Grand Opening - New Al-Qaeda Branch in Africa

Damn, and I was so sure we had those guys pinned down in Afghanistan! According to The Guardian apparently I was wrong - again.

Remember when they were all bottled up in Afghanistan back in 2001? Why, since then, the ambitious little buggers have spread out to Iraq and Chechnya, Indonesia, Pakistan, probably Europe and now- Africa.

Now the African deal wasn't so much a start-up operation as a takeover of Algeria's Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, better known by its French initials GSPC. It's now hooked up with bin Laden and rebranded itself as al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb which means al-Qaeda North Africa.

Western security forces are concerned that al-Qaeda may spread through "a swath of northern and sub-Saharan West Africa, from the Atlantic coast of Morocco and Mauritania to the harsh deserts of Chad." They cite a number of factors causing concern:

-Money from Persian Gulf and Middle East. U.S. officials say private Saudi donors have funneled money to Sunni Muslim schools and mosques in the region. But one intelligence official noted much of the money is intended to counter the influence of Iran, which also funds Shiite interests in the region.

- A sizable population of potentially impressionable young people. West Africa is roughly half Muslim, with higher concentrations in the Sahel. With its extensive links to the Middle East, the region is fertile ground for radical ideas.

-Areas of instability. Morocco and Algerian-backed Polisario Front rebels have disputed desert lands of the largely Muslim Western Sahara for decades, forcing 100,000 people into refugee camps in Algeria. In Nigeria, which has a large Muslim population in the north, elections last month have been largely discredited. The issue has been overlooked greatly, even though the country is Africa's largest oil producer and is on the brink of becoming a failed state, especially in its southern Delta region, the official added.

But don't worry. These Africans just haven't heard yet that we're totally kicking al-Qaeda's ass in Afghanistan.

Another Day, Another Billion Pounds

Steve Bell, The Guardian

Jury Tampering - Death Penalty Style

As of yesterday about half of America has been exempted from jury duty, at least in capital cases. The US Supreme Court has given prosecutors greater power to exclude potential jurors who express moral reservations about the death penalty. Those who say they would lean in favour of life imprisonment rather than execution can now be bounced.

Experts say the ruling will mean "whiter, brighter" juries in future capital trials which often isn't good news for the large percentage of black defendants who - somehow, don't ask me why - tend to get the death penalty just a whole lot more frequently than white murderers.

Now, in fairness, the US Supreme Court has recently ruled that it's unconstitutional to execute retarded children. See, there is enlightenment after all.

Even prosecutors concede the new test does afford a real advantage to the prosecution. As one law professor put it, "death-qualified jurors are slightly more conviction prone.” Neat, isn't it? That's the term now used, "death-qualified jurors." Damn, does that sound barbaric. Death qualified - do they give them a certificate or something?

And what does a Death Qualified Juror (or "DQJ" as we know them) look like? Professor Brooke Butler of the University of South Florida did a study and the results are - well, predictable:

“'They tend to be white,' she said. 'They tend to be male. They tend to be moderately well-educated — high school or maybe a little college. They tend to be politically conservative — Republican. They tend to be Christian — Catholic or Protestant. They tend to be middle socioeconomic status — maybe $30,000 or $40,000' in annual income.

"In a study to be published in Behavioral Sciences and the Law, a peer-reviewed journal, Professor Butler made an additional finding. 'Death-qualified jurors,' she said, 'are more likely to be prejudiced — to be racist, sexist and homophobic.'”

Now, ain't that swell?

Life Goes On

American soldiers in Baghdad's Green Zone take time off work on their tans.

It May be Hard to Say "No" to Putin

At first it seemed like a political ploy or even a publicity stunt when Russian President Vlad Putin offered to settle his differences with Bush by having the advanced, anti-missile operation planned for Poland and the Czech Republic situated instead in Azerbaijan.

It turns out Putin's proposal makes a lot of sense unless Bush has been lying through his teeth again.

McClatchey News Service quotes several American experts in saying the Azerbaijan site is superior - if (and here's the "if") Bush genuinely wants to guard against an Iranian missile attack.

"A radar in Azerbaijan would be better able to monitor missiles launched from anywhere in Iran and could monitor missiles aimed at any part of Europe, whereas a radar in the Czech Republic could not track missiles headed toward parts of Eastern Europe, they said.

"Equally important is what a radar in Azerbaijan couldn't do: track intercontinental ballistic missiles Russia fired at the United States. This would reassure the Kremlin that the U.S. system was directed only at Iran, they said.

"'If it is in Azerbaijan, it's unambiguously aimed at Iran and can't be used against Russia,' said Ted Postol, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist and long-time critic of U.S. missile defense efforts.

"'It's closer to Iran. And secondly, it covers all of Europe, which the European site does not,' agreed Phillip Coyle, a former chief of the Pentagon's weapons testing office who also has been critical of the Bush missile defense plan. "It's technically a better site."

So Vlad Putin's offer genuinely calls Bush's bluff. If he dismisses it without good reason, he legitimizes Moscow's claims that the European site is, in fact, poised against Russia.

Is the Fight All But Lost?

The G8 summit may have been our last, best chance to effectively tackle global warming. The prospects for reaching a binding agreement on GHG emission caps or maximum temperature increases seem perhaps more remote than they were before the world leaders convened.

The lynchpin to progress, George w. Bush, resorted to his usual weasel words which, judging by the past, speak for themselves. He's promised to "seriously consider" the European proposal and - surprise, surprise - he's got just about 18-months remaining in his presidency so he'll be able to do lots and lots and lots of considerin'.

Meanwhile Bush and his ventriloquist's dummy, Harper, have held on to their "intensity based" fetish. Intensity based is just another way of saying "no" to caps or limits to global warming. It's also a way of saying a huge "yes" to continued fossil fuel dependency, especially the really filthy stuff, the tar sands. Let'er rip.

The G8 failure also sends a powerful message to the emerging, global economic powerhouses - India and China. If the West isn't going to get its house in order, they won't either. That's not to say that China and India won't take some significant environmental improvements. They will because they have no choice, especially when it comes to fresh water. But, where GHG and global warming are concerned, it'll be like herding cats to get them into the pen we don't want to go into ourselves.

Where are we headed? In large measure that will hinge on who comes in to dung out the George Bush Oval Office and, probably, how much Big Oil has kicked in to that campaign. I don't know if you've watched any of the Democratic or Republican presidential debates but they feature an enormous gaggle of very, very little reason for optimism.

But that's not to say that we're not headed somewhere. We are. The Sydney Morning Herald has a report on yet more acceleration in the Greenland glaciers slide into the sea. And the latest climate model developed by the Goddard Institute in New York suggests the Earth is close to a tipping point that would start the disintegration of the Western Antarctic ice sheet and Arctic sea ice.

Goddard researcher James Hansen (by now you should know that name) says the model indicates that a 1.7 degree celsius increase over pre-industrial levels will be the likely tipping point for truly dangerous climate change.

"This was due to natural feedback mechanisms that could amplify the impact of a small temperature rise, he said. "If global emissions of carbon dioxide continue to rise at the rate of the past decade, this research shows there will be disastrous effects," he said.

"Published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, the study used a computer model that incorporated more information than previous ones on factors such as changes in solar radiation, volcanic particles, soot, land use and clouds.

"In another study, British Antarctic Survey scientists reported this week they had tracked the flow of more than 300 previously unstudied glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula using satellite radar systems. They found the rate at which they slid into the sea increased by 12 per cent between 1993 and 2003.

"The British team's leader, Hamish Pritchard, said the Antarctic Peninsula had experienced some of the fastest warming on Earth, with a rise of nearly 3 degrees in the past 50 years. "Eighty-seven per cent of its glaciers have been retreating during this period and now we see these glaciers are also speeding up," he said.

"The cause was meltwater acting as a lubricant between the ice and underlying rocks, said Dr Pritchard, whose study is published in the journal Geophysical Research.

"Satellite observations of the Greenland ice sheet, which are made daily, have shown that the period when snow melted during 2006 was 10 days longer than the average for the previous 18 years."

"Dr Marco Tedesco, of NASA's Joint Centre for Earth Systems Technology, said melted and refrozen snow absorbed up to four times more energy from the sun than dry snow, creating a feedback loop that could accelerate melting."

Studies, studies, studies; results, results, results - hmm, must be hogwash.

All Quiet in Kandahar?

Reports in The Globe and The Star this week quoted Canadian officers in Kandahar claiming that they had the Taliban on the run. The stories said that Canadian forces had more or less pacified Kandahar province although they were taken by surprise that the Taliban reverted to guerrilla tactics. Be that as it may, Kandahar was a real success story. Really?

Not according to a report in today's NatPo. It reveals that the lions' share of the battle against the Taliban in Kandahar isn't being fought by the Canadian forces or even the Afghan National Army. It's being fought, daily, and often on losing terms by the Afghan Police. All quiet in Kandahar? Hardly.

"The commander of a beleaguered Afghan National Police detachment in Kandahar province's Zhari district is becoming increasingly frustrated with the Canadian Forces in the area. The foreign soldiers, he charges, have repeatedly ignored police calls for help in fighting the insurgents and overlooked tips on where to find and destroy Taliban nests.

"In fact, Mr. Hakim contends, a lack of co-operation between the police, the Afghan National Army and Canadian troops has helped insurgent strength in the district grow to 300 or 400 fighters from 100 six months ago.

"...the police and NATO seem to be waging their own, independent wars, the commander said. The Canadian offensives against the Taliban, like Operation Hoover a few weeks ago, are largely "useless," because the militants hear in advance of the large-scale missions that often involve tanks. They hide to avoid confrontation and sometimes lay down improvised explosive devices to sabotage the Canadian advance, the officer observed.

Regardless, one thing is clear. The under-equipped, out-gunned Afghan National Police are bearing the brunt of the fighting in Zhari.

"The police are in really bad, bad conditions down there," said Col. Mohammed Hussain, the national force's liaison officer at the Canadian-run provincial reconstruction team. "They are fighting 24 hours, every hour, every minute, every second of the day."

"Experts say that policemen like Mr. Hakim are taking a beating everywhere in southern Afghanistan. With just 10 days of training and equipped with a minimum of firepower, they are used as a military force, a sort of "canary in the coal mine" or tripwire to flush out the Taliban, said Supt. Dave Fudge, the RCMP officer who runs a police training program for the provincial reconstruction team.

"So, for every Afghan army soldier killed, 27 police officers lose their lives to insurgent attacks."

Holding the Line on the Senate

Stephen Harper is, well he's a tire biter. He knows he hasn't got the power or legitimacy to take big bites so he tries to get to the same goal by taking a lot of little bites. And he just keeps nipping away.

Take term limits for senators. This is the brainstorm of an intemperate, minority ideologue - hardly the qualifications I'd want to see in a person trying to change the structure of my federal government.

If Harper wants to mess with the senate, it's time he got off his pompous ass and acted like a man. Put forward a package of his senate reform plan, not just bits but the complete deal. You want term limits, you want elected senators, you want to fiddle with the numbers on a province-by-province basis? Then act like you've got a pair, show us what you want, negotiate a constitutional deal with the provinces and, finally, ask our permission. That's right, bozo, put it to a referendum.

These far right hacks have been maligning the senate since "time before time" (they'll know what that means) but the role of this house in Canada is very little known and even more poorly understood. I personally welcome a body of highly accomplished and experienced overseers, serving in a purely advisory role, to lend that "sober, second thought" to the antics of Harpos and Dorkwells.

Electing senators is a proposal fraught with perils. It would then require some agreement on distribution by province. Good luck on that. It would also accord senators legislative legitimacy. No thank you. One legislative house is plenty. Worst of all, it would lead to a lowering of standards. Senators would become hacks like their counterparts in the commons.

But if we're going to face this prospect, let's at least have an honest debate about it. The senate is much too important to leave it to the backroom skulking and scheming of a far-right ideologue.

Supreme Court Upholds Collective Bargaining against BC Government

A smackdown for BC's faux Liberals in Victoria. In a powerful, 6-1 decision, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the collective bargaining process is protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Court then moved to quash sections of the B.C. Health and Social Services Delivery Improvement Act as contrary to the Charter because it interfered with the collective bargaining process. From CTV News:

"The law superseded existing contracts and allowed for the contracting-out of non-clinical services, which had been originally carried out by union members. It also eased lay-off notice provisions, tightened up "bumping rights" for senior employees, and cut benefits for laid-off workers.

"Unions were also prevented from attempting to renegotiate some of the provisions in future contracts."

Lower courts in British Columbia had sided with the government, perhaps timidly claiming that the SCC had never expressly held collective bargaining protected by the Charter. Today's ruling puts an end to that facile dodge. The province has been given a year to fix the offending portions of the Act.

Mission Accomplished - Iraq Historical Looting Finally Almost Completed

"Stuff happens." That's how then US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed uncontrolled looting of Iraqi archeological treasures in the first weeks of the American occupation.

Eventually the public revulsion at Washington's indifference to the looting triggered some efforts to recover stolen treasures. Most of us thought that the problem was dealt with. Apparently not. To the contrary it seems that the US has done precious little to deter a continuation of the looting over the past four years and has itself destroyed irreplacable Iraqi treasures.

Simon Jenkins of The Guardian tells of Iraq's Board of Antiquities and Heritage and its leader's plea to the British:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2098273,00.html

"Fly into the American air base of Tallil outside Nasiriya in central Iraq and the flight path is over the great ziggurat of Ur, reputedly the earliest city on earth. Seen from the base in the desert haze or the sand-filled gloom of dusk, the structure is indistinguishable from the mounds of fuel dumps, stores and hangars. Ur is safe within the base compound. But its walls are pockmarked with wartime shrapnel and a blockhouse is being built over an adjacent archaeological site. When the head of Iraq's supposedly sovereign board of antiquities and heritage, Abbas al-Hussaini, tried to inspect the site recently, the Americans refused him access to his own most important monument.

"Yesterday Hussaini reported to the British Museum on his struggles to protect his work in a state of anarchy. It was a heart breaking presentation. Under Saddam you were likely to be tortured and shot if you let someone steal an antiquity; in today's Iraq you are likely to be tortured and shot if you don't. The tragic fate of the national museum in Baghdad in April 2003 was as if federal troops had invaded New York city, sacked the police and told the criminal community that the Metropolitan was at their disposal. The local tank commander was told specifically not to protect the museum for a full two weeks after the invasion. Even the Nazis protected the Louvre.

"When I visited the museum six months later, its then director, Donny George, proudly showed me the best he was making of a bad job. He was about to reopen, albeit with half his most important objects stolen. The pro-war lobby had stopped pretending that the looting was nothing to do with the Americans, who were shamefacedly helping retrieve stolen objects under the dynamic US colonel, Michael Bogdanos (author of a book on the subject). The vigorous Italian cultural envoy to the coalition, Mario Bondioli-Osio, was giving generously for restoration.
The beautiful Warka vase, carved in 3000BC, was recovered though smashed into 14 pieces. The exquisite Lyre of Ur, the world's most ancient musical instrument, was found badly damaged. Clerics in Sadr City were ingeniously asked to tell wives to refuse to sleep with their husbands if looted objects were not returned, with some success. Nothing could be done about the fire-gutted national library and the loss of five centuries of Ottoman records (and works by Piccasso and Miro). But the message of winning hearts and minds seemed to have got through.
Today the picture is transformed. Donny George fled for his life last August after death threats. The national museum is not open but shut. Nor is it just shut. Its doors are bricked up, it is surrounded by concrete walls and its exhibits are sandbagged. Even the staff cannot get inside. There is no prospect of reopening.

"Hussaini confirmed a report two years ago by John Curtis, of the British Museum, on America's conversion of Nebuchadnezzar's great city of Babylon into the hanging gardens of Halliburton. This meant a 150-hectare camp for 2,000 troops. In the process the 2,500-year-old brick pavement to the Ishtar Gate was smashed by tanks and the gate itself damaged. The archaeology-rich subsoil was bulldozed to fill sandbags, and large areas covered in compacted gravel for helipads and car parks. Babylon is being rendered archaeologically barren.
Meanwhile the courtyard of the 10th-century caravanserai of Khan al-Raba was used by the Americans for exploding captured insurgent weapons. One blast demolished the ancient roofs and felled many of the walls. The place is now a ruin."

Jenkins put it aptly when he noted that, compared to the American occupiers, even the Nazis did better.

A Bribe for the Record Books

In the West, the best known member of the House of Saud has been Prince Bandar bin Sultan. He was Saudi ambassador to the US for 20-years and such a regular guest at the Bush ranch that he came to be treated as one of the family.

According to the BBC, Bandar has also been the recipient of as much as a billion pounds sterling paid under the table in bribes by BAE to cinch a 43 billion pound sale of military aircraft to Saudi Arabia. Tony Blair intervened to prevent any British official enquiry into the alleged bribery scandal but other countries, such as Switzerland, are conducting enquiries of their own.

The BBC programme Panorama ran a report claiming that the money was paid to Prince Bandar with the knowledge of the British Ministry of Defence.

The New Tory "No Man's Land"?

The Tories may have just torn up their electoral chances in the Maritimes thanks to the expulsion of veteran MP Bill Casey from their caucus and Harpo's betrayal of his government's promise to exclude oil and gas revenues from the formula for determining how much financial support "have-not" provinces – such as Nova Scotia and Newfoundland – get under the federal-provincial wealth-sharing program.

The Tories currently hold eight seats in the Maritimes and any hopes of increasing that in the next election seem doomed. It's even being suggested that the Harpo Conservatives could lose the seats they now hold.

The opposition has been ruthless in hammering Tory Maritime MPs including the already beleaguered Peter MacKay. Good on 'em. They made the deal, they broke it and they're going to pay for that.

Oh Great, A "Deal" on Climate Change

According to the New York Times, George w. Bush has cut a deal with the European G8 group over climate change. The "deal" amounts to Bush agreeing to "seriously consider" the European proposal to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2050.

This is heralded as a great compromise. Shrub still has indicated he has no time for mandatory caps. I wonder what else Bush will be "seriously considering" in the year and a half remaining in his term?

This deal has all the makings of a dark farce.

Say It Ain't So

Thanks to RT for pointing this one out. A story posted on Canada.com quotes a Canadian Forces officer as saying we weren't expecting the Taliban to go guerrilla on us in Afghanistan:

"The Canadian Forces have been “caught by surprise” in recent months by a dramatic shift in the Afghanistan war that has seen the Taliban melt into the civilian population and spread into a far wider area, a top officer admitted Wednesday.

"The new enemy activity has prompted the kind of rapid “sea change” in tactics that used to be unheard of in the Forces, said Col. Mike Cessford, second in command of the Canadian mission here.

"Last year, troops were engaged in fierce fighting with large clumps of insurgents in a single, 20-square-kilometre area west of Kandahar, he said.

"Now the Taliban have dispersed among the province’s civilians and into a “multiplicity” of different districts, Cessford said in a frank assessment of the operation."

Let's see. The Taliban have no tanks, no artillery to speak of, no attack helicopters, no jet strike fighters, they're completely and utterly outgunned. So just what type of warfare were we expecting from them other than guerrilla fighting? It's called "asymmetrical warfare", the kind that the little people without the big toys fight, and there's no way our military leadership should have been taken by surprise by that.

Maybe Rick Hiller should contact General Petraeus in Baghdad and get him to send over an autographed copy of FM 3-24, the US General's seminal field manual on counter-insurgency warfare. Better yet Rick, you can get it in PDF on the internet at:

http://www.usgcoin.org/library/doctrine/COIN-FM3-24.pdf

Unbelievable!

The Good Bad Guys

A strange but positive story out of Iraq from the McClatchey News Service. It's the story of two fierce enemies - the US Army and the insurgent, Islamic Army of Iraq - joining forces temporarily to drive al-Qaeda out ofthe Baghdad neighbourhood of Amariyah:

"Under cover of darkness, a convoy of Bradley Fighting Vehicles and M-1 tanks loaded with American soldiers pulled up to a mosque Monday night in the neighborhood of Amariyah.

"More than a dozen members of the anti-American insurgent Islamic Army of Iraq and some local residents waited for them, armed with AK-47 rifles and dressed in track suits and T-shirts.
But the two forces didn't clash. Instead, they shared information and supplies, in a growing push by the Islamic Army of Iraq and neighborhood residents to push al-Qaida's foreign fighters from Amariyah.

"Capt. Andy Wilbraham, the commander of Delta Company of the 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, of the 1st Cavalry Division, from Fort Hood, Texas, called the men the "honorable insurgency" and "the good bad guys." He said the Iraqis' decision to ally with the Americans, in the battle against al-Qaida at least, had given him hope that Baghdad's Sunni Muslims would follow the lead of tribal heads in Anbar province and help the Americans drive out al-Qaida.

"That won't necessarily mean they'll be long-term allies, however.

"One of the men present, who called himself Abu Bilal, said privately that he remained committed to expelling the Americans from Iraq. But for now, the battle was against al-Qaida's fighters, who he said had turned his neighborhood into a dump for garbage and bodies."

The Islamic Army in Iraq has been a fierce opponent of the US occupation forces. It's fighters have been responsible for a great many sniper, rocket and improvised explosive device attacks on American forces.

OPEC Threatens the West over Biofuels

This time these sleazeballs may have finally gone too far. An OPEC spokesman says the West's pursuit of biofuels could cause the cartel to cut its investment in new oil production, driving the price of oil through the roof. From the Financial Times:

"Abdalla El-Badri, secretary-general of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, said the powerful cartel was considering cutting its investment in new oil production in response to moves by the developed world to use more biofuels.

"The warning from Opec, which controls about 40 per cent of global oil production, comes as the group of eight leading industrialised nations meets on Wednesday with climate change at the top of its agenda. The US and Europe want to use biofuels to combat global warming and to strengthen energy security.

"Mr El-Badri said this meant the biofuel strategy championed by Mr Bush and European leaders would backfire because 'you don’t get the incremental oil and you don’t get the ethanol'. In this case, he warned, oil prices would go 'through the roof'.

"He said Opec members had so far maintained their investment plans but he warned: 'If we are unable to see a security of demand...we may revisit investment in the long-term.'”

Hey George, sound like it's time for a little more regime change?

Arnold Strikes Again!

A lawsuit launched by the state of California could impact on municipal and regional governments throughout the US and possibly even Canada. Watch out Toronto!

California is suing the San Bernardino county for poor planning creating urban sprawl leading to excessive greenhouse gas emissions.

"The California lawsuit, filed in the spring, argues that the 1970 California Environmental Quality Act requires greenhouse gases to be regulated like any other type of pollution. Sixteen states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam have similar laws, but no other state has used these laws to sue over global warming.

"If the suit is successful, California cities and counties could be forced to take steps to limit sprawl, promote compact development, require builders to design energy-efficient houses that offer solar power, and encourage less driving, more mass transit and use of alternative fuels."

The report notes that the California lawsuit is being eyed carefully in several other states that have similar environmental legislation.

Pfizer Sued for Deadly Experiment on African Kids

The government of Nigeria is suing mega-Pharm Pfizer for testing a meningitis drug on kids that left 11 of them dead and others disabled.

Nigeria claims Pfizer illegally conducted tests of the drug, Trovan, on 200-children in 1996. The following year Trovan was approved by the US FDA for adults but not children. Its production has since been cancelled. Pfizer denies all the allegations. From The Guardian:

"Pfizer has said previously that it obtained "verbal consent" from the parents of the affected children, and that the drugs were administered properly. But, before the trial, Juan Walterspiel, a disease specialist for Pfizer, warned the company that the drug was not "tested for its sensitivity before the first child was exposed to a live-or-die experiment".

"Human rights groups have already accused some drugs firms of using Africa as a testing ground for medicines not approved by Europe or the US. In response to the Nigerian case, a US congressman, Tom Lantos, introduced laws to ensure safer testing of drugs in foreign countries. But the legislation ended last year.

"A civil and criminal suit by the Kano government against Pfizer was postponed on Monday until next month. It is seeking $2bn in damages. The state filed charges - including those of criminal conspiracy and voluntarily causing grievous harm - against Pfizer and eight current or former executives and researchers."

Time To Split

There's a growing clamour for the US and Britain to simply get the hell out of Iraq.

Even some of the Republicans vying for their party's presidential nomination want to wrap things up, hand everything over to the Iraqis, and leave. The Iraqi government seems to feel the same way.

Yesterday, Iraq's parliament passed a binding resolution that ensures lawmakers have the ability to block the extension of the UN mandate when it comes up for renewal in December. Until now the power to extend the mandate resided with the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki.

Several Iraqi parliamentarians say they fully expect the mandate renewal to be rejected in December. Without that mandate the US and coalition forces would revert to being an army of occupation which would virtually end their political legitimacy.

The current mandate was renewed by Maliki last year without consulting parliament and it is quite possible that he may try to veto any vote to end the mandate in December. This could trigger a showdown between the already-wobbly Maliki and an increasingly powerful parliament.

Meanwhile, Britain's former ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, added his voice to those calling for prompt withdrawal of US and UK forces.

Meyer told the Guardian he acknowledged that leaving Iraq would be "painful", but said the mission was not worth the death of one more serviceman. "I personally believe that the presence of American and British and coalition forces is making things worse, not only inside Iraq but the wider region around Iraq. The arguments against staying for any greater length of time themselves strengthen with every day that passes," Sir Christopher said.

He added: "I think the Iraqis are in fact sorting themselves out - often bloodily - independent of what we're doing."

Climate Change - India & China Dig In

It's one of those arguments where everybody's got a point and everybody stands to lose because of it.

The two emerging economic megapowers - India and China - have grown very leery of the G8 and all the focus on global warming. They see greenhouse gas initiatives as the bandits trying to lock them out of their own store. Writing in today's Guardian, Randeep Ramesh explains the outsiders' approach:

"What is emerging ahead of the G8 is a loose coalition of the big poor. Lower-income, populous countries with strong economic growth are aware of the trap being laid by richer nations, whose interest is to maintain their place at the top of the global pecking order.

"So we had Brazil's President Lula in Delhi earlier this week. Separated by culture and language as well as starkly different economies, Brazil and India joined hands to blast the west on climate change - a day after Beijing had snubbed richer nations on the same subject.

"The joint Indo-Brazilian declaration made it clear that the developing world was not ready to accept the burden of a problem poor nations did not create.

"'The solution to the problem of climate change, which is essentially the outcome of the unsustainable production and consumption patterns in the developed world, cannot lie in the perpetuation of poverty in developing countries,' the declaration said.

"On a whole range of issues, large developing nations are attempting to come together and build relationships that ensure they cannot be played off against each other. As the Doha round of trade talks have shown, the big poor are able to stick together.

"They will resist the rich world's exhortations to liberalise markets and strengthen intellectual property regimes. If such actions are taken precipitately, the advantages almost exclusively accrue to the investor (read the rich).

"There is also an understanding developing that hostile impressions must be dispelled fast. When American, Japanese and Indian battleships gathered in the South China Sea earlier this year for war games, New Delhi quickly dispatched vessels to take part in joint exercises with the Chinese navy.

"While the developing countries' rise is not assured, it has been predicted. A team of Goldman Sachs economists coined the term "Bric" in 2003 - for Brazil, Russia, India and China - and said that, given luck and the right policies, Bric economies together could become larger than those of the world's six richest nations in less than 40 years."

There's another message in this beyond the text of diplomatic declarations - India, China and Brazil are not ready to acknowledge that the worst impacts of climate change will hit them much harder and much earlier than they will be felt in the West.

India and China are already facing a looming water crisis. Part of this results from the disappearing snowpack and receding glaciers in the Himalayas. Part of this has been caused by over reliance on groundwater stocks. Compounding this is unrestrained water pollution. This is the 800-pound gorilla in their boardrooms. No water, no economic miracle.

They also miss the point of their dependence on the West for fueling their economic ascendancy. Much of the Chinese industrial surge has been the result of Western investment in their economy and, of course, Western markets for their production. India, too, is dependent on the West. It's a tap that can be turned off, quickly and very powerfully.

The Chinese and Indians might like to pretend they don't feel it but there's a knife at everyone's throat. Only in their case those knives are bigger, sharper and much, much closer.

Bolton Takes One in the Back

Poor John Bolton - reviled and disgraced and run out of town. That's bad enough but not as bad as the coup de grace delivered by his successor, Zalmay Kahlilzad.

It sems Kahlilzad has wasted no time winning the friendship of his fellow UN ambassadors on the Security Council, relationships that had been scorched and seared during Bolton's rampaging tenure.

At a diplomatic dinner last month, ambassadors spoke in turn about their relief at Zalmay's appointment. When it came time to respond, Kahlilzad entertained his diplomatic colleagues by quipping, "“I have discovered from your comments that the best thing I have done was to choose my predecessor.”

A Bolton spokesman said he'd heard of the remark and had no comment.

Right-Wing Feast - Eating Their Own

The lunacy that passes for today's Republican elite are famished and grumpy - so famished and so grumpy that they've fallen back on that old conservative favourite, eating their own.

Poor George w. Bush. He's still got a year and a half remaining in his term and his once faithful followers have already put him on the spit over a roaring fire.

Last night's Daily Show ran clips of the likes of Brit Hume, Chris Wallace and Rush Dimbaugh liberally denouncing their once exalted leader as some kind of moron. Meanwhile, down the hall at the asylum in Ward B, another band of inmates, the bunch who are vying for Shrub's job, had a George Bush feeding frenzy of their own at last night's debate.

Apparently sensing the public's disgust with the diminutive Texan to whom they had once pledged their troth and fealty, one by one the candidates rose up in an outpouring of spiritual liberation to denounce the little peckerhead for his immigration policy as well as his screw-up in Iraq and his collapse of America's standing abroad.

The curious part was that the frontrunners all seem intent on ramping up the same aggressive foreign policy that Bush introduced. They're talking even greater unilateralism except they expect to do it with the support of their allies. Sound confusing? Well, I told you it's coming from the asylum.

The Right & The Treachery of Fear

The hallmark of the Far Right since 9/11 has been the wanton exploitation of fear to manipulate citizenry. Make people fearful enough and they will become timid, complacent, malleable.

George w. Bush used fear against his own people to manipulate them into supporting his war of whim against Iraq. He used fear to intimidate them into surrendering their civil liberties. He used fear to quell protests against his diabolical deeds in his illusory war on terror.

Harpo too has used fear as a weapon against the Canadian people and he's poised to unleash this vile weapon on us again. It's already been reported that enviromin Baird is crafting a set of greenhouse gas measures that are designed to cause us to recoil in fear and lose our will to combat global warming.

Using fear against your own people is pure treachery but the Far Right shows no sign of giving up this tried and true technique. No matter how badly discredited George Bush has become among the American people, those who aspire to succeed him can't restrain themselves from following in his despicable footsteps. Fareed Zakaria describes how the Republican frontrunners are at it again:

"More troubling than any of Bush's rhetoric is that of the Republicans who wish to succeed him. 'They hate you!' says Rudy Giuliani in his new role as fearmonger in chief, relentlessly reminding audiences of all the nasty people out there. 'They don't want you to be in this college!' he recently warned an audience at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta. 'Or you, or you, or you,' he said, reportedly jabbing his finger at students. In the first Republican debate he warned, 'We are facing an enemy that is planning all over this world, and it turns out planning inside our country, to come here and kill us.' On the campaign trail, Giuliani plays a man exasperated by the inability of Americans to see the danger staring them in the face. 'This is reality, ma'am,' he told a startled woman at Oglethorpe. 'You've got to clear your head.'

"...The presidential campaign could have provided the opportunity for a national discussion of the new world we live in. So far, on the Republican side, it has turned into an exercise in chest-thumping. Whipping up hysteria requires magnifying the foe. The enemy is vast, global and relentless. Giuliani casually lumps together Iran and Al Qaeda. Mitt Romney goes further, banding together all the supposed bad guys. 'This is about Shia and Sunni. This is about Hizbullah and Hamas and Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood,' he recently declared.

"...The competition to be the tough guy is producing new policy ideas, all right—ones that range from bad to insane. Romney, who bills himself as the smart, worldly manager, recently explained that while 'some people have said we ought to close Guantánamo, my view is we ought to double [the size of] Guantánamo.' In fact, Romney should recognize that Guantánamo does not face space constraints. The reason that President Bush wants to close it down—and it is he who has expressed that desire—is that it is an unworkable legal mess with enormous strategic, political and moral costs. In a real war you hold prisoners of war until the end of hostilities. When does that happen in the war on terror? Does Romney propose that the United States keep an ever-growing population of suspects in jail indefinitely without trials as part of a new American system of justice?

"In 2005 Romney said, 'How about people who are in settings—mosques, for instance—that may be teaching doctrines of hate and terror? Are we monitoring that? Are we wiretapping?' This proposal is mild compared with what Rep. Tom Tancredo suggested the same year. When asked about a possible nuclear strike by Islamic radicals on the United States, he suggested that the U.S. military threaten to 'take out' Mecca."

Zakaria warns that America cannot regain its place in the world so long as its people succumb to the climate of fear so disgracefully exploited by its leaders. It's an excellent article and you can find it here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19001200/site/newsweek/page/0/

America may not be able to break out of the claws of fear by which its leaders have grasped its throat but that's not to say that we in Canada must tolerate this sort of treachery from our own leaders, the Harpers, the Bairds and the Hilliers. It's time to stand up to them and let them know we won't tolerate this nonsense any longer.

Arms Control for Space Not Viable

As George w. Bush tries to assure Vlad Putin that his anti-missile defence system is nothing for the Russians to worry about, Shrub's remarks are shelled hollow by Washington's flat refusal to entertain the idea of arms control for space. From Asia Times Online:

"Arms control is not a viable solution for space," a US State Department official told Space News on January 19. "For example, there is no agreement on how to define a space weapon. Without a definition, you are left with loopholes and meaningless limitations that endanger national security."

"Pentagon officials insist the US is not seeking to put weapons in orbit. Its space research, which is funneling billions of US dollars to aerospace contractors such as Lockheed Martin, is strictly for defense, they say.

"But arms-control experts suggest that this rhetoric has failed to assuage China's fears.

"'So many [missile] defensive capabilities have inherent offensive applications as well,' said Theresa Hitchens, a space-weapons expert at the Center for Defense Information, a think-tank based in Washington.

Bush's recently proclaimed National Space Policy states: "The US considers space capabilities vital to its national interests. The US will preserve its freedom of action in space [and will] dissuade or deter others from either impeding those rights, and take those actions necessary to protect its space capabilities."

"Hitchens said there is a more 'aggressive tone inherent in this policy' and that it 'rejects any limits on US actions in space'. She added: 'This strategy, this policy, more aggressively articulates a space warfighting strategy.'

For all his flaws, Putin isn't stupid and he knows Bush's assurances are utterly meaningless. There's plenty of ammunition in w.'s lies to start a Cold War. It's time the world told Bush to grow up.

Another GWW - Global Warming Warning

Our media yesterday were chock full of stories of the exploits of galloping greenies like Harpo holding forth on the need for urgent action to combat the greatest threat to mankind and other such blather. I guess they were just too high on environmental narcissism to bother with the latest GWW or Global Warming Warning released yesterday by the United Nations.

The UN's 238-page Global Outlook for Ice and Snow contains the latest assessment of the state of earth's icepacks, glaciers and permafrost. The news, in case you can't guess, isn't good.

One geopolitical time bomb the report identified are the retreating glaciers in Asia which will impact on 40% of the world's population. These glaciers, particularly in the Himalayas, are vital to river systems and vital irrigation in both India and China.

The report did have some good news. The permafrost in Siberia isn't thawing as quickly as thought. On the other hand the amount of methane being released from that permafrost is now thought to be five times greater than expected.

Bush to Putin - "Trust Me"

Steve Bell, The Guardian

30 Months for Scooter Libby

By the time he runs out his appeals, George w. Bush will be leaving office just in time to give him a pardon and no harm done. However a federal judge today gave Scooter Libby 30-months worth of incentive to keep this game rolling.

Libby was sentenced to two and a half years for perjury and obstruction in the CIA leak investigation. The court also levied a $250,000 fine.

"People who occupy these types of positions, where they have the welfare and security of nation in their hands, have a special obligation to not do anything that might create a problem," U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said.

Gee, it's a good thing you can't get slammer time for lying your nation into a war that takes the lives of tens of thousands of innocents.

An Iraqi Success Story

With a mess like Iraq, it's always nice to emphasize the positive - even if that's only the least negative.

That was the approach of David Brooks writing in today's New York Times. Brooks was making the case for Iraqi partition as the only viable option remaining:

"...while the center remains paralyzed, local armed bands are grasping for power and creating their own facts on the ground. ...In the Baghdad neighborhood of Kadhimiya, Shiite militias are gradually consolidating control. They are expelling the Sunnis. They have created a system of street justice, complete with underground Islamic courts. They’ve battled rival militias. They fund their activities through extortion and bribery. But amid the mafia behavior and ethnic cleansing, they’ve created relative calm. Two thousand Shiite families have moved in.

"This is now a success story: an ethnically cleansed safe place. Instead of a sort of managed soft partition that at least has a shot of transferring power to the best local people, we’re now getting machine-gun partition that transfers power to the most violent people. For Iraqis, the thug who rules your local gas station rules your life."

Interesting approach, coming from Brooks, a staunch Republican supporter.

Smackdown for Foul Mouthed Bushies

...Not even if they had a mouthful. Ever since they stole office in 2000, the holier-than-thou Bush regime has waged a campaign to clean up American TV.

Part of this pogrom saw the FCC enact policies that allowed stations and networks to be fined if they broadcast shows containing obscene language. The major networks appealed and the United States Court of Appeals in New York ruled against the government.

The case was primarily concerned with what is known as “fleeting expletives,” or blurted obscenities, on television. The Federal Communications Commission had found that the mere utterance of certain words implied that sexual or excretory acts were carried out and therefore violated the indecency rules.

But the judges said vulgar words are just as often used out of frustration or excitement, and not to convey any broader obscene meaning. “In recent times even the top leaders of our government have used variants of these expletives in a manner that no reasonable person would believe referenced sexual or excretory organs or activities.”

Ouch, that's gotta burn! Hey Cheney, Go F__k Yourself, eh.

Why Does It Feel Like Rupert Murdoch's Been Here?

What's with the Canadian media? Who got to them anyway?

They're reacting to Stephen Harper's global warming shell game like he was some born again environmental guru. All he's doing is making empty promises while falling back on his "intensity based" scam intended to avoid disrupting the tarsanders.

The news accounts continue to ape Harper's slurs against the Liberals while steadfastly avoiding pointing out that his record on global warming, the record of the government of the day for the past year and a half, is a complete zero, nothing. With a few exceptions they depict Harpo as onside with the G8 initiative when he's anything but.

The media have been on this issue for too damned long to screw up their coverage this badly by sheer accident.

A Great Puffed-Up Bag of Hot Air

To listen to Stephen Harper jabber you would think he gets it. "Perhaps the biggest threat to confront the future of humanity today" is how he describes global warming while in Germany today for the G8 summit.

So what is our leader's plan of action? In concrete terms, the best he's come up with is to say we can't meet our Kyoto target obligations. Okay, Mr. Prime Minister, just what have you done to try to meet those obligations since you took power a year and a half ago? Tell us about your Herculean struggle. You spent the first year leaving it up to Rona who walked around in a daze "perhaps" from all that hair spray. Then you appointed Baird as her replacement when you realized there were votes at stake on this one. But just what have you done to address the "biggest threat to ...humanity today"? You've done exactly what you intended to do - virtually nothing.

Our prime minister reveals that he's done his homework. He's read and absorbed George w. Bush's playbook, especially the part where it says to tell people what they want to hear and then do whatever you please, regardless.

Now that Harpo has acknowledged global warming to be the biggest threat to humanity today, maybe he can stop wasting invaluable time distorting and falsifying the Liberal record on climate change. The record we need to deal with is that of the government of the day and it's nothing to be proud of.

Gorbachev Weighs In

Most of us don't like or particularly trust Vlad Putin and for good reason. That's why it's easy to dismiss some of his taunts, complaints and even threats. There's another Russian, however, whose credibility is much better, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the opinions he gave BBC about Russia's relations with the West are pretty dismal:

"We lost 15 years after the end of the Cold War, but the West I think and particularly the United States, our American friends, were dizzy with their success, with the success of their game that they were playing, a new empire.

"I don't understand why you, the British, did not tell them, 'Don't think about empire, we know about empires, we know that all empires break up in the end, so why start again to create a new mess.'"

He added that the war with Iraq had damaged Britain's relationship with Russia after a promising start.

"Tony Blair and Putin established a very good relationship and that made it possible to advance our relationship," he said.

"But then Iraq happened and Tony found himself in the embrace of that military monster, of that war situation, and he lost a lot of his credibility in the world and in Europe."

The More They Stay the Same

"When I went into a coma, there was only tea and vinegar in the shops," Jan Grzebski, now 65, told a Polish news channel.

"Meat was rationed and there were huge petrol queues everywhere."

When Grzebski fell into a coma 19-years ago after being struck by a train, his native Poland was a communist state, part of the Soviet Union's Warsaw Pact. Now, as he's rapidly learning, all that has changed but, still, he says some things are very much the same. He couldn't help noticing that people were complaining just as much as during the years of empty shops and martial law. "Now I see people on the streets with cellphones and there are so many goods in the shops it makes my head spin," he confessed.

"What amazes me is all these people who walk around with their mobile phones and yet they never stop moaning."

It's On - Bush & Putin Launch Cold War II

The Frat Boy scores another first. He just goaded Russia's Dark Prince Vlad into bringing back that Golden Oldie, cold war. The original, the real Cold War, ended on his Dad's watch but there's nothing George w. likes more than to show up the Old Man.

Why would the Russians not trust the West, especially one with a supposed leader like Shrub? This is the same w. who scrapped the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and made a complete farce of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The same w. who put his name to the Bush Doctrine of eternal supremacy and pre-emptive war of whim, who claimed virtual US ownership of space, who drove America's already staggering military spending straight through the roof, who plans to develop a whole new generation of nuclear weapons including devices to be used in conventional warfighting, who has developed supposed anti-ballistic missile radars and interceptors which he intends to position as close to Russia as Poland, who extended NATO's membership roles to Russia's border, who has invoked a military pact with India and Japan that flanks both China and Russia, who has invaded one country without UN sanction and threatens to repeat that performance elsewhere, and so much more. What's not to trust?

As dodgy a character as Putin may be, he'd have to be an idiot to trust George w's West and not react to these provocations. The only truly remarkable thing in all of this is that the rest of the West has been so complacent to these destabilizing initiatives from Washington.

Now we have a resurgent Russia, flush with oil wealth and resentful of its recent past, rearming and we have China rearming and we have India rearming and, to a lesser extent, Japan rearming and, of course, America massively rearming. That sure bodes well - huh?

So we've got a Cold War again. Unless you're nearing retirement age or better you probably don't fully understand what that means and you probably don't understand how easy these damned things are to start, how insanely dangerous they can become and how damned hard they are to undo.

Thanks George. There may be tender eyes reading this so I'll suffice to call you a complete, anal sphincter.

Surge Turns Into Sludge

You won't hear this from George w. Bush or his sidekick veep, Loki, but the obvious truth is still getting out. The New York Times has reviewed a summary from commanders in Baghdad that concludes the US forces claim they are able to "protect the population" and "maintain physical influence over" only 146 of the 457 Baghdad neighborhoods.

The report notes the US forces are being undermined by Iraqi security and military forces that often either fail to show up or perform poorly.

In an interview with Agence France-Presse, retired US Lt.-Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, said the US can now forget about winning in Iraq. Sanchez, who commanded American forces in Iraq in the first year of the occupation, says the best that can be hoped for is a stalemate but even achieving that will require a new generation of leaders, political and military.

Sanchez told AFP that a large troop commitment would be needed for years to come but conceded it is "very questionable" whether Americans would support it.

Sanchez is undoubtedly right. With domestic support for the Iraq war now dropping to roughly 25%, the patience of Americans has worn thin. Bush & Company have squandered the goodwill of their own people through their incompetence and their own lack of goodwill.

Every group now vying so viciously for power in Iraq knows that Bush has already lost the war at home and the push will now be on to increase the American blood price over the summer to force his hand.

As a sign of just how out of touch the administration is with conditions in Iraq, Rumsfeld's replacement, Robert Gates, recently mused about the establishment of permanent US military bases in Iraq along the lines of the US presence in South Korea. He seems to miss the distinction that South Korea isn't in a state of anarchy with half the population only too happy to put a bullet in an American back.

Another Quaint Notion

For an oil producer, such as Iran,

nuclear energy is a wasteful

use of resources.

Introduction of nuclear power will

both provide for the growing needs

of Iran's economy and free remaining

oil reserves for export or conversion

to petrochemicals.

Both of those quotes are from Henry Kissinger. Which one do you think he uttered during the reign of the Shah?

The Remarkable Conversion of Bush, Harper and Howard

The Three Stooges have gone green? One by one Harpo, Bush and now Howard have claimed to embrace the need to arrest global warming.

Is the Holy Trinity of global warming heel draggers really doing a huge u-turn and, if so, how did this emerge, out of the blue and all at once?

Harpo we can explain. He draped himself in green when he realized his political future hung in the balance. He did it because he found himself forced to do it and that explains why he's skulking about in the corners quietly trying to protect his precious tar sands. It's like a heroin addict claiming he's gone clean but hiding his stash in the dark recesses of the furnace room.

Howard? Again it's his political future in the balance. He's trailing badly going into an election for a fifth term and so he's scurrying about like a little rat saying he gets it.

Bush? He's playing the odds and writing the script that Harpo and Howard are using. It's called damage control. Say you get it, proclaim that action is needed and then dodge, stall and hope that you can get away with policies so compromised as to be nearly meaningless. Say anything, do what you damned well please. That's been the tried and true tactic of these right-wing thugs for years.

The proof of their charade lies in one aspect of greenhouse gas emissions they don't want to talk about - caps. Caps, ceilings on total permitted emissions, are the essential first step to GHG reductions. These guys steadfastly reject caps, shilling instead for "intensity based" reductions which will actually allow total emissions to continue increasing.

They're all playing the same scam even as time is running out.

Quaint Notions - Part I

If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes,

they are crimes whether the United States does them

or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared

to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others

which we would not be willing to have invoked against

us. ...We must never forget that the record on which

we judge these defendants is the record on which

history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these

defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips

as well.

Justice Robert Jackson, Chief Counsel for the US at Nuremberg

We're So Very Special

Alberta Prime Minister Stephen Harper has a message for his fellow G8 leaders - "we're special". He has the same message for most of Canada - "we're special" only what he means is we in Alberta are special.

Now to understand this, you need to understand that Harpo has a fetish. His fetish is the prospect of Canada, that is to say Alberta, becoming a global energy superpower. He loves the sound of the word "superpower", it gives him a strange tingling down below and brings that serene glaze to his eyes.

Unfortunately for Harpo, the path to superpowerdom runs straight through the Athabasca tar sands, an enormous pit full of a gooey mixture of sand and dirt and bitumen tar that can be dug and crushed and melted and extracted and refined to produce a form of artificial oil that we can then sell to the Americans. Sure we have to exhaust our fixed stocks of natural gas to process the sludge and sure we cause a great amount of air and water pollution to boot but Dick Cheney wants that oil and plenty more. So don't be telling Harpo about "so-called greenhouse gases" or "global warming" or any of that nonsense. We don't need to worry about that because "we're special."

It's not like Alberta isn't suffering for this. Why just yesterday Calgary revealed that it's been hit really hard by prosperity. Not to worry, Harpo's Ottawa will come to the rescue with - what else, more money.

No, it's not Canada against the world, it's Alberta against the world, Canada included. Thar's gold in that thar sludge and Harpo's damned if he's going to let the deaths of a bunch of Africans get in his way. It's not Harpo's problem if they're not special.

Still Hunting for Saddam's WMDs

If you thought the search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was over, think again. There are still 300 weapons experts from 50 countries active in a UN team spending millions of dollars of Iraqi oil money continuing the hunt.

They think they have the answer - there are no WMDs, none, nada, zilch, all gone. Now they're pretty much reduced to scouring international newspapers for tips or paying courtesy visits to world intelligence agencies for information, any information that might help them pass their day.

The problem is that the Security Council won't tell the inspectors that it's time for them to go home. Russia insists that Iraq's disarmament be formally certified by the inspectors. Certifying that nothing, not even a trace, exists anywhere in any corner or cave or bunker in Iraq is virtually impossible.

The inspectors also know that sophisticated equipment and chemicals that can be used to produce real WMDs do exist in Iraq. They say this "dual purpose" material left completely unguarded for months by US forces after the invasion was stolen by the insurgency, al-Qaeda and anyone else who wanted to help himself. The inspectors used satellite images of known sites to watch the stuff disappear on a daily basis. The recent use of chlorine gas bombs in populated areas is traced back to these unimpeded thefts. Good one, George w.

Have We Failed Afghanistan Once Too Often?

Our news about the Afghanistan war usually arrives with a good helping of cheerleading. Our reporters write about how Canada's soldiers are making a difference and I'm sure, in our own very small way, we are. But the key words are "very small" because that's what we are. We have a force of barely 2,500 soldiers, 60% of whom are support personnel hunkered down in garrison, to control a province more than 55,000 sq. km. in area. That's very small indeed.

So gazing too intently at our very small experience doesn't help to gauge the overall situation in that country and, no matter how good we are, we're still just a relatively limited part of that overall situation.

So, six years after the Taliban were run out of Kabul, how is "the mission" really going? According to a review in today's Asia Times, we're not doing all that well:

"The US and allies arrived in Afghanistan in 2001 with burning ambitions and high ideals to turn Afghanistan into a model for development in an underdeveloped part of the world. Many Afghans placed their faith in Western promises that have gone largely unfulfilled.

"Many - if not most - Western development workers in Afghanistan now believe that the US and its allies have overreached and need to retrench with a new and accountable pragmatism.

"With a vast agenda of 'gender equality, civil society, open media, democratic transformation, capacity-building, counter-narcotics and religious tolerance', Western do-gooders have bitten off more than they can chew, they say. 'The more of these agendas we take on the more we doom ourselves to failure,' says one Western aid worker.

"'People's expectations were so high and they were raised more by the international community than anyone else, particularly when they heard about the billions of American dollars committed to Afghanistan,' says Saad Mohseni, the Afghan-Australian director of a large media conglomerate in Kabul. 'Afghans are asking what has happened to this money.'

"Beyond a sputtering economy, however, increasing numbers of Afghans wonder how with nearly 50,000 foreign troops in their country security could have diminished in the past two years. 'When I arrived here in 2002, it was just a fear of these international forces in the country that enabled Afghan society to function,' even without a police force, says Mohseni. 'Today, the new Afghan police force is something that people fear. It has become synonymous with crime in the minds of the public.'

"Afghan citizens also appear befuddled at the prospect of endless fighting in the hinterlands, particularly in the south of the country. NATO's consistent failure to capture Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri in nearby Pakistan confuses many Afghans, but many consider it the least of their problems.

"'For Afghans, the 'global war on terror' was something for the rest of the world,' says Sanjar Qiam, the general manager of a leading national radio station. 'For Afghans it was about getting rid of the Taliban and getting rid of the Northern Alliance, but we still have both of them, and they seem to be getting stronger by the day.'"

From this account and so many others like it we should realize that we need to take a hard look at "the mission" in Afghanistan and see whether we've really made any progress at all. Sure we ran out the ruling gang of thugs, the Taliban, but we then handed the reins of power to the other gang of thugs, our allies, the Northern Alliance. We started this thing on the wrong foot and we haven't moved off that foot for six years.

Washington has no answers and neither do Harpo and Hillier. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be putting the hard questions to them.

Condi Has an Accident

Condosleazy Rice has always been George w. Bush's girl, no question about it. She has toed the Bushie line, somehow even managing to keep a straight face throughout. Remember her "mushroom cloud" gag? That was priceless! That's why it was strange to learn that Connie can sometimes be utterly juvenile in public as she showed during a recent visit to Spain.

Connie had been openly critical of Spain's foreign minister for recently visiting Fidel in Havana without also meeting Cuban dissidents. The Spanish reacted coldly to her chastisement. That led Connie to fly to Madrid to break the ice.

Rice met with the Spanish foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos. Afterward the two met with reporters and it was then that Connie let loose. From the Washington Post:

...when Moratinos defended the Spanish approach of engagement with the Cuban government and suggested that eventually Rice would see the method's merit, Rice rolled her eyes and turned to U.S. reporters and silently mouthed, "Don't hold your breath."

Let's see, she's in Spain, a guest of that government, representing the United States of America, and she manages to act like a spoiled 12-year old. Connie, it's time you started updating your resume. You just made a mess in your diplomatic diaper.

Naomi Klein on the Tar Sands

That ain't oil, it's Tar!

Writing in today's Guardian, Naomi Klein argues that the American fiasco in Iraq has given the US the energy security it quested for - in Alberta:

"The invasion of Iraq has set off what could be the largest oil boom in history. All the signs are there: multinationals free to gobble up national firms at will, ship unlimited profits home, enjoy leisurely "tax holidays", and pay a laughable 1% in royalties to the government.

"It is possible to turn Alberta's crud into crude, but it's awfully hard. One method is to mine it in vast open pits: first, forests are clear-cut, then topsoil scraped away. Next, huge machines dig out the black goop and load it into the largest dump trucks in the world (two stories high, a single wheel costs $100,000). The tar is diluted with water and solvents in giant vats, which spin it around until the oil rises to the top, while the massive tailings are dumped in ponds larger than the region's natural lakes. Another method is to separate the oil where it is: large drill-pipes push steam deep underground, which melts the tar, while another pipe sucks it out and transports it through several more stages of refining, much of it powered by natural gas.

"Then came the US invasion of Iraq. In March 2003, the price of oil reached $35 a barrel, raising the prospect of making a profit from the tar sands (the industry calls them "oil sands"). That year, the US Energy Information Administration "discovered" oil in the tar sands. It announced that Alberta - previously thought to have only 5bn barrels of oil - was actually sitting on at least 174bn "economically recoverable" barrels. The next year, Canada overtook Saudi Arabia as the leading provider of foreign oil to the US.

"All this has meant that Iraq's oil boom has not been delayed; it has been relocated. All the majors, save BP, have rushed to northern Alberta: ExxonMobil, Chevron and Total, which alone plans to spend $9bn-$14bn. In April, Shell paid $8bn to take full control of its Canadian subsidiary. The town of Fort McMurray, ground zero of the boom, has nowhere to house the tens of thousands of new workers, and one company has built its own airstrip so it can fly in the people it needs.

"And that's the Alberta tar sands for you: the industry already contributing to climate change more than any other is frantically turning up the heat. The process of refining bitumen emits three to four times the greenhouse gases produced by extracting oil from traditional wells, making the tar sands the largest single contributor to Canada's growth in greenhouse gas emissions. The $100bn in projected investments from the tar sands have also turned Canada into a global climate renegade.

"That money is the primary reason why, at next week's G8 summit in Heiligendamm, my country's oil-friendly prime minister, Stephen Harper, will join George Bush in opposing all serious attempts to cap or reduce greenhouse gases. Back at home, his government fully supports the oil industry's plans to more than triple tar sands production by 2020, with no end in sight. If prices stay high, it will soon become profitable to extract an additional 141bn barrels from the tar sands, which would place the largest oil reserves in the world in Alberta.

"Contemplating the collective madness in Alberta - a scene even the Financial Times has labelled "some dystopian fantasy" - it strikes me that Canada has ended up with more than Iraq's displaced oil boom. We have its elusive weapons of mass destruction too. They are out near Fort McMurray, in the jet-black goo beneath the earth's crust. And with the help of trucks, pipes, steam and gas, these weapons are being detonated."

Another Fine Mess - Kurdistan

The reality of Kurdistan is a problem that's been on the boil since the end of WWI. It's a tale of betrayal by the West and brutal oppression by the East that has resulted in a people without a homeland.

Long under the thumbs of the Ottomans, the Kurds were to be given back their homeland by the Treaty of Sevres in 1920 between the WWI Allies and the Ottomans. That lasted three years in which the fierce Turkish nationalist, Ataturk came upon the scene which led to the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 and the carving up of the Kurdish homeland with Britain and France tucking the oil rich part into their new possession, Iraq.

The Kurds caught their first break after the first US/Iraq war when the American-led coalition imposed a "no fly" zone over Iraq's Kurdish north which allowed the evolution of an effective, autonomous Kurdish mini-state. That didn't mean Saddam was dormant during these years. To the contrary he continued his policy of Arabizing oil-rich centres such as Kirkuk by driving out Kurds and replacing them with Sunni newcomers. Turkey, beset by its homegrown Kurdish liberation movement, eyed developments in northern Iraq with genuine alarm.

Okay - boom - Saddam's gone. What to do, what to do? Well today we know all too well that the conquerors had no idea what to do and so they didn't. Among their list of overlooked "to dos" that weren't has been the Kurdish problem.

The Kurdish Autonomous Region has been preparing itself for several years for what is occuring on the ground today. It began with the introduction of the KAR's constitution, a document drafted with eventual independence in mind. The only reason the Kurds remain part of Iraq today is that the new Iraqi government yielded to their demands that the Iraq constitution acknowledge and embody the KAR constitution. In other words, the Kurdish leadership has a key to the door anytime they want to walk out.

While the Kurdish Autonomous Region has been easy duty for American troops in Iraq, violence has been mounting between Kurds and Arabs. This is yet another Iraqi civil war, one of several. The Kurds have forced a referendum to decide the future of oil-rich Kirkuk and have been maneuvering to ensure the outcome by ousting Saddam's Sunni plants and replacing them with displaced Kurds. Fair? Hard to say but certainly arguable.

Meanwhile the Turks are getting antsy at the prospect of a break away Iraqi Kurdistan - as the Turks were bound to get. This has led Turkey, our sole Islamic NATO ally, to send tank columns driving on to the Iraqi border. They're now talking quite openly about invading, not only to crush their own Kurdish separatists who have taken refuge there but even to topple Barzani.

So, what is the Grand Occupier doing about this? Very little. The time for sorting out this mess was four years ago, in the immediate wake of the conquest. It had to be dealt with before the KAR constitution became a fait accompli and before the fuse that is Kirkuk was allowed to be lit. The White House, however, arrogantly assumed that the Kurds were safely in their pocket and ignored their gambits while it turned its attention on the Sunni insurgency, the Shia militias and al-Qaeda terrorism. The Americans' unwillingness to recognize much less deal with the Kurdish issues wasn't lost on Ankara.

There are so many forces at play in that supposedly placid part of Iraq that there may be nothing to be done now except to let it all play itself out. This is certainly beyond the grasp and skills of the idiotic lame duck now quacking haplessly about the Oval Office.

Nothing Of The Sort

The American media are giddy at the prospect that their major domo of gross incompetence, George w. Bush, is now claiming to want to tackle global warming.

That's not what he's said. He wants to initiate talks - next year - on a global agreement to set some global targets on greenhouse gas emissions. Talks. Next year. About goals.

It never ceases to amaze me how credible American (and some world) media outlets get all gushy when this jackass makes some decidedly vague or self-contradictory pronouncement. This guy has been around nearly seven years, plenty of time to learn that, if he says something sensible, you had better run for cover.

George w. Bush is a chronic dissembler, a craven deceiver, perhaps even a pathological liar. He's not even good at it and yet he gets away with it. Time and again he has demonstrated that he has utterly no integrity and will freely say what he thinks people want to hear only to pervert his promise behind the scenes.

Hey George w. - there are talks underway and, even though you've been dodging them, there's no reason to derail that process so that you can stage "talks" sometime in the future about something in the way of global warming.

Another point, w., - if you're coming to these talks be sure to bring that silly cowboy hat of yours because these talks won't work without caps.