Goin' Fishin'

I'll be away from this blog for a couple of weeks. Pressing obligations, etc., etc.

Stay safe, avoid the lurking Harpo and I'll be back to this page when I can.

The Mound of Sound

The Miserable Truth of Afghanistan

Another report stating the truth about Afghanistan - we're losing the hearts and minds of the Afghan people to the Taliban.

A Senlis Council survey found that fully half the men in the hotspot provinces of Helmand and Kandahar believe the international community will be defeated by the Taliban. In a counter-insurgency situation, half is not a 50/50 proposition, it's not even a C-minus, it's an F.

According to Senlis founder, Norine MacDonald of British Columbia:

- woefully inadequate aid and development, and misguided counter-narcotics policies, are turning people against NATO forces and making their work much more dangerous

- the survey shows alarming gains in Taliban support in the south, with 27 per cent of respondents backing the militants, compared with only 3 per cent in December 2005

- Eighty per cent of people surveyed said they worry about feeding their families, and 70 per cent know how to fire a weapon. People are hungry and angry, and when bombing campaigns level villages, it's not difficult to see how those facts come together

- In Kandahar and Helmand provinces, 80 per cent of respondents said the international troops were not helping them personally, and 71 per cent believed the Afghan government was also unhelpful.

"Meanwhile, a survey by the independent monitoring group Integrity Watch Afghanistan said that in the past five years – after the Taliban lost power –'corruption has soared to levels not seen in previous administrations,' and about 60 per cent of responders believed it was the most corrupt government in two decades.

"The poll of 1,258 Afghans said that under President Hamid Karzai, money 'can buy government appointments, bypass justice or evade police' with impunity. Weak law enforcement was mainly to blame, said the group's executive director, Lorenzo Delesgues.

"'Corruption has undermined the legitimacy of the state,' he said yesterday in Kabul.

Canada sent forces to Afghanistan treating it as a predominantly military issue. Our top general swaggered and boasted that his combat brigade was going to Kandahar to kill a "few dozen ...scumbags." It's becoming apparent that Hillier didn't bother learning the history of the place which would have shown him that these "scumbags" have, for centuries, proven themselves to be determined, skilled, resilient and courageous fighters who have repeatedly defeated larger, better organized and more powerful foreign armies. He didn't bother to learn the rudimentary lessons of counter-insurgency warfare, particularly the two fundamentals: you have to flood the place with large numbers of troops and you try to avoid using heavy firepower. Instead Hillier fashioned a force that was paltry in numbers and, in the result, unavoidably dependent on airstrikes and artillery to offset their weakness in numbers.

We committed our soldiers to Kandahar without regard to the shakey political dimension of this struggle. It was as though we assumed that Karzai's government was legitimate or perhaps we considered that to be America's problem. Either way, we're defending an illegitimate regime that most of the Afghan people in our area of operations utterly fear and loathe.

Deciding that the Karzai government deserved our support only because it wasn't the Taliban was naive, even stupid. Sending our soldiers over there equipped, staffed and trained to fight our notion of warfare, not the locals' was just as stupid, even irresponsible. Let's remember that support for the Taliban in Kandahar province has increased NINEFOLD since we assumed control of the place. If we keep going like this, where is that number going to stand by 2009?

We owe it to the men and women we send over there to fight and sometimes die to do what we neglected to do during Harpo's sham debate; to ask the tough questions and demand some straight answers from the government and General Rick Hillier, answers that are long overdue.

Finding Balance

There'll be an awful lot of talk about global warming in the runup to the next election. There'll be green and greener yet, even green with envy. We'll hear all about emissions caps, carbon taxes, carbon trading and carbon footprints. It's bound to be All-Carbon, All The Time. Therein lies the problem.

It's in the nature of the beast for politicians to latch on to whatever issue has the public's attention. Sometimes the pols engineer the issue (remember Saddam's WMDs?) and sometimes the issue is something extrinsic. Either way, whichever direction the public is looking at election time, that's where the politicians will be jostling for space.

Harpo's environmental conversion is a particularly telling example. This bozo has flip-flopped on one core principle after another since he assumed office. Liberal initiatives that he scrapped, he now shamelessly restores, claiming them as his own. However, one issue stands alone - the global warming question.

Our Furious Leader didn't embrace the global warming issue because he believed in it. He jumped onto this bandwagon because he realized it would cost him at the voting booth if he didn't. And, like his masterfully dissembling American Idol, he knew that seeming to take charge of the problem was actually his best way to defend his real concern, Big Oil and Big Coal. But I digress.

The real problem with the way the global warming issue is being approached - by all parties - is a lack of balance. It is a genuine and growing threat to us and especially to the generations to follow us and it requires measures that are as big as the problem, but... and here's the real but... it can't be allowed to distract us from the many other problems that also need to be confronted and not just at home but abroad as well.

This is an opportunity being thoroughly exploited and abused by the greenhouse gas deniers. Seizing upon a half-truth, they point out that climate change won't be cataclysmic and may even have some side benefits.

You may not have heard this before, but that is a thoroughly and disgracefully racist argument.

It's true that global warming probably will be less destructive, at least initially, in the northern hemisphere where the vast majority of the greenhouse gases are created. However, it is already having a devastating effect that will only worsen in vulnerable regions of the southern hemisphere, particularly sub-Saharan Africa. But they're blacks and the one thing the West has shown over the past two decades is that black people don't matter. They and their plight certainly don't matter to the greenhouse gas deniers because that would completely destroy their arguments that the problem is overblown.

So long as we take a "them and us" approach to global warming and associated problems, we'll never solve this. If we allow their homelands to become unable to support their populations, we'll force them to migrate. They're not responsible for the global warming that besets them, we are. When they have to migrate simply to survive it'll be because we made that necessary, we ruined their homeland.

They'll begin by migrating into neighbouring territories that are also distressed and least able to accommodate climate refugees. That will lead to a new sort of war, one that's already happening but we rarely hear mentioned in our media, wars of sustenance. Eventually this migration will affect more distant countries in normally temperate climes. This has already begun to plague Europe and it's a problem that's going to worsen rapidly and it's going to spread.

In wars of subsistence, it's the 'haves' versus the 'have-nots' and they quickly come to see and treat each other as genuine enemies. When the haves begin to worry about their own supplies of food and water, the have-nots loom large as mortal threats to be resisted and, if necessary, destroyed.

Leaving this unresolved reduces our options and flexibility and that, in turn, increases the dependence on military force as a default response. If we are to preserve our options, we'll have to begin by treating the welfare of the have-nots as critical to our own.

We should probably hope that the migrants never get beyond tribal status. Were they to organize into regional or even sub-continental movements, they might be able to add a political and even military dimension to the challenges they'll pose to us.

There is no problem or group of problems for which there are no answers. Indeed there are several answers to resolve each and everyone of these problems. If we choose not to pursue the best solutions, a less happy solution will become our reality. That's a little truth we all need to acknowledge. That's why we must begin treating the current situation as an opportunity not a burdensome scourge to be deflected or avoided. Only if we see it as an opportunity, a chance to take the best options still open to us, will we be able to avoid having to accept a poorer solution when today's best options are foreclosed.

The existing environmental challenges all result from neglect built on indifference and greed. This has generated a degree of finger pointing that only blinds us to the enormity of the challenges we face.

We rather arrogantly say we'll not act unless the emerging Third World economies, particularly India and China do the same. Without their equal sacrifice, our best efforts are relatively meaningless. Good point. They take a different approach. We Westerners have had the benefit of growing our industrial economies by polluting the world for many decades so we ought to clean up our emissions first before expecting others to do the same. That's a pretty good point too. Two arguments of varying moral and logical suasion but each sufficiently valid to create a stalemate of inaction. Unless both sides move past this nonsense, our respective indignation will be our collective undoing. Just how stupid can we really be?

So we need an abrupt attitude change on global warming. We need to approach it as a global problem in which we all share all the problems and share in the answers. We need to see the current situation as an opportunity and understand that we'll pay dearly for it if we don't.

We also need to understand that global warming can't be addressed in isolation of the many other challenges facing our civilization today. We must reach consensus on a global response to the many other threats that confront us today such as terrorism, nuclear proliferation, depletion of non-renewable resources, desertification, the spread of viruses, diseases and pests, the over-exploitation of ground water resources, our steadily disappearing stock of arable land and forests, exhaustion of our fisheries, species extinction, overpopulation, the list goes on.

Focusing on one or even a few of these to the exclusion of others will leave us off-balance. A narrow approach will also be ineffective. Taking a broader, inclusive approach offers the best chance of keeping these issues manageable while they're being sorted out. We will also find that the same solutions we apply to one problem will be similarly beneficial to others.

We need to find balance and to see these challenges as more than election issues. The way forward will entail a realignment of our economic, political and social models and philosophies, the way we see the world and interact with it. Xenophobic nationalism is a malignancy to the future health of this planet.

The best solutions to our array of problems are already long gone, closed off. In many respects we simply weren't aware of these gradually mounting threats so we couldn't even consider remedies. However even though some of our options are gone, many remain, but the best of them will be the first foreclosed. The longer we wait, the worse the solution will be.

It's sort of like the movies where the hot air balloon suddenly lifts off with a ground handler still clinging to one of the ropes. The handler panics and refuses to let go until he's gone past the point where he can survive the fall and yet the fall, now fatal, is inevitable. We still have time to let go of the rope but we're climbing higher all the time. Let's do it while we can still have a survivable landing.

The Bitter Truth

Canada's and NATO's policies in Afghanistan are fundamentally flawed. We're just not getting this right and it makes the loss of each of our soldiers killed over there especially bitter to take.

Since I began this blog back in August, I've been writing about the profound mistakes we're making in Afghanistan. If you do a quick search of this site you'll find those articles and there are plenty of them. Taken together, they stand as an indictment of our sitting prime minister and his top soldier, General Rick Hillier.

I wish that I had some genius no one else has, that I was prescient at a mystical level. I don't and I'm not. The fact is that everything I've drawn upon in coming to my criticisms is relatively common knowledge, not even very obscure. Insurgency and counter-insurgency is probably the most clearly defined form of warfare that exists. It's the only form of warfare in which the weakest side - the one that fights at a huge disadvantage in firepower, manpower, communications and mobility - almost always wins. It's been practised time and again and it's an experiment that produces consistent results. Every mistake that we're making in Afghanistan today has been demonstrated repeatedly in the past.

But what do I know. Fortunately I don't have to rely on my say so. The US military has finally come to its senses, digested the lessons of history (some of that history they themselves made) and produced a new counter-insurgency field manual FM 3-24. It virtually catalogues everything we're doing wrong in Afghanistan. Check out Lawrence of Arabia, Col. T.E. Lawrence has his excellent accounts of his successful insurgency in the Middle East in WWI. There are several others.

Now Thomas Walkom, writing in today's Toronto Star, summarizes a report written by Gordon

Smith, now director of the Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria, is Canada's former ambassador to NATO and a former deputy minister of foreign affairs. His Canada in Afghanistan: Is it Working? was done for the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, a Calgary think-tank that is not known for being squishy on matters military.

Smith maintains that negotiating with the Taliban is our only realistic option:

"'We do not believe that the Taliban can be defeated or eliminated as a political entity in any meaningful time frame by Western armies using military measures,' he says.

"The reasons for this are fourfold. First, the Taliban are still the dominant force among Pashtuns in Afghanistan's south, where Canadian troops are operating. NATO bête noire Mullah Omar 'remains unchallenged as leader of the Taliban,' Smith writes. 'There is no alternative representing Pashtun interests who has more clout than he.'

"Second, neighbouring Pakistan 'is highly ambivalent about crushing the Taliban insurgency.' While technically on NATO's side in this matter, important elements of the Pakistani state apparatus, Smith writes, continue to support the Taliban as their proxy in Afghanistan – mainly as a way to fend off what they see as hostile Russian and Indian influences.

"To destroy the Taliban would be to end Pakistani influence in Afghanistan, he says – which perhaps explains Islamabad's less than total support for the NATO mission.

"Third, the NATO strategy of using air power and heavy armour is backfiring. So is the policy of opium eradication. One destroys Afghan lives, the other their livelihoods. The net result, writes Smith (and here he echoes reports from the London-based Senlis Council), is to make Afghans even more hostile to NATO troops.

"Fourth, NATO countries don't have the will to fight a protracted war in a faraway country.
'If NATO states it will only be satisfied with a decisive military victory, the Taliban will call our bluff,' Smith says. 'The Taliban have demonstrated greater resolve, tactical efficiency and ability to absorb the costs of war over the long term than have NATO forces.'

"As a result, 'talking to the Taliban' emerges as the only feasible solution. 'Given the costs of war,' he writes, 'NATO needs to look candidly at the prospects – aware that there can be no guarantee – of a political solution.'"

Smith is clearly right that we're not going to somehow win this battle but he ends his discourse a bit too soon. Not mentioned is the real hurdle that will remain to be cleared - restoring some balance in political power in Afghanistan.

The Pashtun of Afghanistan are the Shia of Iraq - a majority. Thanks for 5+ years of Western indifference the Kabul government has come to be dominated by warlords, drug lords and common criminals of the minority Uzbeks, Tajiks, Hazaris and Turkmen. As far as they're concerned, the Afghan civil war is over and they're the victors. The Taliban are obviously not accepting that result and want to renew the civil war.

To settle this conflict NATO or the US or Pakistan or all of them (India included) will have to use their influence to get these mortal enemies, the Northern Alliance and the Taliban, to engage in some sort of legitimate power-sharing. The US will also have to use its influence to prevent India from exploiting Afghanistan to wage a proxy war against Pakistan. But, if we cannot broker some genuine agreement between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance we'll have to decide whether we're going to become embroiled in their civil war or step completely away from it.

This is a real conundrum but it's one that might have been avoided had George Bush not turned indifferent to Afghanistan in 2001 so that he could conquer Iraq. The US should have played a more direct role in shaping Afghanistan's first post-Taliban government. It should have developed a legitimate political entity to represent the majority Pashtun and it should have given Karzai essential support to prevent the warlords and drug lords from seizing political power. Our side should have kept that scum out of government and thereby prevented the corruption of the country's security services that simply drives the Pashtun into the arms of the Taliban.

We have to recognize that we can't turn back the clock to 2001 (unless we oust the warlords and go to war with the Northern Alliance mujahideen). We can't use firepower to legitimize a corrupted regime. We can't even expect our firepower to defeat this insurgency. So just what the hell are we doing there? It's time we revisited that debate.

Is Bush Just Reagan Without Restraints?

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman makes the case that George W. Bush is little more than a reiteration of Ronald Reagan. He notes that Reagan could have been like Bush if he'd had the same advantages - control of both houses of Congress, no pesky rival superpower, and an event like 9/11 that traumatized the nation and allowed an enormouse power grab.

I sometimes think that the shroud of nationalistic myth has done more for Reagan than it ever did for George Washington. Americans positively revere Reagan and that takes a willingness to ignore an awful lot of his true record.

For a notional conservative, Reagan transformed the US in just two terms from what had been the world's largest creditor nation into the world's largest debtor nation. He genuinely served the rich and powerful at the direct expense of the middle and lower classes. It was Reagan who drew the line between America's "haves" and "have nots". He violated his nation's laws, trashed its constitution and supported terrorism in Central America, South America and Africa. Reagan's hands were sopping with innocent blood by the time he left office. That this man should be revered rather than despised is quite phenomenal.

The Reagan miracle was that he knew what sold. He made America appear powerful again and, to its people, he restored their self-image as dominant and tough. With that parlour trick, Reagan was able to get a blank cheque for policy.

To draw comparisons, Krugman cites a 1993 article in The American Prospect by Johathan Cohn in which the author, "...described how the Interior Department had been packed with opponents of environmental protection, who 'presided over a massive sell-off of federal lands to industry and developers' that 'deprived the department of several billion dollars in annual revenue.' Oil leases, anyone?

"Meanwhile, privatization had run amok, because 'the ranks of public officials necessary to supervise contractors have been so thinned that the putative gains of contracting out have evaporated. Agencies have been left with the worst of both worlds — demoralized and disorganized public officials and unaccountable private contractors.' Holy Halliburton!

"Not mentioned in Mr. Cohn’s article, but equally reminiscent of current events, was the state of the Justice Department under Ed Meese, a man who gives Alberto Gonzales and John Mitchell serious competition for the title of worst attorney general ever. The politicization of Justice got so bad that in 1988 six senior officials, all Republicans, including the deputy attorney general and the chief of the criminal division, resigned in protest.

"Why is there such a strong family resemblance between the Reagan years and recent events? Mr. Reagan’s administration, like Mr. Bush’s, was run by movement conservatives — people who built their careers by serving the alliance of wealthy individuals, corporate interests and the religious right that took shape in the 1960s and 1970s. And both cronyism and abuse of power are part of the movement conservative package.

"In part this is because people whose ideology says that government is always the problem, never the solution, see no point in governing well. So they use political power to reward their friends, rather than find people who will actually do their jobs.

"If expertise is irrelevant, who gets the jobs? No problem: the interlocking, lavishly financed institutions of movement conservatism, which range from K Street to Fox News, create a vast class of apparatchiks who can be counted on to be 'loyal Bushies.'

"The movement’s apparatchik culture, in turn, explains much of its contempt for the rule of law. Someone who has risen through the ranks of a movement that prizes political loyalty above all isn’t likely to balk at, say, using bogus claims of voter fraud to disenfranchise Democrats, or suppressing potentially damaging investigations of Republicans. As Franklin Foer of The New Republic has pointed out, in College Republican elections, dirty tricks and double crosses are considered acceptable, even praiseworthy."

Krugman shows that modern conservatism is indeed "movement conservatism" a far-right wing ideology stripped of any progressive tendencies. It is a movement that advances by dividing, by exploiting wedge issues. It confounds and deceives the center so that it can serve its real constituents on the far right. It strives not for democracy but for oligarchy.

Tell Us Karlheinz, Please Tell Us

Some Canadians, like Stephen Harper for example, think the Airbus scandal is over, closed forever. Others, such as insider Karlheinz Schreiber, believe there's a lot more to this story to be told - and they're right.

Of course Harpo is now best buds with the very guy whose conservative government led to the breakaway of Preston Manning's Reform movement, Brian Mulroney. Looking into Airbus revelations will entail looking at Mulroney and that 2.1-million dollar settlement he extracted from Canada after suing for defamation.

One troubling issue concerns a statement made by Mulroney, under oath, when he was deposed in his defamation action. In his sworn testimony, Mulroney said that he had never had any business dealings with Schreiber. Faced with that statement, under oath, from a former Prime Minister, the Liberal government cratered and settled with the guy for cash and an apology.

A few years afterward, CBC got its hands on Schreiber's European bank records. The statements showed money paid to Schreiber by Airbus, money Schreiber claims was "schmeergelder" or grease money, a bribery fund related to the Airbus/Air Canada deal.

The bank records also showed three transfers from the Airbus money account, each to the tune of $100,000.

Schreiber later told CBC that the money went to Mulroney. He claimed that three times he met Mulroney in a hotel coffee shop and three times he passed him an envelope with $100,000 in cash.

When confronted with this allegation, Mulroney acknowledged the payments which he described as a retainer for legal services to be rendered to Schreiber although there's no evidence of any of this money going into Mulroney's then law firm's trust account or of any legal services actually rendered. Schreiber denies that Mulroney performed any legal services for him.

Another curious point uncovered by CBC was the way Mulroney seemingly handled the money for tax purposes. After the allegation surfaced and Mulroney came up with the retainer explanation, he did a retroactive and amended income tax return declaring additional income. The late Frank Moores, also associated with the Airbus scandal did the same income tax cleanup.

Other than CBC and The Globe & Mail, the discrepancy about the Schreiber payments has never been investigated. Surely if Mulroney claimed, under oath, he had no dealings with Schreiber and, later, when the records came out, admitted he'd received a "retainer" from Schreiber, the evidence our government relied upon in handing Mulroney two million wasn't true.

There's no question that Schreiber is raising this now to bring political pressure to bear while he waits for a May hearing by the Ontario Court of Appeal on his extradition to Germany. However, enough has been uncovered to clearly warrant re-opening the enquiry into the Airbus deal. With his clear conflict of interest, Harper should at the very least explain why he won't look into this.

Warmest Winter Ever

Blame it on el Nino I guess but the US government has determined this winter to have been the warmest since records began being kept in 1880, at least for the northern hemisphere. In the southern hemisphere the period was the fourth warmest on record.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports the 3-month, boreal winter season in the northern hemisphere was 0.91C higher than the previous record in 2004.

The ten warmest years on record have occured since 1995. I guess that one's hard to brush off, eh?

The Greatest Democracy on Earth. Hardly.

Our friends to the south are brought up on a rich diet of America being the greatest democracy on earth. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, they're never reluctant to repeat that claim whenever the opportunity arises. It's too bad. Had they a greater sense of the fragility of their democracy, they might do more to protect it from the abuses that are rampant in their system.

The White House/Gonzales/federal prosecutors scandal provides a window onto how American democracy has been corrupted by the neo-Republicans. The best that George Bush can come up with is that the eight attorneys were sacked because they were lax in prosecuting voter fraud cases. Today's editorial in The New York Times unravels that despicable ruse:

"In partisan Republican circles, the pursuit of voter fraud is code for suppressing the votes of minorities and poor people. By resisting pressure to crack down on “fraud,” the fired United States attorneys actually appear to have been standing up for the integrity of the election system.

"John McKay, one of the fired attorneys, says he was pressured by Republicans to bring voter fraud charges after the 2004 Washington governor’s race, which a Democrat, Christine Gregoire, won after two recounts. Republicans were trying to overturn an election result they did not like, but Mr. McKay refused to go along. 'There was no evidence,' he said, 'and I am not going to drag innocent people in front of a grand jury.'

"Later, when he interviewed with Harriet Miers, then the White House counsel, for a federal judgeship that he ultimately did not get, he says, he was asked to explain 'criticism that I mishandled the 2004 governor’s election.'

"There is no evidence of rampant voter fraud in this country. Rather, Republicans under Mr. Bush have used such allegations as an excuse to suppress the votes of Democratic-leaning groups. They have intimidated Native American voter registration campaigners in South Dakota with baseless charges of fraud. They have pushed through harsh voter ID bills in states like Georgia and Missouri, both blocked by the courts, that were designed to make it hard for people who lack drivers’ licenses — who are disproportionately poor, elderly or members of minorities — to vote. Florida passed a law placing such onerous conditions on voter registration drives, which register many members of minorities and poor people, that the League of Women Voters of Florida suspended its registration work in the state.

"The United States attorney purge appears to have been prompted by an array of improper political motives. Carol Lam, the San Diego attorney, seems to have been fired to stop her from continuing an investigation that put Republican officials and campaign contributors at risk. These charges, like the accusation that Mr. McKay and other United States attorneys were insufficiently aggressive about voter fraud, are a way of saying, without actually saying, that they would not use their offices to help Republicans win elections. It does not justify their firing; it makes their firing a graver offense."

Impartial justice is the breath of democracy. Without it, democracy dies. When any nation's justice system is exploited to manipulate election campaigns, that nation's democracy is mortally wounded. Eight out of the ninety-three prosecutors are gone for failing to prosecute bogus voter fraud cases. What does that say for the remaining eighty-five?

I'm Guilty - Of Everything, Really I Am!

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, al-Qaeda mastermind, is singing like a canary taking the blame/credit for everything from the beheading of American reporter Daniel Stern to the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.

The question becomes if he's just making a lot of this up? He's obviously aware that he's not getting out of this one alive. Rope, chair or injection, he's got a one way ticket to Allah. So what's he got to lose by taking responsibility for every outrage that's blamed on al-Qaeda?

KSM is taking sole responsibility for 28 attacks and plots and shared responsibility for three others including plots to assassinate Pope John Paul and Pakistan strongman Pervez Musharraf.

I wonder if he's responsible for the Hindenburg too?

Nighty Night, Turn Right at the Light

I don't even know if these products are sold in Canada but the US Food and Drug Agency is cracking down on 13-various sleeping pills including Lunesta and Ambien. Apparently they're having some really weird side effects on some users.

Fueled by television and print advertising, sales of these potent products has jumped 60% since 2000. Apparently they work, sometimes too well.

The FDA got involved due to a New York Times article published, "...after some users of the most widely prescribed drug, Ambien, started complaining online and to their doctors about unusual reactions ranging from fairly benign sleepwalking episodes to hallucinations, violent outbursts, nocturnal binge eating and — most troubling of all — driving while asleep.

"Night eaters said they woke up to find Tostitos and Snickers wrappers in their beds, missing food, kitchen counters overflowing with flour from baking sprees, and even lighted stoves.

"Sleep-drivers reported frightening episodes in which they recalled going to bed, but woke up to find they had been arrested roadside in their underwear or nightclothes. The agency said that it was not aware of any deaths caused by sleep-driving."

A study by a forensic toxicologist confirmed that some users really were having weird behavioural problems as claimed. The FDA has ordered that the pharmaceutical companies print more forceful warnings on the products' packaging.

Is It Environmentalism or Is It Managing Environmentalism?

Stephen Harper is a man of deep principles. You may not agree with them, and I hope you don't, but he's a believer in what he believes. That's why his chameleonesque transformation from Mr. "So-Called Greenhouse Gases" to environmental champion has such a hollow ring to it.

In his bid for a majority, Harpo is throwing around all that cash the Liberals left him and he's tossing it about in big numbers - a hundred million here, two hundred million there and there and there too. He doesn't show his face anywhere these days without packing along a 9-figure cheque for the locals.

He's made a lot of noise about the environment and he's doled out a lot of cash but the question remains whether he really gets it or is he really trying to manage what he sees as the fallout of environmentalism. I think Harpo sees the global warming business as something he must appear to accept if he wants to survive. I suspect he's also gambling that the public interest is a fad and that he can best serve his real constituency, the Tar Patch and the province of Alberta, by ensuring that Big Oil and Big Coal get off as lightly as possible.

Hell, the guy just used the Stemlach to fence $150-million tax dollars to the fossil fuel industry. The money went to the province but that was the best way to politically launder it. At the end of the day, it's still a subsidy to the impoverished oil companies, using federal taxpayers' money so that Big Tar doesn't have to spend its own on cleaning up its mess. He fenced it, and it will be laundered but it's still a giveaway to Big Tar.

Of course scores of millions of dollars is just the start of Harpo's gift basket to Big Tar. The real present will be "intensity-based" limits on greenhouse gas emissions. That's about as close to business as usual as our Furious Leader can get without getting lynched by the public. Besides, it's the very same sham policy adopted by his American idol, the chimp in the White House.

This isn't environmentalism. It's damage control and it's a scam.

Pushing Gonzales go the Edge

The US Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, has been caught out - again. He may have just spun one tall tale too many about the firing of eight federal prosecutors.

All along he's assured Congress that the firings weren't politically driven, they were based on performance problems. New documents released show that it was two sides of the same coin. Yeah, they were canned because they didn't perform politically as required.

"D. Kyle Sampson, chief of staff to Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, came up with a checklist. He rated each of the prosecutors with criteria that appeared to value political allegiance as much as job performance.

"He recommended retaining 'strong U.S. attorneys who have … exhibited loyalty to the president and attorney general.' He suggested 'removing weak U.S. attorneys who have … chafed against administration initiatives.'

The corollary to this, of course, is that the other 87 must have been "strong" attorneys who very willingly accepted the administration's initiatives. With an administration as morally reprehensible as this one, chances are that meant being willing to politicize their prosecutions. That might account for the grossly disproportionate ratio of proceedings against Democrats instead of Republicans and the stunning lack of action on profoundly blatant voter fraud cases in Florida and Ohio. Any way you cut it, that's a perversion of justice for the purposes of partisan advantage, something you once saw in courts in dictatorships.

Maybe George Bush simply doesn't care any more. Everything he's put his hand to has pretty much failed - from Iraq to his Mid-East democracy initiative to his aborted Social Security reform. He's so fouled the American presidency that it may take years for American stature to be rehabilitated. So, what's one Gonzales, more or less in this compendium of incompetence and failure?

That's not to say Congress will agree to leave it at that. They've got Bush bleeding in the water and that inevitably attracts sharks.

Global Warming? Blame the Trees

Much of Vancouver Island is logging country. With the fishery and mining in decline, if it wasn't for logging half of this island might not be populated at all. Since the days of the first (white) settlement here, logging has been a way of life.

The logging industry has sometimes been the subject of controversy, at times heated controversy. Environmentalists, often called "tree huggers", have used legal and illegal means to try to halt logging in the remaining old growth forests. Then there's the way some forest companies harvest trees, leaving clear cut swathes when they're done.

Now there's a carbon factor to consider in felling trees. Trees soak up carbon dioxide as they grow. The decaying vegetation, moss and small plants on the forest floor can also, over time, evolve into a carbon sink.

Logging in Canada today creates more greenhouse gas than all the truck and car traffic combined. A Vancouver-based group, ForestEthics has released a report calling for curbs on logging in Canada's boreal forest, the type found in the northern regions of most Canadian provinces.

The effect of logging on global warming was identified in the IPCC reports which claim that a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions can be traced to logging and deforestation.

On Faith and Fundamentalism

Excerpted from American Fascists by Chris Hedges:

God is inscrutable, mysterious and unknowable. We do not understand what life is about, what it means, why we are here and what will happen to us after our brief sojourn on the planet ends. We are saved, in the end, by faith - faith that life is not meaningless and random, that there is a purpose to human existence, and that in the midst of this morally neutral universe the tiny, seemingly insignificant acts of compassion and blind human kindness, especially to those labeled our enemies and strangers, sustain the divine spark, which is love.

These small acts of compassion - for they can never be organized and institutionalized as can hate - have a power that lives after us. Human kindness is deeply subversive to totalitarian creeds, which seek to thwart all compassion toward those deemed unworthy of moral consideration, those branded as internal or external enemies.

Faith presupposes that we cannot know. We can never know. Those who claim to know what life means play God. These false prophets - the Pat Robertsons, the Jerry Falwells and the James Dobsons - clutching the cross and Bible, offer, like Mephistopheles, to lead us back to a mythical paradise and an impossible, unachievable happiness and security, at once seductive and empowering. They ask us to hand over moral choice and responsibility to them. They will tell us they know what is right and wrong in the eyes of God. They tell us how to act, how to live, and in this process they elevate themselves above us. They remove the anxiety of moral choice, the fundamental anxiety of human existence. This is part of their attraction. The give us the rules by which we live. But once we hand over this anxiety and accept their authority, we become enslaved and they become our idols. And idols, as the Bible never cases to tell us, destroy us.

Not Your Father's Terrorists

According to the Washington Post, today's terrorist pretty much defies any sort of ethnic profiling. Take, for example, Bouchra El-Hor from Holland.

"She studied business in college, hung out at the pub with her friends and was known for her fashionable taste in clothes.

"So residents of this 900-year-old river town were thrown for a loop last year when Bouchra El-Hor, now 24, appeared in a British courtroom wearing handcuffs under an all-encompassing black veil. Prosecutors said she had covered up plans for a terrorist attack and wrote a letter offering to sacrifice herself and her infant son as martyrs.

"...terrorism suspects from atypical backgrounds are becoming increasingly common in Western Europe. With new plots surfacing every month, police across Europe are arresting significant numbers of women, teenagers, white-skinned suspects and people baptized as Christians -- groups that in the past were considered among the least likely to embrace Islamic radicalism.

"The demographics of those being arrested are so diverse that many European counterterrorism officials and analysts say they have given up trying to predict what sorts of people are most likely to become terrorists. Age, sex, ethnicity, education and economic status have become more and more irrelevant."

Let'em Eat Canadian Geese

Ah the great Canada goose. We still are caught when we see formations of them fly overhead on their twice a year migration. We're also caught when we run into the leftovers of the growing number who decide they don't want to migrate any longer.

The state of Michigan has become overwhelmed with the waterfowl. A resident population that stood at 9,000 in 1970 has blossomed to 300,000 today. It's a problem that's shared by Canadian cities from Vancouver to Quebec, perhaps even beyond.

Michigan's answer, if it's approved, will be to cull the herd and feed them to the homeless. The slaughtered birds would be sent to Detroit soup kitchens to be served up to the needy.

"Birds have personalities. Some of them found it nice to stay. Once they stayed, they had young, and the young do what the old do and they don't have built-in migration programmed," University of Toronto professor Theo Hofmann said.

"If their parents don't migrate, they don't migrate, whereas other birds have built-in migration. So, regardless of the parents, they migrate."

Canada geese also tend to proliferate because they produce as many as seven goslings a year and have no enemies, he said. Prof. Hofmann has eaten goose -- albeit a domesticated, European species --and describes it as gamey and greasier than duck.

O'Connor Holds Kabul To A High Standard, Really He Does, He Even Says So.

Our slouch of a defence minister, Gordo O'Connor, has raced to Afghanistan after being caught asleep at the wheel (again), this time on the detainee issue.

Obviously not having a clue what he was talking about, O'Connor told the Commons that the detainees were fine because he would've heard from the Red Cross if they weren't. This veteran military man, a retired brigadier no less, had no idea how the Red Cross works.

So Harpo told Gordo to get his camos pressed and get his sorry ass to Kandahar and to be sure to wipe next time before he flushes. Here's what Galloping Gord told reporters when he arrived in Afghanistan. "I want to look the man in the eyes and I want to confirm that they are going to do what they say they're going to do"

Hey Gord, while you're at it, how about you take a few minutes to confirm that you're going to do what you say you're doing. It'd be a good start.

"We use the term detainee abuse but there's no proof that there is any detainee abuse," Mr. O'Connor said. "But it's an important factor because we hold the Afghan government to a high standard."

If he wants proof of detainee abuse, he should contact the US State Department which has issued its own proof of torture and disappearance of prisoners who fall into Afghan custody. As for the "high standard" bull crap, has this loser even figured out that control of this government has come into the hands of murderous warlords, drug barons and common thugs?

Scraping the Barrel to Surge

Salon.com reports that the US is ordering wounded troops unfit for duty back to Iraq to serve in George Bush's surge.

"'This is not right,' said Master Sgt. Ronald Jenkins, who has been ordered to Iraq even though he has a spine problem that doctors say would be damaged further by heavy Army protective gear. 'This whole thing is about taking care of soldiers,' he said angrily. 'If you are fit to fight you are fit to fight. If you are not fit to fight, then you are not fit to fight.'

"As the military scrambles to pour more soldiers into Iraq, a unit of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Benning, Ga., is deploying troops with serious injuries and other medical problems, including GIs who doctors have said are medically unfit for battle. Some are too injured to wear their body armor, according to medical records.

"On Feb. 15, Master Sgt. Jenkins and 74 other soldiers with medical conditions from the 3rd Division's 3rd Brigade were summoned to a meeting with the division surgeon and brigade surgeon. Jenkins and other soldiers claim that the division and brigade surgeons summarily downgraded soldiers' profiles, without even a medical exam, in order to deploy them to Iraq. It is a claim division officials deny."

Salon claims many of these soldiers are being sent to Iraq for their third tours.

Japan's War on Trial

Japan has never found itself able to live with WWII. From its Hiroshima museum to its history books and even its Shinto shrines, the Japanese perspective of the war and that nation's responsibility for it has been deflected if not completely falsified.

There has always existed a bellicose, nationalist force that reached the top levels of Japanese society but lurked in the shadows until recently. Now it lies behind efforts to restore Japan's military and remove the constitutional restraints on its use.

That whole effort now faces a threat to its mythmaking. According to The Guardian, 112 victims of the US firebombing of Tokyo are suing the Japanese government for compensation. The crux of their claim is that, by the time of the air raids, the war was already conclusively lost. Therefore the Japanese government owed its people a duty to end the war - as early as summer, 1944.

Today as Japan prepares to return to full membership in the international fold, it would be helpful for Japan and other nations that were brought into its war to have the true history of those events accepted by Japan and its people.

Manslaughter in Kandahar

A Canadian soldier has been charged with manslaughter in the shooting death last August of Master Corporal Jeffrey Scott Walsh.

The Canadian Forces National Investigation Service has charged Master Cpl. Robbie Fisher, based in Shilo with 2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry regiment, with one count of manslaughter and one count of negligent performance of duty.

Details of the indictments haven't been released but the second charge, negligent performance of duty, suggests the shooting wasn't deliberate.

Is Alberto Gonzales a Marked Man?

George Bush's controversial Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, has to be feeling the heat. With Scooter Libby convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice and with a Democratic Congress happily exercising their power to drag folks in under subpoena to tell it all - under oath - the US administration has become surprisingly co-operative these days.

Despite all the talk about how the Dems are stumbling, their key to victory in '08 is to use little pieces of paper to rip the lid off the past six years of chicanery by the White House and its compliant, Republican Congress. There is much, much to expose and weasels like Gonzales can see the writing on the wall.

At the moment he's on the hot seat over the firings of 8 federal prosecutors. It was something that wouldn't have risen to the level of a belch while the White House was able to rule in secrecy but it's now grown into quite a scandal. What the Dems are eager to show is how the Bushies perverted the nation's justice system to serve their own, partisan ends.

What's at issue is whether the eight prosecutors were fired because they were instrumental in going after Republicans. The flip side to that is whether the other prosecutors, those still safe in their jobs, used their positions to unjustly derail Democrats, especially at election time.

There have been plenty of accounts of investigations announced against Democratic candidates in the midst of election campaigns, investigations that mysteriously evaporated once the polls closed. Does that smack of vote fraud by the justice system itself? Yeah, it does.

When this scandal first surfaced, Gonzales told Congress it was an "overblown personnel matter." He claimed the dismissals were the result of poor performance by the prosecutors affected. It didn't take long to show that was completely untrue. Now the whole business has been tied directly to the White House and Karl Rove.

Bush and his gang have persistently abused their powers since the day they took office in 2001 and they reigned for six years in a state of blissful hubris. Now the Dems, with their little pieces of paper, are about to put that abuse, and the guy who ruled like a monarch, on trial.

Blix Slams Blair on Iraq

Blix, in the eyes of US WarHawks

A common sop about the war against Iraq and the failure to find the WMDs used as a justification for invading is the line about "who could've known?"

Well, if anyone was listening, they could have easily known. The top UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, was telling everyone that they could find no evidence of any weapons of mass destruction. Remember that the UNSCOM inspectors would dutifully inspect, usually by suprise visits, every suspected site that US intelligence could or would point out to them.

Now Blix is poking a sharp stick at Tony Blair's performance in ginning up the evidence for pre-emptive war. In an interview with Britain's SKY News, Blix accused Blair of spinning the truth.

"Describing the conflict as "clearly illegal", Mr Blix, who led the UN search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq until June 2003, refused to specifically accuse the prime minister of open deceit.

"However, he said pre-war intelligence such as the UK government dossier which claimed Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and could deploy some within 45 minutes, appeared to have deliberately overstated the case for war.

"I would never dare to accuse any statesman of bad faith unless I had absolute evidence of it. I do think they exercised spin," said Blix.

So there it is. Blix suspects Blair of outright lying, I'm sure he doesn't have any doubt, but he won't say it unless he's given absolute evidence of it and I don't think TB is about to hand that over just yet.

Time to Cut'N Run - Straight Out of Iraq?

For the Pentagon it seems this is it. Either the current "surge" works or it's time to head for the door and get out of Iraq.

As hard as that may be to believe, the LA Times quotes Pentagon sources as saying it may be time to start gradually withdrawing US troops and concentrate mainly on training Iraqi troops rather than fighting the insurgency.

"'This part of the world has an allergy against foreign presence,' said a senior Pentagon official, adding that chances of success with a large U.S. force may be diminishing. 'You have a window of opportunity that is relatively short. Your ability to influence this with a large U.S. force eventually gets to the point that it is self-defeating.'

"The new round of planning is taking place in an atmosphere of extraordinary tension within the Pentagon, which is grappling with a war about to enter its fifth year and going poorly on the ground while straining U.S. forces worldwide.

"At the same time, the war has created divisions within the Pentagon. Some support the new commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, who advocates using more American forces to protect Baghdad neighborhoods, whereas others back the position of Gen. John P. Abizaid, the retiring commander for the Mideast, who favored handing responsibility more quickly to Iraqis."

There are some, notably in the White House, who believe that even talking about withdrawal will make it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Do You Realize What Being Liberal Means?

A real big thanks to Big City Lib for drawing attention to Conservapedia, the far-right's counter to Wikipedia. You can have some serious fun at this site. For example, I decided to look up Conservapedia's entry for "liberal." Here it is:

"Liberal is often a term used to describe any person who considers themself a strong proponent of a large and controlling government. They believe that powerful bureaucracies are needed in order to provide equality, personal safety and many other services such as health care.
Their speech and actions convey emotional or popular opinion which is often used as a method of solving the perceived problems of society.

Liberals also tend to admire popular or authoritarian figures such as dictators, movie stars, or anyone holding positions of power that are in line with a their own philosophy. Since the election of George W Bush in 2000 they have become overtly angry in their demeanor with anyone who disagrees with them while showing support for dictators such as Hugo Chavez (who recently nationalized many of the industries of Venezuela).

Liberals openly use their collective positions of power within government to perpetuate their causes such as the current popular notion of a man made climate change. (Man Made Global Warming) Scientists who have openly disagreed with this premise have been threatened by the removal of their licenses or titles.
Retrieved from "http://www.conservapedia.com/Liberal"

There you have it. We admire dictators, believe in man-made global warming and use intimidation and threats to silence scientists who disagree.

"The term "liberal" is used often in the United States, Canada and Great Britain. Some examples of liberal beliefs include:

gun control

taxpayer funding of abortion

prohibiting prayer in school

equal rights for men and women

distributing wealth from the rich to the poor

government programs to rehabilitate criminals

same-sex marriage

amnesty for illegal aliens

teaching of evolution

increased taxpayer funding of public school

protection of endangered species

taxpayer-funded rather than private medical care

increased power for labor unions

disarmament treaties

increased taxes

dependence on government programs such as welfare

reduction of millitary expenses"

The site then gives us this, "An alternative definition of liberal is anything that is not conservative."

"For example, the American Heritage Dictionary includes this definition of "liberal": ' Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas ... '"

There's a real nihilistic element to this sort of thinking. It admits of no mutuality of interests or beliefs whether political, economic, religious or social. It thus casts liberals as the natural enemy of conservatives. We skulk about, using "our collective positions of power within government" to "perpetuate" our causes such as the preposterous notion of man-made global warming. There's a real McCarthyist phobia in this thinking.

Germany's Global Warming Albatross

Germany and the autobahns. They can seem almost inseparable and that's just the way most German leaders want to keep it.

Officials of other EU nations have ruffled German feathers by urging the imposition of speed limits on the autobahns. Up till now, speed on the autobahn has been pretty much regulated by the person behind the wheel and the horsepower under the hood.

A spokesman for the German transport ministry claims to have a study showing that a 100 km/hr speed limit would reduce GHG emissions by only 0.6%. Still, polls have shown growing support among the German people for speed limits to reduce GHG emissions.

In Name Only

California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is officially a Republican. Now into his second term a lot of his fellow Republicans think he's not Republican at all and they're griping about it.

One Republican state senator the governor's post-partisan approach as, "the process by which Arnold sits down with Democratic leaders and gets them to do exactly what they wanted to do all along."

Two of the governor's most heralded accomplishments are a plan for cutting prescription drug prices and a program to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. California's Republican legislators were nearly unanimously opposed to both initiatives.

Black - The Movie

Conrad Black is more famous now than at any time in his life. Even al Jazeera has run a story on the guy. His name has been splashed around every major newspaper in the English-speaking world. It's the story of Icarus flying too close to the sun and plumetting into the sea. A man of privilege and wealth who fell victim to his own greed. The stuff that gets churned into movies.

Now I know CBC did a docu-drama on the man but it was far too CBC for mass consumption. No, once the trial is over this will be the fodder for mainstream movie treatment. Perhaps the measure of Black's life will be whether that translates into a real flick or a made-for-TV yawner.

Here's the question: who would you cast to play Lord Black and the other half of this story, Barbara Amiel? I'm having trouble coming up with an actress to play Babs but I have a guy in mind to play Connie - cold, aloof, at times sinister. The only drawback is that he's dead. My pick is Charles Laughton:

O.K. Corral - Kajaki Style

The Independent reports that British commanders are gearing up for what they claim will be the decisive battle for control of Afghanistan. Put simply, the Brits (and NATO) are counting on the Taliban coming out this year, although hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned, and either be destroyed where they stand or mauled so badly that their popular support among the Pashtun people collapses. This, of course, begs the question of whether the Taliban is willing to follow the NATO script.

If the Taliban are simply willing to commit suicide, the Brits' predictions may prove to be right on the money. If the Talib, however, don't want to fight the conventional war, the one where NATO holds all the cards, and instead fight their war, a war of insurgency, then the Brits are wrong. In any insurgency, the decisive year is the final year of the conflict and the odds are 4-1 that turns out to be the year the foreigners pull up stakes and leave.

NATO's Achilles' Heel still lies in the woeful lack of combat boots on the ground. This year they're going to try to clear - and hold - the area around the Kajaki dam to allow the power plant to be repaired. Beyond that, it'll mainly be "search and destroy" type missions, whipping around from place to place, clearing out the bad guys and then leaving and allowing the bad guys to move back in.

I really hope the Taliban are as stupid as NATO is counting on them to be. I hope they get totally trashed this year so that maybe we can just leave the country to the warlords and thugs and drug barons who run the government and get our troops home. I'm hoping and apparently so is NATO.

Stemlach & The Tar Boys Bluffing Ottawa

Alberta's Tar Sands boys are genuine operators, world class. They know how to use scare tactics to deflect problems that are ultimately of their own making. In Alberta Premier, Ed Stemlach, they have their ideal gopher.

The Tar Patch is concerned about the levels of pollution they create. Actually what really concerns them is that they might be compelled to clean up their operations. Clean up = Cost = Less Profit. The last item, profit, is taken to be a right and one that comes with precious few responsibilities beyond that of making more profit.

The ever-helpful Stemlach yesterday told the Tar Patch boys that Ottawa should but out. "We're the trustees. Those resources belong to Albertans and Albertans are the ones who will decide the best way to approach them."

So, let's get this straight: the bitumin (tar) belongs to Albertans and they should decide how it's produced although they are willing to freely share one part of the deal - the pollution - with the rest of Canada and the world. Stemlach's argument might have some validity if Alberta kept all the Tar Sands emissions in Alberta, all of it. But of course, in the many years his government has been in bed with Big Tar, they really haven't found it necessary to be particularly bothersome to this industry - not for ground pollution, nor for water pollution and certainly not for greenhouse gas emissions.

Meanwhile, Big Tar spokesman, Pierre Alvarez, wasted no time before playing Chicken Little. "There's the perception out there that the industry is just going to carry on and continue to grow regardless of what happens out there and I just don't think that is the case. ...we could be in for a period of tremendous uncertainty," Mr. Alvarez said. "When you're spending tens of billions of dollars a year, uncertainty is not helpful."

One thing is clear. Big Tar is willing to go just as far as they're shoved and not one inch further. It's a safe bet they'll continue to puff themselves up and complain and threaten. This bunch isn't going anywhere without a fight and, if it comes down to a fight, they'd much sooner fight a wimp like Stemlach any day.

Food for Thought

The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.

They claim to be superpatriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjugation.

Truman administration Vice-President Henry Wallace, April, 1944.

from American Fascists, by Chris Hedges

The Price of Peace

A genuine conundrum. Afghanistan has the wrong people in government.

Afghanistan's majority ethnic group is the Pashtun. They're in the south and along the border with Pakistan. They have only a marginally effective presence in their parliament and virtually none at all in the cabinet of Hamid Karzai.

The civil war was won (with essential American assistance) by the Northern Alliance, a cobbled-together alliance of warlords and murderous thugs from the Uzbek, Tajik and Hazari regions in the north. When the Taliban and al-Qaeda were driven out, the Americans helped create a supposed democracy. However, the victorious minorities were not about to see another government controlled by Pashtuns and they took over Karzai's cabinet. This is Karzai's conundrum.

The northerners have sought the backing of India, the traditional foe of Pakistan, and they've got it. India backs the Afghan government and its army, if only to give Islamabad fits. Pakistan, of course, has traditionally supported the Pashtun in Afghanistan whose tribal lands are pretty evenly split between the two countries.

Here's the rundown. The minority northerners, who control the Afghan government and army, serve as India's proxies. The majority Pashtun, through their home team, the Taliban, serve as Pakistan's proxies and its main hope of keeping Afghanistan within its influence.

The map shows what an Indian-dominated Afghanistan means to Pakistan. Already outnumbered and massively outgunned by India on its eastern border, it would also face a threat along its western border. Pakistan can't resist helping, or at least acquiescing, to the Taliban's activities in its tribal lands. This is Pakistan's conundrum.

It is not in the interests of the United States to see the Pashtun retake control of their government. America does not welcome the prospect of a return of the Taliban. Pakistan just doesn't have much clout with Washington. The nation they're courting is India, mainly as an ally in containing the threat of Chinese expansion. India is also economically far more important to Washington than Pakistan can ever dream of becoming. This is America's conundrum.

Afghanistan cannot become a genuine democracy when minorities hostile to the majority control the government's key ministries and its security forces. India seeks to undermine Pakistan's influence in Afghanistan and so supports the minorities in control, effectively putting India also in opposition to the Pashtun majority. America also sides with the northern minorities, undercutting Pakistan's influence.

There's your problem - India, Pakistan and America are each exploiting Afghanistan to advance their own, divergent interests. The stability and wellbeing of Afghanistan and its supposed democracy are really secondary factors if they factor in at all. It's the "Great Game" played out in yet another variant and history shows that it's a game that rarely turns out well for the visiting team.

The Nuclear Threshold

Little Bundles of Instant Sunshine

During the height of the Cold War a lot of attention was paid to the "Nuclear Threshold", the point at which the actions of one side would cause the other side to resort to its nuclear arsenal, the point of MAD or "mutually assured destruction", the end of everything.

Back then it was recognized that even tinkering with the nuclear arsenal could destabilize the balance of terror. During his term, Jimmy Carter considered the neutron bomb, a bomb designed to be very heavy on radiation and very light on blast. The idea was that you could use it on an advancing Soviet army, for example, without causing massive destruction and radioactive contamination of the site. The same thing for civilian targets. You could effectively depopulate a city but leave the buildings undamaged.

The neutron bomb was feasible but it was wisely rejected. Saner minds realized it would make nuclear weapons more tempting to use which would cause the other side (the Soviets) to be even more paranoid about an American first-strike.

That's what can happen when you tinker with a nuclear arsenal. It causes everyone else to speculate on what you're up to. It can also cause them to begin building up their own nuclear muscle just in case their worst suspicions become reality. The simple point is we don't need to get Russia or China acting on their worst suspicions.

Now George W. Bush is doing it up real fine. He's doing it up on foreign policy. He's doing it up on defensive systems. He's doing it up on offensive systems too. Let's see - we've got a guy who seems to be unstable staring us in the face and he's brandishing a new shield and a big, new sword. What could he be up to?

It's not what George Bush is up to, it's the perception he gives that is the greatest danger. He's gone unilateral, withdrawn from the nuclear treaty, begun deploying a missile defence system worldwide, and is about to begin production on a new generation of nukes. Add to this his proven willingness to conquer other countries on flimsy pretexts and that he has proclaimed a doctrine of unprovoked, preventative war to ensure that his country enjoys, in perpetuity, "strength beyond challenge."

Now I don't like math any more than the next guy but, pretend you're Moscow or Beijing, and run those six factors through an equation and see what you come out with. Hell, they've even talked about first strike being a valid option. They've talked about using nuclear weapons against Iran's bunkers.

This is the most bellicose president, possibly since 1812, certainly in the past half-century of American history. He's also deceitful, naive, impulsive and ill-informed - putty in the hands of others. Now, factor that into your equation.

Somebody has to pull this clown back from the edge. That has to start by derailing Bush's plan for a new generation of nukes. There's nothing wrong with the existing arsenal. They're reliable and devastating as ever. The new nukes Bush is after would simply make them easier and tidier to use, one warhead at a time. The rest of the world isn't fooled by this. Why should the American Congress allow themselves to be drawn into this lunacy? Why should we all be plunged into another Cold War?

Falwell and Gingrich Wed - Finally

Isn't One Quite Enough?

Hate the sin, love the sinner. Jerry Falwell, hot on the heels of Christain fundamentalist James Dobson, has wasted no time embracing Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich, as you've probably heard, just came clean about screwing around on his second wife during the Clinton impeachment hearings and then taking up with an aide 20-years his junior. That's like the second time the Newtster has pulled that one. However, now that he's considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination, he figured it was a good idea to get this little pecadillo out before he got outed by a rival.

Man, the Christian Right couldn't be happier with the guy. Even Jim Baker and Jimmy Swaggart had to go through a spell of fundamentalist purgatory but not Newt, no sir.

Now the fundamentalists have been going through a bad spell of their own. None of the early Republican candidates were really reliable enough - make that Christian enough - for the religious extremists. John McCain has been trying to turn himself inside out to win the born again backing but he's still not trusted and Rudy Guilliani, well he's a positively unrepentant sinner who is absolutely not to be trusted. Newt, however, there's a man you can deal with and just the guy for the Christian Right.

Oh yeah, back to Falwell. Falwell literally fell over himself to grant Gingrich absolution for his serial sins. No siree, Gingrich, says Falwell, is the real deal, a man redeemed:

"Falwell, in his newsletter, said he has usually been able to tell when a man who has experienced ''moral collapse' was genuinely seeking forgiveness. 'My sense tells me that Mr. Gingrich is such a man,' he wrote."

Now if King Grinch can just get Pat Robertson on side, he'll have the Republican Trifecta. Yes!!!

New York City - Weighing Its Options

There are some parts of the world that are particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels and worsening storms - Bangladesh, for example, or South Pacific island states such as Kiribati and Vanuatu. We don't tend to think of New York as one of these places but it is.

All three of New York's airports now experience some flooding each year and no one is expecting that situation to do anything except worsen. The city itself includes a large number of old, brownstone buildings that are built upon extremely fine sand, leaving their foundations very susceptible in the event of flooding.

It's not so much the rising water that New York fears so much as hurricane-force storms that are expected to increase in both frequency and intensity. Here's a map of areas that may be hardest hit:

Is this just a load of alarmist pap? Well, according to the New York Times, major U.S. insurers don't think so. They've already stopped renewing policies for areas they consider vulnerable:

"Among insurers, all of whom factor climate change into their risk assessments, some like Allstate are already refusing to renew homeowners’ policies in the eight downstate counties (including metropolitan New York) most vulnerable to hurricanes and other major storms that could proliferate in a warming climate."

"Structures at particular risk from storm-related flooding include tenements, brownstones and any building with old masonry foundations, said [structural engineer] Joe Tortorella.

"Mr. Tortorella noted that much of the West Village and Lower Manhattan — neighborhoods whose low elevation renders them vulnerable to flooding — is on a precarious perch. “It’s like the finest sand you can find, so that even if you could put it on a table, you can’t mound it up in a pile,” he said

"In a hurricane or severe northeaster, Mr. Tortorella said, “if the water moves fast enough and recedes fast enough, there could be scouring like a tide that takes sand with it on the beach. As the water recedes, it pulls silt out and could undermine the building. It could be a disaster of epic proportions in New York for the smaller buildings.”

This Sounds Highly Auspicious

Everyone knows the government of Afghanistan and its security services are crippled by widespread corruption. It's one of the main factors driving ordinary Afghans to support the Taliban insurgency. Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, takes the problem so seriously that he has appointed a boyhood friend to be the country's anti-corruption czar. Just one glitch - the guy is a convicted dope dealer. From The Independent:

"Afghanistan's new anti-corruption chief has a shady past. Izzatullah Wasifi served nearly four years in a US prison for trying to sell heroin to an undercover agent in Las Vegas for $65,000.
It is not the ideal CV for a man appointed to root out corruption in the country that is overwhelmingly the world's biggest supplier of opium, from which heroin in refined.

"Mr Wasifi's past came out after an investigation by the Associated Press, which pieced the story together from court records. They revealed that in 1987, Mr Wasifi was arrested at Caesar's Palace Hotel.

"Identifying himself only as Mr E, he tried to exchange a bag containing a pound and a half of heroin for $65,000 (£34,000) in cash, unaware the "customer" was a policeman. Mr Wasifi was released on parole after three years and eight months.

"The government of President Hamid Karzai has refused to say whether it knew about the drugs conviction when Mr Wasifi was appointed to his post two months ago. A childhood friend of Mr Karzai, today he heads an anti-corruption office of 84 people."

Speaking of Clots

Peter Brookes, The Times

But - Gee Whiz, What Happened to Scooter?

Steve Bell, The Guardian

Maybe the European Union Will Lead After All

Just a few days ago it appeared that France and several Eastern European states might sabotage the European Union's ambitions plans to slash greenhouse gas emissions and lead the fight to counter global warming. They tried but they failed.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel held her ground and managed to bring concensus to the 27-nation union. From Spiegel Online:

"At first glance, Merkel -- currently occupying the EU's rotating presidency -- and [European Commission President] Barroso have a lot to celebrate. Everything they wanted to get passed got approved -- and even quicker than the day's agenda called for. For the first time in its history, the European Union has a comprehensive agreement on its climate and energy policy:

"By 2020, CO2 emissions across Europe are to be cut by 20 percent as compared to 1990 emissions.

"Renewable energy sources are to make up 20 percent of the EU's energy mix by 2020 -- up from their current 6.5 percent share."

Spiegel warns, however, that the toughest part is yet to come, implementation:

"The Council has only formulated an abstract goal. The real struggle is reserved for the EU Commission, which now has to negotiate with each individual member state over its emissions and its energy mix. At the summit, Merkel has already had a foretaste of just how much each country defends its own interests, whether that is cheap coal (in the case of Poland) or nuclear power (in the case of France).

"The decision over renewable energy in particular led to heated discussions which could only be defused on Friday morning. France joined together with several Eastern European countries to create a front against the plan proposed by Germany, the UK, Italy and the Scandinavian countries to set a binding target."

Still, the agreement is an important step even if only a tentative, first step. Much negotiation remains to transform the political commitments into tangible emission reductions but the first step has been taken. In this the EU has far outpaced anything proposed in North America.

Why We're Losing in Afghanistan

I've written at length as to why we're not going to win in Afghanistan but sometimes it's good to hear from an expert. Michael Scheuer is an expert - on al-Qaeda and Afghanistan. He retired from the US Central Intelligence Agency in 2005. From 1996 to 1999 he was the chief of the Bin Laden Unit at the CIA's Counterterrorist Center.

Scheuer recently wrote an article published in the journal of the Jamestown Foundation describing how we're mismanaging the campaign in Afghanistan:

"Afghanistan is again being lost to the West, even as a coalition force of more than 5,000 troops launches a major spring offensive in the south of the country. The insurgency may drag on for many months or several years, but the tide has turned. Like Alexander's Greeks, the British and the Soviets before the US-led coalition, inferior Afghan insurgents have forced far superior Western military forces on to a path that leads toward evacuation. What has caused this scenario to occur repeatedly throughout history?

Scheuer writes that Western forces keep making the same mistakes: "...the West has not developed an appreciation for the Afghans' toughness, patience, resourcefulness and pride in their history. Although foreign forces in Afghanistan are always more modern and better armed and trained, they are continuously ground down by the same kinds of small-scale but unrelenting hit-and-run attacks and ambushes, as well as by the country's impenetrable topography that allows the Afghans to retreat, hide, and attack another day." Gee, remember when Rick Hillier was swaggering around, boasting that we were shipping out to Afghanistan to kill a "few dozen scumbags"?

"The latest episode in this historical tradition has several distinguishing characteristics. First, Western forces - while better armed and technologically superior - are far too few in number. Today's Western force totals about 40,000 troops. After subtracting support troops and North Atlantic Treaty Organization contingents that are restricted to non-combat, reconstruction roles - building schools, digging wells, repairing irrigation systems - the actual combat force that can be fielded on any given day is far smaller, and yet has the task of controlling a country the size of Texas that is home to some of the highest mountains on Earth.

"Second, the West underestimated the strength of the Taliban and its acceptability to the Afghan people. When invading in 2001, the West's main targets were al-Qaeda's Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri and Taliban leader Mullah Omar and their senior lieutenants, and because the operation specifically targeted a group of top leaders, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border was not sealed, and so not only did the pursued troika escape, so did most of their foot soldiers.

"Those escapees are now returning in large numbers, and are better armed, trained and organized than on their exit. It seems likely, in fact, that the force being fielded by the Taliban and their allies - al-Qaeda, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Jalaluddin Haqqani, among others - is at least equal in number to the coalition.

"Furthermore, the membership of the force is not just a few Taliban remnants and otherwise mostly new recruits; rather, they are the veteran fighters that the coalition failed to kill in 2001 and early 2002. The Taliban forces are not new; they are the seasoned, experienced mujahideen who are - like former president Richard Nixon in 1972 - tanned, rested and ready to wage the jihad.

"Western leaders in Afghanistan are also finding that many Afghans are not unhappy to see the Taliban returning. Much of the reason lies in the fact that the US-led coalition put the cart before the horse. Before the 2001 invasion, the Taliban regime was far from loved, but it was appreciated for the law-and-order regime it harshly enforced across most of Afghanistan. Although women had to stay home, few girls could go to school and the odd limb was chopped off for petty offenses, most rural Afghans could count on having security for themselves, their families and their farms and/or businesses.

"The coalition's victory shattered the Taliban's law-and-order regime and, instead of immediately installing a replacement - for which there were not enough troops in any event - coalition leaders moved on to elections, implementing women's rights and creating a parliament, while the bulk of rural Afghanistan returned to the anarchy of banditry and warlordism that had prevailed before the first Taliban era.

"Now in the sixth year of occupation, Western leaders are confronted not only by a stronger-than-2001 enemy, but also by the resurgent insularity and anti-foreign inclinations of the Afghan people.

"Today, the Afghans perceive themselves to be doubly ruled, and doubly badly ruled, by foreigners: the US-led coalition and the pro-Western, nominally Islamic, detribalized and corruption-ridden government of President Hamid Karzai. This perception of a "foreign yoke", along with spreading warfare, little reconstruction and endemic banditry, has created a fertile nationalistic environment for the Taliban and their allies to exploit.

"The future for the West in Afghanistan is bleak, and it is made more discouraging by the fact that much of the West's defeat will be self-inflicted because it did not adequately study the lessons of history."

Why are we hearing no discussion of these problems, nothing from Harpo, Gordo and Hillier? Why isn't the opposition raising these issues? Have we succumbed to "stay the course" and "support the troops" because no one has the courage to take a stand? If you really want to support the troops, don't waste their lives on a bungled cause.

Hey Gord, About Those Three Detainees...

Still no word on those three Afghan prisoners Canadian forces handed over to Afghan authorities. For a while our so-called Defence Minister, Gordo O'Connor, tried to mislead Parliament and the Canadian public by claiming the International Red Cross was on to this and surely would have notified Canadian authorities if anything was amiss. Turns out Gordo was pulling that straight out of his ass.

So it's been weeks now since a controversy erupted about these detainees and still no sign of the prisoners or any indication of what happened to them - at least none that Gordo is going to share with you or me or even Parliament.

It turns out a visit to an Afghan prison really isn't conducive to a captive's health or even life, at least according to the US State Department:

"Security and factional forces committed extrajudicial killings and torture," the U.S. report says. Broader "human-rights problems included: extrajudicial killings; torture; poor prison conditions; official impunity; prolonged pretrial detention; abuse of authority by regional commanders; restrictions on freedoms of press, religion, movement, and association; violence and societal discrimination against women, religious converts, and minorities; trafficking in persons; abuse of worker rights; and child labour."

"Canadian troops usually turn detainees over to the Afghan National Police. The State Department said, "The ANP . . . was the predominant government institution responsible for security in the country. Its performance engendered mistrust among the local population, and reports of corruption and mistreatment of citizens in custody were widespread."

Of course Gord thinks that the Afghan National Police, the local gestapo, are a real asset to our troops in winning the "hearts and minds" of the locals in Kandahar province. The man is positively delusional.

How to Corrupt Democracy

We haven't been paying much attention to it here in Canada but a very dark scandal involving the forced ouster of 8 federal prosecutors is unravelling that depicts a calculated effort by the Bushies to undermine democracy in America.

Paul Krugman, writing in today's New York Times, describes the corruption of America's justice department:

"For now, the nation’s focus is on the eight federal prosecutors fired by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. In January, Mr. Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee, under oath, that he 'would never, ever make a change in a United States attorney for political reasons.' But it’s already clear that he did indeed dismiss all eight prosecutors for political reasons — some because they wouldn’t use their offices to provide electoral help to the G.O.P., and the others probably because they refused to soft-pedal investigations of corrupt Republicans.

"In the last few days we’ve also learned that Republican members of Congress called prosecutors to pressure them on politically charged cases, even though doing so seems unethical and possibly illegal.

"The bigger scandal, however, almost surely involves prosecutors still in office. The Gonzales Eight were fired because they wouldn’t go along with the Bush administration’s politicization of justice. But statistical evidence suggests that many other prosecutors decided to protect their jobs or further their careers by doing what the administration wanted them to do: harass Democrats while turning a blind eye to Republican malfeasance."

Krugman cites a study done by two professors into investigations and indictments of politicians since Bush took office. The score: 67-Republicans, 298-Democrats. He also pointed out how candidates backed by Karl Rove tended to find themselves blessed by an FBI "investigation" of a Democratic opponent that almost always evaporated after the election. Does that sound strangely familiar?

According to the ousted federal prosecutors, intimidation was used to try to keep them silent but it didn't work. Now the Democratic Congress can subpoena witnesses to hearings that may just get to the bottom of this dirty business. Krugman predicts, "...we'll learn about abuses of power that would have made Richard Nixon green with envy."

I think this is one story we may all want to follow.

Corrupt judiciary, indefinite detention without charge, secret trials - forget Richard Nixon, this sounds positively Stalinist.

As Long as You Confess on Church TV, It's Okay

Newt by name, newt by nature. The chrubic little salamander, Newt Gingrich, is testing the waters to see if he'd have a shot at the Republican presidential nomination for 2008.

Gingrich, considered the driving force behind the 1994 Republican sweep of Congress, remains very popular among US conservatives, even those who can keep their pants on.

Newt led the charge to impeach Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair. At the time, Repugs were literally gushing with family values indignation, so self-righteous that they spent many times more investigating Clinton than George W. did investigating the 9/11 attacks.

Now before you get into a presidential nomination campaign, common sense dictates that you first clear the decks. You gotta get rid of anything that smells, chuck it over the side, so that one of your rivals won't make you wear it later.

It turns out that Newt, like Clinton, has a problem with his pants. There was the mini-scandal of his first wife who, while beset by cancer, learned that Newt had taken up with another woman. That woman, in fairness, did become Mrs. Newt II. He did clean that mess up - sort of.

Mrs. Newt II held the title from 1981, the end of Newt I, until 2000, the arrival of Mrs. Newt III. That's when it came out that Newt had decided to trade up again, this time to current wife, Callista Bisek, a former congressional aide more than 20 years younger than he is.

Before launching his campaign, King Grinch decided to seek absolution in a TV interview with Focus on the Family founder and fundamentalist uber zealot, James Dobson. The way Newt described it, he was plainly the victim of the whole, sorry business:

''There were times when I was praying and when I felt I was doing things that were wrong. But I was still doing them,'' he said in the interview. ''I look back on those as periods of weakness and periods that I'm ... not proud of."

Oh, c'mon Newt - just a little bit proud, really, eh? You can still score the young'uns.

Drink Nevada Dry

No, it's not a new soft drink, it's what Las Vegas is doing to the rest of the state.

Trying to maintain vast lawns, pools the size of small lakes, fountains and golf courses in a rapidly growing city stuck in the middle of a desert takes a lot of water, a lot more than Las Vegas gets from its 4 inches of annual rainfall.

The city now wants to build a pipeline to drain Nevada aquifers, some 300 miles to the north. Ranchers in that area are less than pleased, especially as they already face shortages from depleted groundwater reservoirs. The city's water commissioner concedes that even the dwindling supply of rural groundwater won't be enough to meet future needs of Las Vegas.

The long term solution, she says, would see Las Vegas pay to build and operate desalination plants along the California or Mexico coast and trade the freshwater from that source for a greater share of the Colorado river flow. Maybe somebody should tell her the Colorado is already under severe stress.

"Quickly"? Is He Joking?

Enviromin John Baird says Canada is going to move "quickly" to regulate pollution from all industrial sectors. That's a promise vague enough to sail an oil tanker through.

"Regulating" pollution isn't necessarily the same as reducing it or eliminating it. The US also regulates pollution and, under its regulations, GHG emissions are expected to increase 20% over the coming decade. That doesn't mean they're not regulating, they are. We've been given plenty of notice that Harpo's bottom line is also "intensity based" regulation, so we too are going to regulate possibly hefty increases in our already excessive GHG emissions.

The other little Harpo dodge came straight from the mouth of our Furious Leader: "We are working through the Kyoto [protocol] process to try and get international action ... that will involve all of the world's major emitters, and as you know, currently, most of the major emitters are not part of the protocol or at least have no targets under the protocol. So these are efforts that are important that we will continue to work on."

So, we're going to "try" to get international action and, after all, you can't blame us if China and India and the US don't hop on board, right? Those are weasel words, weasel talk, something Harpo has in abundance.

The international answer to fighting global warming has to be found in one place, the World Trade Organization. We need to change WTO rules to permit carbon taxes, a form of tariff levied against the exports of those countries that will not act responsibly to cut - as in actually reduce - their GHG emissions in accordance with scientific recommendations. Nations that don't should be penalized, hit in their pocketbooks, while nations that do should be rewarded. Make it a paying proposition and you'll quickly find meaningful global warming initiatives universally embraced. If someone has a better solution, I'd love to hear it.

You'll know Harpo is serious about international action and not merely using it as a dodge when he comes out strongly in support of carbon taxes. Don't hold your breath.

Speaking Truth to Power

I wish Harpo was in Chicago. If he was, maybe he'd load up on a lot of wisdom about the international turmoil now underway in Afghanistan and elsewhere. There's plenty of it to be had in the Windy City from the roughly 3,000 international affairs thinkers gathered there for the annual, International Studies Association convention.
Here, according to James Travers, writing in the Toronto Star, are some of the words of wisdom Harper could find helpful:

"Politicians stiffening national backbones won't find renewed strength in this sampler drawn from four intensive days. There's no guarantee imposing democracy controls terrorism, that being over there necessarily makes us safer over here or, most importantly, that the hope of reconstructing Afghanistan as a stable, modern state is guided by a common blueprint.

"None of that is idle musing. Academic and think tank business is booming in the failed states/security sector and the result is a lot of empirical holes in subjective cloth.

"For example, research predicts that violent groups will cling to their methods even after becoming political parties, Western powers become targets by intervening in essentially local conflicts, and practical short-term tactics make nonsense of the theoretical long-term Afghanistan strategy."

"A steady supply of walk-in suicide bomber recruits is a product of new anger over infidel boots on Islamic soil and not just a manifestation of more deeply rooted grievances.

"And in Afghanistan the goal of winning hearts and minds is being pushed further over the horizon by the day-to-day damage of air strikes in a war fought among the people and by anti-drug policies that make farmers poorer and more vulnerable to corrupt officials."

This isn't revolutionary thinking, far from it. It's actually very conventional wisdom that is simply not heard very often and even more rarely heeded.

First the "Bush Doctrine", Now This

I've written several comments about the quiet arms races underway - in the United States, China, India and even Russia. In no small part, these have been - if not triggered, certain accelerated - by America's unilateralism under George Bush and the infrequently mentioned, bellicose "Bush Doctrine" in conjunction with lesser provocations such as Bush's space doctrine.

George Cheney-Bush has done a great deal of damage to multilateralism and global order. His foreign policy is built on coercive acquiesence ("you're either with us or against us"), not concensus. It is premised on "strength beyond challenge" and not just pre-emptive war but preventative war - war on the pretext of preventing war even if the perceived threat is only "emerging." These are the policies of mad men, something that hasn't gone unnoticed in Beijing and Moscow.

Everybody that matters is going for their guns, strapping on the six-shooters, and, while no one is willing to admit it, they're beginning to mosey on down to the corral.

Now it's Russia's turn. According to The Guardian, Russia is about to unveil a new military doctrine of its own, one that holds NATO and the West as Russia's greatest danger.

In a statement posted on its website, Russia's powerful security council said it no longer considered global terrorism as its biggest danger. Instead, Russia was developing a new national security strategy which reflected changing "geo-political" realities, and the fact that rival military alliances were becoming "stronger" - "especially Nato".

There have been changes in the character of the threat to the military security of Russia. More and more leading world states are seeking to upgrade their national armed forces. The configuration has changed," the council said.

"In particular Russia has been incensed by the US administration's plans to site two new missile interceptor and radar bases in Poland and the Czech Republic.

"Senior figures in the Russian military yesterday told the Guardian they were infuriated by what they regard as Nato's "relentless expansion" into "post-Soviet space" - the countries of former communist eastern Europe and the Baltic. Russia felt increasingly "encircled" by hostile neighbours, they said.

"Yesterday Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said Washington had failed to explain why it wanted to site missile bases on Russia's doorstep. President Putin has ridiculed the US claim that the bases are designed to shoot down rogue missiles from Iran or North Korea, claiming their real target is Russia's nuclear arsenal.

"'We have been discussing this issue with our American colleagues. But most of our questions have remained without coherent answers,' Mr Lavrov said.

"The chairman of Russia's academy of military science, Mahmoud Garayev, said Russia could no longer afford to ignore the threat from Nato. Drugs and terrorism were an irrelevance, he said."

It's not as though no once could've seen this coming. George H.W. Bush presided over the end of the Cold War. His Frat Boy kid may have just brought Cold War back from the grave.

The Malevolence of the Far Right

I don't always agree with New York Times columnist Tom Friedman but I have to agree with his take that the Walter Reed hospital scandal is just one manifestation of how George Bush has tried to run the country as though there was no war at all:

"Mr. Bush summoned the country to D-Day and prepared the Army, the military health system, military industries and the American people for the invasion of Grenada.

"From the start, the Bush team has tried to keep the Iraq war 'off the books' both financially and emotionally. As Larry Diamond of Stanford’s Hoover Institution said to me: 'America is not at war. The U.S. Army is at war.' The rest of us are just watching, or just ignoring, while the whole fight is carried on by 150,000 soldiers and their families."

Welcome to the world of the far-right, a world in which you run huge deficits, fight a war on borrowed money and slash taxes for the rich. There is something genuinely pernicious about people like that.

Kipling's Advice? - Beware

News Alert! We're not the first group to think we can overwhelm the native Afghans with our superior technology and intelligence. They've been playing this game for centuries, since the days of the ancient traders.

In the last couple of centuries these backward, impoverished, primitive and feudalistic people have driven out two British and one Soviet invasion. They've learned that, given enough commitment and willingness to sacrifice, they can easily outdo us in coping in terms of adversity, sustaining casualties over a protracted campaign, and maintaining popular belief and support for their cause. That's why they're able to boast that "you have all the watches but we have all the time."

These people aren't a bunch of Supermen. They don't have secret powers. We, like those armies that went before us, have the power, the technological powers of military sciences and weaponry. They're willing to take clearly losing odds but why? Maybe because they're about the first of the modern-age guerrillas. Maybe because they've been at this great game for so much longer than we have that they believe, truly believe, they can win this. And - maybe because they're right.

More than a century ago, this is how Rudyard Kipling wrote of Afghanistan:

If you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains

And the women come out to cut up what remains

Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains

And go to your God like a soldier.

Kipling learned from these people a century ago that they play to win, so much so that they'll risk annihilation should they lose. They're willing to go twenty years, they're willing to go fifty. We can kill them off in droves but they know that new generations will follow to replace them.

Here, ask yourself this. Name the last bunch of foreigners to defeat these people. To whom did these Afghans last surrender, to whom did they accept defeat and yield? Who has conquered these people, how, and where are these conquerors now? No points for coming up with those who've merely tried.

Then ask yourself this. Who, among the generals, who keep drifting in and out of this counter-insurgency, has had practical, hands-on experience in the field, commanding a company or a battalion or a regiment, in a successful counter-insurgency?

Far be it for me to claim these Afghans can't be defeated. They can, given enough manpower deployed over enough time under rules brutal, even barbaric enough to tame civilian and insurgent alike. But are we ready to go that far back to the time and place where their wars are fought, even today, and would we really be willing to welcome home our soldiers if we did?

It's Not Going to Happen

Maybe we really are lemmings but in just about every corner of the northern hemisphere there are signs that governments are dragging their heels on effectively reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The Global Warming poster boy, the United States, says the best it can do is a 20% increase in GHG emissions over the next decade. Our own prime monster, Harpo, seems intent on following suit with his own "intensity based" targets. The two emerging, economic superpowers - India and China - have shown little commitment to curbing GHG emissions although China has been talking a lot about it lately. Now we have the European Union, the place where many hopes were anchored, beginning to balk. From Spiegel online:

"France and 10 other countries, including several in central Europe, have already indicated that they are uncomfortable with binding targets or quotas.

"The EU currently accounts for about 14 percent of global greenhouse emissions. Yet, as emerging economies such as China and India grow, Europe's share of the worlds emissions are receding. China is already second only to the United States in its CO2 pollution. On Monday China's Prime Minister Wen Jiabao announced that the country would do more to save energy and cut pollution, but he didn't set any specific targets.

"The left-wing Die Tageszeitung writes.

"'To reduce the emission of greenhouse gases in a market economy, it has to be made more expensive ... The easy way is to implement an environment tax: The increase in income from energy consumption then flows directly towards reducing other taxes and expenditures.'

"'Some European Union countries obviously want to prevent an agreement on binding emissions targets -- and do not want to accept penalties in the case of failing to meet these commitments.'

If Europe folds and fails to put in place binding and effective measures to reduce GHG emissions, I expect it will set the tone for the remainder of our northern hemisphere. Washington and Ottawa will certainly use it for all it's worth to justify their own lax GHG policies and our vacillation will undoubtedly be pounced upon by China and India for the same purpose.

That's not to say that the day isn't coming when all of these nations finally get the "GHG" problem. As drought, floods, violent storms, warming, desertification and population migration reach a certain threshold of destruction and economic disruption, attitudes will change. The problem is that threshold is very likely to be past the tipping point.

Well, at least we can't say we didn't have one last opportunity to confront the problem and do something meaningful. Of course, we'll be gone by then. It'll be the generations we've bequeathed this to that will do the talking. I can only imagine what they're going to think of us.

If we continue to treat the solutions, imperfect as they are, as a burden rather than an opportunity, we're heading down a path where we'll eventually confront much greater burdens that will dictate our future for countless generations to come.

Libby Guilty on Four Counts

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby has been found guilty of two counts of perjury, one count of making false statements and one count of obstruction of justice. Libby was acquitted of a single count of lying to the FBI.

The verdict came after 10-days of jury deliberations following a 7-week trial.

Libby's lawyers announced they'll file a motion for a new trial and, if that doesn't work, they'll appeal the convictions.

The Coalition Strikes Back

It's On! Or at least we're told it's on. About 4,000 British soldiers, along with about 300 Canadians and 1,000 Afghans have launched a campaign in Helmand province in the region of the Kajaki dam where the Brits have wrestled with insurgents all winter.

This time NATO is taking on more than just the Taliban. They're also targetting the drug trade and what are now called "narco-terrorists."

The offensive, named "Operation Achilles", isn't intended to fix and destroy the insurgents but to drive them out of the area and win the "hearts and minds" of the locals.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. With the bulk of Britain's combat troops committed to this area the Taliban could choose to exploit their absence in other parts of the province. Or the insurgents could choose to lay low and bide their time until NATO declares victory and returns to its garrisons.

The worst possibility is that the Taliban have deliberately drawn the bulk of Britain's combat force to the Kajaki area to make it easier for them to strike elsewhere. This wouldn't be the first time Afghan guerrilas have played that trick.

Paying For Our Own Poison

Maybe that's the way we need to look at the coal-fueled world, especially China. We ship our manufacturing jobs over there where they use cheap labour, lax environmental laws and a coal-fired economy to produce cheap goods we then buy. Put another way, we're driving their coal-driven economic miracle.

But it's not just attractively priced Chinese products we're getting out of this. We're also getting the end-products of all of that burned coal and that seems to be hitting us hard just when we least need it.

A team of researchers from Texas A&M university believe that coal soot discharged into the atmosphere by India and China could be responsible for some of the freakish weather we've been experiencing in Canada and the US.

They believe the particulate pollution drifts high over the Pacific where it results in cloud change and more intense storms - the sort that battered Vancouver over the winter. They believe these intense storms will change wind patterns globally.

Renyi Zhang, an atmospheric scientist at A&M, told the Globe:

"'You are probably going to have extreme weather, cold winters or warm winters. I just can't say. The impact needs to be further evaluated,' he said.

"'The bottom line is that if you change the weather in one region you are going to change the weather everywhere and you are going to change the climate, basically.'

"He and his colleagues reached their conclusions using satellite data collected between 1984 and 2005, as well as climate models. He says he knows it is controversial to suggest that winter storms may in part be man-made.

"'First we found the evidence that storms are getting stronger. Second, we believe we have made a link to the pollution in China. People may have different opinions.'

We need to get to the bottom of this - fast. What is the point of paying India and China for their products if it's going to mean also allowing them to deliver meteorological mayhem to our shores? The longer we wait the harder this is going to be to correct. The planet may just not be able to afford the economic miracles of China and India.

Our Trigger-Happy Partner

They have to do better than this or we have no business fighting alongside them.

The US Army is blaming purported insurgents for its actions in calling in an airstrike with two, 2,000 lb. Mk. 84 bombs on a house that left five adult civilians and four children dead. It was the insurgents that made them do it, right?

These murderous buggers better realize that they can't claim it was the insurgents, real or imagined, that made them call down two, massive aerial bombs on a house. No, that decision, and the death of the innocents that inevitably resulted from it, lies directly with the American forces who called in the airstrike.

This was nothing short of butchery. The fact is they didn't give a damn how many people they killed, insurgents or innocents, in that airstrike. Those lives meant nothing, absolutely nothing, to those involved in these homicides. These people do not deserve our support, much less the sacrifice of the lives of our own soldiers. If they want to slaughter civilians, they don't need our help.

Now, Do We Treat Him?

Doctors have discovered a blood clot in Dick Cheney's leg. It's the sort that could be fatal if left untreated. No word yet on whether the doctors have decided he's worth saving.

We're Number One!

We are, Numero Uno and all that but there were a lot of duds in the competition.

Canada came out tops in a BBC survey asking respondents to rate 12-countries - Britain, Canada, China, France, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, North Korea, Russia, the United States and Venezuela - as having a positive or negative influence in the world. The broadcaster surveyed 28,000 people to come up with its results.

Bottom slot went to Israel then Iran and the US.

Canada topped the list followed by Japan and France. Britain, China and India were also viewed somewhat positively.

"'It appears that people around the world tend to look negatively on countries whose profile is marked by the pursuit of military power,'' said Steven Kull, director of the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes, which conducted the research along with pollster GlobeScan.

"Countries that relate to the world primarily through soft power, like France and Japan and the EU in general, tend to be viewed positively,'' he added.

"Pollsters questioned about 1,000 people in 27 different countries, including the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China, India, Brazil, Mexico and Australia; as well as four predominantly Muslim countries: Egypt, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia; and two countries with large Muslim populations: Lebanon and Nigeria."

Maybe somebody should tell Harpo that we don't need to brandish a lot of guns, Canada is already pretty well respected without them.

Firepower Backfires

Tanks and artillery and jet fighters are great - when you're fighting someone else's tanks and artillery and jet fighters. In tackling an insurgency, however, relying on mega-firepower actually increases your already high chances of failure.

There's a new study out making this very point. From the Washington Post:

"Two political scientists recently examined 250 asymmetrical conflicts, starting with the Peninsular War. Although great powers are vastly more powerful today than in the 19th century, the analysis showed they have become far less likely to win asymmetrical wars. More surprising, the analysis showed that the odds of a powerful nation winning an asymmetrical war decrease as that nation becomes more powerful.

"The analysis by Jason Lyall at Princeton University and Lt. Col. Isaiah Wilson III at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point shows that the likelihood of a great power winning an asymmetrical war went from 85 percent during 1800-1850 to 21 percent during 1950-2003.

"The same trend was evident when the researchers studied only asymmetrical conflicts involving the United States. The more industrialized a powerful country becomes, the more its military becomes technologically powerful, the less effective it seems to be in an asymmetrical war.

"Essentially, what Lyall and Wilson are saying is that if you want to catch a mouse, you need a cat. If you hire a lion to do the job because it is bigger and stronger, the very strength and size of the lion can get in the way of getting the job done."

"While the findings are of immediate interest because of the situation in Iraq, the social scientists are really trying to address a systemic issue: America has gotten stuck in the Hollywood notion that a military with ever more powerful armaments is a more effective military.

"Reversing that view will be difficult because it calls into question the utility of giant defense projects, Lyall said. Also, the findings lend credence to the politically unpopular notion that successfully prosecuting an asymmetrical war, such as the one in Iraq, requires a large fighting force and, possibly, high casualties as troops asked to blend in with local populations become vulnerable targets for insurgents."

The Lyall and Wilson analysis is useful if only for restating a reality that's been heard repeatedly before - by everyone, it seems, except our political and military leaders. The most important weapon in fighting an insurgency is a massive number of boots on the ground - not tanks, or fighter jets or artillery - but enough soldiers to actually secure the countryside. So long as the insurgents can come and go relatively unmolested, they're almost guaranteed to win.

You can't control, you can't secure a territory the size and nature of Kandahar province with a battle group of 1,000 soldiers. It can't be done. That's why we wind up calling in air strikes and artillery on civilians, unnecessarily handing a tactical victory to our enemies. That's why we wind up dependent upon corrupt, local security forces whose main contribution seems to be to drive the population into the arms of our enemy.

The latest American manual on counter-insurgency warfare says we need 25-soldiers for every 1,000 locals, living where they live, keeping them safe from the insurgents day and night. In Kandahar province we need a force of 22,000 minimum. Oh well, only 21,000 left to go, eh?

American Fascists - Hedges on Creationism

Taken from American Fascists.

Chris Hedges on Creationism:

"The danger of creationism is not that it allows followers to retreat into a world of certainty and magic - which it does - but that it allows all facts to be accepted or discarded according to the dictates of a preordained ideology. Creationism removes the follower from the rational, reality based world. Signs, miracles, and wonders occur not only in the daily life of Christians, but also in history, science, medicine and logic. This belief system becomes the basis for understanding the world, and random facts or data are collected and made to fit into the belief system. If facts can't be made to fit, they are discarded or treated as misguided opinions.

"When facts are treated as if they were opinions, when there is no universal standard by which to determine truth in law, in science, in scholarship or in the reporting of the events of the day, the world becomes a place where lies become true, where people can believe what they want to believe, where there is no possibility of reaching any conclusion not predetermined by those who interpret the official, divinely inspired text."

Should NATO Demand American Restraint?

Let's see:

1. We're in Afghanistan because another bunch of foreigners, al-Qaeda, used the place to train and prepare for the attacks of 9/11. America was attacked and NATO responded.

2. We're still in Afghanistan almost six years later because the country we're supporting under the NATO charter chose to go off on a lark of its own in another country, Iraq.

3 We're still in Afghanistan because the bulk of the ground forces the US has deployed in the region are stuck in Iraq and can't be sent to Afghanistan.

4. Now, America is toying with the idea of taking on another Muslim state, Iran.

5. An American attack on Iran could unite the Muslim people, within Iran and throughout the rest of the world of Islam, whether Shia or Sunni, and bring them to see our efforts as part of a genuine crusade against Islam.

6. NATO forces in Afghanistan are stuck smack in the midst of the Muslim world, surrounded by worrisome countries like Pakistan and - oh my, Iran.

We already have an unmanageable front to our south and east, the border with Pakistan. American airstrikes on Iran would open another front, this time to the west.

Now, our forces on "the mission" are already overstretched. What lies in store for them if the White House brings a new bunch of problems in from the west, from Iran?

I think our leaders, Harpo included, need to demand unequivocal assurances from the Bush regime that it won't attack Iran so long as our own people are in harm's way in neighbouring Afghanistan. We're already paying the price for their Iraq adventure. We don't need to fight Iranians also.

Damned Idiots!

Why, oh why, can't they figure this one out.

Trigger happy US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan are going on a spree killing civilians. You could also say they're on a massive recruiting drive - for the Taliban.

Yesterday following a suicide bomber attack, American troops opened fire on a group of civilians, mowing down 16 of them. The US military admits that after first claiming they victims were likely killed by insurgent gunfire.

Today - well today they're killing kids. The way the US military spokesman puts it, they spotted two guys with guns going into a house so they called in an airstrike on the place.

They called in massive firepower on a residence without knowing who was inside because they "saw" or thought they saw a couple of men with guns in a country where people just tend to have guns.

The airstrike killed 5 adults and 4 children between the ages of 6-months and 5-years.

The US military admits the aircraft dropped two, TWO THOUSAND POUND BOMBS, on the residence. What in God's name is anyone thinking when dropping two, one-ton bombs in a residential area? These are "area weapons." They kill everyone - innocent or suspect - within their huge blast area.

If this is the way we - and our allies - are going to conduct this war, it's time we got out because we have lost the moral high ground we like to boast about so much. This isn't warfare, it's butchery. Gunning down civilians in the street, blowing up kids in their homes. If those were our townspeople lying dead in the street and our kids' corpses in the rubble of their home, how do you think we would react?

We all have to share some part of this. Our leaders are determined to wage this war on the cheap. We don't have a fraction of the troops needed for this job. That both increases their vulnerability and limits their options when they do fight back. We're using the indiscriminate overkill of aerial bombardment because it's comparatively cheap and we don't care enough about these civilians to do this job properly.

Remember, this is a war for the "hearts and minds" of the Afghan people. What goes through those hearts and minds when word of these atrocities gets out, and it quickly does? Is this a preview of how we're going to fight the Taliban's spring offensive this year, by waging our war against insurgent and civilian alike?

Just in case you're curious, here's some information on the Mk. 84, 2000-pound bomb used on this house:

The Mk. 84 (pictured above) carries 945 lb of Tritonal, high explosive. It is capable of forming a crater 50-feet wide and 36-feet deep. It generates lethal fragmentation to a radius of 400-yards.

Let's do the math. Anything standing within a 2,400 foot diameter circle of this bomb can be killed. A 50-foot wide crater, 36-feet deep is pretty much going to obliterate a mud house and everyone inside. Now, try dropping two of these.

Clean Up Call for the Tar Sands

A Commons committee has urged the government to force a substantial reduction in emissions by the oil companies operating in the Athabasca Tar Sands. From the Toronto Star:

"The regulations should also ensure that future oil sands expansion is done in a way that does not "jeopardize" Canada's obligations under the Kyoto climate change accord, says the yet-to-be released report of the natural resources committee, obtained by the Star.

"'The mounting environmental and social costs associated with oil sands activities ... make it increasingly clear that it would be irresponsible to continue on a `business-as-usual' course. It is time to being the transition toward a clean energy future,' says the report, dated Feb. 28 and marked "Confidential."

"The report says by harnessing new technologies, such as pumping carbon dioxide underground, and by buying credits from companies that have already reduced their emissions more than required, the oil sands could have net emissions of zero within the next 12 years.

"The report was to have been tabled in the Commons this week, but was delayed.

"Because MPs yesterday began a two-week break, the report now is at risk of not being tabled until after the Tories have announced emission-reduction targets for the largest industrial polluters, which include the oil sands."

The recommendations won't go down well with Harpo who wants to avoid significant GHG emission reductions by opting for the ruse known as "intensity-based" targets. Once again aping his mentor, George Bush, Harpo is content to keep rolling the dice even though they're loaded against the country and the planet.

Another Global Warming Problem - Shipping

Like it or not, our global economy relies on shipping to transport goods and materials around the planet. There has been a lot of attention lately to the greenhouse gas emissions of the airline industry but now we're learning that shipping produces twice as much GHG as air traffic. It's not covered under the Kyoto protocol or any other legislation either and it's expected to increase by as much as 75% in the coming 15 years.

Researchers from the Institute for Physics and Atmosphere in Germany used data from the oil company, BP, which owns 50 tankers. They found that annual GHG emissions from shipping currently reach upward of 800 million tonnes.

The global shipping fleet now has about 70,000 ships with orders outstanding for an additional 20,000 vessels.

Bush Environmentalism Up In Smoke

This is what the Frat Boy calls environmental progress. A leaked government report predicts that, under George Bush's "intensity reduction" programme, US greenhouse gas emissions will increase in the coming decade just as much as they have in the past ten years.

Naturally the White House, in its increasingly delusional manner, claims this will be a real achievement. White House environmental spokesman, Kristen A. Hellmer, said on Friday, “The Climate Action Report will show that the president’s portfolio of actions addressing climate change and his unparalleled financial commitments are working.”

In the period 2002-2112, total US GHG emissions are expected to increase 11 per cent, compared to an 11.2 per cent increase in the previous ten years.

Ms. Hellmer said Mr. Bush remained satisfied with voluntary measures to slow emissions.

Naturally Bush is not without supporters such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute which applauds the current regime for its success. Myron Ebell, who directs climate and energy policy for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a group aligned with industries fighting curbs on greenhouse gases, said Mr. Bush was right to acknowledge the inevitability of growing emissions in a country with a growing population and economy.

The Bush booster, CEI is just about what you would expect from what we've seen from these right-wing nutjob think tanks. Here's just part of the summary of the Competitive Enterprise Institute from Sourcewatch.org:

"CEI's Michelle Malkin and Michael Fumento published "Rachel's Folly," which claims that dioxin is good for you. [6] CEI's Jonathan Tolman (who holds a bachelor's degree in political science), published a study that month titled "Nature's Hormone Factory," claiming that naturally-occurring chemicals produced by plants and other living organisms are as dangerous as industrial chemicals. [7] In December of that year, CEI submitted comments opposing the EPA's proposed air quality rule to limit particulate emissions, claiming that "the EPA has failed to consider whether the proposed standard may actually increase mortality due to reductions in disposable income that compliance efforts may produce. ... At all times regulation imposes costs that mean less real income to individuals for alternative expenditure. That deprivation of real income itself has adverse health effects, in the form of poorer diet, more heart attacks, more suicides."

I guess if dioxins are good for you then greenhouse gas emissions must be positively splendid. It's remarkable that the media still parrot the garbage these bogus "think tanks" spew out, especially without revealing just how pernicious these groups are.

Not suprisingly, our very own Furious Leader, Harpo, also favours "intensity based" targets just like his American Idol.

What's Coming - The Next IPCC Report

Der Spiegel has got the scoop on the next IPCC report due out in April. The German news mag has obtained a copy of the report. Here are some of the highlights from Spiegel online:

"The main conclusion of the report is that climate change is already having a profound effect on all the continents and on many of the Earth's ecosystems. The draft presents a long list of evidence:

Glacial lakes are increasing in both size and number, potentially leading to deadly floods
Permafrost in mountainous regions and at high latitudes is warming increasing the danger of land slides.

As the temperature of rivers and lakes rises, their thermal stratification and water quality is changing.

River currents, affected by melting glaciers and ice, are speeding up during the spring.
Springtime is starting earlier, causing plants to bloom earlier and changing the migrations of birds.

Many plants and animals are expanding their habitats into mountainous regions and higher latitudes that are becoming milder.

The authors of the report have sifted through some 30,000 data sets from more than 70 international studies documenting changes to water circulation, to cryospheres (ice zones), as well as to flora and fauna over a period of at least 20 years.

Many natural resources are likely to fall victim to climate change according to the IPCC draft report:

Some 20 to 30 percent of all species face a "high risk of extinction" should average global temperatures rise another 1.5 to 2.5 degrees Celsius from their 1990 levels. That could happen by 2050, the report warns.

Coral reefs are "likely to undergo strong declines."

Salt marshes and mangrove forests could disappear as sea levels rise.

Tropical rainforests will be replaced by savanna in those regions where groundwater decreases.

Migratory birds and mammals will suffer as vegetation zones in the Artic shift.

The IPCC expects the following world regions to suffer the most due to climate change:

The Arctic due to the greatest relative warming

Small island states in the Pacific as sea levels rise

Africa south of the Sahel zone due to drought

Densely populated river deltas in Asia amid flooding

This list alone makes abundantly clear that mankind will not escape these changes unscathed.

The UN climate panel expects "increasing deaths, injuries and illness from heat waves, floods, storms, forest fires and droughts." The draft summary for policymakers details "heat-related mortality" especially in Europe and Asia.

Several hundred million people in densely populated coastal regions -- particularly river deltas in Asia -- are threatened by rising sea levels and the increasing risk of flooding. More than one-sixth of the world's population lives in areas affected by water sources from glaciers and snow pack that will "very likely" disappear, according to the report.

The climate experts detail the potential consequences for most of the world including Europe, Africa, Asia, the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, polar regions and small Pacific islands. For the most part, global warming will have negative effects for both humans and the environment across much of the planet. The positive aspects -- such as better agricultural and forestry yields in northern Europe -- will be more than outweighed by the threats presented by rising temperatures and the perils that accompany them.

The draft also makes clear just how strongly the authors stand behind their forecasts. Most of their conclusions belong to category two, which means the researchers back them with "strong certainty." Some are even designated "very strong certainty," including the example that North America will be hit by stronger forest fires and heat waves in large cities, as well as the assumption that climate change poses the biggest risk to small island states.

The experts apparently do not have concerns about the planet's food production capabilities. Conditions for agriculture are likely to improve in higher latitudes, leading to greater global yields overall. However, numerous developing countries are likely to be hit by greater periods of drought at the same time -- thus threatening their populations with hunger. The climate panel expects yields in the north and deep south only to begin to sink once temperatures rise by more than three degrees Celsius. Overall, they put "average trust" in their predictions about food production.

Rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the Earth's atmosphere will at first help the plant world. Vegetation growth will be stronger and the planet will become greener. The absorption of CO2 by plant life will to a certain extent work against climate change, but not forever. "In the second half of the century terrestrial ecosystems will become a source of carbon which will then accelerate climate change," the IPCC report warns.

Although the inhabitants of poorer, developing nations are likely to suffer the most from climate change, the IPCC report makes clear that richer industrial nations such as the United States are also at risk. North America, the report cautions, is hardly prepared for the "growing risks and economic losses caused by rising seas, storms and floods."

The IPCC report also explicitly details the threat posed by tropical storms. Climate change is expected to increase the number of strong hurricanes leading to the concern that insurance companies might refuse to cover damages in regions threatened by such storms like New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf of Mexico.

According to information obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE at the end of February, the climate panel will demand radical changes and massive investment against global warming in the third part of the IPCC report expected to be released in May in Bangkok. Some $16 billion (€12.1 billion) will be required by 2030 and humanity only has until 2020 to turn back the trend.

5 Good Reasons, 5 Bad Reasons to Criticize Israel

I found this article at Haaretz.com, a liberal Israeli newspaper. It's really something to think about:

Five of the following are reasonable. Five are not.

This is a reflection, if nothing else, of the duality of leftist criticism of Israel. There are leftists whose critiques are clear-eyed, factually valid, morally on point. And then there are those for whom Israel represents a blood-boiling factory of evil, an entity whose very existence is an affront, an abomination. Those who are convinced, and seek to convince the world, that the Jewish state should cease to exist.

"Why does the left hate Israel? Here are five good reasons:

1. Because Israel's policies are frequently marked by gratuitous humiliation of and disdain for the Palestinians.

2. Because Israelis can live with this. If the policies hinted at in 1. above are associated with a status quo which Israelis find tolerably calm and Palestinians find unbearable, even lethal, Israel's leaders often view this as a viable and even optimal outcome.

3. Because Israel, in practice, values settlements more than it values social justice.The right will tell you that there is no contradiction between settlements and social justice. Which would be true if there were no Palestinians, and if the Palestinians did not view the land occupied by settlements as theirs, historically, legally, and morally. And which would be true if the same consideration offered settlers in fixing the route of the West Bank fence were applied to Palestinians, that is, were farmers not cut off from their fields, pupils from their schools, and close relatives from one another.

The right will tell you that the settlements are no obstacle to peace. But that same right will also argue that the settlements are the only real bulwark between the Palestinians and an independent Palestine.

4. Because Israel, even in withdrawing from Gaza, has left it to die. It is not lost on leftists that many Israelis reap a distinct satisfaction from the Palestinians' inability to help themselves, govern themselves, save themselves. Leftists may note that Israel has done everything in its power to convince the world to deny much-needed aid to a democratically elected government, and that Israel has not acted as a neighbor whose primary concern is an eventual peace.

5. Because of the propensity of Israel's leaders to demonstrate arrogance, claim a monopoly on the moral high ground, set non-negotiable demands to which Palestinian politicians cannot agree, then condemn Palestinians for intransigence.

Here, then, are five bad reasons:

1. The Palestinian cause is inherently progressive.As currently constituted, Palestinian governance is marked by institutional graft, widespread human rights violations, curbs on press freedoms, tribalism, blood feuds, murders of women on the basis of contentions of preservation of family honor, and celebration of the targeting and killing of non-combatants as a legitimate form of resistance to occupation.

2. Israel remains the sole root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the reason it remains unresolved.As root causes go, both sides have demonstrated profound intransigence, both sides have violated agreements with abandon, both sides suffer from extremists whose power to destroy a peace process far outweighs their proportion of the population.In addition, the contention that Israel is solely responsible suggests that the solution of the Mideast conflict is the dissolution of Israel.

This brings us to:3.

Israel is a Jewish state.For a vocal minority of leftists, this fact alone - coupled with the following two arguments - is enough to call into serious question Israel's right to exist. This argument, which holds that the formally Jewish nature of the state enshrines an unconscionable level of racism, dovetails with:

4. Israel is an apartheid state.See Occupation: It's horrid, but it's not apartheid

5. Israel's actions are comparable to those of Nazi Germany.This contention may be the genuine litmus test for anti-Semitism on the left. In the end, the compulsion to accuse Israel of genocide, while turning a blind eye to wholesale slaughter in Darfur and elsewhere, tends to say a great deal more about the accuser than the accused. "

Haaretz is a welcome voice of moderation. It recognizes that others can criticize Israeli policies and actions without being anti-semitic just as some critics truly are anti-semites.

al-Qaea Moving Shop

More revelations from Syed Saleem Shahzad in today's Asia Times. He claims al-Qaeda is moving shop, from the Afghan/Pakistan region to Iraq.

"According to people familiar with al-Qaeda's thinking who spoke to Asia Times Online, Osama bin Laden's deputy and the group's ideologue, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, sees potential for the group to capitalize on a possible US war over Iran. Relocating the al-Qaeda leadership from the Afghan-Pakistani border areas would put it closer to this new "epicenter".

"In addition, the relationship between al-Qaeda and the Taliban has cooled after the Taliban's decision to strike a deal with Pakistan over support for the insurgency in southwestern Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda refuses to deal with any state, including Islamabad.

"The al-Qaeda leadership is biding its time, banking on sufficient chaos in Iran and Iraq for it to move to the Middle East, according to Asia Times Online interactions with various sources."

It's likely that this is indeed what Shahzad has been told by his al-Qaeda contacts but there's no way of knowing whether it's true. What I'd like to know is whether al-Qaeda is too busy packing up for the move to take a role in the Taliban's spring offensive this year.

Is It Arab Culture or Religious Extremism?

In his NYT column today, Thomas Friedman threw in the following translation of a poem by a Saudi:

"When you cannot find a single garden in your city, but there is a mosque on every corner — you know that you are in an Arab country.

When you see people living in the past with all the trappings of modernity — do not be surprised, you are in an Arab country.

When religion has control over science — you can be sure that you are in an Arab country.

When clerics are referred to as “scholars” — don’t be astonished, you are in an Arab country.

When you see the ruler transformed into a demigod who never dies or relinquishes his power, and nobody is permitted to criticize — do not be too upset, you are in an Arab country.

When you find that the large majority of people oppose freedom and find joy in slavery — do not be too distressed, you are in an Arab country.

When you hear the clerics saying that democracy is heresy, but seizing every opportunity provided by democracy to grab high positions — do not be surprised, you are in an Arab country.
...
When you discover that a woman is worth half of what a man is worth, or less — do not be surprised, you are in an Arab country. ...

When land is more important than human beings — you are in an Arab country. ...

When fear constantly lives in the eyes of the people — you can be certain you are in an Arab country.”

I expect these are valid criticisms of today's Arab way of life but as I went through this list I began to wonder if some of these didn't fit the lives of the fundamentalist Christian right:

- People living in the past with all the trappings of modernity
- When religion has control over science
- When clerics are referred to as "scholars"
- Rulers transformed into demi-gods who never die or relinquish their power
- Clerics who say [secular] democracy is heresy yet seize every opportunity provided by
democracy to grab political power
- Where a woman is subordinated to a man.

I think a lot of this wisdom isn't confined to the Arab world at all but is rooted in religious fundamentalist extremism of any faith.

New Nukes for the Nucular Frat Boy

Just so long as those pesky little countries don't get any big ideas.

Lawrence Livermore has won out over the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the competition to design and build America's new and improved, next generation of nuclear weapons.

The new nukes will be the first new nuclear weapons for the US in twenty years.

Preparing for the Worst

Writing today in the International Herald Tribune, Peter Charles Choharis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, calls for a new American mission for Iraq:

"The recently issued National Intelligence Estimate predicts that in the next 12 to 18 months, the security situation in Iraq will continue to deteriorate at rates comparable to last year, when tens of thousands of Iraqis were killed monthly and many more fled. According to the report, "sustained mass sectarian killings," assassinations of key religious or political leaders or "a complete Sunni defection from the government" could trigger a total collapse.

"No one in the Bush administration or among the Democrats disputes the forecast. They are ignoring it.

"President George W. Bush is sending tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops into Iraq. Most Democrats want to withdraw troops (some immediately) and let the Iraqi army and police secure the country, even though the National Intelligence Estimate says Iraqi security forces are not likely to be capable of that in the next 12- 18 months.

"Both President Bush and the Democrats demand that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki's government make tough political choices, even though the Parliament has regularly lacked a quorum because members are too frightened to attend.

"Neither the administration nor the Democrats are planning for a worst-case scenario.

"If Iraq collapses, the United States must have in place detailed plans and budgets to secure safe havens for Iraqi noncombatants; to configure a troop deployment capable of responding to mass migrations; to stockpile food, shelters and medicine for masses of internally displaced civilians, and to vastly expand the paltry $35 million spent last year on Iraqi refugee assistance.

"Beyond legal and moral reasons, America has strong strategic interests in preventing a humanitarian disaster. Abandoning Iraq could create failed states that fund and protect terrorists. Regional wars could erupt as Saudi Arabia and others intervene to protect Sunnis while Iran does the same for Shiites, or as Turkey moves against Iraq's Kurds, and the entire region scrambles for Iraq's oil. Millions of Iraqis would try to flee to America, Europe and elsewhere in the Middle East.

"The Bush administration contends that "failure is not an option" in Iraq. If humanitarian relief becomes part of our mission, then no matter what happens in Iraq, the United States can still achieve victory."

And Then What?

It's a scenario we've seen played out time and again over the last five years. Some US official shows up in Pakistan complaining loudly about Islamabad's failure to crack down on al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Then, within a day or two, Pakistan announces the arrest of one or maybe two of the terrorists. But then what?

Just what does Pakistan do with the Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives it captures? Are they interrogated, Pakistani style? Are they charged with some sort of crime and, if so, what? Do they stand trial? Do they go to prison? Or, are they detained for a while and then set free out the back door?

It's been pretty well established that: 1) Musharraf holds power at the suffrance of Islamists; 2) his military intelligence service is both powerful and continues to support the Taliban; 3) Pakistan always seems to be dragging its heels on capturing the bad guys; and 4) Pakistan continues to allow the Taliban and al-Qaeda to operate pretty freely in Waziristan.

With this track record, I'd really love to know just what Mushy does with these guys once the cameras are turned off.

Keeping Him Honest

George Cheney-Bush's pants are about to burst into flames. That accounts for the White House's sudden retreat from its years of claims that North Korea had an advanced uranium enrichment programme.

As the New York Times points out, it's the US, not N. Korea, that may have some explaining to do when UN nuclear inspectors return to Pyongyang.

"...we suspect that this week’s confessions of doubt about North Korea had less to do with a sudden burst of candor than the fact that Pyongyang has agreed to readmit nuclear inspectors — who probably won’t be able to find the active uranium enrichment program the administration has been alleging for more than four years. Add to that the White House’s eagerness for a diplomatic win in these bleak times — and its insistence that a nuclear deal cannot go ahead if the North is believed to be hiding things — and you understand why the White House might find this truth so convenient.

"Late may be better than never, but it isn’t nearly enough to make up for the damage caused. And we haven’t even raised the issue of Iraq and its long-gone weapons.

"Let’s be clear. The North Koreans had and have an illicit nuclear arms program. They tested a device from their plutonium-based program last October. And Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has admitted that North Korea bought some 20 centrifuges — useful only for enriching uranium — from Abdul Qadeer Khan’s nuclear black market.

"The problem is that the Bush administration eagerly spun those 20 centrifuges into an industrial-scale enrichment program, and then used it as an excuse to scuttle a Clinton-era deal to close down the North’s plutonium-based weapons program. Four years later, the North set off that test."

Why I Can't Stand Stephen Harper

I don't like Harpo, not one bit. I guess that's because I don't trust him. He's the master manipulator, second to none. He lacks vision but he's up to his eyeballs in plans.

I don't like Harpo because he doesn't like me. Chances are, he doesn't care much for you either. It's no secret. He's come out repeatedly to make disparaging remarks about Canada and Canadians, slurs that reveal what this guy is truly made of.

We know pretty well what Canadians are and their common values. Studies and polls upon polls have shown that we have a consistently centrist, liberal viewpoint and values. Harpo doesn't share those values or that viewpoint. He can't stand what we stand for. It makes him embarrassed when he discusses Canada with his extremist right-wing pals in America. I embarrass Harpo and so do you. Harpo does not stand with the people of Canada, Harpo stands above them.

There was a time when the Conservative party wasn't ashamed of the modifier, "Progressive." Harpo put an end to that. There's nothing remotely progressive in his vision of Canada.

I guess what I most don't like about this guy is that he worries me. He instinctively wants to meddle, to adjust the structure of Canada to his peculiar liking. He simply lacks the necessary understanding of the country for that. Harpo sees Canada from a uniquely Albertan perspective and, viewed that way, the country looks a lot different than the Canada that most of us see. I suspect it is because of his skewed focus that he so wants to meddle.

Harper wants to change our core institutions. He'd like to wage a divestiture of federal powers, a devolution of those powers to the provinces. He wants to transform the Commons and, even more, the Canadian Senate. He wants to make Canada more acceptable to Alberta and he figures he can do it before anyone has a chance to stop him.

Remember the last prime monster who wanted to shape Canada in his ego maniacal image? That was Brian Mulroney. He wanted to transform Canada into Brianland so much that he schemed and connived and manipulated until he had the premiers join him in signing a document to change the country without Canadians themselves having any say in the matter. That was the Meech Lake accord.

It was a lousy deal that would have created two classes of Canadians and an actual living, breathing country within a country, Quebec. Go back and have a look at the "distinct society" clause that was thrown into Meech to get Bourassa on side.

What was more important about Meech was what was not prescribed, what was not agreed upon. I remember reading the Ottawa papers in which Mulroney assured us all that Meech would bring peace with Quebec. The distinct society clause would bring Quebec fully into Canada and end the perpetual bickering. Mulroney stated with great pomposity that, in exchange for the distinct society clause, Quebec would be willing to have the "notwithstanding clause" expunged from the constitution. We would all be one.

Mulroney was lying through his teeth. The guy who was telling the truth was Quebec premier Robert Bourassa. He was candid throughout although English Canada wasn't paying much attention. Bourassa said that Quebec had no intention of abandoning the "notwithstanding clause" but insisted on it being retained. In conjunction with the distinct society clause, the two measures would have operated to arguably give Quebec de facto sovereignty within Canada. It would have imbued Quebeckers with a supranational status, setting them apart from other Canadians instead of bringing us all together. Further, Bourassa also refuted Mulroney's promise that Meech would end Quebec's constant demands. Bourassa quite openly said that Meech was just a beginning and anything but an end. He said that the day after the constitution was amended Quebec would say "thank you very much" and put forward further demands.

Mulroney was completely out of his depth and so eager to claim the mantle of Second Father of Confederation that he tried to impose an agreement in which there was far less agreement than he'd promised.

Fortunately Clyde Wells mustered up the courage to block Meech without acceptance by the Canadian people in a referendum. That led to Meech II, the Charlatan Accord. The same nonsense repackaged to make it more appealing to the electorate. Fortunately, the Canadian people were willing to do what their premiers were not, the same premiers who had tried to pull this stunt behind our backs. We threw the accord where it belonged, in the garbage bin.

Opening constitutional negotiations in Canada is like going to war. You don't start it unless you have a clear exit strategy. Mulroney didn't have that. Because of his clumsy pursuit of his ego, Mulroney left the country in a position where to refuse his scheme would stoke separatist fury in Quebec.

Remember Lucien Bouchard? It was Mulroney who brought him to prominence in Ottawa and it was Mulroney who positioned Bouchard to storm out and lead perhaps the most powerful separatist movement Quebec has known. In the ashes of Mulroney's flawed gambit we found the separatist juggernaut that Mulroney himself had launched. His legacy was the horrible mess in which he left Canada.

I think Mulroney, for all his flaws, was a brighter man than Stephen Harper. Harpo is a divider. Like a carnivore, he looks for wedge issues with which he can cut a few prey out of the herd. It's a sleazy characteristic, opportunist and mean. I don't want a person of Harpo's fused intellect and lamentable character to again open the Pandora's Box of constitutional amendment.

When Mulroney showed up on the scene as PC leader, Canadians flocked to his party and he scored massive, back to back majorities. When he first ran for the Tory leadership I saw in him all the worst of the mythical snake oil salesman. Mulroney made me cringe when I first noticed him, during all his years as prime minister and even today he gives me the same recoil I get in smelling sour milk.

I never voted for Muldoon although plenty did. They did it not once but twice although it's hard to find anyone these days who'll admit to voting for Mulroney in his second, general election. Still they did put Mulroney into power and that, to me, shows how vulnerable the Canadian electorate can be to manipulation, Harpo's best skill.

Tinkering with our constitution requires wisdom, national vision and measured diplomacy. A petulant and aggressive divider like Harper can wreak great mischief on this country before anyone has a chance to do anything about it. I expect that he would bring the same wedge and divide tactics that have served him so well in his slippery rise to power.

We don't know Stephen Harper. The problem is, he'll keep it that way until he gets a majority in parliament and we'll be the worse off for that.

Don't You Look at Me - I Mean It

I Don't Think It's This Guy Either

The Times of London reports that a controversial Catholic Cardinal says the Antichrist is coming:

"An arch-conservative cardinal chosen by Pope Benedict XVI to deliver this year’s Lenten meditations to the Vatican hierarchy has caused consternation by warning of an Antichrist who is 'a pacifist, ecologist and ecumenist.'

"Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, 78, who retired as Archbishop of Bologna just over three years ago, quoted Vladimir Solovyov (1853-1900), the Russian philosopher and mystic, as predicting that the Antichrist 'will convoke an ecumenical council and seek the consensus of all the Christian confessions'.

"The 'masses' would follow the Antichrist, 'with the exception of small groups of Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants' who would fight to prevent the watering down and ultimate destruction of the faith.

"The choice of Cardinal Biffi raised eyebrows in the Vatican, given the cardinal’s forthright and sometimes eccentric views. The cardinal warned of the coming of the Antichrist during his two decades as Archbishop of Bologna, and said an “invasion” of Muslim immigrants was undermining Europe’s Christian values."

And we thought Pat Robertson was a nutbar.

Digging Up the Dirt on Mark Sykes

From: The Telegraph

That's Sir Mark Sykes to you and me and scientists are hoping he can give them critical insights in the fight against bird flu and other pandemics - 90 years after Sir Mark succumbed to the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1919.

The focus has fallen on Sir Mark because he was buried in a lead-lined coffin. Researchers hope the coffin has allowed the body's DNA to remain intact.

Researchers, "believe analysis of Sir Mark's genetic material could uncover new information about the H1N1 virus which killed him, and help to develop drugs to fight modern forms of the disease such as bird flu (H5N1)."

Green Light for Cybrids

From: The Telegraph

They're called "Cybrids", the product of implanting a human cell into the egg of a cow or rabbit. The result, as shown in The Telegraph diagram above, is an embryonic hybrid that, genetically, is almost entirely human.

Britain has decided to permit its scientists to being experimenting with Cybrids in the quest for "new treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cystic fibrosis, motor neurone disease and Huntington's."

Cybrids are supposed to be destroyed with fourteen days. This research has expressed concerns that it may go beyond Cybrids and extend to Chimeras, a creature composed from the cells of zygotes of two different species.

Straight Talk - Australian Style

Remember Carson Kressley, the flamboyant blonde guy from "Queer Eye For The Straight Guy"? Well, he's at the centre of a blatantly homophobic barrage by an Australian radio broadcaster that has been upheld by Australian authorities as allowable:

Veteran Aussie broadcaster John Laws delivered the following tirade in response to Kressley's inclusion as a judge at a fashion contest:

"'He was judging girls - now what the hell does a pillow-biter know about judging girls?' Laws asked.

"'They should have had a few truckies down there, or me….fair-dinkum Aussie blokes judging fair-dinkum Aussie girls. Not this pompous little pansy.'

"'I remember when Australia was a land of proud, dedicated women and hard-drinking and hard-talking men. Why this sudden proliferation of pansies I don’t know. The sooner this fairy flies out and lets us judge our own women on our own criteria the better.'

"Declaring Australia a land of 'truck drivers, wharf labourers and free thinking red-blooded men,' he then went on to play a recorded message incorporating the words 'piss off pansy'".

The Australian tribunal which judges complaints about this sort of thing found Laws remarks hateful, "We rule unanimously that the statements that Mr Laws made constituted homosexual vilification, because they incited severe ridicule of homosexual men on the ground of their homosexuality."

Having done that, the tribunal then concluded the remarks were protected, "By majority, we rule further, however, that his publication of these statements on the radio fell within an exception established by the (Anti-Discrimination) Act that is designed, within appropriate limits, to preserve freedom of expression. Our majority decision is accordingly that the publication was lawful."

Only in Australia, eh?

The Iraqi Exodus

From The Telegraph

They're doctors and engineers, teachers and administrators, Christians and other religous minorities - all battered by Iraq's ongoing civil war. Two million have left Iraq outright, another 1.8 million remain displaced within the country.

Good News from Big Pharma

You may have never heard of Sanofi-Aventis but it's the fourth-largest drug company in the world and based in Paris. Working in partnership with the charity, the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, the company has introduced a new, cheap and effective drug to fight malaria.

The medicine goes by the name, ASAQ. It blends two of the most powerful malaria-fighters, artemisinin and amodiaquine. Not only is it effective but it's affordable even for third world countries. A treatment for an adult costs a dollar and consists of two pills a day for three days. Treating a child comes in at just half a dollar.

Malaria takes the lives of 3,000 African babies and children - each day. That's about a million or more every year.

Best of all, Sonafi has decided not to patent ASAQ so that it can be produced even more cheaply by generic drug companies in countries like India.

The Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative was set up in 2003 by Doctors Without Borders to develop partnerships with major pharmaceutical companies aimed at developing cost-effective drugs for tropical diseases.

Got Pain? Toke Up!

The medical journal Neurology has published a study that is being hailed as conclusive proof that marijuana is a valuable pain reliever.

The study focuses on peripheral neuropathy, a condition that results in severe pain. Neuropathic pain in HIV patients is similar to the type of pain experienced from many other illnesses including diabetes and multiple sclerosis.

Writing in the Boston Globe, Lester Greenspoon, says the study merely reinforces what's been known all along:

"Neuropathic pain is notoriously resistant to treatment with conventional pain drugs. Even powerful and addictive narcotics like morphine and OxyContin often provide little relief. This study leaves no doubt that marijuana can safely ease this type of pain.

"As all marijuana research in the United States must be, the new study was conducted with government-supplied marijuana of notoriously poor quality. So it probably underestimated the potential benefit.

"In the 19th century it became a well-established Western medicine whose versatility and safety were unquestioned. From 1840 to 1900, American and European medical journals published over 100 papers on the therapeutic uses of marijuana, also known as cannabis.

"Our knowledge has advanced greatly over the years. Scientists have identified over 60 unique constituents in marijuana, called cannabinoids, and we have learned much about how they work. We have also learned that our own bodies produce similar chemicals, called endocannabinoids.

"The mountain of accumulated anecdotal evidence that pointed the way to the present and other clinical studies also strongly suggests there are a number of other devastating disorders and symptoms for which marijuana has been used for centuries.

"While few such studies have so far been completed, all have lent weight to what medicine already knew but had largely forgotten or ignored: Marijuana is effective at relieving nausea and vomiting, spasticity, appetite loss, certain types of pain and other debilitating symptoms. And it is extraordinarily safe — safer than most medicines prescribed every day.

"If marijuana were a new discovery rather than a well-known substance carrying cultural and political baggage, it would be hailed as a wonder drug."

Slate

Slate

Way Out of Line

Japan's right-wing prime minister Shinzo Abe claims there is no evidence that Japan coerced Asian women into working as sex slaves during WWII. His remark flies in the face of the Japanese government's admission in 1993 that it set up and ran brothels with "comfort women" for Japanese troops.

"The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coercion," Abe said. "We have to take it from there."

"Historians say that up to 200,000 women, mainly from Korea and China, were forced to have sex with Japanese soldiers in brothels run by the military government as so-called "comfort women" during the war.

It's estimated that 80-90% of these comfort women were Korean girls taken forceably from their homes, given a medical check and shipped off to the brothels.

Staying French

France is not known for fat people. In France, 9 per cent of the population are obese and less than a third are overweight. In North America it's closer to a third obese and two thirds overweight.

It sounds like the French are intent on staying French-like. According to a report in the LA Times, France is introducing health warnings on food packaging:

"Beginning Thursday, the government ordered food ads to carry cautions telling the French to stop snacking, exercise and eat more fruits and vegetables.

"With processed snacks and fast food encroaching on France's tables and culinary traditions, health officials fear the nation's youth face a growing risk of obesity.

"The ad restrictions fly in the face of the image of the trim and cuisine-conscious French, perpetuated by books like Mireille Guiliano's best seller "French Women Don't Get Fat." The book argues that the French can eat croissants and foie gras without ballooning because they take time to savor flavors and eat judiciously.

"But the growth of processed snacks and ready-made meals with high fat, salt and sugar are changing that image.

"And France and the World Health Organization are particularly worried about an obesity epidemic striking the young and bringing future health risks with it, such as diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease. WHO warns that 20 percent of children across Europe are overweight, their ranks swelling by 400,000 a year.

"Other European countries have already taken measures along the lines of France."

It sounds like a pretty sensible idea, doesn't it?

New Rule - One War at a Time

If that rule had been in place in 2001, the world would probably look a lot different today.

Imagine if the American military had gone into Afghanistan, helped toss out the Taliban, and then made its top priority wiping out al-Qaeda and subduing the warlords while establishing a functional government in Kabul backed by an Afghan army genuinely capable of defending the country.

That might have happened if the US had a "one war" rule, you only launch one war at a time. You don't launch a second war until you've wrapped up the first. That would also leave you with the capability to fight a second war if one was thrust on you by another country.

A "one war" rule is especially important today when the electorate is increasingly unwilling to support protracted campaigns. You have to finish what you start before you exhaust that essential public support. "No dessert unless you eat your vegetables" - we get taught that by our moms.

Canada didn't go along with the Iraq folly. That's as much because Harpo wasn't prime minister as because Chretien was. We didn't go to Iraq so we won't have to bail out like just about every other country, save Australia, is doing. But that doesn't mean we're not paying the price for the White House ignoring the "one war" rule.

al-Qaeda probably could have been wiped out in 2001 but now its resurgent and, worse, decentralized throughout the Muslim world and even into our own. Bush has played into bin Laden's hands from the moment he decided to invade Iraq, an astonishing combination of hubris and abject stupidity. So now we're still faced with the threat of al-Qaeda and the Salafist and Jihadist spin-offs it has spawned.

We're paying for Bush's folly in still being stuck in Afghanistan, bracing ourselves for combat with a resurgent Taliban. We've been there for five years, plenty of time to establish a functional government and (with a lot of effort and commitment) produce a functioning army and security service capable of defending that government and the country.

Plenty of time indeed. Boosters of the war point to genuine progress that we've made and there has been progress. That'd be great if only the other side, the bad guys, hadn't made so damned much progress themselves. The drug lords have made progress. The warlords have made progress. The Taliban is resurgent and Pakistan has become quietly defiant. By all accounts, their progress far outstrips ours. There's the problem.

We've squandered the one thing we have the least of and need the most - time. This thing was supposed to be over long ago. Hillier told us we were just going over there to kill a few dozen "scumbags" in Kandahar and we've killed many dozen already and there are more coming our way.

There are alarms going off that a failure in Afghanistan will mean the end of NATO. If it does it's because key members - Germany and France (sort of) - have decided they would prefer a more rational alliance, one among the European Union membership, one that isn't going to be America's foreign legion. Don't forget that Bush tried very hard to cajole NATO into jumping into Iraq also. No, George Bush has lost the confidence of the other NATO leaders save, of course, for our own.

Imagine where we might be today if we'd only started this millenium with a "one war" rule.

Time to Narrow Canada's Growing Income Gap

It's not just a Canadian problem. From America to India the income gap between the rich and the poor is widening rapidly. In the US, the percentage classified as extremely poor has grown rapidly since George Bush took office.

According to a report in the Toronto Star, a staggering four out of five Canadians families are working more and earning a smaller share of the national wealth than they did thirty years ago:

"What's more, the growing income gap has hit a record high during an economic boom, a period when traditionally the gap between rich and poor has shrunk.

"'The rich are getting richer, the poor aren't going anywhere and there are fewer people in the middle to mediate the two extremes. We ignore these trends at our collective peril,' says the study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, an independent research institute concerned with issues of social and economic justice.

"The report, titled 'The Rich and the Rest of Us,' shows that the richest 10 per cent of families with children – those with incomes more than $131,200 in 2004 – earned 82 times the amount earned by the poorest 10 per cent. In 1976, the richest families earned 31 times the amount of the poorest families.

"The bottom half of families raising children, those earning less than $60,000 in 2004, earned less or stayed the same, in inflation-adjusted terms, compared to a generation ago. Those in-between worked more hours just to keep pace."

Even addressing this situation as a problem is enough, these days, to get a person branded a raving socialist but it is a problem that has to be addressed by the next federal government. Harpo would kiss Satan's feet before he'd take any meaningful action on this problem.

The report cites four factors contributing to the problem: minimum wages that have fallen behind inflation; the loss of well-paid manufacturing jobs and the increase of poorly-paid jobs in the service sector; the decline in the unionized work force; and the increase in temporary and contract (no benefits) employment.

"The study's focus on families is deliberate. Families busy raising children are among the most time-pressed of Canadians. And yet, the report notes, all but the richest Canadian families are spending more time at work.

"The average Canadian family with children clocked almost 200 more hours of work in 2004 compared to nine years earlier. Only the richest 10 per cent of families didn't work more hours between 1996 and 2004. And yet they were the only ones to see major increases in earnings."

While I don't expect Harpo to do much to reverse this problem, I wonder whether in the world of globalization and free trade there is much that any federal government can do.

Good To Go - Not?

The judge associated with the 1989 Dryden air crash and the subsequent overhaul of aviation safety in Canada has warned that spending cuts are setting us up for another air disaster.

Judge Virgil Moshansky conducted the probe into the 1989 Dryden crash. Now he says that government funding cuts to Transport Canada are recreating the conditions that led to the previous disaster. From the Toronto Star:

"Virgil Moshansky yesterday issued a scathing condemnation of Ottawa's move to give Canada's air carriers greater responsibility to oversee the safety of their operations. "Today, 18 years after Dryden, history is repeating itself, only worse," Moshansky told the Commons transport committee.

"'Cost-cutting is again in vogue at Transport Canada, and has been for some time,' he said.

"At the centre of the debate is a move by Transport Canada to give both large and small air carriers more responsibility for overseeing their own safety, a new regime known as safety management system (SMS).

"While icing on the wings was blamed for the crash of an Air Ontario Fokker F-28 jet that killed 24 people at Dryden, Moshansky's three-year inquiry uncovered serious problems at Transport Canada, including lax oversight of airlines that allowed safety problems at Air Ontario to go unchecked.

",,,at the time of the Dryden inquiry, there were 1,400 aviation inspectors, about 400 short of what was needed for adequate oversight, he said. Today, there are between 800 and 850 inspectors.

"He urged the committee to recommend more funding for the department so it can properly carry out oversight and enforcement and avoid 'the slippery slope to another Dryden.'

"'In the interests of the safety of the Canadian air travelling public, I urge this committee to reject the proposed dismantling of the aviation regulatory oversight system,' he said.

"Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon defended the move, saying it added a layer of safety.

"But Moshansky ripped that defence, saying that the department is eliminating its oversight role. He urged the committee to recommend legislative changes to ensure whistle-blower protection, proper regulatory oversight and adequate funding."

Better Late Than Never

Six years of bombast, threats and violence have served the United States very poorly. Afghanistan and Iraq testify to the dangers of relying too heavily on military options, especially without the committment to see them through.

I've sometimes wondered where Bush's army would be stuck now if he hadn't invaded Iraq? In the wake of 9/11 there was an almost evangelical fury that attached to American foreign policy that made the use of force a much more valid option. If Iraq didn't exist I think the Bush administration would have found some other country to attack. Back then the thinking was to take a little country, throw it against a wall, and use that as an object lesson to all the other troublesome little countries. It was intended to cement the New World Order foreseen by the Project for the New American Century, the neo-cons.

Dangerous and unstable as the world was in September, 2001, the events since then have made it a much more dangerous, unstable place today. The shine has worn off the military option these days. Just keeping the existing wars going is straining not only the American military but also the British and even our own forces.

It was encouraging, therefore, to read a piece in today's New York Times about a shift in American foreign policy to talking instead of threatening:

"Administration officials insisted Wednesday that the new overtures, including an agreement to join Iran and Syria in talks on Iraq, did not mean there had been a change in policy. 'There is no crack,' the White House spokesman, Tony Snow, said. 'A number of people have been characterizing U.S. participation in a regional meeting as a change in policy; it is nothing of the sort.'

"But foreign policy experts, administration critics on Capitol Hill and former diplomats disagreed, saying the administration appeared to have recognized the extent to which it had tied its own hands by insisting on talking only to friends. Even Ms. Rice had called the opening to Tehran and Damascus a 'diplomatic initiative.'

“'The question isn’t whether the axis of evil is dead; it’s alive as it was yesterday,' said Daniel P. Serwer, a vice president at the United States Institute of Peace and a former diplomat who served as executive director of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. 'The question is whether the concept, as it was applied, is dead. And it’s absolutely clear to me that you have to talk to who you have to talk to, in order to get things done.'”

Ultimately, pursuing the diplomatic option will benefit both the administration and the Pentagon. Both win when military force is seen for what it is - an absolute, last option.