Sadr - 1, Maliki - 0

Muqtada al Sadr got a step closer to taking power in Iraq this past week.

Nouri al-Maliki gambled everything, including his own reputation, in personally leading the Iraq army's assault to clear Basra, promising a "decisive and final battle," only to see his numerical and firepower superiority go up in smoke as Iraqi soldiers were repeatedly mauled and ground down by Sadr's irregulars, the Mahdi Army.

The balance of power has shifted. A number of factors have come into play. One is that Sadr's forces have shown they can and will resist the government forces, even in the face of American air support. The Mahdi Army has shown that Sadr cannot be eliminated militarily. Baghdad is going to have to accommodate him. The fighting showed that the success of the "surge" was more Sadr's doing than that of Bush or Petraeus. Maliki, already seen as politically weak, has now shown himself as militarily weak also.

This wasn't just between rival Shia factions. The Sunni were watching closely, so were the Kurds. Now they've seen just what they can expect to be up against if they get into a shooting match with Baghdad and, if anything, they're bound to be (to use Bush's favourite word) "emboldened." Maliki may have just scuppered any hopes Maliki and Bush had of meaningful compromises to forge a united Iraq.

So Maliki lost this opening game but there are several more to be played. Iraq has provincial elections coming up in October and then there's the World Series in Washington in November. Every group in Iraq must be planning how they'll be spending the long, hot summer that's just around the corner.

Sadr acted brilliantly in calling off his militias when he did. They had already achieved their political objectives and engaging in a war of attritition at this point could have left the Mahdi Army too weak to exploit whatever opportunities may come along over the next six months.

What must be running through Maliki's mind? Possibly visions of the end.

Just When You'd Lost All Faith In The RCMP

Along comes the news - surprise, surprise - that utterly disgraced RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardeli intervened to slap Ralph Goodale's name right on a pivotal press release that may well have handed Stevie Harper a ticket to 24 Sussex Drive.

Now according to RCMP Complaints Commissioner/smokescreen Paul Kennedy, there was no evidence that Zaccardelli's intervention was politically motivated. Mr. Kennedy, of course, is the man least able to find evidence of anything untoward in any complaint against the RCMP.

“I have found that Commissioner Zaccardelli made the final decision to issue the letter and news release, and he likely also provided the impetus and direction for the production of those documents. There is no evidence that Commissioner Zaccardelli relied on any improper considerations in coming to his decisions."

No evidence at all, none whatsoever. I mean, just because Zaccardelli plastered Goodale's name on the press release and then released it, by fax, not to the press but first to an opposition MP, that's not evidence of anything improper, is it?

Of course the most telling point of the Kennedy absolution is found in this line from the Globe & Mail:

"Mr. Kennedy said that Mr. Zaccardelli and several senior members of the RCMP policy centre, which was responsible for the conduct and communication of the income-trust investigation, refused to provide him with any information about the disclosure."

Oh, now I get it. There's no evidence of any wrongdoing because all those who would have any knowledge of it refused to talk to the guy who then blithely exonerated them.

After standing on his head to the delight of bystanders, Kennedy went on to do the splits, adding that the RCMP has no policy on notifying complainants when an investigation is initiated into a complaint. “Clearly if you have no policy you can't break policy,” he said.

There you go, classic Kennedy. What a waste of skin.

2008 Election GORED!

Al Gore may be the most influential politico not to be running in the 2008 US presidential election.

Gore plans to hold the candidates' feet to the fire over global warming. On this evening's 60 Minutes, Gore unveiled a $300-million initiative to force climate change to the top of the candidates' debates.

"The first television advertisements, which are to begin airing on broadcast networks as well as cable starting on Wednesday, will pair up the most unlikely partners in the movement to address global warming.

A clip aired on CBS showed the Reverend Al Sharpton sharing a sofa with the conservative preacher Pat Robertson. The two men acknowledge they agree on almost nothing - barring the need to deal with global warming.

Other spots will feature the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, alongside New Gingrich, the conservative Republican who once held the same post.

The support from such conservative figures as Gingrich and Robertson marks a victory for Gore in his efforts to make global warming a cause for all Americans: evangelical Christians and fiscal conservatives as well as those on the left."

It's a smart move at just the right time. Neither Clinton nor Obama can afford not to heed the campaign. It could easily resolve the contest against either of them should they choose to ignore it. However embracing the message will mean presenting some clear and specific policies against which John McCain will be measured.

If, as I suspect, Iraq is in for a dangerous and violent summer, the "surge factor" that McCain has been relying on may present him with a big liability. He too cannot afford to shun a bi-partisan environmental campaign of the sort crafted by Gore.

The Sparks Are Yet To Fly in Harare

Zimbabwe's opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, claims a landslide victory over Robert Mugabe's Zanu PF in yesterday's general election.

'We've won this election,' said Tendai Biti, the MDC's secretary-general. 'The results coming in show that in our traditional strongholds we are massacring them. In Mugabe's traditional strongholds they are doing very badly. There is no way Mugabe can claim victory unless it is through fraud. He has lost this election.'

Is this the beginning of the end to Zimbabwe's nightmare, the end of Mugabe's 28-year reign? Don't count on it. The official results haven't yet been announced and it's hard to imagine Mugabe wouldn't rig an unfavourable outcome to claim victory. That's especially true given that Zimbabwe's army and police leaders have announced they won't tolerate an MDC win.

Mugabe, corrupt and incompetent as any leader can be, has been clever enough to ensure the leadership of his country's military and security services are utterly beholden to him. Who needs to worry about the people so long as you have the absolute loyalty of all the guns?

Iraq's Viet Cong

Nouri al-Maliki may just have transformed a troublesome militia into Iraq's own Viet Cong. It's the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al Sadr, an outfit that's making effective use of the most potent guerrilla tactics to grind down the numerically and technologically dominant Iraq Army.


Whereas the Viet Cong used the jungles, waterways, backroads and even networks of tunnels to wage their war against the South Vietnamese and American forces, the Mahdi Army operates in its own jungle, the congested slums of Iraq's key cities and their intricate mazes of alleys where tanks can't reach and fighting is one-on-one.

James Glanz wrote a brilliant article in yesterday's New York Times in which he explains why this latest war, pitting Shiite against Shiite, is different and may just be the undoing of the Maliki government. This isn't about resisting the occupiers. It's about dethroning the Baghdad government and, in this fight, time is not on Maliki's side.

Glanz writes that this battle, this war, bears an eerie resemblance to a recurring dream he developed in his four years covering Iraq:

"Here is what happens in the dream: Because I know a little Arabic, I somehow find myself a translator for the invaders, even as some of my Chicago buddies are in the alleys plotting against my employers. And each night when I walk home along my beloved Dearborn Street under the rusty elevated tracks and past the White Hen grocery store, I wonder what the guys poring over maps in their armored vehicles plan to accomplish against a few million South Siders fighting in their own alleys. That’s usually when I wake up.

That dream, a nightmare, really, flashed through my mind as I stood at the end of a filthy, pothole-riddled alley talking with a small-time deputy commander in the Mahdi Army, the militia that is the armed wing of Mr. Sadr’s political movement. Standing there with his arms folded over his potbelly as his fighters scurried about behind him, the man who called himself Riadh, 34 years old, was effectively deputy commander of an alley.

“We can’t face the armored tanks of the Americans face to face, because all we have is light guns,” he said. “So we just wait for a chance to attack something.”

Alleys: they are dangerous only when used by those who grew up in them. That is the basic reason Mr. Sadr and his fighters simply will not go away in this war.

What makes the case so difficult is that it is not just a question of a battle with American troops, here from half a world away carrying out operations that Mr. Sadr and his fighters consider an abhorrent occupation. Some 3,500 troops in the Basra fight are Iraqis from outside the province, and witnesses say it is clear that few if any of the Iraqi security forces in the assault know the neighborhoods the way the Mahdi Army does. Its fighters literally pop in and out of alleys, battling a federal force of nearly 30,000 to what is, so far, a stalemate.

No one has ever accused Mr. Sadr of being brilliant, charismatic, or even above average in the intellectual realm. But he has one thing few of those leaders have: he never left, even in the worst years of Saddam Hussein. And that does not just give him credibility on the streets. In a country where sheer social, religious, political, historical, geographic and psychological complexities are what seem to defeat all easy solutions, Mr. Sadr is one of the few who have been here continuously, absorbing the shifting lessons of the place. He has done his homework, he has put in his time.

As I sit here writing this piece, listening to the intermittent whooshes and booms of rockets and mortars fired into the Green Zone, almost certainly by Mr. Sadr’s fighters, I can no more predict where the conflict is headed than I can say what will be in my dreams tonight during the few hours of sleep that this war and my editors allow me. But when it comes to Mr. Sadr’s loyalists in the alleys of Basra and Baghdad, one thing is irrefutable.

In those alleys, waking up will not end the dream."

Glanz has filed a piece in today's NYT, in which he reports that the Mahdi Army has consolidated control of at least half and, by some accounts, possibly much more of Basra, taking over police stations and establishing roadblocks.

Maliki's weakening has been dramatic. From beginning with a "surrender or die" edict, he switched to a 72-hour amnesty for surrender and then extending that by a further week and offering to pay rewards for those who turn in their guns. That doesn't sound like a guy who figures he's winning this battle. It sounds like someone who is very worried about his own ability to survive the conflict.

Cause for Concern? Has McCain Lost It?

Okay, so Hillary just makes it up as she goes along. Not so for John McCain. That's why his stumble when he linked the fundamentalist Sunni, al-Qaeda in Iraq with the fundamentalist Shia government of Iran seemed so perplexing.

So just what happened? It sounds as though the Republican presidential candidate can't tell a Sunni from Shiite and yet I find that hard to believe. McCain is probably neck and neck with Murtha for the Politician Most Invested in Iraq prize.

What really got me thinking was when I heard an American journalist ponder whether McCain had simply had a "senior moment." Life takes us all and it's a bitch. That said if Iraq is John McCain's Viagra, let's make damned sure he still has all his marbles. No "senior moments" for the Commander in Chief of the Free World, rien?

Outsourcing Your Very Life

What's this woman doing? Whatever it is, she's doing it in a really nasty, ill-lit and unhygenic looking spot.

You can thank the New York Times for that photo. It shows a Chinese woman processing pig intestines, the mucus membranes from which are used to make the blood thinner Heparin. Hmmm, is squalor what you think of when pharmaceuticals come to mind?

"After many near misses and warning signs, the heparin scare has eliminated any doubt that, here and abroad, regulatory agencies overseeing the safety of medicine are overwhelmed in a global economy where supply chains are long and opaque, and often involve many manufacturers.

“In the 1990s governments were all about trying to maximize the volume of international trade,” said Moisés Naím, editor in chief of Foreign Policy magazine and author of “Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy.” “I’m all for that, but I believe this decade is going to be about maximizing the quality of that trade, not quantity.”

Mr. Naím said the heparin scare is already having a “huge” impact, fueling worldwide anxiety over imported medicine and a growing demand for consumer protection.

The way heparin is made and distributed illustrates the challenges. The drug’s raw material comes from mucous membranes in the intestines of slaughtered pigs. Those membranes are mixed together and cooked, a process that in China often takes place in unregulated family workshops.
It is then transported to middlemen, called consolidators, who direct the product to plants in China that manufacture heparin’s active ingredient for shipment to either another trader or the finished dose manufacturer. In the United States, the tainted ingredients ended up at Baxter International, which later had to recall the blood thinner.

Since the outbreak in the United States, Japan and several countries in Europe have recalled certain heparin products made with Chinese ingredients. In some instances, European traders buy and sell the heparin to companies in other countries, extending the supply chain even more.

Anti-counterfeiting experts say that the longer the chain, the greater the opportunity for counterfeiters to adulterate the product. In fact, F.D.A. investigators have yet to figure out where in the multistage manufacturing process the chemical that mimics heparin was added."

First it was lethal pet food, then toxic toothpaste, lead painted toys, now it's blood thinners. C'mon people, something has to give. We either deal with this properly - now - or, I swear, we will lose control of this problem.

HILLARY WASN'T LYING! The Real Sniper Incident Revealed!

What makes this clip so good is there stands Hillary amidst an adoring crowd and she's beaming at them and lying right to their faces. The only thing she didn't say was, "I did not have sexual relations with that sniper." It makes you wonder, is this the vaunted "experience" advantage Hillary claims entitles her to the Democratic nomination?

By the way, when that hotline phone rings at 3 a.m., I hope the person who picks it up isn't under any delusions about being under sniper fire.

Siegelman Out on Bond

Former Alabama governor Don Siegelman has been released from prison where he was serving time for supposed bribery. A Federal Appeals Court ordered his release saying there were legitimate questions about the case.

The Siegelman case has become widely celebrated as an example of Republican abuse of justice in Alabama. When 60 Minutes recently aired an expose on Siegelman, the network's affiliate in northern Alabama went off the air, claiming it had experienced a technical failure with the network.

Karl Rove has been linked to the effort to railroad Siegelman.

The Face of The World Environment

Rainforest Clearing - Brazil

Kite Flying in Beijing

Coal Fueled Generator in Yorkshire


River Pollution in China

Drought in Australia

These pictures, reprinted from The Guardian, tell just part of the story of what's happening to our world. Floods, droughts, crop failures, desertification, resource depletion, freshwater exhaustion, species extinction not to mention widescale pollution of the air, land and water.

Living in Canada we experience these global realities mainly through the occasional disturbing photograph. For most people in the world this is the reality of their own back yards, of their streets and cities and rivers.

Today's Globe & Mail has a moving story on the effects on the world's poor people of the doubling of grain prices over this past year. The "humanitarian" news services are running these stories every day, without exception. Around the world, more and more people can no longer afford the basic staples they see on their store shelves. That number is growing rapidly. Out of sight, out of mind? Maybe for now but not for long.

Desperate people are often angry people, especially if they can see the cause of their misery and suffering as someone else. Maybe they see you running around in your SUV as responsible for their children's hunger. A lot of these people do have some access to television even if they never could dream of having one themselves. At some point they're bound to catch a look at Western programming showing how we lead our lives, our seemingly inexhaustible abundance.

These folks already know that we rich Westerners are responsible for their climate change problems, the full effects of which they're experiencing already. Do you really think this isn't going to create a lot of hotheads seeking to avenge their people's suffering? If you don't believe that the Pentagon and the British Ministry of Defence who've studied this growing problem certainly do.

Forget Islamist terrorism, that's for kids.

McCain - Talkin' the Talk and then Walking Away

John McCain wants voters to believe he's a true champion of the environment. That's what he says. What he does - that's a different story.

When tough environmental initiatives come to a vote in the US Senate, you can count on John McCain to be - well, to be absent. From The Guardian:

"Twice in the last three months, the US Senate has come within one vote of overturning $1.7bn in tax benefits for oil companies and using the money to promote renewable energy. Both times, McCain has skipped the vote, effectively killing the proposal and alarming leading green groups.

"McCain also was a no-show during controversial votes on subsidising the conversion of oil to "clean" coal and relaxing rules for oil refineries.

"When the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) released its annual environmental rankings last month, McCain - whose campaign website declares him "a leader on the issue of global warming" - earned a zero for missing all of the group's votes on key green issues. He was one of nine Republicans scoring the lowest possible rating."

The Sierra Club and other environmental groups intend to publicize McCain's environmental voting record in the runup to the November elections. From his embrace of Christian fundamentalism to his call for even more deregulation of the financial sector to his insistence on keeping the Iraq War on the front burner, John McCain is showing the world that there's a lot more to him and a lot less to him than he'd like you to believe.

Carbon Taxes to Level Playing Field

It's an idea I've endorsed for some time - carbon tariffs on imports. Work out the carbon footprint associated with an import and then levy a tariff on it as the product arrives at our docks.

By fixing the tariff to the product, it becomes possible to circumvent the principal arguments that block progress on a meaningful and effective plan to combat global greenhouse gas emissions.

The more populous countries, China and India, have a sound argument that because their per capita emissions are just a fraction of a citizen of the West, they should get a pass until we lower our per capita emissions. This, of course, ignores the fact that they're largely poor, over populated, agrarian societies which gives them an enormous advantage on the per capita scale.

The smaller, Western countries also have a sound argument when they point to China having already emerged to become the top GHG emitter. Leaving aside issues of population, that's a powerful argument but it's no more powerful than the per capita argument so - stalemate.

Carbon tariffs levied on production cut through both arguments and break the deadlock. Those tariffs, however, must be applied to imports as well as domestic production. Then fair is fair.

CIBC World Markets has released a report endorsing carbon tariffs and noting they could even restore North America's manufacturing sector. From the Toronto Star:

"It becomes absurdly quixotic to ban coal plants in North America while at the same time China's got 570 coal plants slated to go into production between now and 2012, 30 plants between now and the Olympics," CIBC economist Jeff Rubin said.
"We're moving in opposite directions."

With some advanced countries enacting carbon taxes, carbon trading systems and other measures to lower emissions, CIBC believes the growing pollution from developing countries will provoke penalties against their exports.

That would benefit the environment, and will also bring certain jobs back to North America, since carbon emission taxes and high oil prices would offset the benefit of cheap labour, Rubin says.

"Chinese goods will have to pay for the carbon that they emitted and they'll pay for that when they enter our market place by paying that tariff," Rubin said in an interview.

"Once we impose the tariff on Chinese goods, some of those industries will be coming home, because . . . energy and carbon efficiency is going to matter more than labour costs."

We still have an edge on clean technology and we do the country no good service by failing to use that edge to our own betterment. We need to see carbon taxes not as something that will endanger our economy but something that can stimulate and restore our economy.

It's The End of the World As We Know It

Unless you're over 70, you probably don't remember a time when the United States of America wasn't global top dog. The transition, well underway by the late 30's, was really cemented by WWII. When that one was over no one was in the slightest doubt of who was ruling the roost.

It's been a terrific run. The 50's, 60's and 70's were the grandest time to be an American, heralding real social, political and economic advances. Whatever was new today would be the basis for something newer next year. No one could even foresee that ending. But ending it is.

George w. Bush has caused enormous damage to his country. With the help of a Saudi guy, he's dragged the US to the far right and perched it precariously very near the end of the limb.

Six months ago there was very optimistic talk about how the next president would put America back on an even keel and, eventually, undo the damage left in the wake of a departing Bush. There was still time to set things right. It wouldn't be easy and it wouldn't be quick but there was still at least some time. Lately, however, it seems that hopeful optimism may have been misplaced.

Take Bush's tax cuts for the rich. When they were introduced, even John McCain opposed them. That was then. Now McCain favours making them permanent and even Clinton and Obama are talking about which cuts should be kept and new ones to be added.

Now the line is that these ruinous tax cuts are necessary to see America through its current fiscal crisis. Say what? Even the Washington Post which seems to oppose the tax cuts then goes on to make a bizarre claim:

"The direction of the tax debate is frustrating deficit hawks in Washington, who worry that none of the candidates is charting a course toward a balanced budget. Meanwhile, Bush and other politicians are telling voters alarmed by a sagging economy that keeping the cuts past their 2010 expiration date can help revive the nation's fortunes, a claim many economists say is nonsense."

Okay, the tax cuts are bad. But then the paper goes on to describe how wonderful the Bush cuts have been:

"The tax cuts, the signal economic achievement of the Bush administration, are among the three biggest federal tax reductions since the end of World War II, comparable in size to the Reagan tax cut of 1981 and the Kennedy tax cut passed in 1964, according to the nonprofit Tax Foundation. By the time the Bush cuts are scheduled to expire, it's projected that they will have saved taxpayers $1.6 trillion."

They will have "saved" taxpayers money? Only if you ignore the fact that these cuts have been funded by enormous government borrowing. America's taxpayers, particularly the working and middle classes, are going to have to repay that money, with interest, to foreign lenders - every last dime of it. And the longer this madness goes on, the more debt those taxpayers are going to carry, with interest, and the more they and their kids and grandkids are going to have to pay.

It's sad really. The American people seemingly can't be trusted to accept tough measures necessary to restore their country. If Chretien and Martin had shown as little faith in us they would never have embarked on the road to balanced budgets and debt reduction. Imagine the mess we would be in today.

I think one thing is obvious. If no presidential candidate runs seeking a mandate to reverse America's fiscal slide there'll be even less chance of reform coming through Congress. Debt is a disease that has spread through the United States at all levels and America will have enormous problems retaining its place on the global scene if it doesn't deal with this problem.

Oh Damn! Democracy's Back in Pakistan

When it comes to the Global War Without End on Terror, the less democracy we have to overcome the better.

Look what happens when those brown people get democracy? You get Hamas elected by the Palestinians. Hezbollah gets in to the Lebanese legislature. Now you've got moderates in power in Pakistan. What next?

You see the thing is, once they get elected, they get all uppity. They just don't do what they're told, they're hardly any use at all - or worse.

Take Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's former dictator. He swept the decks; threw uncooperative judges in jail, tossed the parliament - now there was a guy you could double-deal with. Sure he conned you a lot of the time but at least he said he'd do what he was told. And then, along comes democracy. Great.

Now Pakistan has fallen into the hands of a bunch of "free thinkers" who've announced they'll actually hold talks with the Taliban and al-Qaeda leadership in their country. When Bush sent diplomats John Negroponte and Richard Boucher to meet coalition leader Nawaz Sharif, they got a chilly welcome and a scolding. From The Guardian:

"...senior coalition partner Nawaz Sharif gave the visiting Americans a public scolding for using Pakistan as a "killing field" and relying too much on Musharraf.

"...body language between Negroponte and Sharif during their meeting on Tuesday spoke volumes: the Pakistani greeted the American with a starched handshake, and sat at a distance .

In blunt remarks afterwards, Sharif said he told Negroponte that Pakistan was no longer a one-man show. "Since 9/11, all decisions were taken by one man," he said. "Now we have a sovereign parliament and everything will be debated in the parliament."

It was "unacceptable that while giving peace to the world we make our own country a killing field," Sharif said, echoing widespread public anger at US-funded military operations in the tribal belt.

"If America wants to see itself clean of terrorism, we also want our villages and towns not to be bombed," he said."

Well, there goes the neighbourhood and it's all the fault of that damned democracy again.

More Thoughts on Clean Coal

Clean Coal theory is dangerous. As global warming skeptics constantly point out, there's always some uncertainty about theories.

Why is Clean Coal just a theory? Because no one has yet shown that the amount of CO2 that needs to be captured to establish a viable, clean coal-fired electricity system can be safely and permanently sequestered. It requires a lot of emptiness - underground reservoirs where the carbon can be stored under very high pressure. The reservoirs need to be in reasonable proximity to the capture source. The further you need to pump the stuff the greater the expense and the risk of something going wrong.

Here's a little something they don't want to tell you: there's not remotely enough reservoir space to pull this off. That's why it's all gimmickry, a diversion. So if, in theory, you had an infinite amount of reservoir space and if, in theory, enough of that reservoir space was suitable to safely store high pressure CO2 and if, in theory, enough of that suitable reservoir space was sufficiently close to make sequestration economically viable, then you've got, in theory, an answer.

So, the first question for Mr. Harpo - how much viable storage capacity exists? Second question - how much CO2 can be safely and permanently sequestered in the existing storage? Third question - how much of Canada's electricity requirements can ever be realized through clean coal technology?

It sounds great, in theory, but sometimes you have to ask the practical questions.

Is Harper On To Something or Just On Something?

Stephen Harper has unveiled the cornerstone of the Tories' environmental programme - a "clean coal" power plant in development in Saskatchewan.

The idea behind clean coal is to capture the CO2 emissions and sequester the carbon somewhere that it can't escape into the atmosphere. That goal presents a host of technological challenges, all of which have to be met if it is to be worth the expense and effort.

The way the Saskatchewan project is being hyped you would think that Canada scored some enormous breakthrough, something the rest of the world has been able to only dream of. Now you wouldn't know it to listen to Harpo but the Saskatchewan project. to which he's now conveniently lashed himself, was announced in 2002 and it was in 2002 that Saskatchewan announced its plans for a demonstration clean coal electricity plant in 2007.

Carbon capture technology has come a long way since 2002 but the problem then, as now, remains in sequestration. Capturing the CO2 is only good if you can find a way to store it - safely and permanently.

The popular concept of sequestration is to pump the gas under high pressure into existing oil wells where it will actually help in the extraction of remaining oil reserves. It sounds good, in theory, but there can be problems. For starters, the gas sits there waiting to escape. It just sits there, at high pressure, waiting and waiting and waiting for something, such as a fissure to develop. If one of these reservoirs is breached you don't want to be living anywhere near it, at least if you want to go on living.

What's troubling is that the most technologically challenging part - sequestration - is the part that's almost never mentioned. Instead our attention is diverted to the shiny bits - carbon capture.

But, for Harpo, it's all sleight of hand. It's a promise he won't be around to keep anyway and it's something he can use to conceal his deliberate failure to take any meaningful action to curb GHG emissions.

Another Trace of D.B. Cooper?

It's been almost 20-years since a young boy found $5,800 of D.B. Cooper's stash of twenty dollar bills decomposing along the banks of the Columbia River. The bills were determined to be part of the $200,000 Northwest Orient Airlines gave Cooper after he hijacked their plane on a hop from Portland, Oregon to Seattle in November, 1971. Cooper also demanded, and got, four parachutes after threatening to blow up the plane.

Somewhere over the Pacific Northwest, Cooper put on one of the parachutes, took the money and walked off the plane's rear ramp into a raging storm. It's been widely believed that Cooper didn't survive the jump. Now it seems he might just have made it after all.

The FBI is now conducting forensic tests on a parachute discovered by some kids two weeks ago in a field 100-miles south of Seattle. The chute had been buried in the dirt. The FBI has confirmed that the field was on the flightpath taken when Cooper jumped.

Hurricane Hillary - the Democrats' Own Katrina

The best thing that John McCain has going for him is Hillary Clinton. So long as she's in the race for the Democratic Party's nomination his popularity soars. By the time November has come and gone the toughest opponent McCain may have faced in his march to the White House could be Mike Huckabee.

David Brooks, writing in the International Herald Tribune, says Hillary simply can't help herself - or the Democrats.

"The door is closing. Night is coming. The end, however, is not near.

Last week, an important Clinton adviser told Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen (also of Politico) that Clinton had no more than a 10 percent chance of getting the nomination. Now, she's probably down to a 5 percent chance.

Five percent.

Let's take a look at what she's going to put her party through for the sake of that 5 percent chance: The Democratic Party is probably going to have to endure another three months of daily sniping.

For three more months (maybe more!) the campaign will proceed along in its Verdun-like pattern. There will be a steady rifle fire of character assassination from the underlings, interrupted by the occasional firestorm of artillery when the contest touches upon race, gender or patriotism. The policy debates between the two have been long exhausted, so the only way to get the public really engaged is by poking some raw national wound.

For the sake of that 5 percent, this will be the sourest spring.

About a fifth of Clinton and Obama supporters now say they wouldn't vote for the other candidate in the general election. Meanwhile, on the other side, voters get an unobstructed view of the Republican nominee. John McCain's approval ratings have soared 11 points. He is now viewed positively by 67 percent of Americans. A month ago, McCain was losing to Obama among independents by double digits in a general election matchup. Now McCain has a lead among this group.

For three more months, Clinton is likely to hurt Obama even more against McCain, without hurting him against herself. And all this is happening so she can preserve that 5 percent chance.

When you step back and think about it, she is amazing. She possesses the audacity of hopelessness.

Why does she go on like this?

Does Clinton privately believe that Obama is so incompetent that only she can deliver the policies they both support?

Is she simply selfish, and willing to put her party through agony for the sake of her slender chance?

The better answer is that Clinton's long rear-guard action is the logical extension of her relentlessly political life.

For nearly 20 years, she has been encased in the apparatus of political celebrity. Look at her schedule as first lady and ever since. Think of the thousands of staged events, the tens of thousands of times she has pretended to be delighted to see someone she doesn't know, the hundreds of thousands of times she has recited empty clichés and exhortatory banalities, the millions of photos she has posed for in which she is supposed to appear empathetic or tough, the billions of politically opportune half-truths that have bounced around her head.

No wonder the Clinton campaign feels impersonal. It's like a machine for the production of politics. It plows ahead from event to event following its own iron logic."

Maybe He Should Give Bush a Medal

According to Dick Cheney, the greatest burden of the Iraq War isn't being carried by those soldiers now enduring their fourth combat tours in that hellhole. It isn't by those who find themselves trapped beyond their enlistments thanks to the military's "stop loss" policy. No, the real burden is being carried by President Bush.

"The president carries the biggest burden, obviously," Cheney said. "He's the one who has to make the decision to commit young Americans, but we are fortunate to have a group of men and women, the all-volunteer force, who voluntarily put on the uniform and go in harm's way for the rest of us."

There are no words to describe how vile this creature is. Dick Cheney knows a lot about fighting. He fought to bag five draft deferments during the Vietnam War to keep his ass safely at home while others went off to do his share of the fighting. This man is the poster boy of Chickenhawks. It's no wonder he has no idea, none, of the burden his country's trapped soldiers are truly bearing.

Hillary Under Fire

Hillary Clinton isn't having a good time of it lately. After running a pretty effective smear job on her rival, Barack Obama, to the enternal gratitude of Republican John McCain, Hillary has been pulled back into the realm of reality, her own reality, and she's not liking it.

To use the phrase of the judge at the McCartney divorce hearing about Heather Mills, Hillary has "over-egged the pudding." That's a polite way of saying she's been a bit carried away with her many claims to fame.

To hear her tell it, she was instrumental in helping her husband, the Big Dog, cope with the many crises he faced during his terms as president. Why she must've been right there by his side, guiding his hand. Except she wasn't. It turns out that some 11,000 pages of her record - pried loose by a Republican Freedom of Information proceeding - shows a considerably different picture to that painted by Hillary. Often she was on holiday at critical moments or having a tea social somewhere else.

Now Hillary is up against the "Phantom Sniper." This little, self-serving figment of Hillary's imagination came up in relation to her 1996 visit to Bosnia. Just last week Hillary told everyone how she had to brave sniper fire when she arrived at Tuzla airport:

"I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base," she said in a speech last Monday.

Brave stuff indeed, presidential even - except it didn't happen. She just made it up. Also along on that junket was the comedian Sinbad who said the greatest crisis they faced was figuring out where to eat.

Caught with her drawers down and unable to claim the dog ate her homework, Hillary did the only thing she could do, she says she "misspoke":

"I say a lot of things — millions of words a day — so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement."

Yes, Mrs. Clinton, you do say a lot of things - a lot about your Democratic rival, Mr. Obama, and a lot about yourself. Maybe if you focused on saying less - maybe by just sticking to things that are true - you would do yourself a lot of good.

A weekend poll found that 60% of American voters said that McCain and Obama were believable. 57% said that Clinton was not believable. This is a candidate with a serious credibility problem and it's all of her own making.

What Did My Father Fight For?

How dare you? That seems to be a popular line among blogging tories. How dare you?

They question a prominent Liberal's assertion that our fathers fought for certain values in WWII which he claimed included cracking down on white supremacists in Calgary.

These same tories then go on to clothe their own dads in values they espouse. Sort of like getting out the Barbies and playing dress up. My dad was in the army (perhaps the motor pool or quartermasters corps but hey) and so he therefore validated my point of view on this issue or the other and he certainly didn't fight for anything you support.

What a preposterous load of hooey. Read Barry Broadfoot's book, "The War Years," (1974) Doubleday Canada, an anthology of vignettes from Canadians who lived and fought in WWII. It's from original source works like this that you'll discover just what was in your dad's or granddad's mind when he turned up at the recruiting centre to sign on.

Notable by their absence are things like King and Country or stopping global tyranny. Many signed up out of the enthusiasm of the moment, looking to grab a bit of the glory before it was all over. FTA, sometimes taken to mean F*** The Army, also can refer to Fun, Travel, Adventure - lures that have gotten young men to take the hook since long before Caesar. One fellow told Broadfoot that he signed on for the boots. He was barefoot at the time and nothing looked so appealing as a pair of quality army boots. Some signed on for genuinely trivial reasons, others to escape something unpleasant at home. Some needed a job or regular meals or wanted to learn to fly or just thought it'd be great fun.

The point is that each serviceman showed up for his own reasons based on his own beliefs and perceptions, views that generally were proven naive and sometimes completely false.

The curious thing is that, the more intimately a soldier was involved in actual combat, the less likely that person was to find meaning in the reality of war. Why we insist on finding that for them now is beyond me.

Was the Manley Report a Sham?

The key recommendation of the Manley panel report on Afghanistan finally makes sense.

The notion of drawing a line in the sand over a demand that NATO provide an extra 1,000 soldiers to support Canadian forces in Kandahar always seemed curious. Why 1,000? It seemed like a political number to come up with in a report that was supposed to be an assessment of the mission, not the politics behind the mission. Why not something meaningful, say 5,000 or more?

Well, if Denis Coderre is right, one thousand was an entirely political number and the Manley Report was all about the politics behind the mission and nothing more. In effect, Manley played a willing shill for Stephen Harper.

The Liberal defence critic says the extra 1,000 troops was already arranged before the Manley report was revealed. From the Globe & Mail:

"What I have learned is that, even before the Manley report, there was already a deal that Americans, if they don't have anybody [to assist the Canadians], will step up to the plate and provide that 1,000 soldiers," said Mr. Coderre.

Steven Staples, president of the Rideau Institute, a policy organization that has been critical of Afghan mission, holds similar views.

"The additional troops will have more political than military significance. With the 1,000 troops, French President Sarkozy scores points with U.S. President Bush, President Bush claims victory at NATO next month, and [Prime Minister] Stephen Harper can keep Canada in the war for another three years," Mr. Staples said in an e-mail yesterday.

"What is most concerning is that Canada, surrounded by 1,000 additional U.S. troops, will become increasingly implicated with U.S. forces and their aggressive war-fighting approach to the conflict."

In this context the Manley report finally makes sense. John Manley's job was to be Stephen Harper's water boy - and he delivered.

Surge Politics

There's something for everybody when it comes to "surge politics."

George w. Bush has been playing surge politics as the only means he has to salvage something of his presidential legacy. John McCain is relying on surge politics as just about the only means for a Republican to retain the White House in November.

The Demutantes have been on the wrong end of surge politics. Overall it doesn't help them when voters believe Bush's 11th hour brainwave is somehow working. Then again, a lowering of violence does bolster the argument that America can declare "mission accomplished" and leave.

Surge politics, however, is also played by the Iraqis insurgents and by the terrorists who've insinuated themselves into that country since 2003. With US voters beginning to make up their minds about who they'll support in November and the US media losing all interest in the place, it behooves the bad guys to get their faces front and center again. They need to be on American voters' minds if they're to have any prospect of influencing the November ballot.

My guess is that the key players in Iraq are ready to play Mesopotamia - the Home Game. In other words, they would like the US forces out so they can have at each other without meddling foreigners. If the surge can be made to appear a failure it's more likely the American people will elect an anti-war president. If the surge is seen as a success, however, John McCain will reap a lot of votes.

I had thought there would be an outbreak of major violence this summer - beginning in May or June. However the recent wave of bombings suggests this may be beginning already. Suddenly more American troops are getting ambushed and killed, Iraqi civilians are again falling to sectarian violence in big numbers.

The New York Times reports that a barrage of 20-mortar rounds was fired into the Green Zone bunker district today while, across the country, 58-Iraqis were killed. According to the paper, witnesses claimed the mortar attack came from a Shiite neighbourhood. More ominously, they said the attack was launched by a group of militia men belonging to the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al Sadr.

If al Sadr's forces are initiating fresh attacks it could spell the end of the militia's ceasefire which largely gave the surge the illusion of success. It could just be the next example of surge politics, Iraqi-style.

Update

The NYT is reporting that four American GIs were killed in Baghdad by a roadside bomb, bringing the total US combat death toll over the 4,000 mark.

If, as it appears, this is the beginning of a second insurgency - an end to the ceasefire of the past months - then - sorry, I don't know what to even guess. There are so many forces in play including Bush's last months in office, McCain's election prospects, the Dems (for whom Hillary is probably more lethal than al Sadr), the Shiite establishment and its militias, the Kurds and Turkey and the Iraqi Sunnis with their pan-Arabic backers. Oh, and I left out the Wahabist terrorism movement.

It's far too early to tell whether this is just a huge blip or the overture to some group's political agenda. There'll probably be morgues stuffed with cadavers before the subplots are revealed.

Damn Them All

This is about the most fitting tribute to the malevolence and carnage of Bush/Cheney and their minions. It's a couple of years old but it's perfect for the fifth anniversary of the war on Iraq.

Just Dickin' Around

Rick Mercer on Harper/Cadman

Here it is, Kids. This one is definitely worth the price of admission.

America's Racist Media Laid Bare

They spent the better part of a century and a half warning us that "the South will rise again" and the decent world didn't listen. Yet since the days of Lyndon Johnston the South has indeed arisen and a lot of the ugliness it once championed has been resurrected.

Under George w. Bush, in particular, racism and bigotry have crept back. Even America's media, wittingly or otherwise, are getting into the act. Look at the way they're focusing on Barack Obama and Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Then look at the way they're abjectly ignoring those other preachers - the white boys - and their political allies.

This article is from Alternet. It's long but it deserves to be read:


Rudy Giuliani's priest has been accused in grand jury proceedings of molesting several children and covering up the molestation of others. Giuliani would not disavow him on the campaign trail and still works with him.

Mitt Romney was part of a church that did not view black Americans as equals and actively discriminated against them. He stayed with that church all the way into his early thirties, until they were finally forced to change their policies to come into compliance with civil rights legislation. Romney never disavowed his church back then or now. He said he was proud of the faith of his fathers.

Jerry Falwell said America had 9/11 coming because we tolerated gays, feminists and liberals. It was our fault. Our chickens had come home to roost, if you will. John McCain proudly received his support and even spoke at his university's commencement.

Reverend John Hagee has called the Catholic Church the "Great Whore." He has said that the Anti-Christ will rise out of the European Union (of course the Anti-Christ will also be Jewish). He has said all Muslims are trained to kill and will be part of the devil's army when Armageddon comes (which he hopes is soon). John McCain continues to say he is proud of Reverend Hagee's endorsement.

Reverend Rod Parsley believes America was founded to destroy Islam. Since this is such an outlandish claim, I have to add for the record, that he is not kidding. Reverend Parsley says Islam is an "anti-Christ religion" brought down from a "demon spirit." Of course, we are in a war against all Muslims, including presumably Muslim-Americans. Buts since Parsley believes this is a Christian nation and that it should be run as a theocracy, he is not very concerned what Muslim-Americans think.

John McCain says Reverend Rod Parsley is his "spiritual guide."

What separates all of these outrageous preachers from Barack Obama's? You guessed it. They're white and Reverend Jeremiah Wright is not. If it's not racism that's causing the disparity in media treatment of these preachers, then what is it?

I'm willing to listen to other possible explanations. And I am inclined to believe that the people these preachers go after are more important than the race of the preacher. It's one thing to go after gays, liberals and Muslims - that seems to be perfectly acceptable in America - it's another to accuse white folks of not living up to their ideals.

I think there is another factor at play as well. The media is deathly afraid of calling out preachers of any stripe for insane propaganda from the pulpits for fear that they will be labeled as anti-Christian. But criticism of Rev. Wright falls into their comfort zone. It's easy to blame him for being anti-American because he criticizes American foreign and domestic policy.

If Rev. Wright had preached about discriminating against gay Americans or Muslims, there probably would not have been any outcry at all. That falls into the category of "respect their hateful opinions because they cloak themselves in the church."

But one thing is indisputable - the enormous disparity in how the media has covered these white preachers as opposed to Rev. Wright. Have you ever even heard of Rod Parsley? As you can see from what I listed above, all of these white preachers have said and done the most outlandish and offensive things you can imagine - and hardly a peep.

If the disparity in coverage isn't racist, then what is it?"

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/80253/

Hillary Likes Unions - Now That She Needs Their Support

But she wasn't interested in union rights when she sat on the board of directors of WalMart, no not one bit.

In six years on the board, Clinton sat mute as the mega-retailer carried on a relentless war against labour unions trying to get a foot in the door.

ABC News got its hands on tapes of WalMart board meetings and, nope, nothing from Hillary there. Then there's the tape of her appearance before a shareholders' meeting where she said, "I'm always proud of Wal-Mart and what we do and the way we do it better than anybody else."

Clinton now says she no longer shares WalMart's values and believes unions have been essential to America's success. Yeah, right.

Meanwhile, Florida's Democratic organization has ruled out another primary to allocate the state's delegates. Apparently they could fine neither the money nor the consensus of both candidates.

Newsweek reports that the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal has diminished Bill Clinton's political capital, leaving people asking, "Can the Big Dog stay on the porch for eight years?"

Obama is conquering YouTube with his 30-minute "A More Perfect Union" speech. In took but 19-hours for it to receive 1,000,000 hits, obliterating the popularity of Clinton's 3 AM ad and McCain's top ad of Bill Clinton endorsing his political skills.

McKay on Afghanistan - a "Tremendous Success"

According to DefenceMin Peter MacKay, Canada's mission to Afghanistan is a "tremendous success." This from a guy who, nearly seven years after this dog and pony show began, still has to fly in secretly and keep his presence quiet until he's stepping on the aircraft to get the hell out.

MacKay, spinning so furiously that his head nearly exploded, said, ""the insurgency remains a real challenge, but you have to look at it in relative terms. You have to do a retrospective occasionally, look at where we were five short years ago, two years ago."

Okay, Pete, you want to take us back in time, say "five short years ago," to yesteryear before the Karzai government was totally corrupted and compromised, before the Taliban were resurgent and Afghanistan raced to set endless consecutive records for opium production. Yeah Pete, let's kick back with a cold one and do that retrospective stroll down memory lane - or maybe not.

Five short years ago. That'd be the time that America bugged out to go play in the sandbox of Iraq, right Pete? Five years ago today. Great timing pal. Idiot. Psst - Pete, the day you can visit Afghanistan without having to sneak in, sneak around and sneak out you can parrot "tremendous success" but, until then, try to come up with something that doesn't sound completely insane.

Eyeing Each Other Over Open Sights

The great military rivalry of the 21st century is bound to be between China and the United States.
Gwynne Dyer, in his latest book, contends that a key reason for America's invasion of Iraq was to achieve military control over the Persian Gulf to thwart China's influence in the Middle East and be in a position to cripple its access to the region's oil should that be necessary.

The Chinese government today announced an increase of 18% in the nation's defence budget this year. The Pentagon figures China's disclosed budget is but half to perhaps just one third of its actual spending which would still leave China spending well less than a third of the US defence budget. That said, the Chinese appear to be getting more bank for their buck out of their defence appropriations, spending that Chinese analyst Chen Zhou explained and defended in an interview in today's Der Spiegel:

Chen: If we grow economically, we must also strengthen our military. We must protect our sovereignty, our unity and the country's security. Historically our military consisted primarily of land-based forces that were meant to protect our homeland. Since 1980, we have also been arming ourselves for other local conflicts and wars. Please do not forget the activities of the separatists in Taiwan ...

SPIEGEL: ... who you have threatened with military force, should Taiwan declare its independence.

Chen: We will defend our sovereignty with all means. If, in fact, we are forced to stop a secession attempt with military means, our navy and air force are not yet effective enough. In that sort of a conflict, we must be superior in the water and in the air, at least locally.

SPIEGEL: Does this mean that you plan to measure up militarily to Taiwan's most important ally, the United States?

Chen: It is not necessary for China to challenge America's position of supremacy. Our concern is to prevent an intervention by the Americans during a crisis in the Taiwan Strait. Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, and no one else, should resolve the Taiwan issue. Whether this is done peacefully or militarily is purely a matter for the Chinese.

SPIEGEL: How does Beijing intend to prevent the Americans from intervening?

Chen: Both sides hope to preserve peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. China wants to develop economically. We don't want a war, not even a crisis. But to ensure that this is the case, we must be militarily prepared.

SPIEGEL: In other words, Beijing stresses deterrence?

Chen: Exactly. Deterrence is one of our strategies. Our goal is to preserve peace and stability on the Taiwan Strait. In the past, we did not pay sufficient attention to studies about deterrence. Now we are very interested in the effects of deterrence. We must be able to prevent, resolve and control crises. Crisis management is our top priority. We can resolve a crisis if we are in a position to deter.

SPIEGEL: You have demonstrated that you are able to give the Americans a shock. For example, one of your submarines surfaced directly next to the aircraft carrier "Kitty Hawk" without having been previously detected.

Chen: That was a coincidence. Our navy is still very small compared with the US Navy. Our range of operation has just reached the so-called first island chains, that is, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines.

SPIEGEL: Do you plan to venture farther afield in the future?

Chen: Traditionally China has seen itself as a land power. In our recent history, foreign powers were able to invade us because we had no navy. Now we want to defend ourselves at sea. To more effectively protect our national interests, we will develop our capability to operate on the high seas. Our navy will travel farther afield. But our goal is always defense. We are not an offensive power.

The US/China/Soviet/Indian arms race continues apace. It seems as though we're about to enter a brand new Cold War.

Afghanistan - Awash in Opium And Democracy

Thanks to their brilliantly thought-out constitution, Afghanis are scheduled to go to the polls 11-times over the next 17 years. They'll be voting to elect presidents and parliamentarians and provincial and district counsellors.

Karzai's job comes up for a vote next May and most of his parliamentarians face elections the following year. For a country wracked by insurgency, this is a real security nightmare.

But, according to The Economist, Karzai remains the favourite to win the presidential runoff.

"Mr Karzai has not said he will run, though most people expect him to (not least, the Western governments which back him). His popular support, however, is lukewarm at best. His government has been tarnished by charges of incompetence and corruption, while his international backers have struggled to fulfil promises to rebuild the country. Large parts of the south, Mr Karzai's heartland, have descended into insurgent-inspired chaos. The president has become increasingly critical of the West, and particularly of Britain, the Afghans' historic foe.

"But, as in 2004, Westerners think Mr Karzai will prove the worst Afghan leader except for all the others. He is from the dominant Durrani federation of the majority Pushtun tribe. He participated in the jihad against the Soviet occupiers but does not have blood on his hands from the civil war that followed. He did not leave his homeland for sanctuary abroad. (Those who did are called dogwashers: the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, said they washed the dogs of rich Americans.)

"No other prominent politician has that mix. Afghanistan may have capable technocrats on call, such as Ehsanullah Bayat, a telecoms mogul, Amin Arsala, a former vice-president, and even, improbably, America's (Afghan-born) ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad. But they lived abroad. It also has former mujahideen commanders such as Burhanuddin Rabbani and Younis Qanooni, both Tajik leaders, and Gul Agha Sherzai, the energetic major of Jalalabad, whom Mr Karzai dubs the bulldozer. But they are tarnished by warlordism. An excess of would-be leaders, in short. And an excess of ways to vote for them."

Bush - Iraq War an Undeniable Success

What else was he going to say? The truth? C'mon we're talking George Walker Bush here, the hellspawn of George Herbert Walker Bush and his darling Babs.

It's the glorious fifth anniversary of the George Bush Memorial Clusterf__k more commonly known to academics as the Iraq war. Five years, doesn't time just fly?

So they popped George in some clean undies, a shirt and tie and stood him up before a crowd at the Pentagon to crow "Mission Accomplished All Over Again." From McClatchey Newspapers:

President Bush on Wednesday declared that "the successes we are seeing in Iraq are undeniable" [provided you're well and truly in denial] as he gave a rousing defense of the war on its fifth anniversary before a receptive but not overwhelmingly enthusiastic Pentagon audience.

As the war entered its sixth year, Bush refused to concede any setbacks in the conflict, where nearly 4,000 Americans have been killed and the country has been plunged into sectarian violence. About 158,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Iraq.

Bush said, "my administration understood that America could not retreat in the face of terror. And we knew that if we did not act, the violence that had been consuming Iraq would worsen and spread and could eventually reach genocidal levels."

The 2007 American troop buildup "opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror," the president maintained.

He then looked ahead, saying that the goal is to "consolidate the gains we have made and seal the extremists' defeat."

Oh yeah, speaking about undeniable success. Yesterday marked the opening of reconciliation talks in Baghdad. I guess there were a lot of empty chairs. The Americans showed, so did Maliki's representatives. Sadly missing, however, were the Baathists, the Shiite militias and the Sunni insurgency. They chose to give it a pass.

Oh yeah, the other good news. The War Without End on Terror has been going so gosh-darn well that the top White House counterterrorism post was left to sit empty for the past 15-months! I guess George must have picked up on that when one of his aides glanced through the latest Newsweek. That got George going and, today, he announced the appointment of Ken Wainstein to be his new White House-based homeland security adviser.

McCartney One, Mills No Score

Every now and then a matrimonial case comes along that's worth a giggle, like the guy who bails out on his missus when he discovers he's holding on to a winning lottery ticket. It's good for the soul to see these people get their comeuppance.

And then there's the former Mrs. Paul McCartney, Heather Mills. A brief disclosure - I haven't cared much for Sir Paul since the Beatles broke up but I have a lot of sympathy for him at the moment. For some reason he managed to wed the Shrew from Hell. I'm sure that today he figures the 24-million pounds it cost him to rid himself of Ms. Mills was worth every hapenny.

Mills may have walked away with a tidy fortune, the equivalent of 17-thousand pounds for each day of their marriage, but she wound up leaving any discernable shred of dignity remaining to her on the courthouse floor.

Oh, how the judge, Mr. Justice Bennet, laid into Ms. Mills. He had a lot of trouble with a lot of her claims - well all of them to be accurate. For example, she said she had millions of pounds in savings when she met McCartney yet there was no evidence of any of it in her tax records. She said she gave 80 to 90% of her earnings during coverture to charities but, again, not the slightest sign of that in her tax records - or anywhere else apparently. The judge found that her "tax records disclose no charitable giving at all."

"Having watched and listened to her give evidence, having studied the documents, and having given in her favour every allowance for the enormous strain she must have been under (and in conducting her own case), I am driven to the conclusion that much of her evidence, both written and oral, was not just inconsistent and inaccurate but also less than candid. Overall she was a less than impressive witness.

"If the wife feels aggrieved about what I propose, she only has herself to blame. If, as she has done, a litigant flagrantly over-eggs the pudding and thus deprives the court of any sensible assistance, then he or she is likely to find that the court takes a robust view and drastically prunes the proposed budget.

"She is entitled to feel that she has been ridiculed, even vilified. To some extent she is her own worst enemy. She has an explosive and volatile character. She cannot have done herself any good in the eyes of potential purchasers of her services as a TV presenter, public speaker and a model, by her outbursts in her TV interviews in October and November 2007. Nevertheless, the fact is that at present she is at a disadvantage. The wife would say she is at a severe disadvantage. I think she overplays her hand."

"In my judgement the picture painted by the husband of the wife's part in his emotional and professional life is much closer to reality than the wife's account. The wife, as the husband said, enjoys being the centre of attention. Her presence on his tours came about because she loved the husband, enjoyed being there and because she thoroughly enjoyed the media and public attention. I am prepared to accept that her presence was emotionally supportive to him but to suggest that in some way she was his 'business partner' is, I am sorry to have to say, make-belief.

"I have to say that the wife's evidence that in some way she was the husband's 'psychologist', even allowing for hyperbole, is typical of her make-belief."

I do pity Mills but I have no sympathy for the situation she's placed herself in - because she did this to herself, all by herself. She tried to use McCartney's reputation to manipulate him and to his credit he stood his ground as she repeatedly and unrelentingly defamed him.

Worst Woman In The World - Heather Mills.

If You Can't Beat'em, Bleed'em Dry

Napoleon's soldiers marched on their bellies. George Bush's soldiers march on America's frayed financial future.

America's trained chimp, George w. Bush, assured his people that he didn't need 300,000 soldiers to conquer Iraq and fired his top military man, General Shinseki. He assured his people the whole thing would cost $50-billion, $60-billion tops and fired his first economic advisor, Lawrence B. Lindsey who had the audacity to claim the war would cost $100-billion to $200-billion annually.

Then there was Cheney who promised that American troops would be greeted as liberators and Rumsfeld who said the whole thing would take six weeks, six months at the outside.

America has the mightiest military machine on the planet, perfect at rolling up a battered and disabled Iraqi army in 2003, and utterly useless at controlling the country ever since. There is simply nothing quite so pathetic looking as a main battle tank without another tank to shoot.

The conquest of Iraq was supposed to be an object lesson to little, unfriendly nations around the world of what happens when America plays hardball. They watched and learned but the lesson played out wasn't the one America wanted to send.

Mainstreet America may believe that the "surge" is working and it is until you factor in the dormant Shiite militias and Sunni resistance. They've taken a break from slaughtering each other and passing American troops but they're still there and they're still ready to go and there's no reason to think they won't be heard from again - soon.

The success of the surge has been measured in body counts, a bit of foolishness that America hasn't been able to shake since Viet Nam. If you want to measure the surge you need to look at other signs - the lack of electricity, water, sanitation, even gasoline; the lack of meaningful political progress; the corruption of the Iraqi government and the infiltration of its security services. If you leave the body counts out of it, this surge has accomplished precisely nothing.

Another object lesson from the Iraq war is how astonishingly ineffecient and profligate America is at this sort of thing. It's now spending roughly $12-billion each month on direct operational costs alone for its war. That's money it doesn't have. That's money it has to borrow - on foreign markets, money that will be bequeathed in the form of interest-bearing debt to America's youth and their children.

What happens if Asia and Europe decide they're not interested in funding America's wars any longer? Better yet, what happens if they decide they will keep lending money but they want the IOUs in Euros, not American greenbacks?

When you fight an unwinnable, war without end, entirely on borrowed money that you squander like a manic-depressive on crack, you're playing a mug's game. It's something only a trained chimp would consider worthwhile. Happy legacy, President Numbnuts.

Cheney to the American People - "Go F__k Yourselves"

He was born a Dick, he's been a dick his whole life and a dick he remains. On the 5th anniversary of the Great American Fiasco, aka the Iraq War, Dick Cheney sat down for an interview and made clear just what he thinks of his "fellow Americans." From the New York Times:

Martha Raddatz, chief White House correspondent for ABC News, sat down with Mr. Cheney in Amman, Jordan, one of several stops on a Middle East tour that includes Iraq, Israel, the West Bank, Oman, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

After Ms. Raddatz asked about the economy — which he said was in “a rough patch,” not a recession — the subject turned to the deep unpopularity of the Iraq war. Here’s a transcript of the exchange, released by the network:

Raddatz: Two-third of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.

Cheney: So?

Raddatz: So? You don’t care what the American people think?

Cheney: No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls. There has, in fact, been fundamental change and transformation and improvement for the better. That’s a huge accomplishment.

You know, he might be right. Under Saddam, after all, the Iraqi people had to endure functioning hospitals and electricity and they didn't even have any sewage flowing down the streets in front of their homes. There has been fundamental change.

So You've Defunded Your Government, Now What?

BushCheneyRove set out to defund the government of the United States. It was their policy coming into power in 2000. Like the conquest of Iraq, it had nothing to do with 9/11.

The idea behind defunding government was to dismantle the legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal," to put America back on an every man for himself basis. Privatize everything, especially Social Security, and by every means keep health care out of the public sector.

Defunding government was a complicated business. One aspect was tax reform to free those who didn't actually work for a living - coupon clippers - from the burden of taxation, shifting their fair share to wage earners. The next step was to direct big tax cuts for the wealthiest income earners, again shifting the burden of those cuts to those "left behind", the working and middle classes.

The War on Terror offered enormous possibilities. For the first time, America privatized warmaking itself with billions of dollars shuffled off to Halliburton and Kellog Brown & Root, among others lining up in Baghdad for corporate welfare on the grandest scale.

Defunding government also entails debt and deficits. Run huge deficits funded by foreign borrowings and so burden the government with debt that it has no choice but to scrap any vestiges of New Deal thinking.

But now there's an even better way to submerge America's taxpaying classes - the subprime mortgage fiasco. It's America's new economy, a legacy of the Reagan years. Grow a bubble, create notional wealth, strip wealth, collapse bubble and clean up the mess with government bailouts.

Now America is in the midst of yet another collapse. The fiscal banditos have made their fortunes and split, leaving the aftermath to society. As ever it's the government that has to step in to protect the economy from total collapse and, as ever, that means pledging the good credit of the taxpaying classes against the chicanery of the non-taxpaying elite. You see, the US government doesn't have the hundreds of billions of dollars, trillions perhaps, this will ultimately cost. It's defunded. That money has to be borrowed and that crushing debt can only serve to suffocate any remaining, reasonable expectations the taxpaying classes may have of their government.

By the way, this is another page that Harper has torn out of the Republican playbook. It's just his cup of tea.

In Defence of Privacy, Our Fundamental Right

I believe in rights. I believe there isn't a single right we have today that hasn't been bought and paid for - in blood - often several times over. I believe there isn't a right that can't and won't be taken from us unless we defend it. But in order to defend rights, they have to be understood and valued.

One right that's rapidly being lost is our right to privacy. Our privacy is being invaded, even trampled upon at every turn. Use your credit card and you're yielding a bit of your privacy. Use the phone, same thing. Hell the grocery store now records your favourite brand of frozen pizza and your preference in feminine hygiene products. Now in British Columbia, the government has our health records processed in the United States which means, thanks to the Patriot Act, our assurance of health care privacy is shattered.

Britain, home of Magna Carta itself, has become astonishingly indifferent to the right of privacy. Britain has become a surveillance society with its precious architecture defaced by batteries of CCT security cameras. In some communities the police operate aerial reconnaissance drones over their own streets. These are things designed to aid the war against al-Qaeda, not to surveil ordinary Britons.

There was a story over the weekend about a proposed new British transit identity card. Leaving aside the right of privacy, it's pretty cool technology. It functions as a cash card and a security/surveillance device. Want to hop a train, get on a bus or ride the Tube? Swipe your card or else submit to inconvenient human scrutiny. I mean, after all, if you're not using your card you must be up to something, eh?

In no time they've got a detailed history of Charlie Banks of 54 Melbourne Grove, SE 22. They know where he goes, when and for how long - every day, every month, every year of his life. Computers can immediately spot something out of the ordinary and, very quickly, "out of the ordinary" becomes something suspicious, something to be watched. You call extra surveillance upon yourself by choosing to try something new and, Heaven help you if that something new just happens to be in or near a place that's already being watched.

"If you have nothing to hide, there's no reason to worry." That's the vile excuse they always use when stripping away another layer of your privacy. That's right, only wrongdoers need to be worried, right? Wrong, dead wrong. It's a set up whereby defending your fundamental right to privacy becomes analogous with trying to hide something in your dirty, devious and undoubtedly criminal or subversive life.

Surely the onus ought to be on those seeking to narrow your rights, not on those defending their rights. You want to take away my rights then first show that it's truly necessary. Show the purpose is valid. Show there are no other ways to achieve the same purpose, not just no other ways that are as inexpensive. Show just how much intrusion is actually required and for just how long. No blank cheques. No indefinite powers. The focus has to be on restoring that right as fully and quickly as possible. Figure out who will watch the watchers, who will represent the public interest in monitoring their intrusion of the public's rights and give those watchers genuine powers to intervene when they detect abuse.

Sadly, this isn't what happens. After all, it's so much easier to cast suspicion on objectors when the rest of the public is complacent and all too willing to be herded into the surveillance corral.

If you've ever served your country or had a family member who went off to war and maybe didn't come back, these are rights you have fought for, rights that must belong to your entire society. If you don't defend them you cheapen that service, that sacrifice. Freedom, after all, is more than just hoisting another pint in The Legion.

Addendum:

I forgot to explain why I consider privacy our "fundamental right." That's because the strength of our right of privacy impinges on so many of our other essential rights including free speech, association, assembly, equality; thought, conscience and religion; arrest and detention and due process. Undermining privacy can also powerfully undermine those other rights.

Another concern that arises out of the erosion of our privacy rights is the almost Newtonian rise in secrecy that results from it. It's an action/reaction process. As our privacy is stripped from us, government secrecy inevitably increases. We don't know who is watching us, when we're being watched and what is being recorded and catalogued much less how it will be used on or against us or others, often without our awareness even of that. It sets up government against the individual in an adversarial relationship.

It's vastly more troubling when it's done at the same time we are "dumbing down" society, weakening us against the shelling out of our rights. That's what I meant by my reference to the masses being complacently herded into the surveillance corral.

The Big Melt

This might not be a good time to complain about melting to those of you shovelling snow from your roofs back East but - can't be helped.

Contrary to the nonsense being spun by the hoax climate (i.e. denialist) industry, the world's glaciers are melting faster than ever.

The outfit that knows is aptly called the World Glacier Monitoring Service. As its name suggests, it keeps tabs on glaciers around the world and it's not in the business of creating smokescreens for the fossil fuel industry.

The latest WGMS report says the world's glaciers are melting faster than at any time in the past 5,000 years. From The Guardian:

"Based on historical records and other evidence, the rate at which the glaciers are melting is also thought to be faster that at any time in the past 5,000 years, said Professor Wilfried Haeberli, director of the monitoring service. 'There's no absolute proof, but nevertheless the evidence is strong: this is really extraordinary.'

The problem could lead to failing infrastructure, mass migration and even conflict. 'We're talking about something that happens in your and my lifespan. We're not talking about something hypothetical, we're talking about something dramatic in its consequences,' he said.

Lester Brown, of the influential US-based Earth Policy Institute, said the problem would have global ramifications, as farmers in China and India struggled to irrigate their crops.
'This is the biggest predictable effect on food security in history as far as I know,' said Brown."

The Himalayan glaciers feed the main rivers of both India and China, providing water essential for agriculture in those massively populated nations. The loss of these glaciers is expected to turn the once mighty Ganges into a seasonal river, dry except during the monsoon season when water isn't needed for irrigation anyway. The same situation could afflict major agricultural areas of China also.

It's not just people and rice paddies and wheat fields that need reliable volumes of water. Industry consumes enormous amounts of water and both China and India are moving to industrialize on a massive scale that will only compound their water needs just when those resources are becoming unstable.

Before long, water may be the new oil. Maybe then those of us in coastal British Columbia will stop whining so much about it.

Depressing Talk and Laissez Faire Suicide

The "D" word has hit the papers. It was only a matter of time. The British newspaper The Independent has come out and used the word "depression" in the context of the current global credit crisis.

Sensationalism, irresponsible fear mongering? Let's hope so. But that doesn't change the fact that no one knows what the world is facing from a financial crisis sparked by America's subprime mortgage meltdown.

Two things to bear in mind. The subprime mortgage fiasco was only the spark to an economic, house of cards that had turned explosive long ago. Second, what we're witnessing is consistent with the end of great economic empires from the past. We may be on the brink of an economic adjustment of seismic proportions that will see a transfer of economic power from the United States to Asia.

This very outcome was predicted several years ago in a powerfully insightful book, American Theocracy. If you haven't read it, it would certainly be worth your while to get your hands on a copy.

The author, Kevin Phillips, a prominent Republican, illustrated the transitions taking place within the United States over the past two decades, classic hallmarks seen in the decline of the Roman, Spanish, Dutch and British empires in centuries past.

One of these indicia is the shift in the economy from manufacturing to the financial sector, or financialization. When this occurs, the banking, lending, insurance sector displaces manufacturing in dominating the nation's gross domestic product. It happened in Spain and in the Netherlands and in Britain before each fell into decline.

In the financialization era, a dominant nation believes it can simply outsource manufacturing to lesser, typically agrarian, states and it will reap grand rewards from investing in manufacturing in these less expensive venues. It works, but not for long.

What's wrong with outsourcing manufacturing (a.k.a. globalization) is that the dominant nation uses its wealth to grow the economy of other nations instead of its own. Nowhere has this been more powerful than in the transfer of manufacturing from the US to China.

You know those types who warned that WalMart was a place where working people went to shop themselves out of their jobs? They were right.

But I digress.

The financialization of America wasn't well handled, not at all well handled. Federal Reserve Board chairman Greenspan didn't understand it. He even dismissed warnings that America was developing a dangerous housing bubble, calling it mere "froth" in the marketplace. Al got out while the getting was good.

In the course of financialization, America was flooded with cheap money. Foreign creditors, notably China, were content to purchase American debt at artificially low interest rates in order to keep their own exports pouring into the US.

This flood of cheap money led to artificially low loan and mortgage interest rates. Low mortgage interest rates stimulate demand for housing which, in turn, sends housing prices up. Soaring housing prices, in turn, provide a powerful incentive for buyers to get into the market and take advantage of the free money a house will generate as its price keeps climbing. Debt became almost irrelevant.

There were two, key warning signs that were neglected by the US government and the Fed. During this period, home equity ratios fell to all-time lows and household debt levels reached record-highs. Savings, as a percentage of income, plummeted too. Warning bells should have gone off, emergency flares should have floated across the skies, but they didn't.

Yet the cheap money kept pouring in even as the supply of qualified borrowers fizzled. That's when lenders got creative. Interest only mortgages came to be the favoured choice of first time home buyers in markets like California. Then there were people who were lured into borrowing money they had no means to afford - the subprime mortgagors. They were the fuse in the grenade.

America created a large class of borrowers who staked everything on continuous escalation in housing prices. So long as that elevator went up, they were okay. But it stopped and then began heading down, in free fall.

There were people who got rich off this orgy of fiscal madness. Among them were the hustlers who sold these loans, took the mortgages - good, doubtful and simply bad, bundled them up and sold them as derivatives to mainstream lenders. Everyone was so blind, stinking drunk on notional wealth that nobody heard the ticking sounds coming from those bundled "asset backed commercial paper" derivatives.

The subprime mortgage problem is relatively small - maybe $400-billion out of $11-trillion in mortgage loans - but it's enough to spread uncertainty and fear throughout the credit industry and, for a nation addicted to debt and foreign loans, that can be and is devastating. What ought to have been good loans can turn into bad loans with nothing more than a loss of confidence and that's what seems to be happening. Companies that find the credit market dried up can be toppled by even short-term capital interruptions. Expansion plans are scrapped, employees are shed from payrolls, and so it goes. The economy shrinks, yielding to recession.

The financialization of the American economy was bad enough but government and regulatory incompetence made it far worse. The marketplace is self-correcting, obviously, but we sometimes find that those corrections can irreparably damage a nation's economy, even the nation itself.

These are fascinating times in which we live. Whether environmentally, economically, politically or militarily, history is unfolding before our eyes daily on a scale never before witnessed. New powers are ascending while old powers recede, sometimes unexpectedly. Natural resources are reaching depletion, renewables are past exhaustion, species are nearing extinction, and our climate is changing beyond our ability to control our own impacts.

What we're experiencing today was unknown just a few generations back. We're sailing in uncharted waters with shoals in all directions. A lot of the changes we'll confront in the next two decades have already been put in motion and are now unstoppable.

The America of the Bush Oligarchy has written its own destiny. What remains now is to see how that plays out. It's bound to be a bumpy ride, so hang on.

Russia To Step Back Into Afghanistan?

The biggest news to come out of the upcoming NATO summit in Bucharest may be an announcement of Russian participation in Afghanistan.

The story has been kicking around for a few weeks, largely treated as rumour, but now, according to Asia Times and other journalistic sources, this seems to be turning into reality:

Russia may be about to join hands with NATO in Afghanistan. A clearer picture will emerge out of the intensive consultations of the foreign and defense ministers of Russia and the United States within the so-called "2+2" format due to take place in Moscow from Monday through Tuesday next week. From the guarded comments by both sides and the flurry of US diplomatic activity, it appears highly probable that Russia is being brought into the solution of the Afghanistan problem, along with NATO.

According to the Russian newspaper Kommersant and the Financial Times of London, the initiative came from Russia when its new ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin - erstwhile Russian politician with a controversial record as a staunch Russian nationalist who routinely berated the West - signaled a strong interest in this area at a recent meeting of the NATO-Russia Council at Brussels. The plan involves Russia providing a land corridor for NATO to transport its goods - "non-military materials" - destined for the mission in Afghanistan. Intensive talks have been going on since then over a framework agreement.

From the feverish pace of diplomatic activity, the expectation of the two sides seems to be that an agreement could be formalized at NATO's Bucharest summit. In an interview with German publication Der Spiegel on Monday, Rogozin confirmed this expectation, saying, "We [Russia] support the anti-terror campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. I hope we can manage to reach a series of very important agreements with our Western partners at the Bucharest summit. We will demonstrate that we are ready to contribute to the reconstruction of Afghanistan."


The implications are obvious. Russia would be willing to cooperate with NATO, but on an equal and comprehensive basis, and, secondly, the sort of selective engagement of Russia by NATO that the US has been advocating will be unacceptable to Moscow. Significantly, Putin frontally questioned the standing of NATO's monopoly of conflict resolution in Afghanistan.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has also separately signaled Russia's readiness to provide military transit to Afghanistan for NATO provided "an agreement is concluded on all aspects of the Afghan problem between NATO and the Collective Security Treaty Organization [CSTO]". Significantly, Lavrov was speaking immediately after the 7th session of the Russian-French Cooperation Council on Security Issues in Paris on Tuesday. He asserted that "most NATO members, including France", favor Moscow's idea of a NATO-CSTO cooperative framework over Afghanistan. Lavrov all but suggested that Washington was blocking such cooperation between NATO and the Russian-led CSTO."

But cooperation with Russia involves NATO embarking on cooperation with CSTO and possibly with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as well. (Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, addressing the Security Council in New York on Wednesday, proposed that for effectively combating drug trafficking originating from Afghanistan, a system of security rings promoted by Russia in the Central Asian region in recent years would be useful and that the potential of CSTO and SCO should be utilized.)

What worries the US is that any such link up between NATO and CSTO and SCO would undermine its "containment" policy toward Russia (and China), apart from jeopardizing the US global strategy of projecting NATO as a political organization on the world arena.

The most damaging part is that Russia-NATO cooperation will inevitably strengthen Russia's ties with European countries and that, in turn, would weaken the US's trans-Atlantic leadership role in the 21st century. "

Completely by chance, this story neatly dovetails with (and corroborates) the following opinion piece concerning US dependence on NATO to maintain its global stature.

Recession Hits US Could Be Worst In Half Century

The president of America's National Bureau of Economic Research says the United States has entered a recession that's going to get a lot worse and could be the worst to hit the country since WWII.

"The situation is bad, it's getting worse, and the risks are that the situation could be very bad," Martin Feldstein said in a speech yesterday at a financial industry conference in Boca Raton, Fla. From The Boston Globe:

"Feldstein's remarks were punctuated by an extraordinary run of alarming developments yesterday, including surging oil prices, new worries about home foreclosures, and the near collapse of a venerable investment bank that sparked another rout in stock prices on Wall Street.

Rising oil prices, in turn, are driving up prices for everything from food to electricity, threatening to end years of modest inflation. Gold prices hit a fresh record yesterday, as investors embrace it as a hedge against inflation and a weakening US dollar, which remained at lows against the euro.

Feldstein followed his remarks in Florida with an emphatic statement later in the day.

"The economy is now in a recession," he said. "It will last longer and be deeper than the last two recessions, which lasted only 8 months from peak to trough. It could well be longer and deeper than the recession in the early 1980s that lasted 16 months."

Feldstein's view is increasingly the common one among economists. A Wall Street Journal survey of economists published yesterday found more than 70 percent agreed that the US economy is now in recession."

Without NATO, America's Global Standing Plummets

The United States has been ranting lately about the very future of the NATO alliance hinging on the willingness of its European members to send more troops to fight America's castoff war in Afghanistan.

Washington may have been trying to shake up the European states but it's a policy that carries potential risks to the US that may be even more threatening.

America posits itself as "Leader of the Free World," a fairly grandiose but shallow, even tenuous claim. What is the Free World if not the Western world?

Since the end of WWII, America's prestige has been framed as the leader of the developed world. It was Washington's ability to lead Europe and harness their combined industrial engines and military might that elevated it to leadership globally.

Without a NATO to lead, America is reduced to a powerhouse dependent on ad hoc coalitions of states that typically need to be bribed or cajoled into joining and that flit in and out as it suits their interests. Bush, himself, on trying to gather a meaningful alliance to legitimize his conquest of Iraq spoke of the future as one to be shaped by "coalitions of the willing."

These coalitions, however convenient, lack precisely what America needs most - permanence and constancy. They're "one off" affairs that can rapidly turn into embarrassments as once true blue underlings get bored or are driven out in elections at home. That ain't no way to lead the world.

Without NATO, what remains save for the United Nations, a body increasingly hostile and suspicious of the United States? The UN is also the place where America cannot avoid looking into the faces of its future economic rivals - China and India, Russia and Brazil - and their demands for recognition and power sharing.

The European Union itself has emerged to rival the United States in population and combined GDP but NATO isn't structured as a US/EU partnership. Within NATO, America remains very much first among notional equals. Within NATO America can still leverage its considerable strengths.

It is no fluke that the United States appears much more worried about the potential demise of NATO than its European partners. Their 21st century reality is much different than the past, more divergent from America's.

In America's heyday, Europe was delineated by a concrete wall and barbed wire. To the East lay nothing but threats. The Soviet Union and its vast thousands of tanks stood poised to smash through the Fulga Gap and swallow the West. The wall is finally gone and the barbed wire and tanks are gone too. Europe has swelled to Russia itself and now has become dependent upon Russia for essentials such as natural gas.

Europe sees itself today more connected to Russia than at any time since the First World War and Old Europe finds itself increasingly at odds with New Europe and the United States over how it will deal with Russia. Washington is intent on driving NATO straight to the Russian borders by inducting Georgia and the Ukraine even as it negotiates to plant anti-missile batteries in Poland and the Czech Republic, virtually on Russia's doorstep.

American belligerence is fueling an arms race with Russia that is directly contrary, even harmful to Europe's interests. European leaders are more or less playing nice at the moment, hoping that November will bring a level of maturity and vision to the White House not seen since 2000.

NATO still has an important role to play in the futures of both the US and Europe but the next American president will have some real fence-mending to do. That'll mean toning down American unilateralism and exceptionalism, giving Europe a greater say in the leadership of the Alliance and no longer treating NATO as America's Foreign Legion.

The stresses that threaten the Alliance are more American than European. And, if NATO does fall apart, America stands to lose more than anyone else.

Cruising Kandahar

The New York Times has published this photo of a Canadian patrol attacked in Kandahar city on Wednesday. I think the picture of the lead vehicle and soldiers milling about speaks for itself.

Help Yourself

Here are a few bumper sticker mock-ups. If you like them, feel free to download them and print them up.

Brooks On Spitzer

David Brooks is a conservative columnist with the New York Times. Perhaps it is his lofty perch and ideological leanings that have left him able to offer these insights into the fall of Eliot Spitzer and those like him:

"...these people succeed and enjoy their success. When Bigness descends upon them, they dominate every room they enter and graciously share their company with those who are thrilled to meet them.

But then, gradually, some cruel cosmic joke gets played on them. They realize in middle age that their grandeur is not enough and that they are lonely. The ordinariness of their intimate lives is made more painful by the exhilaration of their public success. If they were used to limits in public life, maybe it would be easier to accept the everydayness of middle-aged passion. But, of course, they are not.

And so the crisis comes. Perhaps alpha male gorillas don’t wake up in the middle of the night feeling sorry for themselves because “nobody knows the real me.” But those of us in the business of covering the great and the powerful know that human leaders have an almost limitless capacity for self-pity.

They seek to heal the hurt. Maybe they frequent prostitutes because transactional relationships are something they understand. But in other cases, they just act like complete idiots.

I don’t know if you’ve seen a successful politician or business tycoon get drunk and make a pass at a woman. It’s like watching a St. Bernard try to French kiss. It’s all overbearing, slobbering, desperate wanting. There’s no self-control, no dignity.

These Type A men are just not equipped to have normal relationships. All their lives they’ve been a walking Asperger’s Convention, the kings of the emotionally avoidant. Because of disuse, their sensitivity synapses are still performing at preschool levels.

So when they decide that they do in fact have an inner soul and it’s time to take it out for a romp ... . Well, let’s just say they’ve just bought a ticket on the self-immolation express. Some desperate lunge toward intimacy is sure to follow, some sad attempt at bonding. Welcome to the land of the wide stance.

...they are completely unprepared. And in the middle of some perfectly enjoyable dinner party, a woman will suddenly find a tongue in her ear."

Where There's Smoke - There's More Smoke

A fascinating account in today's Globe & Mail about Frank Moores, Gerry and Fred Doucet, Government Consultants International, Thyssen, KarlHeinz Schreiber and the never to be Bear Head armoured vehicle plant.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080314.wpayments14/BNStory/mulroney/home

The story has an interesting account about a certain "letter of intent", money that flowed from Germany and some interesting accounts that were then rendered:

"After the document was signed, one of the first invoices to arrive for Mr. Schreiber was from Fred Doucet, whose new company was Fred Doucet Consulting International.

It was dated Nov. 2, 1988, which was less than three months after Mr. Doucet left his government job and about a month after the document was signed. His invoice was for $90,000.
Other invoices started rolling in. The law firm of Gerry Doucet, Mr. Doucet's brother, also billed for $90,000. Gary Ouellet's consulting company billed for a further $90,000. Frank Moores sent his $90,000 invoice and his lobby firm, Government Consultants International, issued an invoice for $250,000.

All of the invoices used similar language to describe the work that was performed: “professional services,” “services rendered” and “consulting services.”

And sure enough, over a period of 20 days, money started winding its way from Germany back to the lobbyists. Thyssen sent $2-million to one of Mr. Schreiber's Liechtenstein shell companies. That was transferred to another shell company, which in turn sent $1-million to one of Mr. Schreiber's Swiss bank accounts. Then, $610,000 was transferred out of the Swiss bank account – codenamed “Frankfurt” – the same day Fred Doucet invoiced Mr. Schreiber.

After the money made its way through another Liechtenstein company, Mr. Schreiber paid all of the parties – a total of $610,000 – on Nov. 15, 1988, from one of his Calgary companies, Bitucan."

Maybe it's just coincidence. Maybe Fred Doucet and maybe Gerry Doucet and maybe Frank Moores each really did do work costing exactly, to the penny, $90,000.00. But we may never know. Frank, of course, is long dead and neither Fred nor Gerry seem to want to talk about it.

Wait, I know. We should just ask KarlHeinz. He paid them.

Tony's Desperate Search for Relevance

Tony wants to be loved. He wants to be valued and respected and hoisted up on some sort of international pedestal.

When he finally got his marching papers from No. 10 Downing Street, Blair fashioned himself into some "super envoy" who would do what none had done before him, make peace between the Palestinians and Israel.

That hasn't exactly worked out, has it?

Then he was casting about for support to become the President of the European Union. A lot of major EU states are wary about Tony's breathtaking submission to the Washington dominatrix. No, sorry Tony, that looks like a non-starter.

Now Tony wants to save the planet. That's better than Palestine, right? Better even that the whole EU, right? Yes, the planet. There's something fitting to a man of Tony's experience and accomplishments. Just the ticket.

According to The Guardian, "Tony Blair.. ..plans to publish a report over the next year that could form the basis for what he described as a proper global deal to combat the biggest threat facing the world.

Explaining his thinking, Blair said: "Essentially what everyone has agreed is that it is a serious problem, it is man-made, we require a global deal that there should be a substantial cut in emissions at the heart of it, and this global deal should involve everyone, including in particular America on the one hand and China on the other, so it is the developed and developing world.

"The question is: what is the framework that gets everyone in the deal that has obligations all around, even if they are different obligations, and results therefore in a chance of reaching that substantial cut in emissions? So the task is both to specify finally what we mean by a substantial cut in emissions to get a clear global deal, but also to set out the framework.

"The problem is that you could work out what you are going do, and what the Europeans are going to do, but it seems far more difficult to see how you put the whole thing together, so that you have a true and proper global deal."

He said that the initiative "arose out of my experience in office. We got a long way from 2005 to the 2007 G8 summit in Germany, when people - including the Americans - finally agreed there had to be a new global deal, and everyone had to be part of it, and there had to be a substantial global cut in emissions.

"But we have not decided the target, or the means by which we are going to give effect to those common but differentiated obligations. There will be an insistence that everyone has to be part of the deal."

"I can give this some realistic political guidance, and I am not going to come up with something that I myself would have rejected when I was sitting round the table. There is no point producing something that is not politically doable. It may be politically challenging but that is a different thing."

Can Blair really make the difference he believes he can? I hope so but I think he left his credibility to drain away into the sands of Iraq. He sure hasn't made a difference in the Middle East and a lot of Europeans don't think much of George Bush's sock puppet. He's an enthusiastic little shit though, isn't he? Annoying, but enthusiastic. You have to give him that much.

AfriCom Really Is AfriKom After All

The US Army's newest overseas command, AfriCom, is getting a rough reception from most African leaders. In fact, only Liberia has offered to host American military installations on that continent.

When the Pentagon first began scouting for basing privileges in host nations, it assured them that AfriCom - make that AfriKom - would have a humanitarian, not a military focus. They expressly assured all and sundry they wouldn't be using AfriKom to hunt down Islamists in those lands.

What sharp teeth you have, Grandma!

The United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs, in a move destined to set the Pentagon and White House wolves howling, has come right out and said that AfriKom's focus is military, not humanitarian:

In a key briefing to Congress on 13 March, General William “Kip” Ward, head of the US Command for Africa, AFRICOM, devoted only 15 seconds of his four-and-a-half minute opening remarks to a possible humanitarian role.

Focusing instead on military training, security and counter-terrorism, his remarks came in sharp contrast to a year ago when officials announced that the command would concentrate on humanitarian assistance, alarming many aid agencies, which were concerned that US military involvement in humanitarian aid would undermine their neutrality.

The UN is concerned about AfriKom stepping on the toes of humanitarian NGOs operating in Africa. Many African leaders, however, are more worried about AfriKom stepping on their necks.

Now that the US is relying on Africa for an increasing share of its imported oil and with the recent appearance of China in competition for African resources, the Dark Continent has come in for much more attention from Washington. Given what they've seen happen elsewhere in the world, that has a lot of African leaders openly questioning why they need, or would want, the US Army there anyway?

Olbermann to Hillary - Purge the "Cheap, Ignorant, Vile Racism" From Your Campaign!

Namibians Understand Global Warming

Precipitation fluctuations - drought & flood or "feast or famine" if you will - are one of the hallmark effects of global warming driven climate change. This past year alone we've witnessed massive inundations in places like England, central Europe, Mexico and across Asia.

We think of drought as a powerful cause of crop failure but flooding can be just as bad. That's what's underway right now in Namibia as you can see in the picture above. The floods are expected to severely curtail the cereal grain crop in much of that country.

Meanwhile, here in the land of the affluent we've developed a fondness for burning food to make SUV juice.

And it's not just the disruption of Namibia's food supply. The floods have also overwhelmed the country's primitive, pit toilet system contaminating the water these people have to drink. 74-cases of cholera have already been recorded and you can bet there'll be plenty more to come.

But, of course, every cloud has a silver lining, even rain clouds. Namibia's torrential rains have been a positive boon for army worms. There's been a huge outbreak of army worms, nasty little creatures that breed fast and consume anything green in their path - green as in pastureland, green as in food.

China - Far Dirtier Than We'd Imagined

Here's a real setback to hopes of tackling global greenhouse gas emissions.

Reuters news service reports that studies undertaken by researchers from the University of California found that Chinese GHG emissions are set to grow at least 11% annually from 2004 to 2010, not the more benign 2.5 to 5% estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Environment ministers from the world's 20-top emitters are scheduled to meet on Friday in Japan. These 20-nations produce 80% of the planet's total GHG emissions.

The UC Berkley report indicates Chinese emissions will have grown by 600-million metric tons by 2010 which vastly eclipses the 116-million metric ton reductions targeted in the first phase of the Kyoto Accords.

"It had been expected that the efficiency of China's power generation would continue to improve as per-capita income increased, slowing down the rate of CO2 emissions growth," said Maximillian Auffhammer, UC Berkeley assistant professor of agricultural and resource economics.

"What we're finding instead is that the emissions growth rate is surpassing our worst expectations, and that means the goal of stabilizing atmospheric CO2 is going to be much, much harder to achieve."

This report isn't an anti-Chinese smear job either. The calculations were based on pollution data from 30 Chinese provinces and China's official waste gas emissions data.

So, the climb just got one helluva lot steeper and the lesson is that something effective has to be up and running very, very soon.

A Fine Tribute to A Much Maligned Woman

I've made no secret of the high regard I hold for Louise Arbour. I believe she's exceptional in every respect and, in some, unparalleled.

She is also a person who has been much maligned abroad and at home. Washington's dislike for her was visceral and even our own journalistic malignancy, the National Post resorted to branding her an anti-semite.

If you're interested in Arbour's travails, Jeremy Kinsman has written an excellent account at the CBC website:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_kinsman/20080311.html

It's a good read, check it out.

And He Was Expecting - What?

Retired Justice John Gomery showed up before a Commons committee today to whine that Harpo has completely ignored his report on restoring government accountability issued in the wake of his enquiry into the sponsorship scandal.

At the time, when Gomery was doing everything possible to help Harpo into power, our Furious Leader rubbed his back, patted his judicial bum and assured Gomery that he, Harpo, would clean house once he got the reins of power.

SURPRISE! Just kidding. C'mon you really didn't believe that nonsense, did you? Did you? Accountability? Ha, in a pig's eye!

From the Toronto Star:

"I am disappointed. I find it hard to swallow," he told the Commons government operations committee, which is reviewing the Conservative's handling of his report.

"I gave them two years, I thought it would give them the time to do something."

Well, best you learn how to swallow harder, Johnny. You were had. The Canadian people were had.

Gomery told his undoubtedly rapt audience that the growing, centralized power in Harpo's PMO is a "danger to Canadian democracy" and paves the way to political interference in public administration.

But what's wrong with Rule by Political Commissars? You know, those faceless insiders who keep the gags firmly on outfits like the Department of National Defence and Environment Canada, Harpo's aides who keep the curtains so tightly drawn lest the Canadian people get a glimpse of what the inside really looks like.

Gee, John, does this mean no more congratulatory photo ops with Stephen Harper? I'll bet you feel like a real tool now, don't ya? That's because you were a tool and a very handy one at the time.

Enough Is Enough, Except When It's Not

Harpo EnviroMin John Baird is a huckster, a dabbler in the Dark Arts, a master of sleight-of-hand. Well, maybe not exactly a master because he and SHarper have tried to con us twice and it hasn't worked but you have to give him full points for trying.

That's why Bairdo is now talking tough on the Athabasca Tar Sands, or at least future projects which, he promises, will have to achieve unattainable targets using nonexistant technologies that we've been told for a decade are just around the corner. Our Furious Leader's 800-pound gorilla (and he really does look like one) beats his chest, bares his fangs in anguished roars and flings dung about his cage proclaiming loudly that they'll do better next time or, if not, then the time after that, or the one after that, or sooner or later or eventually, maybe.

It's all show. Really, it's all for worrywart voters. "Look mom", he proclaims, reaching deep into his diapers, "look what I've made for you!" Sorry for all the scatalogical references but it's a preposterously scatalogical plan.

It's designed to showcase initiatives; bright, shiny, sparkling distractions; not to achieve a meaningful reduction in our nation's GHG emissions. If he wanted to do what really matters, Baird would be showcasing something other than fanciful ideas - he'd be defining limits, hard caps on greenhouse gas emissions.

Why are the Tories so afraid of greenhouse gas emission caps? It's obvious when you think about it. It's because it would mean carbon rationing, allocation of a national, total maximum permissible carbon emission quota, and how else can you carve up something you've rationed except on a per capita basis? Why should a guy from Ontario be limited to X-tonnes of GHG emissions when a guy from Alberta gets 4X? If we're all going to have to sacrifice, shouldn't we all bear the same sacrifice? Of course we should, it's the quintessential Canadian way, rien?

You see, once you set hard caps, emissions = money and potentially big money. Alberta doesn't want to share its good fortune, it's petro-wealth, but it sure wants you to share it's petro-dirt. Whatever limits are set, it wants your province not it's own to bear the disproportionate burden, to carry the environmental cost of its wildly lucrative Tar Sands.

Worse yet, is what the idea of carbon rationing on an equitable, per capita rationale would or could lead to. Why, if we entertained such revolutionary thinking at home, how would we begin to refute the Chinese and the Indian claims for similar, per capita quotas? What might begin in Athabasca could wind up undoing the entire New World Order.

That's why Bairdo is cavorting about promising to "do better" because what's he really trying to do is to keep the same shell game going for just as long as he and our Furious Leader can get away with it.

I hope I've given you something to think about, a fresh way of looking at exactly what lies behind the Tories environmental scheming. Harpo, Bairdo and the rest of them are cheap shills for Big Oil and the sooner we see that plain reality, the sooner we'll find a way of dealing with this problem.

William Fallon - Milestone to War on Iran?

Yesterday's resignation of US Admiral William Fallon has set Washington pundits scurrying to cast bones and read the entrails.

Fallon had most recently served as the top US commander in the Middle East. The Admiral defied Bush/Cheney by publicly opposing any US attack on Iran. From the Washington Post:

"And so Fallon, the good cop, may soon be unemployed because he's doing what a generation of young officers in the U. S. military are now openly complaining that their leaders didn't do on their behalf in the run-up to the war in Iraq: He's standing up to the commander in chief, whom he thinks is contemplating a strategically unsound war."

NBC News reported that Defense Secretary Robert Gates, under pressure from the White House, had lately been refusing to take Fallon's calls.

Fallon's resignation/firing comes at an interesting time. Just a week from now General David Petraeus who Fallon has branded as an ass-kisser, will appear before Congress to testify about the wonderful progress he's achieved in Iraq. And this Sunday, the Prince of Darkness himself, Dickster Cheney, is off to the Middle East for "talks."

Will the US attack Iran? Cheney and Bush want to, that much is obvious. Their military leaders don't want to but they've just been given a message by the impaling of Fallon what lies in store for the career of anyone who dares oppose the Evil Twins. Israel wants to go, badly. More US Navy warships are headed to take up station within striking range of Iran. Who knows what predeployments are being made for the US Air Force's strategic bomber force? Bush/Cheney are running out of time to do this - getting awfully close to a "now or never" moment. One thing is plain - there's nothing in these developments that suggests the US wants to focus on dialogue with Tehran.

And what if they go ahead? Well, hang onto your hats. There'll be no conquest of Iran to rival what happened in Iraq. The US Army is simply tapped out. They'll have to be content with airpower - bombing and cruise missile attacks. They'll have to show a degree of competence beyond anything seen so far if the bombing campaign is to work and, by "work," that means total reduction of Iran's anti-shipping weaponry, submarine and land-based.

If Iran survives with a fraction of its anti-ship weaponry intact, the Persian Gulf is closed for business. Nobody will be able to ship oil out of the Gulf and, sorry to say this kiddies, but that means a meltdown in the world economy. The US economy collapses into a depression and every other developed nation gets shoved into that same hole.

But surely Bush/Cheney wouldn't do anything that stupid, would they? How do you think they got their nation stuck in Iraq? They ignored reality, all the warnings, and went in believing they would be out within six weeks to six months. These are profoundly stupid people. Then again, that adds a certain spice to this looming peril, doesn't it?

Making a Silk Purse Out of an Afghan Goat's Ear

I was lucky enough to catch part of an interview with Gwynne Dyer aired on BC's Knowledge Network last night. The interview had been taped sometime last fall.

Dyer had some interesting observations on Afghanistan. He noted that the Afghans had "seen off" four, foreign incursions over the past 150-years - three British invasions and one Soviet - and said we're number five even if we think we're "special."

As for democracy and a viable state, Dyer said that Afghanistan has never really functioned as a state, merely an assembly of suspicious, rival ethnic groups that, between wars, sometimes manage to strike ceasefire deals that last for up to two to three decades. Then they go back at it until they get exhausted and decide what comes next. That's where they were when we stepped in.

Right now we've got the Uzbeks, Tajiks, Hazara and Turkmen lined up on our side against the largest ethnic group, the Pashtun, on the other. Warlords are in power in Kabul because it's a tribal society, a genuine herd of cats.

We have no plans to get rid of warlord rule and, unless and until we do just that, the nation will remain a patchwork of tribalism. In other words, we can win but only if we fight - and defeat - every ethnic group in the country. And what do you think are the odds of that?

The only way "the mission" to Afghanistan makes the slightest sense is from a position of wilful blindness and profound ignorance. You have to really, really, really dumb yourself down so that you can ignore all the obvious contradictions and manifest obstacles for which we're not even venturing solutions. We're talking John Manley dumb here.

I've spent hour upon hour searching out information on Afghanistan's warlords, a subject that goes unnoticed and unmentioned by Canadian reporters even thought it is the pivotal reality to Afghanistan's future. People, both present and past, like Dostum, Dadullah, Massoud, Gul Agha, Fahim, Haq, Mazari, Shirzai and Hekmatyar - not to mention, of course, Karzai. Even the president is a warlord. They all are. And, as pointed out by Chatham House in its latest review of Afghanistan's pitfalls, there exists a powerful "nexus" - yes, an actual, living, breathing connection - between these guys and the insurgency and the country's record-breaking opium trade. They're against the Taliban insurgency because (a) we're doing the fighting and (b) they choose to be for now.

Ah, but what about the Afghan National Army? Okay, what about it? In a nation whose very foundations are based on ethnic rivalry and feudal tribalism, how long do you think the Afghan National Army will last after the warlords each call their own factions home? These soldiers don't have a bond with a country that doesn't exist. Their bond is with their respective tribes and those tribes are directly ruled, not by Kabul, but by their warlords. Every private and corporal's families are subject to the whims of their tribe's warlord.

We have an Alice in Wonderland mentality about this war and that explains why, six years down the road, we're still hanging about swatting at flies. C'mon - we're talking about the power and glory of the Western world here on one side and a gang of medieval peasants on the other - and we're not winning! And our leaders - military and political - ran out of ideas years ago. They're on "stay the course" cruise control now. The best idea they can come up with is an extra thousand soldiers for Kandahar.

At least we've finally shed our sophomoric notions of bringing democracy and human rights to Afghanistan. Psst - here's a secret - we were never serious about that anyway.

The key to getting out of this cesspit is to find a way to drive a wedge between the Taliban and al-Qaeda. We've made that task vastly more difficult, Herculean even, by our foolishness of the past six years, but if we don't find a way to make it happen our sole remaining choice will be to leave, defeated. We need to look at the Taliban, cleansed of al-Qaeda affiliation, as barely distinguishable from all the other fundamentalist nutjobs we allow to rule outside the Pashtun territories.

The Taliban need to be re-integrated into Afghan affairs but we can't do that. These deals are negotiated and brokered among warlords, not with outsiders, particularly not infidel outsiders. The role we need to play is to figure out what it will take for the Taliban to cut al-Qaeda loose and then make that happen. Here's a hint - bombs aren't going to do it. It's going to take honey, lots of it.

Afghan elections are coming up and there's word that Washington is going to try to shift their boy, Khalizad, into Karzai's chair. Let's all hope - pray if you can - that doesn't happen.

Image credit: http://www.warlordsofafghanistan.com/ . Where you can buy a lovely set of coasters bearing the images of each of these charming fellows. If you're looking for truly informative sources on Afghanistan, let me know and I'll post them.

Wake Me When It's Over

They folded on Afghanistan. They folded on the Tory budget. They even folded on their own amendments. They folded on the environment. Every time the Tories shout "boo" Stephane Dion dives for cover and takes his MPs with him.

He was supposed to get his government ready to fight an election. That's the first rule when leading a party in a minority parliament.

Now he's up against it. He goaded the Tories with a tax cut and they're calling his bluff. Will Dion fold again? Does it even matter? James Travers, writing in the Toronto Star, argues that Dion allowed himself to be outflanked even on his strongest issue:

While the Conservative performance is long-term threatening to the environment, the Liberal failure is more immediately politically damaging.

The difference for Dion is that the environment is a point of a departure, an easily grasped way of presenting Liberals as the vector for a country moving forward in optimism, not back in nostalgia.

How the party skidded past that point puzzles even many Liberals. But two factors are clear.
One is that Dion's green credentials had more currency with the party than they now have with the public.

The other is that Conservatives were as skilfully swift in positioning Dion as an impotent environmentalist as they were framing him as a weak leader.

Even before the echoes of Dion's victory speech faded, Harper's spin-doctors were tracing the sorry record of Liberals who signed Kyoto but did next to nothing to rise to its challenges.

Since then, outflanking Dion on potential ballot questions has become the Conservative norm. They succeeded on Afghanistan and the management of a slowing economy while the renewed climate activity coupled with last night's vote on the NDP motion leave Dion without a compelling election issue.

- Update - This post has attracted a great deal of interest from Blogging Tories and their ilk. Before you do something embarrassing in your drawers, calm down. This post is about Mr. Dion, not the Liberal Party which, as each of you knows in the dim recesses of your narrow minds, will be back in due course. You, my friends, are gloating on borrowed time.

A quick question. Where would you be if you didn't have a leader like Harper? If there was ever a time you ought to be steamrollering the opposition into a powerful mega-majority, this is it. But you're not, not even close and you can blame lard-ass for screwing up your great and yet fleeting opportunity.

Britain Delays Iraq Draw Down

Plans announced by Brit prime minister Gordon Browne last October called for his country's military contingent to be reduced by half right about now. Hasn't happened and it seems the force of 4,100 will be staying for some months to come.

The Americans are holding a presidential election "some months to come." It could just be coincidence but accounts of American military deaths in Iraq seem to have picked up.

There's no way to tell, just yet, whether we're seeing the beginning of the pre-November election uprising by Iraq's Sunni and Shia militias but what's happening seems consistent with that.

Nothing to do but wait and watch.

John McCain: Abandoned Hope, Lapsed Conviction

I used to like John McCain, especially back in 2000 when he showed such courage and decency in his campaign against George w. Bush for the Republican presidential nomination.

I liked the John McCain who stood up and denounced Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as "agents of intolerism."

I liked the John McCain who took on Rumsfeld and Cheney and Bush for their absolute bungling of the Iraq war.

I liked the John McCain who, in 2001, stood his ground and opposed the Bush/Cheney tax cuts for the rich, proclaiming, "I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us, at the expense of middle-class Americans who most need tax relief."

If I'd had the chance I could have voted for that John McCain but this is 2008 and that John McCain is dead. He's been replaced by the new John McCain, stripped clean of all those principles, all that courage and that good conscience so that he can weasel through that small hole that leads to a Republican White House.

The new John McCain is a willing, even happy shill for the extreme, religious right; for America's "most fortunate"; for those who want the Iraq war to go on forever and ever amen. He appears as convocation speaker at Bob Jones university, embraces nutjob Pastor John Hagee, pledges to make permanent the tax cuts for the rich that once so offended his good conscience, and says he'll continue an unwinnable war until victory is his.

It's becoming impossible to tell where George w. Bush leaves off and John McCain picks up.

Your Daily Laugh(s)

Today it's all about Creationism. Now if you're religiously devout and you believe all evolutionists are going to burn in hell, you won't enjoy these clips. However if you're not quite so biblically ingrained, enjoy Lewis Black and Ricky Gervais:

Why Do They Drag Their Wives Through It With Them?

New York governor Eliot Spitzer has all but expressly admitted he enjoyed the services of one or more prostitutes. At a hastily-summoned press conference, Spitzer ducked the hard question, saying only that he had violated his obligations to his family, "I failed to live up to the standards I set up to myself. Now I stand to regain the trust of my family," he added, as his wife, Silda, stood by his side.

What I don't get is why these guys find it necessary to drag their wives through it when they're caught. B.C. premier Gordon Campbell did it, so did Bill Clinton. It's as though they're saying, "Look, she's still here beside me, so it's not all that bad and you - get over it."

At least Kobe Bryant's wife got a huge diamond ring out of it when it was her turn to stand by her man.

Bill Maher Takes On Clinton's McAuliffe

This is pretty funny

Eliot Spitzer Linked to Hooker Ring!

New York's former crusading prosecutor turned governor is reportedly linked to a prostitution ring.

The New York Times reports that Eliot Spitzer has informed his senior aides of this and has scheduled a press conference this afternoon to reveal all.

"Mr. Spitzer gained national attention when he served as attorney general with his relentless pursuit of Wall Street wrongdoing. As attorney general, he also had prosecuted at least two prostitution rings as head of the state’s organized crime task force.

In one such case in 2004, Mr. Spitzer spoke with revulsion and anger after announcing the arrest of 16 people for operating a high-end prostitution ring out of Staten Island."

American Taxpayers In the Crosshairs Again

We Canadians sometimes like to believe American taxpayers have it great thanks to vastly lower tax bites. Well, not so much as you might imagine.

America's taxpaying public are a prey species at the moment, stuck smack in the crosshairs of a government that has trimmed their ranks, an economic elite that has been set free, and a predatory economic nightmare that may soon be added to their "to do" list.

The George w. Bush regime has been a faithful friend to America's rich. It began with exempting the "investment class" from much of their traditional tax liability, shifting that burden instead to the remainder, the wage-earners. That was followed up with tax cuts for the wealthiest of those wage-earners, who also happened to be the nobility of the investment class. The burden they slipped also shifted to the middle- and working-class stiffs who were, as the nutjobs say "left behind."

Now with America teetering on the brink of a massive recession those tax cuts for the rich have shown themselves to be anything but "manna from heaven" bringing wealth and prosperity to all but John McCain and the Republicans remain insistent on making them permanent.

But wait, there's more. In the name of defunding government, Bush has been running massive deficits propped up by borrowed, foreign money. The money goes out the door just as fast as it comes in, the IOU's get deposited in a special room reserved for the kids and grandkids of the working- and middle-classes. That's business as usual.

But wait, there's more. Every decade or so, a group of prominent American rentiers go on a fiscal raid on the scale of a Genghis Kahn. They rape and pillage the countryside and then disappear as quickly as they arrived leaving nothing but disaster to show where they had been. That's when the government has to step in with emergency relief, typically borne on the backs of taxpayers, to settle things down, punch the reset button, and await the arrival of the next wave of Huns.

Think "savings and loan scandal" or the "dot.com bubble" or today's "subprime mortgage scandal." Enormous wealth is supposedly created, entered on the books, backed by millions of little people and then, in an instant, wiped out. Think Charles Keating, Bernie Ebbers, "Kenny Boy" Lay, Jeffrey Skilling and then put their faces on all those ancient, terra cotta warriors unearthed in China.

The Savings & Loan scandal of the late 80s, early 90s was, for it's day, "the largest and costliest venture in public misfeasance, malfeasance and larceny of all time." $160-billion of depositors' and investors' wealth was wiped out of which $124 was made good in bail outs by the government, i.e. the America taxpayer. A few, like Charles Keating, went to jail but many more just walked away with a lot of loot. Enron/Worldcom are more recent but they ended up much the same although not with similar bailouts. By then it was good enough that employees and small-time investors just had their financial integrity shattered. Now we're into the subprime mortgage and associated fiascos and hold on to your hat, if, as an American taxpayer, you're lucky enough to still have one.

Paul Krugman, writing in today's New York Times, warns that America's mortgage meltdown could massively dwarf the Saving & Loan or Enron/Worldcom collapses. Think of a cross-section of an old grenade. It has a fuse that is stuck right in the middle, surrounded by a sphere of high-explosive, all of it held in place with a metal casing. When the pin is pulled, the fuse explodes, detonating the surrounding explosive that causes the metal casing to break into lethal shards that fly out in all directions in search of victims.

In today's America, warns Krugman, the subprime market of $200-billion is the fuse planted in the midst of an $11-trillion, potentially volatile, mortgage market main charge.

"One consequence of the crisis is that while the Fed has been cutting the interest rate it controls - the so-called Fed funds rate - the rates that matter most directly to the economy, including rates on mortgages and corporate bonds, have been rising. And that's sure to worsen the economic downturn.

What's going on? Mr. Geithner described a vicious circle in which banks and other market players who took on too much risk are all trying to get out of unsafe investments at the same time, causing "significant collateral damage to market functioning."

A report released last Friday by JPMorgan Chase was even blunter. It described what's happening as a "systemic margin call," in which the whole financial system is facing demands to come up with cash it doesn't have. (A financial joke making the rounds, via the blog Calculated Risk: "Who is this guy Margin that keeps calling me?")

The Fed's latest plan to break this vicious circle is - as the financial Web site interfluidity.com cruelly but accurately describes it - to turn itself into Wall Street's pawnbroker. Banks that might have raised cash by selling assets will be encouraged, instead, to borrow money from the Fed, using the assets as collateral. In a worst-case scenario, the Federal Reserve would find itself owning around $200 billion worth of mortgage-backed securities.

Some observers worry that the Fed is taking over the banks' financial risk. But what worries me more is that the move seems trivial compared with the size of the problem: $200 billion may sound like a lot of money, but when you compare it with the size of the markets that are melting down - there are $11 trillion in U.S. mortgages outstanding - it's a drop in the bucket."

Will American taxpayers, at the end of the day, find themselves saddled with this one too? Are they going to be used to bail out America's banks and financial institutions? By the way, just what happened to their Social Security contributions over the past three decades? Oh yeah, their government, that's now conveniently broke, wrote them IOUs for that. What a relief!

EU Issues Warning on Environmental Migrants

Top European Union officials are warning of a massive migration out of the developing world caused by global warming.

Within a decade they forecast that the advantaged countries will have to cope with millions of what they term "environmental migrants." From The Guardian:

They point out that some countries already badly hit by global warming are demanding that the new phenomenon be recognised internationally as a valid reason for migration.

The immigration alert is but one of seven "threats" that the two officials focus on in pointing to the security implications and the dangers to European interests thrown up by climate change.

The main message is that the immediate and devastating effects of global warming will be felt far away from Europe, with the poor suffering disproportionately in south Asia, the Middle East, central Asia, Africa and Latin America, but that Europe will ultimately bear the consequences.
This could be in the form of mass migration, destabilisation of parts of the world vital to European security, radicalisation of politics and populations, north-south conflict because of the perceived injustice of the causes and effects of global warming, famines caused by arable land loss, wars over water, energy, and other natural resources.

"Reduction of arable land, widespread shortage of water, diminishing food and fish stocks, increased flooding and prolonged droughts are already happening in many parts of the world." Fresh water availability could fall by up to 30% in some regions, causing farming losses, surging food prices and shortages, and civil unrest. "Climate change will fuel existing conflicts over depleting resources."

This isn't the stuff of some Mad Max movie. It's real, it's deadly serious and it's already happening. Anyone who believes Canadians will remain immune to this is an idiot. We need to begin discussing what this problem means - for the world and for us - and how to address it. Sadly with Harpo at the helm and Baird on the bailing bucket, we're not in for a great ride.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/mar/10/climatechange.eu

A Window Into the Past

I got a terrific gift this weekend. I got it from an American guy with whom I share the same, somewhat unusual family name.

This fellow, my 10th cousin, decided to do the genealogy thing when he retired as an officer in the US military. Only he decided to do it not for his immediate family but for the whole clan which, as it turns out, represented a tree with four main branches.

I found his website in 1999 and contacted him, giving information of my family going back but two generations. My great-grandfather died well before my dad was born and, in those early days, there was a disconnect and so my dad, who's now 90, knew very little of his grandfather.

I contacted my American friend this weekend to ask if he'd found out anything further and I got an e-mail back within a few hours. There were three attachments and my jaw dropped as I began reading.

I now know my lineage, unbroken, going back 18-generations. In truth, I know one generation further back but only just. Turns out he was a Teutonic Knight, one of a force that reached the Swedish island of Gotland somewhere around the early to mid-1200s. Apparently he was in the conquering and pillaging business before he retired to England. The trail, with names, addresses and full details, picks up in 1275 in Yorkshire.

My American cousin took partial strands of information he gleaned here and there and matched them up using census, tax, parish and land records to verify the connections. Then, and here's the good part, he started a DNA project by which he's been able to biologically trace each of the four branches. That's how he confirmed my branch from Germany to Gotland to England to Canada.

My mom's buried in the "family plot" in Leamington, Ontario. After her funeral my kid brother and I went to the town hall to get burial records and found, not only the graves of the immediate relatives we knew, but also a handful of "unknowns" shown on the chart. A mystery - until yesterday. We now know who the unknowns are. They're my family's direct line since their arrival in Canada in the early 1800s. My American cousin knew all about them, even down to where each is buried.

I began the weekend knowing really nothing of my past beyond the life of my grandfather and ended the weekend with a roadmap going back to Edward I and beyond. Mind-boggling.

The whole thing is a tribute to a guy who devoted his retirement to this project and learned how to harness the internet and DNA science to his search. I now know the outline of my family story and maybe, someday I'll be able to find out more and add to it.

For You Hillary Fans Who Just Don't Get It

Yeah, I admit I've been a bit hard on Hillary but she deserves every bit she gets. I've written about her cardinal sin of undermining Obama to the benefit of McCain but it's obvious, from your vitriolic rebukes, that went over your heads. Okay, here it is again, this time from Gary Hart writing for the Huffington Post:

"It will come as a surprise to many people that there are rules in politics. Most of those rules are unwritten and are based on common understandings, acceptable practices, and the best interest of the political party a candidate seeks to lead. One of those rules is this: Do not provide ammunition to the opposition party that can be used to destroy your party's nominee. This is a hyper-truth where the presidential contest is concerned.

By saying that only she and John McCain are qualified to lead the country, particularly in times of crisis, Hillary Clinton has broken that rule, severely damaged the Democratic candidate who may well be the party's nominee, and, perhaps most ominously, revealed the unlimited lengths to which she will go to achieve power. She has essentially said that the Democratic party deserves to lose unless it nominates her.

Senator Obama is right to say the issue is judgment not years in Washington. If Mrs. Clinton loses the nomination, her failure will be traced to the date she voted to empower George W. Bush to invade Iraq. That is not the kind of judgment, or wisdom, required by the leader answering the phone in the night. For her now to claim that Senator Obama is not qualified to answer the crisis phone is the height of irony if not chutzpah, and calls into question whether her primary loyalty is to the Democratic party and the nation or to her own ambition."

There, is that plain enough for you? Do you get it now? She's a political monster, not just an animal. What matters above all to Hillary Clinton isn't the Democratic Party and it isn't America, it's Hillary Clinton. If she comes to power, hers is an attitude that her country, and others, will pay for again and again.

Oh, before I go, here's Maureen Dowd's latest take on Clinton/Obama from the New York Times:

"Hillary successfully recast herself in Ohio as a beer-drinking former waitress. Only after last week’s reversals did the Obama camp raise a louder ruckus about her tax returns. Obviously, Ms. Night Shift does not want to reveal the details of the fortune that Bill Clinton has made, sometimes through dubious associations.

It has taken Obama a year to start seriously rebutting Hillary’s risible claim that she has far more national security experience than he does. Having a first lady tea in Belfast is not equivalent to bringing peace to Northern Ireland.

Obama sounded whiny after his losses, chastising reporters on his plane for asking him hard questions about Goolsbee and Antonin Rezko. Privately, his people conceded that he hadn’t been as fierce about winning as Hillary, once more playing rope-a-dope.

He’s now learned what Hillary learned in Iowa: You can’t cruise to victory on a coronation strategy.

If he thinks Hillary has cut him down to size lately, he’d better imagine what his life would be like as the Clintons’ vice president. "

Tet 68 - Baghdad 08?

There are a few things that the Sunni and Shiite militias in Iraq want from the United States. There's really only one thing they both want, and that's the withdrawal of American forces from their country. A window of opportunity is about to open for them.

Both sides are well armed. The Shia militias have stockpiled the endless thousands of weapons "liberated" from American arsenals, including Abu Ghraib. The Sunni have been equipped by the Americans voluntarily so that they could fight the al-Qaeda terrorist movement.

Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi army is well rested, having had the past six months to recruit, train, organize and deploy under the guise of a ceasefire that has just been extended by the boss. al Sadr's men are also believed to have widely infiltrated the Iraqi security and police forces. The Sunnis haven't had the luxury of a six month leave but they have been getting a lot of "on the job" training in tactics and the use of their new American toys.

Time flies.

Both sides have learned that, for America, even the most powerful foreign policy is vulnerable at home, at the ballot box. If the American people dislike something enough, those who court their favour will, even if reluctantly, agree to do their bidding. That's raw, ballot box democracy.

So for Iraq's armed and ready militias, the trick is to shape American public opinion in the runup to November's elections. After the next president is decided, their leverage plummets. They need to strike while their influence is strongest. Just when will that be?

In order to decide what to do, the Iraqis need to have a good idea who's likely to win the White House in November. They need to know who will be the Democratic candidate and how likely that person is to prevail over Republican John McCain. The better McCain's chances the more aggressively they'll have to act.

Polls have shown that the American people believe the surge has worked. As violence has fallen, particularly in Baghdad, American approval ratings for this war rose steadily. It's still, on balance, an unpopular war but McCain holds out the promise that, with a new commander in chief, him, this can be turned around, victory can be won and the country spared the ignominy of another Vietnam.

McCain is counting on the improvement in those approval numbers. Without them the Republicans would have been less willing to nominate a war hawk (although they weren't given many options among their candidates). We've already seen, however, that popular support for the Iraq debacle is soft. As violence spikes it evaporates, ebbing until it reaches the hard-right floor.

But what of the Dems? The militias will also be looking closely at them. If somebody comes out of the Clinton-Obama knife fight not too badly wounded and there's reason to believe the Democratic nominee will trounce McCain, then a much different set of considerations arises.

The less violence there is in Iraq, the easier it could be for a Democratic president to declare victory and pull out America's troops. It's a gamble but I think the militias just might choose to lay low if the Dems offer a realistic prospect of a timely American withdrawal.

If, however, McCain seems to be winning or it really is too close to call, the pre-election runup will be the militias' last best chance to influence events. Then I think they'll take to the streets and it'll be open season on American troops whenever and wherever they can be targeted.

For the militias, it'll be their Tet 68 moment - a mass armed uprising intended to show the vulnerabilities of American forces, inflict heavy casualties and strike a fatal blow to American popular support for the war and any war hawk candidate.

The militias don't have to win, that's not how this works. The 1968 Tet Offensive was a mass uprising by the Viet Cong insurgency that was a spectacular failure but a victory nonetheless. It failed militarily. The Viet Cong were all but wiped out. However it was an enormous political victory and that's what these insurgency/resistance movements are all about.

Tet shattered American support for the Vietnam war. Americans suddenly believed their war was lost. It was a powerful tide change in public opinion. When support collapsed at home the end for the American effort was inevitable.

Nixon came to office on a pledge to get America out on a "peace with honor" plan. Does that sound familiar? It's what politicians fall back on when there's no other way to get out of a quagmire. It means "withdrawal under the illusion of not having really lost." Remember that because you'll likely see more of it over the next few years.

The Iraqi militias too can rise up to launch their own Tet. They don't have to win on the streets of Baghdad. They just need to win on Main Street, America. It's an opportunity they can't count on ever getting again. In 2004, the American people were still behind Bush's war on terror and were still solidly behind the Iraq war. These past four years have seen a collapse in American support for the Iraq conflict and conditions right now are about as ideal as they can get.

When could this uprising occur? My guess is that the US elections will determine the timing. The militias need to send shockwaves through American voters and leave some time to let that settle into anti-war opinion.

I could see this beginning in July/August and running for, say, two weeks of intense fighting (Hue comes to mind) followed by another six weeks of steady but scattered attacks. I think they would need to have their impact crest around late September to erase all confidence in the surge and shake loose all soft support for the war.

The Bush factor.

George w. really isn't helping McCain on this. He's determined to push through his long-term basing deal with the Maliki government. That agreement can only inflame resistance sentiment inside Iraq, among both Sunni and Shia. Remember, a key reason the Americans invaded Iraq was to find a new location for the US bases in Saudi Arabia that were causing the Saudi rulers so much trouble. If those bases were unviable in a country under the iron hand rule of the Saudis, how palatable will they be in a country beset by enormous, sectarian conflict, where America is seen as an occupier, with a feeble government and a neighbour like Iran?

So, yep, I think that we may see a hot summer of intense conflict in Iraq, battles that could well determine who takes the White House in November.

I sure don't want to see this happen but, when all these conditions and circumstances come together at this one, brief period, I can't see how it won't.

Hillary Clinton Flip-Flop Mashup

I've been pretty thoroughly scolded for saying the obvious about Hillary Clinton.

She's hypocritical, self-aggrandizing and a master of dirtball politics.

But don't take it from me, let Hillary explain. She can do it so much better than I:

http://www.trendpimp.com/media/2875/Hillary_Clinton_Flip_Flop_Mashup.html

And if you want more, just Google Hillary and "flip flop" to see her (r)evolving opinions on everything from Iraq to immigration to change and whatever else pops up that she thinks she needs to bail out on or claim as her own. I guess that's her "experience" coming through.

By the way, anybody know where to find Hillary's tax returns or her papers from the Clinton library? Somebody seems to have buried those damned things. Wonder why that would be?

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs - What's Going On?

Jobs are in the news today, in Canada and in the United States.

The good news is here at home where we added 43,000 more jobs last month, a fivefold increase over the 8,000 forecast. This comes atop 46,400 added in January.

The bad news is in the United States. The Americans lost 63,000 jobs in February, following a loss of 22,000 jobs in January. The New York Times calls it the, "...fastest falloff in the labor market in five years."

“I haven’t seen a job report this recessionary since the last recession,” said Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. “This is a picture of a labor market becoming clearly infected by the contagion from the rest of the economy.”

So, what's going on in Canada? Are we defying gravity? From the Financial Post:

"Mind boggling," said Derek Burleton, senior economist at Toronto-dominion Bank. "I'm obviously a little shocked right now."
"The last two-months blowout in employment certainly goes against this notion that Canada's economy is really beginning to slow, especially after the Bank of Canada statement earlier this week."

The manufacturing sector, hit hard by the strong Canadian dollar, shed 23,700 workers in February but that was partially offset by job growth in the construction sector. The goods-producing sector lost 12,500 jobs while the services sector gained 55,800."

Nobody seems to be able to account for the disparity between the Canadian and US numbers. With buoyant world grain markets and energy markets, are we better poised to withstand an American recession and, if so, for how long?

Canada's good news would be a lot more welcome if it wasn't for the weakening situation to the south. Now that NAFTA and Rust Belt unemployment have become a prominent issue in the presidential campaign I don't think our job performance is going to be welcome to those who blame NAFTA for their misfortune.

Time to Scrap NATO?

Maybe the time has arrived to negotiate a new alliance to replace the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

I'm not really sure if anyone can really define what NATO is today. We know what it was right up until the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union. It was Western Europe and North America (plus Turkey) aligned against the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact. Most of us could even draw the line of demarcation between the two sides. Plain as day, black and white.

NATO's job was to deter Soviet expansion into Western Europe. Sure there was also the business about keeping open the sea lanes but the centre of attention was always the Fulga Gap and the image of thousands of Soviet tanks pouring through on a mad drive to the English Channel.

What is NATO's mission today? Where lies the commonality of interests among its member states? Is NATO to be transformed into an anti-terrorism force? Is it to become an instrument of regime change? Peacekeeping, peacemaking? Warfighting? What? Is its sphere of influence to be global and, if not, what areas are we going to deal with and what are we not?

What of the emerging economic giants and their associated rearmament/arms races? Who will deal with China and ought NATO to define, well in advance, the extent and limits of any future role in Asia?

I think we really do have to begin by finding our commonality of interests - economic, political and security. I'll bet you there are a whole bunch of new members of NATO who don't really have all that much in common with some of the founding nations.

One of the reasons Iraq and Afghanistan are such messes is that our side had such a poor understanding of regime change. We went in to get rid of an existing regime but without much thought as to what would go in to fill the vacuum. In Afghanistan, in particular, that meant we got our figurehead (Karzai) and allowed warlords, thugs and drug barons to entrench their power beyond the immediate borders of Kabul. That has to be graded as an abject failure.

Now we know that when you invade a country and drive out its leaders you have to flood the place with troops and equipment and supplies, you have to focus on securing what you've conquered and getting civilian society restored just as quickly as you possibly can. That still hasn't been accomplished in Iraq or, after six years, in Afghanistan.

We've relearned the lesson everyone thought had been etched in stone after Vietnam - you don't go in without a clear exit strategy. There isn't one for Iraq and there isn't one for Afghanistan. At the risk of sounding circuitous, going in with a clear exit strategy means going in with a clear understanding of what you're there to accomplish and taking along all the troops, equipment and supplies you'll need to do just that. If you don't go in right, you have pretty poor odds of getting out right.

Look at all these NATO "summits" which are thinly veiled efforts to patch together the bungled adventure in Afghanistan. While that is necessary, the member nations need to start the groundwork to achieve a clear consensus of what may come after Afghanistan and what the alliance is prepared and not prepared to do when it arrives. If we don't, we're just letting ourselves in for another Afghanistan.

I think we need to recognize that NATO was never cut out to do the Afghanistan mission. We went over there, once we agreed to take over so the US could go play in Iraq, with a force trained and equipped for conventional warfare in Europe. Sort of like showing up in a tux at a barbeque. We didn't, however, go in prepared to really tackle an insurgency much less the equally destabilizing threats of the opium trade and warlordism and Pakistan and Iran and meddling India - well you name it. If you've got a house with four rooms on fire and you can't even handle the blaze in one room, sorry, but that house is going to burn to the ground.

So how do we get out? Well, we're starting to edge our way to the door by lowering our sights. You haven't heard a lot lately about democracy and women's rights for the Afghan people. There's been a clear but quiet shift over to a "stable" rather than a democratic government and the whole women's issue went out the window with the establishment of fundamentalist warlordism. We can't handle the Pashtun problem, we're sure as hell not going to go picking fights with the Uzbeks, Tajiks and Hazara. And that means democracy is out. And human rights, you can pretty much write that off too.

My guess? I think we're going to have to leave Afghanistan not all that different than we found it. We'll create a national army for Karzai or his successor and split. Whether that army lasts for long before it gets torn apart by the pressures of tribalism is a serious question, one let's hope that doesn't get answered before we're gone.

The future of Afghanistan may be decided as much by China as by us. While we were asleep at the switch, swatting away at the insurgency, China snapped up the rights to Afghanistan's enormous copper deposits in the north. And, with the railway corridor the Chinese are building to haul that copper out they're probably ideally positioned to also exploit the gas and oil deposits that have reportedly been found in the north.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that NATO has to ensure it doesn't get dragged into another Afghanistan or any other foreign mission as unprepared as it has been this time. To do that, the Alliance has to renegotiate its terms to achieve a consensus that binds all members. In the process we may find that there are some member states that aren't willing to be true allies but let's find that out now, not later.

We have to begin this at home. Our parliament needs to examine what Canada wants and needs out of NATO and how we want it changed. Given the hillarity of the "debate" we supposedly just had about extending our Afghanistan committment to 2011, we better make sure we start taking this issue a lot more seriously.

Arbour "Coming Home"

So it's official. Louise Arbour is stepping down this summer as UN High Commissioner for human rights. From the Globe & Mail:

"She didn't tell the council why she is stepping down, but she told a small group of reporters that she wanted to spend time with her family after four years of constant travel and long hours.

She acknowledged that she found much of the criticism had been hurtful, but she said, "I am not quitting because of this pressure. On the contrary, I have to resist the temptation to stay to confront it, she said.

"It is for personal reasons. I'm not prepared to make a commitment for another four years of this work. I have family. I have found myself working essentially all the time here, travelling, and very far from them. So I know I can't make the same kind of commitment for another four years. I'm going home, basically. It's pretty simple."

In her short, four years with the UN, Arbour has been a lightning rod for criticism from human rights abusers on all sides, running the gamut from Zimbabwe, China and Chechnya to Israel and the United States.

She drew plenty of praise from the human rights community:

"The criticism she receives is a tribute to the good work that she's been doing," said Amnesty International spokesman Peter Splinter.

"She's done a very good job. She's brought direction to the office. She's brought resources. She's been outspoken. She's been unflinching in challenging human rights violations in big and powerful countries as well as in countries not so big and not so powerful. It's going to be a real challenge for the secretary-general to replace her."

Her departure has got all the right-wing nutjobs in a tizzy with denunciations of her. She really seems to touch some powerful nerves with those who believe "our" side is beyond rebuke.

Your Morning Laugh

The best line of the day has to be this one from Chantal Hebert in the Toronto Star writing about Harper's blundering PMO:

One can only run a federal government on the

wits of apprentice sorcerers for so long.

As Hebert writes, first it was Sandra Buckler getting caught out claiming DND had kept Harper in the dark when it stopped transferring detainees in Afghanistan.

Next up was press secretary Dimitri Soudas getting mixed up in a dispute between DPW and a certain "politically active" Montreal landlord.

Now it's chief of staff Ian Brodie and the leak of embarrassing revelations about Obama's and Clinton's real positions on NAFTA.

Yes, yes, yes. Top that off with a slathering of Brian Mulroney and a heaping helping of the Chuck Cadman affair and SHarper seems to be getting in deeper every day.

Maybe, though, we ought to be grateful for all these scandals. With an opposition in disarray these embarrassments are probably going a long way to keep Harper out of majority territory.

Still, "apprentice sorcerers." that is a good one.

She's Just Another Chump - Get Rid of Her

Hillary Clinton has shown that, as far as she's concerned, she is more important than the Democratic Party and absolutely more important than ensuring the Republicans don't hold on to the White House in November. To put it bluntly, she's proven beyond any doubt that she's not fit to be the Democratic presidential nominee.

She's played the race card more times than I can recall, she's played dirtball fear politics, she's even endorsed John McCain over her Democratic opponent, Barack Obama. Just where does she get off?

This guttersnipe held forth that only she and John McCain - and not Barack Obama - were qualified to be commander in chief of America. In pinball, that's when the "tilt" buzzer comes on.

She's experienced? Excuse me but what wars did she actually wage, what peace did she conclude? Hmmm. Maybe none, nada, zip? She was (and remarkably is) the wife of Bill, former two time (no pun intended) president of the United States of America.

If Hillary will put herself first without the remotest regard for the fortunes of the Democratic Party and in abject furtherance of the interests of the Republican Party, how can anyone ever trust her to put America's interests ahead of her own? Simple answer - you would have to be a fool to trust Hillary R. Clinton to ever do the right thing if it conflicted with her self-interest.

From what I've seen, I'd vote for McCain before I'd ever think of voting for Hillary Rodham Clinton. At least with McCain you know what you're getting. She has poisoned the Democratic nomination race and, I expect, she wouldn't hesitate to do the same thing to her country if America was ever unfortunate enough to hand her the reins.

Hello Canada!

The crocuses are out, the tulips are coming up, the trees are in bud and motorcycle season has officially begun. Yipee!

What? Snow? No, no, no, no. OH, you have snow! Sorry to hear that. Snow, really? I mean we've got snow - if you look up on the mountains, plenty of it there. We just don't have any - down here where we live.

Am I supposed to feel shortchanged, missing out? Well not much I can do about it. I guess I'll just have to live with it. Maybe if I jump on my bike that'll make me feel better.

You guys are so damned lucky. Sheesh.

(the preceding message is known as "Vancouver Island Gloat," an annual rite of passage when people here in Lotusland run up their phone bills calling friends and relatives back east to ask how they're getting by. Five or ten seconds into it you've got the first mention of the crocuses out, then the tulips, then the trees, followed closely by a little whine about having to start cutting the damned lawn again. Then you enjoy the silence, the slow burn on the other end of the line. Finally you listen patiently to angry curses about the snow and driving and the G.D. shoveling driveways, expressing polite sympathies where appropriate, and then hang up knowing that, next spring, you'll get to do it all over again!)

p.s. it is spring.

Please feel completely free to leave your frozen-ass comments. Thanks for stopping by.

Ontario Upholds Helmet Law

Baljinder Badesha lost his argument in an Ontario court yesterday that wearing a motorcycle helmet infringed his religious obligation to wear a turban. Manitoba and BC Sikhs (seen here) are allowed an exemption.

I personally don't like the idea of anyone riding a bike without a helmet but it's their religion, not mine, and I guess as long as they don't endanger me when I'm using the road I haven't got much room to complain.

Dragging Russia Back Into Afghanistan

NATO's really up against it in Afghanistan. It's so desperate that it's considering appealing to the Russians for help. No, really.

A supply of Russian troops is out of the question. Our side wouldn't tolerate that any more than would the Taliban although the insurgents would love the symbolism of it. According to the CanWest news service, NATO is interested in Russian logistical assistance:

The transatlantic alliance will stop short of asking for Russian troops or the dreaded attack helicopters used in Afghanistan during the 1980s, since that would represent a huge propaganda coup for the Taliban insurgents.

But NATO is interested in Russian help in transporting equipment and troops into Afghanistan through Russian territory, officials said Wednesday.

The Russian government could make contributions that would include "regular use of Russian transport means to get supplies to NATO forces in Afghanistan [and] possible Russian contributions to the re-equipment of the Afghan army," said Robert Simmons, NATO's special envoy for the Caucasus and Central Asia, according to a report by Agence France-Presse.

So, let's see now. With NATO membership now stretching to Russia's doorstep and with newly minted NATO partners Poland and the Czech Republic establishing bases for an American anti-missile battery, also on Russia's borders, and in all places, Afghanistan, where the west played such a key role in the Soviet defeat, NATO thinks the Russians will chip in to help now that we're in a bad way?

Good luck with that fellas.

It Really Is "War Without End"

Congressional groups eager to have America wrap up its military presence in Iraq and get out are being told that Congress lost any say in the matter when it voted, in 2002, to authorize the Bush regime to invade Iraq.

Astonishing.

From the Washington Post:

"The 2002 measure, along with the congressional resolution passed one week after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks authorizing military action "to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States," permits indefinite combat operations in Iraq, according to a statement by the State Department's Bureau of Legislative Affairs."

Uppity lawmakers with fanciful ideas of checks and balances and government of the people, had been demanding, "...that the administration submit to Congress for approval any agreement with Iraq. U.S. officials are traveling to Baghdad this week with drafts of two documents - a status-of-forces agreement and a separate "strategic framework" - that they expect to sign with the Iraqi government by the end of July."

The monarch, it seems, disagrees. Jeez I think there's still time to impeach the clown.

Obama, Clinton - the Knives Are Drawn

They've both gone for their knives. Let's hope they realize they're holding them at their own throats.

Where the hell is Howard Dean? Isn't this just the sort of thing he's supposed to stop.

Hillary Clinton has shown she'll sacrifice anything, even her own party, to advance her ambitions. Publicly claiming that she and John McCain - and not Barack Obama - have the experience to serve as commander in chief was a despicably low blow and potentially fatal to the Democratic presidential prospects if she doesn't win.

If Hillary is the best the Democrats can field, I can understand why a lot of independents and even many Democrats would be drawn to McCain. She sure is pointing them in his direction.

Engaging Hamas

George Bush doesn't get it, neither does Olmert. Hamas is the duly elected governing party of the Palestinian people. It's not Fatah and Abbas. They lost the election, Hamas won.

Hamas isn't a very likable outfit. It is, however, the chosen voice of a radicalized population. If we could ever get past idiots like Bush and Olmert, we might also find that Hamas could, possibly, be the key to easing the radical nature of the Palestinian people.

Bush ought to just back out of this thing anyway. He's been revealed as a blatant manipulator who co-opted Abbas against the will of the Palestinian people, sparking a bloody civil war in the result.

Somebody else needs to step in - and I mean step in with troops. It has to be a coalition of countries that can still be seen, on both sides, as unbiased. That isn't going to be easy, both sides embracing the delusional "you're either with me or against me" philosophy that's worked so well for George w. Bush. Since we probably won't satisfy either of them, the UN will have to ensure that it sets the bar high and satisfies itself.

Next step. Option A. Back to the pre-1967 borders and I mean back. One big 5-year plan to remove all Israeli settlement beyond its pre-1967 borders, everything. Out, gone. Jerusalem either a free city or partitioned. Full compensation for Arabs forced out post 1949 which can be offset by the value of Israeli-owned assets left behind in Palestinian territory. Agreement to guarantee sharing of freshwater resources situated in the West Bank. Full recognition of Israel and full trade rights with the Arab nations. Aid to Israel to help in accommodating relocated settlers. Then, a 10-mile wide demilitarized zone along the Israeli-Palestinian borders.

Or

Option B. A one-state solution. Full citizenship for every Palestinian living within the combined Israel-Palestinian state. Full voting rights, human rights and all other political freedoms.

Israel gets to choose.

Option A would be the only practical solution for Israel. The single state option wouldn't work demographically. The Palestinians would soon gain an ethnic majority that would translate into electoral control. To retain Jewish political control, Palestinians would have to be disenfranchised in a form of apartheid. Unacceptable, flat out.

Give the Palestinian people something to work for, something to build, instead of always leaving them with just something to fight for. We've had that experiment for half a century and have seen how well it's worked. You want to eliminate radicalism? That's where you begin. Give them their own country, give them a Marshall Plan that floods them with aid to build that place into something worth having as quickly as possible, and you'll have not just a roadmap but the road itself.

You can't get this started until you acknowledge the democratically elected leaders of the Palestinians, no matter how distasteful you may find that. If you want to see the face of the Palestinian leadership, don't look at them, look a decade or two beyond them and then start creating the opportunity for that future, progressive leadership to emerge and take hold.

Or not. You can always go back and ship over more boatloads of clusterbombs and attack jets because, surely, you just need a few more of them to solve the problem, just a few more.

TAR SANDS TRIUMPH!

Yes! A setback for the Oil Patch, finally.

A Federal Court justice has put Imperial Oil's Kearl tar sands project on hold, ordering the company to explain how it concluded that intensity-based targets will reduce the potentially damaging effects of the project's greenhouse gas emissions to a level of insignificance.

Justice Daniele Tremblay-Lamer obviously wasn't impressed with Esso's hogwash. From The Edmonton Journal:

"The evidence shows that intensity-based targets place limits on the amount of greenhouse gas emissions per barrel of bitumen produced. The absolute amount of greenhouse gas pollution from oil sands development will continue to rise under intensity-based targets because of the planned increase in total production of bitumen. The [environmental assessment] panel dismissed as insignificant the greenhouse gas emissions without any rationale as to why the intensity-based mitigation would be effective to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to 800,000 passenger vehicles, to a level of insignificance."

Counsel representing the environmentalist groups who opposed Imperial were more than pleased with the result:

It sends a clear message that environmental assessments must be open, honest and transparent, said Sean Nixon, a lawyer for Ecojustice, formerly called the Sierra Legal Defence Fund.

Ecojustice represented the Pembina Institute, the Sierra Club of Canada, the Prairie Acid Rain Coalition and the Toxics Watch Society of Alberta.

"It will be interesting to see if the panel can explain in a rational way how intensity-based measures can lessen the impact of greenhouse gas emissions," Nixon said.

http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=46586a70-7589-4ee7-81b6-27e497fe0413&k=4625

Louise Arbour to Step Down?

The U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Canadian Louise Arbour, is expected to resign soon after four contentious years in the post.

The former Supreme Court justice has been known for her clashes with the Bush regime over the Iraq war, the death penalty and American excesses in its "war on terror." From the Washington Post:

Arbour, "...said the U.S.-led counterterrorism struggle has set back the cause of human rights by "decades" and has exacerbated a "profound divide" between the United States, its Western allies and the developing world. "The war on terror has inflicted a very serious setback for the international human rights agenda," she said."

Arbour, a former U.N. war crimes prosecutor who secured the indictment of the late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, said that bedrock principles once taken for granted -- including the prohibition against torture -- have been eroded, and that what she considers Washington's excesses have undercut her efforts to crusade for human rights, particularly in places where political repression is greatest.

Human rights advocates largely praised Arbour, a former Canadian Supreme Court justice, as a tough, principled lawyer who has offered the United Nations' most forceful critique of the United States' use of harsh interrogation techniques and the transfer of suspects to countries where they stand a chance of being tortured. They note that she has done more to expand the presence of U.N. rights monitors around the world, making reports on abuses from Baghdad to Katmandu routine.

But she has also been a lightning rod for American conservatives, including the former U.S. envoy to the United Nations, John R. Bolton, who scolded her in 2005 for using Human Rights Day to criticize U.S. anti-terrorism tactics instead of highlighting rights abuses by countries such as Burma, Cuba and Zimbabwe. Even supporters say she has trod lightly over abuses by some of the most powerful U.N. members, including China and Russia, leaving the United Nations increasingly silent on some of the world's most pressing human rights issues."

Needless to say her rumoured resignation will be welcome news to Washington and to human rights abusers worldwide. There's one Canadian we can all be very proud of. This country would do well with a lot more Arbours and a lot fewer like Harper, Levant and Flanagan.

Could al Sadr Swing the American Election?

In a few months we should have a good idea of the role Muqtada al Sadr and his Mahdi army intend to play in the American presidential election.

My guess is that, should McCain emerge as a clear favourite, the Shiite militias will take to the streets declaring open season on American forces. There have been recent reports that the Sunni militias, those the Americans armed to take on al-Qaeda, may also be planning to turn on the US forces.

Why? To restore Americans to a state of heightened fatigue to the war without end in Iraq. Neither the Shia nor the Sunni see any long-term advantage in a protracted American presence in their country. The Sunni are worried that the Shiite government and security services are getting too entrenched, backed by the U.S. and Iran alike. The Shia likewise view America's rearming of the Sunni militias with fear and distrust.

A big reason behind John McCain's popularity is a belief that Bush's "surge" is working which leaves Americans feeling more optimistic about the Iraq war. Low US casualty rates have created an illusion of success. McCain's platform of late has been to finish it up and leave victorious.

That impression works for the Iraqis if a Democrat wins, especially Obama. It's in their interests to make conditions seem peaceful enough for a President to get on with extracting American forces.

If, however, they foresee an inevitable battle with American forces, better to engage that sooner when there's time for it to have an adverse impact on McCain before Americans go to the polls.

Iraqis on all sides are watching the rival campaigns unfold and weighing what outcome they want in November and just how to get it.

Hillary, Obama - Knock It Off

Today's editorial in the New York Times has some prudent advice that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama should heed if the Democrats are to have any hope in defeating John McCain:

"...there is still a chance to take this campaign and elevate it, finally, to a serious debate about major issues. That is what American voters deserve. And that is what Democrats must do if they hope to break the Republican grip on the White House.

After eight damaging and divisive years there is certainly a lot that needs to be debated starting with President Bush's disastrous war, his tax cuts for the rich, regulatory incompetence and neglect, and unrelenting assaults on civil rights, civil liberties and the balance of powers in government.

In other words, something quite different than the schoolyard shoving contest we've witnessed over the last few weeks between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and their increasingly out-of-control "surrogates". Mrs. Clinton's camp continues to be responsible for most of the nastiness we've seen this primary season and there were signs they were drawing the wrong lesson from Tuesday's vote: that "red phone" ads and hard-ball tactics will win the day. Mr. Obama's team, meanwhile, increasingly acts as though this exercise in democracy should be a coronation, that his opponent should bow out of the room.

For Democrats, changing this dynamic is all the more urgent because Senator John McCain has now won the Republican nomination and visited the White House today to collect the rather dubious blessing of Mr. Bush's endorsement. Mr. McCain is now free to stand on the sidelines and enjoy the food fight, knowing that whoever wins the Democratic nomination will be weakened, and honing his attack for the fall."

Bush Drops a Huge One Right Smack in the Middle of His Road Map

America's all-time Moron in Chief has just sent his Middle East peace initiative up in flames. His administration's own credibility is utterly gone and so is that of Fatah stooge Mahmoud Abbas.

Vanity Fair has dropped a bombshell - after Palestinian elections that led to victory for Hamas, Bush, Rice and deputy national security advisor Elliot Abrams backed an armed uprising under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan that sparked a civil war in Gaza.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/04/gaza200804

The Vanity Fair link keeps going down. You can also find the article here:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030508A.shtml

The report seems more than plausible and it'll be enough to turn the Palestinians against Abbas. If he gets out with his life, he'll be lucky. Abbas, with a well earned reputation for corruption, now stands exposed as an American operative to boot.

Bush has issued a blanket denial - as if he had any other choice - but the damage is done. There's no more room for pretending to be an honest broker. His turn at the Middle East Wheel of Fortune is over but the way it ended, mired in scandal, will be a fitting legacy for his entire administration.

H/T to Red Jenny

Clemency Sought for Kohail

Canada is going to bat for Mohamed Kohail, the young Canadian kid who faces beheading in Saudi Arabia.

Apparently Harpo has decided that his new policy on clemency interventions applies in this case. What that means is that Canada goes to Riyadh having concluded that their justice system stinks because, if it was a fair trial, we wouldn't intervene.

Now I've come to you asking for a favour for a condemned criminal because your justice system sucks. That's the double bind to Harpo's policy. When you ask for consideration you effectively tell the only guy who can give it that you think he's a shit. That might not always sit well, don't you think?

Schreiber/Mulroney Dog & Pony Show Proceeds

Having dodged a bullet at the Commons ethics committee, Brian Mulroney was praying that the public inquiry into his nefarious dealings with KH Schreiber might somehow be called off.

Sorry, dude, it's on. Justice min Nicholson says it's going ahead and, better yet, Schreiber gets to stay here until it's finished.

Jeebus I wonder what you have to do to get intervenor status at that thing?

The Commons ethics committee didn't get very far but it did expose a whole pile of raw nerves , issues that the inquiry is going to look completely rigged if it chooses to avoid. That, I think, would be more damaging to the Tories than if they had called the whole thing off.

Enquiring minds want to know. Now where's that guy, Hladun?

Affordable Environmentalism

The OECD isn't some raving, left-wing outfit. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is the club for the wealthiest nations on the planet. That's why, when the OECD calls for urgent action to counter global warming, pollution and other environmental hazards, even you deniers ought to take time to listen.

Here's something else in the OECD's latest report - all these remedial measures are - wait for it - AFFORDABLE! You're not going to have to wind up living in a cave. From Reuters:

"Climate change is mankind's most important long-term challenge," OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria told Reuters after issuing a 520-page Environmental Outlook in Oslo.

The 30-nation OECD said possible environmental safeguards might slow world growth by just 0.03 percent a year -- meaning that by 2030 the global economy would be 97 percent bigger than in 2005 instead of almost 99 percent larger with no measures."

"Solutions are available, they are achievable and they are affordable," Gurria told a news conference. "The consequences and costs of inaction ... would be much higher."

"If we want to avoid irreversible damage to our environment ... we'd better start working right away," he said.

http://www.enn.com/pollution/article/32259

Too Smart For Our Own Damn Good

Canadians are academically top-heavy and, unless we change that, it'll cost us.

A report in today's Toronto Star notes that Canada ranks #1 as having the greatest percentage of its working force with a college or university education.

"The latest census data shows that Canada stands first in the developed world in the proportion of people who hold credentials from either college or university – 48 per cent, compared with 39 per cent in the U.S. or 32 per cent in Australia.

The data also shows Canadian women outnumber men at university, more than half of immigrants have a university degree compared with 20 per cent of Canadians born here, one in five post-secondary grads has taken a business or marketing-related course – but only 10 per cent of young adults hold a certificate in a skilled trade.

Too, the census reveals a young generation studying different fields than their parents – more chefs than mechanical repair, for instance, more computers than construction, more transportation than health services."

This is all well and good until your toilet backs up or you need a machinist or some other skilled trade. There we're in trouble. Canada is facing a critical shortage of skilled tradesmen (& women).

From welding to drywalling there are not enough young people entering our trades.

Nothing new to this story. It's a problem that's beset some sectors of industry since the 60's.

My Dad was in the specialty steel business in Ontario. Most of his customers were tool and die companies working for the automotive and aeronautical industries. Those companies were dependent on highly skilled machinists and tool makers but there were never enough.

The Soviets actually helped ease Canada's problem. Their invasion of Hungary in '56 and Czechoslovakia in '63 brought quite a few highly skilled tradesmen to Canada as refugees. By the time the 70's rolled around, a lot of them owned their own, highly profitable tool and die companies. After they were absorbed, however, the trade shortage problem returned.

Why? A major reason was that the apprenticeship process wasn't sufficiently attractive to draw newcomers. Kids could earn a lot more taking an unskilled factory job than they would ever receive during their years as an apprentice.

Another problem is our public attitude to labour of any sort. We're snobs, plain and simple, and before long we may come to regret our snobbery.

When I entered law school I was surprised at how many of my classmates admitted they were there largely due to their parents. Some had absolutely been groomed for it from childhood. It was mandated.

The upshot? We're awash in lawyers and bereft of machinists. Make sense? Of course not.

From one end of this country to the other we need to change all this and, while government and the private sector need to do a lot more, so do we as individuals and, especially, as parents. Remember, Jesus was a carpenter.

The Guardian is Going Straight to Hell

They've really done it this time. The Guardian has shown itself delightfully blasphemous in an article today suggesting that Moses (the one and only) was stoned out of his gourd when he went up Mount Sinai and received the Ten Commandments:

An Israeli researcher is claiming in a study published this week the prophet may have been stoned when he set the Ten Commandments in stone.

According to Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, psychedelic drugs formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times.

Writing in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy, he says concoctions based on the bark of the acacia tree, frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, contain the same molecules as those found in plants from which the powerful Amazonian hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca is prepared.

"The thunder, lightning and blaring of a trumpet which the Book of Exodus says emanated from Mount Sinai could just have been the imaginings of a people in an altered state of awareness," writes Shanon. "In advanced forms of ayahuasca inebriation, the seeing of light is accompanied by profound religious and spiritual feelings."

References in the Bible where people "see" sounds, is another "classic phenomenon", he said, citing the example of religious ceremonies in the Amazon in which drugs are used that induce people to "see" music.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/05/religion.israelandthepalestinians

A Failing Strategy in the War on Drugs

The United Nations International Narcotics Control Board releases its annual report today warning that major drug cartels are operating with virtual impunity because nations are wasting their efforts focusing on small-time users instead.

From The Guardian:

"According to the 127-page annual report from the UN's International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), governments need to make greater efforts to freeze traffickers' assets, improve access to drug treatment programmes and expand the range of non-custodial sentences available for convicted users.
The main findings were:

The emergence of new smuggling routes, in particular cocaine from South America being stockpiled and repackaged in west Africa before entering Europe.

Increased cultivation of coca bushes - from which cocaine is derived - in Peru and Bolivia as crop eradication programmes reduce production in Colombia.

A 17% increase in illicit opium poppy cultivation during 2007 in Afghanistan. The country now accounts for 93% of the global market in opiates.

It added: "Some countries still spend disproportionate effort in targeting low-level offenders and drug users, as compared to the more pressing issues of identifying, dismantling and punishing those who control or organise major drug trafficking activities.

"Many states impose unconditional imprisonment of drug abusers for lesser offences, such as possession or purchase of drugs for personal use and these typically make up a significant proportion of growing prison populations in some countries. There is no universal 'moral instinct' when it comes to punishment for less serious cases."

The report does, however, criticize countries that condone drug use of any form, including medical marijuana. Canada is specifically mentioned for providing "safer crack kits" which, I have to admit, I know absolutely nothing about.

The UN Drug Czar, whose name escapes me at the moment, is fiercely opposed to any and all forms of drug use and production regardless of the circumstances. In Afghanistan, for example, he wants the entire opium crop wiped out immediately without the slightest regard to the implications that might have for the counterinsurgency war being waged. It's that lack of realism and inflexibility that probably ensures this report will be left to gather dust.

Has Washington Overplayed Its Hand in South America?

Colombia has been called the "Israel of South America" by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Both countries, claims Chavez, are propped up by the United States and tend to invade their neighbours, a reference to Colombia's recent incursion into Ecuador to attack FARC guerrillas.

Mexico recently joined Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Peru, among others, in condemning Colombia. Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa is now in Brazil for meetings with president da Silva before heading to Venezuela for a meeting with Chavez.

Colombia is increasingly coming to be seen as America's proxy in South America and, as such, faces isolation within its own region.

Bush has entered the fray, urging Congress to set aside its concerns about Colombian human rights violations to push through a new US/Colombia trade deal. If he overplays his hand he risks legitimizing Chavez among moderate South American states and, in the process, wounding American influence in that region.

Is the Monroe Doctrine finally dead meat?

The Next President of the United States of America

It's John McCain or, perhaps, John w. McSame.

A convincing case for that was made by the TV pundits during last night's primaries coverage. The scenario sees Clinton and Obama battle it out in an increasingly bitter contest that alienates a lot of the eventual loser's followers and disenchants independents.

McCain is already targeting the middle and the independents. He goes for a running mate who's a real "fire'n brimstone" type to appease the evangelical Republican base and uses the remaining nine months to wage a powerful campaign of moderation.

Clinton and Obama grind each other down until just about nobody wants either of them any more. Clinton prevails, emerging to find herself with the "Over 60" Democrats and having to share what were blue collar Dems with McCain. The youth vote and "Latte" crowd stay home and sulk.

Republicans combine with independents and Dems who've shown they won't vote for Hillary no matter what, costing the Democrats their tenuous hold on Congress to boot.

Game, set and match - McCain. Four More Wars, Four More Wars!

A Survey For All You Young Libs, Dippers, Progressives

This survey is directed specifically to those of you who are young enough that you are still planning or might possibly want to have children. I really want to hear from you women.

Take a quick read on the post below about "reproductive outsourcing." It's about a growing, surrogate mother industry in India. The idea is that, for a fee of about $25-thousand, a fine, fit young woman in India will furnish a child, either by artificial insemination or by embryo implantation.

I think back to my days as a young professional and remember those of us who went through the whole childbearing process. Mom leaves work, gets fat, goes through the ordeals of childbirth, etc., etc. Been there, done that - twice and I still can't understand what a woman has to be to get through it.

However, what if having kids was just a function of extracting the genetic material from each parent, tossing together an embryo and having it frozen and shipped to India to be baked by an accomodating woman for 25 Gs? 9-months later and you get back a genetically-correct offspring with no fuss, no muss, no career dislocation, no physical infirmity, nothing save for a small dent in the savings account.

Would you do it? Would you be tempted by the possibility? With the gap between rich and poor growing wider by the day and the desperate plight being inflicted upon the poorest, baby bakeries seem to be a sure thing.

What do you think?

If you're past the point where this is even relevant your opinion still is. Simply identify yourself by the "past it" tag and weigh in.

Cheers all.

Pee Wee Herman's Second Cousin Twice Removed?

Maybe it's just me.

Hillary's Poison Pill

Hillary Clinton is flush with political savvy. She's no fool. That's why she had to know the potential damage she was causing the Democratic Party with her powerful, desperate and pathetic television ad dramatically depicting a ringing telephone in the middle of the night with a vulnerable sleeping baby backdrop. The message was "don't trust Obama to have the faintest clue what to do when the phone rings in the middle of the night to inform him of a grave national emergency that places that little baby's life in jeopardy."

Hillary knew that it would get results, for her, but she also had to know that, if it didn't work for her, it would get even better results for the Republican nominee, John McCain, should Obama win the Democratic Party's nomination.

If Hillary is warning Americans not to trust Obama in a crisis, imagine what McCain can - and will - do with that. If McCain has any sense of fair play he ought to ask Hillary to send him the bill she got for that ad.

Poison pills are subterfuge generally seen in corporate resolutions and shareholder agreements designed to thwart hostile takeovers or keep angry creditors at bay. Clinton didn't have to weaken her party's future that way. But she did. Why she may yet become the Republican poster girl of 2008.

AdBusters Trashed by Canadian Broadcasters

All they wanted was to be able to buy airtime to express their concerns - 30 seconds here, 30 seconds there. They wanted to speak to the Canadian people in the same forum that McCain uses to flog its crappy frozen pizzas. Canada's television broadcasters - the outfits who get licensed to use the public (your and my) airwaves said "no." So AdBusters took them to court - and lost.

The AdBusters press release explains it this way:

"It's outrageous that the fast food, oil and automobile industries can buy as much TV time as they want in order to promote their agendas, but citizens are not allowed to talk back," said Adbusters Editor-in-Chief Kalle Lasn in response to the ruling. "Canadian democracy will not work properly until we the people have the same right to buy airtime as corporations do."

The rejected Adbusters ads pointed out that over 50 percent of the calories in a Big Mac come from fat, called for an end to the age of the automobile, and promoted Buy Nothing Day. While Court Justice William Ehrcke ruled that private broadcasters have the right to run whatever ads they like, Adbusters feels the case raises some troubling questions."

Outrageous? Actually I think they're right. Unless there's something offensive, dishonest or inciteful in an advertisement or public service message, why should a television network - using our public property - be allowed to refuse to run it provided they're paid the standard rate for their (our) airtime?

If McDonald's is vulnerable to an ad pointing out, truthfully, that half the calories in a Big Mac come from fat, why should a paying customer be refused the opportunity to express that point?

In our progressively dumbed down society, television is becoming the media for communication, most of it programmed to the lowest common denominator. Still, that is where you have to go if you want to reach the populace and the folks who spew out the Big Macs and Cadillac Escalades know it. Should they be able to use their advertising clout to monopolize one of the most important forms of public property, the airwaves? If so, why?

Debunking Global Warming

Trust it to come from the National Spot. The Spot reprinted a "special report" that appeared in the Financial Spot from Big Tobacco, Big Oil shill Fred Singer entitled "The Case Against Global Warming." It's part of the swill coming out of this week's International Conference on Climate Change in New York sponsored by the Heartland Institute which doesn't sound remotely like what it is, a front group for the fossil fuel industry.

Singer posits all the old garbage about causes of global warming. Naturally the Spot carefully ensures that Singer's background is nowhere to be found in his unchallenged and astonishingly informative scientific assessment.

Singer's new band, that calls itself the Non-Governmental International Panel on Climate Change (AKA the International Fossil Fuel Industry Panel on Climate Change) issued a bold open letter to UN Secretary General Bam urging that the world abandon the futile fight against greenhouse gas emissions and instead focus on adapting to the inevitable warming. The letter was signed by a host of impressive sounding folks, many of whom are directly linked to the fossil fuel industry, the denialist movement or far right wing think tanks including these jokers:

Warren Anderson, US(co-author of Fire and Ice)

Dennis Avery, US(director of the Center for Global Food Issues, Hudson Institute)

Franco Battaglia, Italy(professor of environmental chemistry at the University of Modena)

Robert Carter, Australia(”Professor Carter, whose background is in marine geology, appears to have little, if any, standing in the Australian climate science community;” well known climate change skeptic)

Richard Courtney, UK(Technical Editor for CoalTrans International (journal of the international coal trading industry), was a Senior Material Scientist of the National Coal Board and a Science and Technology spokesman of the British Association of Colliery Management)

Joseph d’Aleo, US(retired meteorologist & well known climate change skeptic)

Fred Goldberg, Sweden(associate professor at the Royal School of Technology in Stockholm)

Vincent Gray, New Zealand(founding member New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, which has the stated aim of “refuting what it believes are unfounded claims about anthropogenic (man-made) global warming.”)

Klaus Heiss, Austria(economist, Science & Environmental Policy Project)

Craig Idso, US(founder and chairman of the board of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, funded by Western Fuels and Exxon Mobil)

Zbigniew Jaworowski, Poland(professor at the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw & global warming skeptic)

Olavi Karner, Estonia(Tartu Observatory)

Madhav Khandekar, Canada(retired Environment Canada meteorologist, on the scientific advisory board of Friends of Science, published in Energy & Environment)

William Kininmonth, Australia(past head of head of Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology’s National Climate Centre, known Australian climate change skeptic; listed as “Director of the Australasian Climate Research Institute,” but the Institute is listed as simply a trading name for “Kininmonth, William Robert”, and is based at his private residence)

Hans Labohm, Netherlands(economist, author of Man-Made Global Warming: Uravelling a Dogma)

Christopher Monckton, UK(we all know his lardship; connected with the Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI), formerly the Frontiers of Freedom’s Center for Science and Public Policy, which promotes the views of global warming skeptics)

Lubos Motl, Czech Republic(theoretical physicist who works on string theory and conceptual problems of quantum gravity)

Tom Segalstadt, Norway(head of the Geological Museum within the Natural History Museum of the University of Oslo, IPCC reviewer)

S. Fred Singer, US(Whom we also all know; former space scientist and government scientific administrator, runs the Science and Environmental Policy Project and has been connected with numerous conservative think tanks, including Cato, American Enterprise Institute, and of course, the tobacco industry)

Dick Thoenes, Netherlands(emeritus professor of chemical engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, co-author of Man-Made Global Warming: Uravelling a Dogma)

Anton Uriarte, Spain(professor of Physical Geography at the University of the Basque Country

Gerd Weber, Germany(works for the ‘Gesamtverband des Deutschen Steinkohlenbergbaus’ (Association of German coal producers)

C'mon. The Association of German Coal Producers, Big Tobacco, the American Enterprise Institute, one-man "Institutes", Friends of Science, climate change outfits funded by Exxon, the British Association of Colliery Management? None of these connections, of course, are relevant to the National Spot. They would only confuse its readers.

Go Green Now, Or Wait? Lead or Follow?

Decisions, decisions. I do some of the easy green things already - mini-flourescents and LEDs; restricted driving with small, fuel-efficient car; motorcycle when practical; small house kept on cool; new windows - that sort of thing.

I do these things but I'm torn about whether it really matters? I'd like to take a vacation too but then there's the issue of fossil fuel consumption and jet engine emissions and so on. If two or three percent of the population skips those things, will it make the slightest difference?

I do believe in athropogenic global warming, not the slightest doubt. I also am convinced that there are several, climate change tipping points that we may not keep ourselves from reaching.

A year and a bit ago I wrote that there are several solutions to global warming, the best of which slipped through our fingers in the 60's before we knew any better. There are today's solutions which aren't nearly as good but they too are slipping away fast. Then there are tomorrow's solutions which are going to be a lot more miserable yet. Sooner or later we'll have to opt to solve the problem and, when we do, we'll have to accept whatever options remain to us at that time.

But, in the meantime, what do we do as individuals? Do we transform ourselves into environmental monks or is a limited measure of conservation and restraint enough?

What do you think?

Arms Race Update - The Sizzler

Russia built them, China has them and Iran may have them soon.

The Sizzler, Russia's new anti-ship missile is said to be the best in the world and it's got the US Navy flummoxed.

"This is a carrier-destroying weapon,'' said Orville Hanson, who evaluated weapons systems for 38 years with the Navy. "That's its purpose.''

"Take out the carriers'' and China" can walk into Taiwan,'' he said. China bought the missiles in 2002 along with eight diesel submarines designed to fire it, according to Office of Naval Intelligence spokesman Robert Althage.

If Iran does get its hands on the Sizzler it could feasibly lock down the Persian Gulf and disrupt the world's oil supply.

That's What You Get For Lovin' Me

It's an old Gordon Lightfoot song but it could well double as the anthem for Canada's softwood lumber capitulation, er treaty, with the United States.

To buy peace, we let the US government keep a big hunk of the illegal duties it levied on Canadian softwood imports, money that was then handed over to the US lumber industry to fund further legal attacks on us.

So the Harper/Emerson masterstroke agreement of 2006, the one where we supposedly bought seven years of peace, lasted one year before the Americans made their move.

That followed the procedures set out in the deal, arbitration first and then submission of the dispute to a court in London. Okay. The court came out, ruling in favour of BC and Alberta but finding that eastern producers were in violation of the terms.

Being a law-abiding country, Emerson wasted no time in saying Canada would accept the ruling which the treaty makes binding. So what do the Americans have to say? You got it, they won't say they'll accept the "binding" decision. Instead the US trade reps said they'll consult the "stakeholders," the American lumber companies that brought the attack funded by Canadian plunder.

And if they don't agree to their binding obligations? Well they're not quite so binding as we thought. Seems the US can bail out of the deal whenever they like. Would somebody remind me why the hell we're in Afghanistan anyway?

They Call It "Reproductive Outsourcing"

A fascinating item in the International Herald Tribune about a new and rapidly expanding industry in India - surrogate motherhood.

India, widely known for the destination of a variety of outsourced jobs is now fielding a corps of housewives available for artificial insemination - at bargain prices!

"Reproductive outsourcing is a new but rapidly expanding enterprise in India. Clinics that provide surrogate mothers for foreigners say they have been inundated with requests from the United States and Europe in recent months, as word spreads of India's combination of skilled medical professionals, relatively liberal laws and low prices.

"Commercial surrogacy, which is banned in some European countries and subject to a wide spectrum of regulation in U.S. states, was legalized in India in 2002. The cost of the medical procedures, air tickets and hotels for two trips to India (one for the fertilization and a second to collect the baby) comes to around $25,000, roughly a third of the typical price in the United States."

"Under guidelines issued by the Indian Medical Council, surrogate mothers sign away all their rights to the child. In cases where the surrogate provides a womb for an embryo formed from the sperm and egg of the prospective parents, it is only the names of these genetic parents that appear on the birth certificate. If an egg donor is involved, her name does not appear on the document, either; only that of the father."

There are so many moral and ethical issues that leap out from this and they'll never, ever come up for serious consideration. Yes, your own baby and for less than the price of a Volkswagen!

Arm's Race Update

This is, unfortunately, becoming a weekly feature.

The big news this week is the big money being thrown into rearmament by India and by China.

To the alarm of Pakistan, India has increased its military budget by 7.8% for the coming year. It's also in the process of purchasing and license-producing a total force of 1,500 Russian T-80 main battle tanks which should give it the biggest armoured force in Asia, perhaps anywhere.

China, not to be outdone, is bumping its military spending 18% this year. From BBC:

"Just before the announcement, the US released a report criticising China's military spending, and voicing concern over advances in space and cyberspace.

China rejected the Pentagon report as a "serious distortion of facts" that could harm its relations with the US.

"It breaks international norms... We do not pose a threat to any country. The US should drop its Cold War mentality," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

In the report, Washington claimed that the real Chinese defence budget for 2007 was at least double the stated amount. "

This is rich, coming from the Pentagon. Bush has increased the Pentagon's budget by 11% for 2008, from $432 to $481-billion (exclusive of War on Terror costs) and the amount of that increase almost equals China's entire expanded military budget which will total around $59-billion.

The Chinese military expansion, however, is serious. McClatchey Newspapers reports that, "...China has aggressively expanded its navy to include 57 attack submarines, including eight equipped with a fierce Russian supersonic missile, known as a “Sizzler,” that some experts consider the finest anti-ship missile in existence."

I know I keep harping on this but Western leaders have to get off their arses and begin demanding that Washington, Beijing, Moscow, Mumbai, Tokyo and the Koreas knock this off, now. This is serious, people. We can't afford to let it go unnoticed, unmentioned.

Save the Planet - Eat Whales

That little bit of despicable perversion comes from a Norwegian pro-whaling lobby, the High North Alliance.

Here's their thinking. They've done a survey that shows harpooning whales is environmentally less damaging than raising livestock. From the Environmental News Network:

"The survey, focused on whale boats' fuel use, showed that a kilo (2.2 lbs) of whale meat represented just 1.9 kilo (4.2 lbs) of greenhouse gases against 15.8 for beef, 6.4 for pork and 4.6 for chicken.

Greenhouse gas emissions caused by one meal of beef are the equivalent of eight meals of whale meat," the study said."

Now, what the Alliance's study overlooked is that the best environmental solution is actually to harpoon Norwegian whalers themselves. Not only is it cheap and effective, it eliminates your dinner's greenhouse gas emissions for decades. Hey Svend, get over here!

Now There's a Novel Approach - Strategy

This should get a lot of brass noses out of joint. An informal meeting of NATO foreign ministers is scheduled for this week. At the meeting, French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner "will express the need for the alliance to develop a true strategy in Afghanistan."

Hmm, a true strategy, why didn't we think of that before? Of course, Kouchner's true strategy will have to be wrapped around the addition of a few hundred French combat troops for eastern Afghanistan. Mr. Kouchner's true strategy probably overlooks the need for many thousands of additional combat troops but no matter.

Memo to the Big Cod. You're being outed by a Frenchman who says NATO generals have been screwing around over there these last six years without a "true strategy."