq] on my desk.' An $8 cab ride to the Pentagon and Bush would have found the plans on Donald Rumsfeld's desk. He knew this because he put them there four months earlier. On November 21 2001, he asked Rumsfeld: 'What kind of war plan do you have for Iraq?'

"'Targets have been selected,' says Vincent Cannistraro, a US intelligence analyst. 'For a bombing campaign against nuclear sites, it is quite advanced. The military assets to carry this out are being put in place. We are planning for war.'

"...the region's biggest obstacle to peace and stability is not Iran but the US. The invasion of Iraq has both bolstered Iran's standing by installing a friendly Shia regime in Baghdad, and given Iran every reason to arm itself for fear of imminent attack from US bases now embedded on its border. Each time the White House issues threats against Iran, it strengthens the crude, anti-semitic prime minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who can rally the nation around a foreign enemy - a strategy with which Bush is all too familiar.

"...it seems once Bush has got hold of a bad idea he just can't let it go. Just because it is irresponsible, irrational, unpopular and unconscionable doesn't mean he won't do it.

"'History does not repeat itself,' Mark Twain once wrote. 'But it does rhyme.'"

Pre-deployment of military forces is evidence of a decision already taken to go to war. It's very expensive. It requires a major logistical supply line. Once deployed, forces in the field either have to be sent into combat or brought back to get put back into shape to be deployed again. In other words, you lose your ability to commit that force again for several months. With the American military already severely stretched, Bush really doesn't have the option of squandering its remaining resources, even if they are naval air and air force assets, on mere sabre-rattling.

Republican Meltdown? Maybe

They've been flying far too close to the flame for far too long. Now, even Republican pollsters say their party may be headed for disaster, the worst since Vietnam and Nixon. From The Guardian:

"'I believe Republicans are in a more dangerous position than at any time since 1974,' said Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster and commentator. 'Back then you had Watergate. You had economic recession, a military collapse in Vietnam and had civil unrest. All those same ingredients are present today.'

"Mr Luntz said his own polling and focus group research in the first two states in the primary process - Iowa and New Hampshire - had persuaded him that most Americans are hungry for a change. That desire, he believes, is unlikely to be met by the Republican candidates for 2008. 'The Republican party seems to have lost the will to govern,' he said.

"...despite the war, the country remains evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. Pollsters and strategists expect the 2008 elections to be as close as the last three, and the Republicans have the ability to bounce back.

"'In the last few elections, in the electoral vote column, they have almost been dead even,' said Rhodes Cook, who runs a respected political newsletter in Washington. 'Barring something unusual we will probably have another close election in 2008. So neither party is really starting in a bad position.'

The Republicans' challenge will be to hold their support in the face of what's coming in the next 18-months. The Iraq war continues to draw support away from them, certainly among the essential undecideds. Then there is the campaign underway in the Democratic-controlled Congress to get to the bottom of what the secretive Bush administration was really up to over the past six years. Tough times lie ahead for the right.

The Pew Research Centre's, "...own polls suggest that Mr McCain's forceful advocacy of a troops increase is not an issue for Republicans. Mr Doherty said: 'Among the Republicans there has been no slippage at all in support of the war over the last year, and even over the last six months. They still see the possibility of a successful outcome. They still want to keep the troops there.'

A Good First Step

The group's name is admittedly geeky, the Global Legislators Organization for a Balanced Environment, or GLOBE, but its heart seems to be in the right place.

The Guardian reports that, at a meeting last week in Washington, "Delegates agreed that developing countries would have to face targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions as well as rich countries.

"The meeting in Washington of the G8+5 Climate Change Dialogue also agreed that a limit should be decided for maximum acceptable carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, the NBC reported. A global market should be formed to cap and trade carbon dioxide emissions, they also said."

There's some hope that the group's principles of a global CO2 cap and bringing developing countries into the same, environmental regime may actually form the basis upon which nations can be encouraged to act both individually and collectively.

Senator Joe Lieberman told the meeting that the US Congress is about to act after many years of "denial and inaction. ...I want to make a prediction, which is that the Congress of the United States will enact a nationwide law mandating substantial reductions in greenhouse gases before the end of this Congress or early in the next," he said. This session of Congress ends late in 2008.

"Senator John McCain said the push to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that spur global climate change was a national security issue, and that voluntary efforts to limit these emissions from vehicles, power plants and other human sources 'will not change the status quo'."

We'll Be Long Gone By Then, Whew!

The good news: current estimates say the worst is probably centuries away. The bad news: current studies suggest there's an even chance that we've already passed the point of being able to stop it.

What they're focusing on is a major melt of both polar ice caps that would produce a sea level rise of four to six metres. Five years ago IPCC scientists assessed the risk as "very low." Now they're calling it an even bet - eventually.

The melting process could take centuries but it's already underway and there are already a number of areas in immediate danger of submergence. The Maldives, for example, isn't expected to exist by the end of the century. Bangladesh is extremely vulnerable to any rise in sea levels as are many low-lying cities - little hamlets like London, New York and Tokyo.

This development comes atop news that many British companies have been concealing their true greenhouse gas emissions to the tune of roughly 200-million tonnes of CO2 annually. An organization called Christian Aid reports that only 16 of Britain's top 100-companies are complying with the government's reporting guidelines.

Lamer Roasts Harpo

One of Canada's great legal minds doesn't buy Harpo's plan to stack Canadian courts with judges of his ideological bent or the process he wants to use to go about it.

Former SCC Chief Justice Antonio Lamer says if Harper wants tougher criminal sentencing, he should change the criminal law, not stack the bench.

He's particularly critical of Harpo's brainwave about adding cops and lay people to the panels that vet judicial candidates. Pointing out the obvious, he told the National Post:

"'Mrs. Smith who is on the board doesn't know what the court is about. What she knows she probably got off American TV and thinks that judges use hammers.'

"Lamer said judges should be screening judicial candidates seeking promotions and lawyers should be vetting other lawyers who want to sit on the bench because they are the ones who know what the job is about. 'If I were on a selection committee to pick the head of neurosurgery, I wouldn't know anything,' he said, by way of comparison.

The reality is that Harper doesn't understand that judicial independence and judicial integrity are interdependent - or maybe he just doesn't care how he molests one of the cornerstones of Canadian democracy.

Jonestown In A Pack of 20

Good for the BC government. Provincial government lawyers won't be mincing any words when they attack Big Tobacco's right to advertise in the Supreme Court of Canada today.

They intend to depict tobacco ads as akin to the preacher Jim Jones who persuaded his 900-followers to drink poisoned Kool Aid in 1978. From the Globe:

"The federal government, the Canadian Cancer Society and six provinces will lead the charge against a concerted attack by Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd., Rothmans Benson and Hedges Inc., and JTI-Macdonald Corp.

"A federal brief argues that tobacco kills one in every two smokers -- about 45,000 people each year -- and that the tobacco industry has knowingly concealed this devastating reality, all the while falsely claiming that filtered cigarettes and special "light" brands provide a measure of safety."

BC argues that, "The use of trigger words to induce the Jonestown massacre mirrors the efforts of tobacco companies to disguise their message -- "smoke, smoke, smoke and smoke" -- as an absurd, intellectual exercise in brand discrimination.

"It is as if two Jonestown preachers were competing to convince their flock to drink deadly cyanide of one flavour or another, each extolling the virtues of superior colour and taste.

"A person saying: 'Drink the purple cyanide' is still saying: 'Drink the cyanide.' A person saying: 'Smoke du Maurier' is still saying: 'Smoke.'"

Sunni Oil May Change Iraq Dynamics

Two factors that have driven the sectarian violence in Iraq have been the past, the brutal domination of the southern Shia and northern Kurds by the minority Sunni, and the future, oil wealth that appeared to be almost entirely within the Shia and Kurdish territories leaving the Sunni central area bereft of peteroleum wealth.

Already hostile to the Sunni, the Shiites and Kurds were less than enthusiastic about the idea of sharing what they've come to see as their oil resources with the gang who once oppressed them and, worse, had almost nothing to offer in return. In the north and the south, partition was definitely an option.

To the Sunnis, however, the idea of partition was a threat to cut them out of Iraq's oil wealth and leave this once dominant group with little to show but empty, barren desert.

Now there's hope that improves the prospects for achieving either a peaceful partition or a peaceful, united Iraq - Sunni oil. Foreign oil exploration companies, using previously unexamined or only partly-examined seismic data, have concluded that the Sunni region may actually have significant, untapped oil reserves.

Initial studies have already identified sites believed to hold 15-billion barrels of oil from one series of wells alone and three trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

At the moment there's little more than promising studies with actual production years away and then only after peace is restored, but the promise itself may bring political rewards in the near future as great as the financial rewards to be had down the road.

Why We're Losing the War on Terror

Paddy Ashdown, the international community's High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2002-2006, examines where it all went wrong:

"Since the Cold War ended, the UN has, on average, intervened in the territory of one of its members every six months, and six of the last nine interventions have been in Muslim countries. That is, in Somalia, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Bosnia. What's more, around 65 per cent of the interventions prevented a return to conflict. Overall, the world is safer because we have intervened. It will be much more dangerous if we stop doing so. Our staying out of Darfur has only resulted in spreading the conflict, first to Chad, with other nations to follow if we cannot stop it.

"The Iraq experience represents the triumph of hubris, nemesis and, above all, amnesia over common sense. We have abandoned experience in favour of a kind of 19th-century 'gunboat' diplomacy approach to peace making. And it isn't working. Getting intervention right is not rocket science and it's not new. Spend at least as much time and effort planning the peace as preparing for the war that precedes it. Base plans on a proper knowledge of the country. Leave ideologies and prejudices at home. Do not try to fashion someone else's country in your own image. Leave space for its people to reconstruct the country they want, not the one you want for them. Don't lose the 'golden hour' after the fighting is over. Dominate security from the start; then concentrate on the rule of law. Make economic regeneration a priority. Understand the importance to the international community effort of co-ordination, cohesion and speaking with one voice. And do not wait until everything is as it would be in our country. Leave when the peace is sustainable.

"At present, we intervene as though democracy was our big idea. It is not. We are not even particularly good at it ourselves. Good governance is our big idea; the rule of law is our big idea; open systems and the market-based economy - these are our big ideas. A stable democracy, fashioned to the conditions and the cultures of the country concerned, is what comes afterwards. It is the product of good governance, not its precursor.

"...we have chosen the wrong mindset to defeat al-Qaeda. We have chosen to fight an idea primarily with force. We seek to control territory; it seeks to capture minds. This is, at heart, a battle of ideas and values. Unless we realise that and can win on that agenda, no amount of force can deliver victory.

"We are not winning. In those regions of the world where this struggle is fiercest, civilisation is losing and medievalism is winning. We have to reverse that if we are to give ourselves a better chance of building peace in future. So to be successful, we will need more than the right structures, good intentions and a warm desire to do something to help. International intervention is a very blunt instrument, whose outcomes are not always predictable. It is not for the fainthearted or the easily bored. It needs steely toughness and strategic patience in equal measure. And strategic patience needs strategic vision - and we seem to lack that, too . It also requires a willingness to commit a lot of troops at the start, a capacity to provide sustained international support to the end and an ability to endure a time frame that is measured in decades, not years.

"The only reward for success is that all the expenditure and all that pain will be less than the cost of the war that was avoided, or the price of the chaos which would have ensued if the international community had stayed at home. Leaving early, or doing it badly, may end up making things worse - and nearly always means having to return and do it again."

One tenet of Ashdown's message is "go big or go home." It's a message that's being ignored in Ottawa, London and Washington. The US invaded Iraq with about a third of the force it needed for the job. In Afghanistan, the situation is no better but actually far worse. In both countries we've committed to delivering their people into the arms of secular, Western democracy.

Afghanistan is a generational task that will easily take two decades to resolve, especially with our emphasis on the combat side. As it is the West that has taken the responsibility for propping up Hamid Karzai, the question needs to be asked which Western nations are prepared to commit to Afghanistan for twenty years? We can't get any other NATO members to commit troops badly needed for this year's Taliban offensive.

If we are going to commit to Afghanistan for the long haul are we content to have Canada's entire military effort overseas consumed by the gaping maw of Kandahar? What about other places where the need for our help will be greater and potentially even more significant to Canada's global interests? Are we willing to double or even triple the size of our armed forces? What are we willing to sacrifice to do that? Or will we allow Afghanistan to become at once both the anchor around our feet and our excuse for shirking responsibility everywhere else?

These are questions we need to debate, both on the floor of the House of Commons, and among all Canadians. Harpo and Hillier aren't giving us straight answers. They're the "stay the course" type whose vision is measured in days and weeks. That's not good enough, not even close.

The Pacific Dead Zone

Let's dispense with the inevitable: - no, no one can say with 100% certainty that global warming is completely responsible for this BUT no one has any more likely cause either.

Global warming is impacting Pacific Ocean ecosystems. From the Sydney Morning Herald:

"Professor Jane Lubchenco, from Oregon State University, said: "Wild fluctuations in the intensity of ocean upwellings are wreaking havoc with the ecosystems of the west coast.

"We're seeing extreme distortions on both sides of the norm. This is a system that is out of kilter. It's fluctuating rapidly."

"Up to five decades of data had shown that the events were "unprecedented in this ecosystem", she said.

"She pointed out that similar ocean current disruption had been seen in other regions of the world, particularly Peru, Chile and parts of Africa.

"Experts at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco described two extraordinary linked events in 2005 and 2006.

"The first occurred when a nutrient-rich ocean current that normally appears off northern California and Oregon in spring was delayed by a month.

"This led to a loss of phytoplankton, the microscopic plant organisms that form the vital base of the ocean ecosystem and upon which larger animals depend for food.

"Salmon, which normally take to the sea at this time, starved. The effects rippled up through the food web as predators, including many sea birds, went hungry and died.

"The following year the west coast current came back with a vengeance, producing an upwelling of nutrient-rich water twice as strong as the average recorded for several previous years.

"Phytoplankton bloomed to levels not seen before, turning the sea to green-brown soup. They then died and sank, causing oxygen levels in the water to plummet virtually to zero.

"The result was a "dead zone" in which nothing could survive. Scientists conducting a submarine survey found dead crabs and marine worms scattered across the ocean floor, and no sign of any fish.

"The knock-on effects were once again disastrous for sea birds which relied on the sea creatures for food. Huge numbers of dead birds were washed up on the shores.

"The 2006 dead zone, which remained for nearly 17 weeks, was three times bigger than any seen in the region before, said Dr Francis Chan, from Oregon State University in Corvallis."

A Powerfully Stupid Move

22-year old Prince Harry is expected to ship out to Iraq by the end of February.

It's reported he will join his regiment and serve in Basra in light armoured vehicles performing reconnaissance duties.

Members of Britain's Royal family have served in combat before. Prince Andrew flew helicopters in the Falklands while the fleet was under attack from Argentinian aircraft. However this would be the first time one got involved in counter-insurgency.

What a prime target for the insurgents. Sending a high-profile person into harm's way in Iraq seems astonishingly stupid. After all, this is the same combat zone where the likes of George Bush or Condi Rice can only stage surprise visits.

The Chechnyan Disaster

Vladimir Putin has handed control of Chechnya to a monster by the name of Ramzan Kadyrov.

The Guardian paints a picture of Kadyrov as a brutal tyrant, just the sort Putin would choose to suppress the Chechens:

"Mr Kadyrov personifies much of the tragedy visited on his people. A rebel fighter turned by the Russians, he and his clan have pacified the province by establishing a rule of medieval brutality. The murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya accused Mr Kadyrov of personally assisting in the torture of suspects. Human Rights Watch last year documented 82 cases of torture by forces under the control of Mr Kadyrov's paramilitary groups.

"One of the most feared torture chambers is in Mr Kadyrov's home village of Tsentoroi. Relatives, associates or friends of wanted rebels are abducted and then tortured for weeks on end with electric shocks, beatings and suffocation. If they emerge alive they are presented with a menu of crimes, to which they readily confess. Keeping their mouth shut is a condition of their release. The Russian human-rights organisation, Memorial, documented 316 cases of abduction in 2005, and of those 127 disappeared without trace, and 23 were found dead, bearing the marks of assassination. But Chechnya is a forgotten conflict, a casualty not only of Mr Putin's presidency but of the decision by the US and Britain to co-opt Russia as an ally in the war on terror. It was a trade-off that obliged the west to avert its troubled gaze on Chechnya in return for access to strategic airbases in central Asia, and ultimately a victory over the Taliban in Afghanistan. Chechnya hangs like a cloud over Britain's worsening relations with Russia, as it does over the unexplained murders of Ms Politkovskaya and the former fugitive Alexander Litvinenko.

"The only voices against [Kadyrov] are dead ones. Ms Politkovskaya said in one of her last interviews: 'I dream that he should face trial. And the strictest legal procedures with the listing and investigation of all his crimes should take place.' It is unlikely to happen soon."

Before 9/11 the world widely condemned the brutality and butchery Russia meted out to the Chechen people. Once the World Trade Centre towers were knocked down, all that changed. Suddenly Vladimir Putin became a valued allly in the Global War Without End on Terror and the suffering in Chechnya was forgotten.

Is the Baghdad Surge Just More Sectarianism Only With American Guns?

ABC news reports that US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has expressed concern to the Shiite-dominated Maliki government that the "surge" so far as targetted Sunni neighbourhoods, overlooking Shia hotspots including Sadr City.

"The Iraqis, however, told her that the Mahdi Army and its leader Muqtada al-Sadr had been losing influence and were cooperating with authorities on security issues, the official said.

"The Iraqis said they did not want to 'waste our resources in a place that's stable,' the official added.

"He did not say how Rice responded.

"Before the operation began, U.S. officers said privately that the Shiite-dominated security forces were resisting calls to move against al-Sadr's forces quickly, arguing that the main threat to stability came from Sunni insurgents."

If the US and Iraqi security forces don't move against al-Sadr's militias, the surge will be plainly sectarian and risks leaving Baghdad's Sunni population largely defenceless once it's over.

Death In the Clouds

Competitive paragliders from around the world have gathered in Australia for their world championship. So far their practise runs have been anything but uneventful.

A couple of weeks ago, "Nicky Moss, a member of the British team in the world championships, was attacked by eagles with a wing span of almost 3m, sending her into freefall 2,500m above the Australian Outback as she prepared for the event."

The Times of London reports that worse followed yesterday when two others got caught in a thunderstorm:

"A champion paraglider is being described as “the luckiest woman alive” after being caught in a storm that sucked her to an altitude higher than Mount Everest.

"Ewa Wisnierska is believed to have flown unconscious for almost one hour through a violent thunderstorm that catapulted her to the cruise altitude of a jumbo jet and left her body heavily bruised and covered in ice.

"Her paraglider came through the storm intact and she landed 60km (37 miles) from her launch site. Ms Wisnierska, 35, was treated in hospital for severe frostbite injuries to her face but was otherwise unharmed.

"He Zhongpin, a Chinese paraglider who flew into the same storm, was found dead on Thursday, 75km from his launch site. He is believed to have suffocated or frozen to death after being sucked up into the centre of the storm.

"Speaking from her hospital bed yesterday Ms Wisnierska, a German of Polish descent who is ranked among the top paragliders in Europe, described her journey through the violent storm. 'You can’t imagine the power — you feel like nothing, like a leaf from a tree going up,' she said. 'I was shaking all the time. The last thing I remember it was dark. I could hear lightning all around me. I knew I was in the middle of a thunderstorm and I could not do anything.'

"Her paraglider was equipped with a tracking system that clocked her ascent at 20m (65ft) a second once the storm began to suck her upwards, eventually reaching a height of 9,946m (32,000ft).

"Her descent was recorded at 33m a second. “I wanted to fly around the clouds but I got sucked up into it and started to spiral,” Ms Wisnierska said. 'I was thinking, I can’t do anything, so I only have to wait and hope that the clouds were bringing me out somewhere. Then I woke up and was thinking I was maybe unconscious for one minute. I didn’t know I was unconscious for so long.'

"She woke more than 45 minutes later and at a height of 6,900m to find herself still stuck in the storm, surrounded by darkness and with her gloves frozen. 'I saw my hands and the gloves were frozen and I didn’t have the brakes, and the glider was still flying on its own. It was amazing because the glider was still flying. I don’t know how it is possible because there was hail everywhere.'

"Doctors later told her that her blackout may have saved her life, because her heart and body slowed down. Temperatures at a height of 9,000m drop below minus 40C."

Could Kim Jong Il be Toppled?

According to the Times of London, "rumours and speculation abound" over the security and future of the North Korean dictator's regime:

"Hard information about the workings of the North Korean leadership is almost impossible to establish, but recently there have been unusually intense rumours about possible plots against the Dear Leader.

"The latest story doing the rounds of intelligence agencies is that his brother-in-law, Jang Song Thaek, a close aide who returned to public life last year after being purged, is emerging as a rival.

"Oblivious of possible power struggles behind the scenes, thousands of men and women, dressed in suits and brightly coloured traditional skirts, danced in the streets of the capital, Pyongyang, as the official state media reported extravagant messages of praise from around the world.

"But the tone of yesterday’s speeches supported the suspicions of many analysts that North Korea was still a long way from relinquishing its nuclear capability. “The successful nuclear test last year represents a proud victory of ‘army-first politics’ . . . and a thrilling demonstration of the greatness and might of socialist North Korea,” the Speaker of the country’s Parliament, Choe Thae Bok, said yesterday."

Could Kim be toppled in a coup? It's hard to imagine how, given that the North Korean people have been so indoctrinated to support him, even to the point of seeing Kim as some sort of dem-god.

I never really understood the depth of that brainwashing until I watched a North Korean woman interviewed about a fire in the government office in her small village. She told of how six villagers, in succession, entered the building to rescue Kim's photograph from the wall even though they knew they would probably die in the process. How could you ever persuade people of that mindset to accept the toppling of their leader?

Forced Marriage is Bad Enough, But Forced Divorce?

The Independent reports that some Saudi couples are now finding themselves divorced against their will. Those who refuse risk being thrown into prison:

"Fatima al-Timani is facing the end of her sixth month in prison in the Saudi town of Damman. Her only crime is to refuse to be separated from the man to whom she had been happily married for the past four years and with whom she has two children.

"Fatima is the latest victim of a growing practice in the oil-rich Saudi kingdom of forced divorce, when disgruntled relatives have used hardline Islamic courts to dissolve matches against the will of the married couple.

"The plight of 34-year-old Fatima, who was pregnant when court proceedings began in 2005 and is now in prison with her one-year-old son, Suleiman, has drawn widespread public sympathy in the tightly controlled kingdom.

"Fatima is forbidden from seeing her husband, Mansour al-Timani. He now looks after their two-year old-son Noha, who has only been allowed occasional visits to his mother. Fatima's relatives have accused Mansour of lying about his tribal background to win their father's approval for the marriage and want it annulled so she can have an arranged marriage to a spouse of their choosing.

"Saudi Arabia has possibly the worst record on women's rights of any country. The kingdom has been ruled since the 1920s by the House of Saud whose clerical allies, the Wahhabists, have imposed an austere state faith on what had been a religiously diverse mixture of Muslims with Sunni, Shia and Sufi communities.

"Under Wahhabi rule, women have no voting rights, almost no employment rights and are barred from even driving.

"Despite a concerted effort to present a more reformist image to the outside world since the death of King Fahd in August 2005, rights groups have noted continuing erosions of human rights under his successor Abdullah."

So, to recap - Most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi, Saudis have been the prime sponsor of al-Qaeda, Saudi money is now being funneled to the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, the Saudis are brutally repressive to women and yet neither Shrub nor Harpo have a harsh word to say about them. Huh?

A Weapon Against Heart Disease?

British researchers believe they've found a means to fight heart disease by unlocking the heart's own ability to heal itself. From The Independent:

"Millions of people suffering from heart disease have been given new hope by research which shows that damaged organs may be capable of healing themselves.

"A team of scientists at the Institute of Child Health in London have discovered that cells in the outermost layer of the heart can be stimulated to move deeper inside the heart muscle and, once there, help to repair a failing organ.

"The discovery could lead to injections being given into the bloodstream or, in emergency cases, directly into the heart muscle itself. So far the technique has only been tested on rats and mice but, if it is proved to work in humans, it could be developed into a treatment in "years rather than decades", according to Paul Riley, who led the study.

"Dr Riley, of the ICH, said: 'Our research has shown that blood vessel regeneration is possible in the adult heart. In the future ... there could be potential for therapy based on the patients' own heart cells.'

"The team have found that cells in the outer layer of the heart are similar to stem cells, and have the capacity to develop into any kind of new tissue or structure in the heart. Called progenitor cells, they can be stimulated by a protein, Thymosin-beta4, to move into the heart muscle and form new blood vessels. With new blood vessels to carry oxygen and nutrients, the damaged heart muscle can grow new tissue and repair itself."

"Dr Riley said: 'To investigate whether Thymosin-beta4 could have a therapeutic effect on damaged adult hearts, my research team took cells from the outermost layer of adult mouse hearts and grew them in the lab. We found that, when treated with Thymosin-beta4, these adult cells have as much potential as embryonic cells to create healthy heart tissue. This suggests that Thymosin-beta4 could have a therapeutic use.'"

Neo-Nazi Extortion

Spiegel Online has published a story about how Germany's neo-Nazis have learned to exploit their repugnance.

The small town of Kirchheim an der Weinstrasse, not far from the Rhine River in western Germany faced an uproar after neo-Nazis offered an exorbitant amount to purchase a failing bar at the edge of town that they announced would be turned into a training centre for the far-right NDP party.

The townsfolk were up in arms which seems to be just what the neo-Nazis were after. Kircheimers demanded that their town council buy the property to keep the neo-Nazis out. Fully half the town's population signed a petition demanding action.

The town council kept their nerve, defeating the idea by a vote of 14-3. It turns out that was just what the neo-Nazis did not want to hear. They never had the money to buy the property anyway, they just wanted to scare the town into buying them off. Now they're scrambling to find a way to back out of their offer.

It'd all be sort of funny if this was an isolated incident but it's not:

"German domestic intelligence officials see a disturbing pattern emerging. They warn that often, the neo-Nazis are only feigning interest in the properties in order to drive the price up. The result is more money for the property owner and -- as part of the deal -- more money in the party's treasury.

"The pattern is always the same. Once the right extremists have found a likely property, they do everything they can to be indiscrete. Most often, they send out well-known activists from the brown scene to make sure their intentions are well publicized. In the case of Kirchheim an der Weinstrasse, it was Uwe Meenen, local NPD party leader and part of a group that would like to see the creation of the 'Fourth Reich.'"

"Bruch, the state's interior minister, does see a risk that at some point, the right extremists won't actually be bluffing. But as a rule, it looks as though property sellers could be working hand in hand with the neo-Nazis: The purchase price is driven up by the fear of having right-wingers in the neighborhood and the profit is then split between them."

Solar Power Breakthrough?

If it works as promised, it has the potential to revolutionize our electrical grid. It's a new solar panel technology that is said to be able to produce electricity as for about the same cost as what we now rely on fossil-fuel powered generating plants to produce.

Behind it is John MacDonald of MacDonald Detweiler fame which became MDA Technologies, the company that created the Canadarm used on the space shuttle. MacDonald at 70 has come out of retirement to serve as chairman and chief executive of Canada's only solar panel-maker, Day4 Energy Inc.

Day 4's science genius is a Russian physicist, Leonid Ruben, who MacDonald met in Moscow. During their meeting, Rubin revealed the solar panel breakthrough. The new science allows much more electricity to be generated and harvested than from conventional, solar panels.

Of course there is a lot of difference between producing a workable prototype and ever getting the new technology into production but, with the current appetite for renewable energy, Day 4 is about as well positioned as it could ever hope to be.

For God's Sake, Don't Tell the Truth

Well, the Department of Foreign Affairs has squandered tax dollars to come up with a study telling Harper how best to spin the Afghan mission to the Canadian public.

The study tells him not to use words like, "freedom, democracy, liberty – in combination this phrase comes across as sounding too American."

Instead they want Harper to say Canadian things like, "rebuilding," "restoring," "reconstruction," "hope," "opportunity" and "enhancing the lives of women and children."

Not mentioned seems to be the word "honesty." Then again, prepping the Boss to spin Canadians really doesn't have much to do with honesty, does it?

"The Tory communications problems are compounded by "a general perception that this government is already closely aligned with the U.S. on other fronts," the report states.

"To counter this, the Tories should seek opportunities to "underscore Canadian sovereignty" and quash the view there is an "overly-close, dominant-subservient" relationship between the two countries."

Reading Between the Lines

You'll know that America has truly made progress in Iraq when its leaders no longer feel they can only travel there by "surprise visits."

Condi Rice made a surprise visit to Baghdad today to warn the Maliki government that Americans have run out of patience and expect to see tangible signs that democracy has truly taken hold in Iraq, "The American people want to see results and can't wait forever."

"Some of the debate in Washington is in fact indicative of the concerns that some of the American people have for the prospects of success if the Iraqi government doesn't do what it has said it will do,'' Rice said.

Bringing democracy to Iraq, if that is possible at all, is of a generational scale, a reality for which the US does not have either patience or committment. That might be viable in a homogenous state not undermined by internal ethnic and sectarian divisions, but that would be someplace like Japan, not Iraq.

Rice has made clear that Iraq's future hinges on one thing above all else - America's dwindling patience. That patience, in turn, has been defined by the way this adventure was sold to the American people: invasion, regime change, almost instantaneous democracy and exit - six months at the outside. It was all bundled up as a neat, clean and tidy package but it was really a bag chock full of delusion and deceit.

Imagine if Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice had gone on the Sunday morning talk shows to announce that they wanted to topple Saddam but that it would entail an occupation of at least ten and probably twenty years, would cost easily a trillion dollars or more, would cost thousands of American lives and scores of thousands of wounded and, even then, might not work. But they didn't. They cast out fantasies, dangerous myths and illusions. Just what did they think was going to happen to their political support when their own people stopped believing their fantasies?

Afghanistan In Ten Pages

It's entitled Saving Afghanistan and it's only ten pages. Brief as it is, this report from the Council on Foreign Relations' journal Foreign Affairs presents one of the most coherent and effective summaries of Afghanistan; its history, its paradoxes and dilemmas, what's needed to turn it around and why. You can find it here:

http://www.nytimes.com/cfr/world/20070101faessay_v86n1_rubin.html

If you read these ten pages you'll have a better working understanding of the Afghanistan challenge and how those countries behind "the mission," Canada included, are getting the fundamentals wrong. Harper and, especially, Hillier need to read this - maybe even take a pop quiz on it.

We're spinning our wheels in Afghanistan. In part that's because we're fighting only one of several wars that are underway in that country and region and the war we've chosen to fight isn't going to resolve the others. We're struggling mightily to prop up something that is rotting out before our eyes - the Kabul government of Hamid Karzai and its thoroughly corrupt judicial system and security forces.

We're not fighting this to win. We're there to fight battles, not to win a war. It's now widely accepted that 80% of what we recognize as Taliban forces aren't even actual Talibs, Islamic extremists. They're disgruntled Afghan nationalists and those who've been preyed upon by the Karzai corruption and those who've lost family members to our air strikes plus even more who simply need a job. That 80% is the hallmark of our failure and it speaks to the futility of trying to wage a counter-insurgency on the cheap.

In Vietnam, America won all the battles. It just never figured out how to win the war. Hillier and Harper are also fixated on fighting battles because the question of what it will take to win this war is one that, for them, is better left unasked.

To All You Ignorant, Inbred Rednecks

I'm no longer astounded yet still amused at the vitriolic comments increasingly left by you right-wing nutbars. You know who you are. Nine out of ten of you are named "anonymous," presumably because that gives you the Dutch Courage to pursue your rants. Most of you are far too craven and cowardly to leave your name or e-mail identification.

Your favourite derisive term seems to be "sick." To say something critical of Steven Harper or Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter or George Bush or the Global War Without End on Terror is "sick." Yeah, ...okay.

Some of you, such as the guy who goes by "Ex-NDIP" seem to have figured out that your comments will be posted here but only so long as they're free of any excessive invective (You can still call me many things but "sick" goes way too far). To the contrary, even ill-informed or ill-conceived views are welcome because, without them, there can be no debate, no honing of perspective and values.

There are, however, others who simply want to hurl insults, to snarl and spit from the security of obscurity. Here's what I really need to say to you. I've had a career dealing with your type and you're about as predictable as the waterfowl migration or, sunrise.

Where I once truly appreciated seeing your kind was when I was having you sworn in before a court reporter or a judge. The look that came over your face (and there was just the one, one very common face) was a reward unto itself. Suddenly it struck you that it was showtime, the moment of truth. For once in your life you had to stand by your boastful invective and defend yourself against your own words. Best of all, it was me you were stealing obviously fearful glances of and I could always tell.

Today, of course, it's all on the internet. That really doesn't change the fact that I know you guys and I know you really, really well. I've seen you all so many times before, I can quite often put a real person's face and a name to your comment. I realize it's not yours but it is a person so very much like you.

But I digress. As I cannot make you defend your invective, pleased be advised I'm simply going to delete it. If, however, you would like to invite me to your site, I'd be pleased to respond.

Better yet, let's form teams.

The One, The Only, The Mound-Of-Sound.

The Killers' Sabbatical

Big news out of Baghdad. The civilian death rate in the city dropped overnight from the average of 40 to only 10.

Iraqi army Brig. Gen. Qassim Moussawi, a spokesman for the Baghdad commander, said, "This shows a big reduction in terror and killing operations in Baghdad.'' He attributed the improvement to the joint US-Iraqi security operation that began a few days ago.

Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil, commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, said the militia fighters and insurgents are laying low, for now, "They're watching us carefully. There's an air of suspense throughout the city. We believe, there's no question about it, that many of these extremists are laying low and watching to see what it is we do and how we do it. How long that will last, we don't know."

Comics versus Sphincters - FOX Goes Goofy

Okay - Jon Stewart, Steven Colbert and the others, they've come to define political satire in the United States. Soon, however, Comedy Central is going to face some competition from the "fair and balanced " agit-prop channel FOX News.

It's going to be a extreme right Daily Show and, judging by the cast, it's bound to be - crap. The new show, "The Half Hour News Hour," will feature such accomplished gagsters as Rush Limbaugh, reprising the role of President of the United States of America, and Ann Coulter as his Veep. Anyone who's ever caught Limbaugh's or Coulter's own programmes has to be left wondering why they thought they needed a new vehicle for comedy.

As I don't get FOX News I won't be able to tune in but I think the show title may need some tweaking. With the likes of Coulter and Limbaugh maybe they should change it from HHNH to "Back Passage."

This Is Not Good

Asia Times has published an op-ed piece from Kim Myong-chol, an "unofficial" spokesman of Kim Jong-il and North Korea.

The remarks and the tone used by Kim give little reason to hope that North Korea is finally ready to act responsibly:

"Two things combine to make this 65th birthday [of Kim Jong-il] anniversary and the Lunar New Year most auspicious. The first is that Kim has led the DPRK to score a fifth straight bloodless victory over the world's sole superpower by "outsmarting the US in the game of nuclear bluff" as The Sunday Times in London put it on February 4. He has emerged the first national hero in the 5,000 years of Korean history to fulfill the long-elusive ambition of the Korean people to acquire military capabilities to take the war from the Land of Morning Calm to the heart of the metropolitan USA.

"The second is the little-known fact that the birthdate of Kim Jong-il, February 16, 1942, coincides with the Lunar New Year universally observed in East Asia.

"The most significant fact about the six-party talks that ended this Tuesday is US President George W Bush waving a white flag, offering to allow the DPRK to retain its nuclear arsenal as it is. It means the shared recognition of the five parties and the DPRK as a nuclear-weapons state and the US notice that it would lift its financial crackdown on the Korean state.

"The five parties - the US, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia - agreed to provide the DPRK with a huge amount of energy, up to a million tons of fuel oil, in compensation for the suspended operation of an outdated and expendable nuclear site. The DPRK government of Kim Jong-il renews its determination to use its nuclear umbrella to contribute to maintaining peace and security on the Korean Peninsula and in the rest of the world."

This rhetoric sounds pretty ominous but, then again, did anyone really believe that Kim Jong-Il could be trusted for long?

Senate Reform

There appears to be broad support for establishing term limits for Canadian Senators. It's being suggested that appointments be limited to 12-to 15-years.

On balance, this seems like a good idea. It ensures some prospect of replacing those who've become unfit to serve due to age or impairment.

A sticking point is term length. The Tories want an 8-year term. Stephane Dion points out that such a short term would mean that a long-serving prime minister would be able to replace the entire senate to one of his own liking. To avoid that, the Libs want the term limit extended to between 12 and 15-years.

The Liberals remain staunchly opposed to any attempt to make the senate elected. Despite all the noise about electing senators, it is pretty much a naive proposal. The provinces would undoubtedly want a say in it and, probably, a constitutional amendment.

In an elected senate it would be hard to justify allocating seats other than on a provincial population basis. That would increase the representation of Central Canada at the expense of the West.

An elected senate would also bring partisanship to the forefront and those elected would have a legitimate argument that they also had a legislative function similar to MPs.

Here's One Tehran Needs to Explain

It's pretty clear that some of the explosives and ordinance that Iraqi militias and insurgents alike have been using were made in Iran. How they got into Iraq and, once there, how they wound up in the hands of both Shiite and Sunni fighters isn't clear. Given the level of corruption within the Iraqi government and security services, the blame may well lie with the Baghdad government.

The Tehran government, however, may have a tougher time explaining how 100-Austrian made, Steyr sniper rifles wound up in the wrong hands in Iraq. These are .50 calibre rifles that pack an awesome punch, capable of penetrating light armour from up to a mile away.

Over British and American objections, the Austrian government approved the sale of 800 of these rifles to Iran, ostensibly to be used in countering drug smuggling. So far the Americans have found 100-of them in Iraq. They claim the serial numbers of the captured Steyrs prove they're from the Iran sale.

This still doesn't prove that top Iranian leaders were directly involved in getting these weapons into Iraq but it certainly leaves them with some accounting to do. Then again, the Steyr, lethal as it may be, can even be had via the internet.

Stephen Harper's Hypocritical Arrogance

In the last parliament, Stephen Harper didn't pass up an opportunity to lambaste the minority government of Paul Martin for not working with the opposition.

Now the shoe is on the other foot and the sanctimonious control freak is showing an arrogance for his own minority rule that is both hypocritical and outrageous. As James Travers writes, Harper is a master of the Big Lie:

"Confirmation of Ottawa's new order is found in the current and bizarre confrontation over the Kyoto Protocol. Having already decided that this country's international treaty commitments aren't binding on his government, Stephen Harper is now signalling the same who-cares attitude to domestic law.

"Conservatives are simply dismissing a bill that gives the administration 60 days to announce plans to reach Canada's 2012 Kyoto goals. After tossing obstacle after obstacle in the bill's 10-month path through Parliament, the Prime Minister's operatives now compare it to reversing the laws of gravity while darkly warning that the targets are now so far out of range that firing at them would mark the economy as ground zero.

"Like most Big Lies, there's a little truth in those.

"First Liberal and now Conservative foot-dragging has left Canada far behind nations in the environmental vanguard. It's also obvious that considerable sacrifice is now required to make up for lost time.

"Those are important considerations. But they are no longer the most pressing concerns.
What's more worrying than the government's environmental sincerity is its default character. It's so cocksure, so blinded by the beauty of its convictions, that it bowls over anything in its way.

"Woven through its declared willingness to ride roughshod over Parliament is the same single-minded determination that is driving its attempts to add partisanship and ideology to the appointment of judges. Both are risky steps in the wrong direction. "

It's one thing for Harpo to treat the stooges in his own caucus and cabinet this way but, while he may not be willing to accept it, Canada is still a democracy and the Commons has spoken, clearly and unequivocally. If Stevie can't respect and defend our fundamental institutions, it's time he skulked back to Alberta.

Zundel Gets Five Years

A German court has sentenced Ernst Zundel to imprisonment for five years after finding him guilty on 14-charges of incitement. The holocaust-denier was deported from Canada in 2005.

Zundel's trial, which began last November, has been described as "raucous." At least some of his team of five lawyers apparently shared his views and, according to the Toronto Star, tried to turn the trial into a soapbox:

"The initial attempt to try him collapsed last March over a dispute with one of his lawyers, Sylvia Stolz.

"At one stage she had to be carried from the courtroom, screaming 'Resistance! The German people are rising up,' after defying an order banning her from the trial on grounds she tried to sabotage the proceedings by denouncing the court as a “tool of foreign domination.”

"In the current trial, defence lawyer Ludwig Bock quoted from Adolf Hitler’s 'Mein Kampf' and from Nazi race laws in his closing statements last week as argued for Zundel’s acquittal.
Bock accused the Mannheim state court of not wanting to face a 'scientific analysis' of the Holocaust and alleged that prosecutors — one of whom has termed Zundel a “rat catcher” — had defamed his client.

"Another of Zundel’s five lawyers, Herbert Schaller, told the court that all of its evidence that the Holocaust took place was based only on witness reports, instead of hard facts."

The Gloves Are Off

Alberta premier Ed Stelmach has put Ottawa on notice - keep your environmentalist mitts off our oil industry. From the National Post:

"Referring to the federal environment file as a "runaway train" with "every political party trying to get ahead of each other" on cutting greenhouse gases, Mr. Stelmach promised that sacrificing Alberta's energy sector on an altar of green would end in disaster, given that the province already shoulders a major part of the country's economic load.

"Last week in Ottawa, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that the "era of voluntary compliance" to federal greenhouse gas emission standards was "over" and his government is scheduled to deliver a set of aggressive intensity-reduction targets next week. The new regulations are expected to hit the Alberta oil sands especially hard, since the region represents the largest greenhouse gas emitters in the country."

This puts Harpo in an awkward position. Fully 9 of the top 15 GHG emitters in Canada are in Alberta and when it comes to CO2, all roads lead to Ft. McMurray.