The Madness of King George

A retired British army general, Michael Rose, has some advice for Americans debating the cost of pulling out of Iraq - look how well it served Britain to cut and run from America in 1776. In an editorial in the New York Times, Rose notes that King George's London fretted in much the same way over much the same concerns about leaving the American colonies as Washington is today over leaving Iraq.

"...Cornwallis, King George III and his ministers were convinced that this defeat and the withdrawal of British troops from the 13 colonies would result not only in anarchy in America but also in the collapse of the entire British Empire.

"France, Spain and other rivals, they were certain, would seize the remaining colonies in America, the West Indies, the Mediterranean and India. Worse still, the Irish, heartened by the success of the American rebellion, would rise up. At the end of the day, Britain would become no more than an unimportant island off northwestern Europe.

"If the Whig opposition, led by Lord Rockingham, had not had the moral courage and vision to accept defeat by the American colonists, and had not been able to persuade the king and his ministers to do likewise, Britain would likely have lost its position in the world, and today the people of the largest democracy in the world, India, would be speaking either French or Portuguese. By ending the unnecessary war in North America, Britain was able rapidly to rebuild its army and navy, eventually take on and defeat Napoleon, and become the unquestioned pre-eminent global power.

"Few saw this in 1781. During the cruel years of the war, George III had followed a hopelessly flawed strategy and had failed to commit adequate resources to the mission. He had never understood the character or nature of the American people and he had greatly underestimated their determination to throw off the yoke of British rule. The War of Independence had never just been about “taxation without representation.” It had been about the freedom for Americans to develop their own society in the way that they wished.

"George III was oblivious to the changed mindset in the colonies, and through a combination of hubris and a conviction that as the leader of the world’s premier military power he could bear no challenge to his authority, he had determined in 1775 to teach a sharp lesson to the radicals in North America: “Blows must decide.”

"Unfortunately for Britain, he attempted to fight a conventional war against insurgents, and sent far too few troops across the Atlantic to accomplish the mission. Although they initially took New York and Philadelphia, the British subsequently failed to adjust to a counterinsurgency strategy against the “war of the posts” that George Washington adopted after his defeat at Germantown, Pa., in October 1777.

"Instead of trying to isolate the rebels and gain the support of the loyalist and uncommitted colonials, the British spent much of their time defending their bases and maintaining their supply lines, only occasionally venturing out on punitive expeditions. They never succeeded in cutting off the heartland of rebel resistance in New England by taking control of the Hudson River Valley. Nor was the British Army — the finest in the world — ever able to establish sufficient security in the countryside or counter rebel propaganda. It soon came to be regarded as foreign occupation force.

"Finally, the British were never able to prevent a steady flow of arms, ammunition, instructors and fighters from entering the colonies from abroad. Thus Washington, whose Continental Army was down to a few thousand fit soldiers, managed to survive the harsh winter of 1777-78 at Valley Forge and rebuild his military strength.

"It had truly been the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. So how did Britain recover? War is the parent of illusions, and the first step in ending a war must be to shatter those illusions. It takes courage to accept defeat and vision to see that good can emerge from what appears to be disaster.

"Pitt set about rebuilding the British Navy and Army, for he could see that war with France was looming once again. He would often visit the yards to ensure that ships were being constructed on time. Under the energetic direction of the Duke of York, the king’s second son, the army was reorganized and retrained. New commanders were appointed for both services — men like Nelson and Wellington — who were determined not to make the same mistakes as their predecessors. It is hardly an overstatement to say that had Britain not ended the American War of Independence when it did, it could never have been in a position to defeat Napoleon.

"Today, of course, the United States finds itself in much the same position as Britain in 1781. Distracted and diminished by an irrelevant, costly and probably unwinnable war in Iraq, America could ultimately find itself challenged by countries like China and India. Unless it can find a leader with the moral courage of Pitt, there is a strong probability that it will be forced to relinquish its position as the global superpower — possibly to a regime that does not have the same commitment to justice and liberty that the United States and Britain have worked so hard to extend across the world over the past two centuries.

"The sound of the first shot fired at Lexington in 1775 echoed across the world. So too did the firing of the last shot six years later at Yorktown. That second echo brought salvation for Britain, and ultimately great benefit to the entire world."

Now, is there anyone in Washington today wth the courage to speak truth to power, the power of King George W.?

Mushie Dodges Another Bullet

Pakistan president and generalissimo Pervez Musharraf has been attacked - again. This time gunmen opened fire on Mushie's aircraft over Rawalpindi.

Authorities recovered at least one anti-aircraft gun and one machinegun from a rooftop in the city. The nature of this assassination attempt points to inside collusion. Anti-aircraft guns are big and bulky. Moving and positioning them takes a lot of effort and would be almost impossible to conceal. The plotters would also need to know a) that Mushie was going to be taking a plane ride, b) the type of plane he'd be flying in, c) the route and destination, and d) the time that aircraft would be in a vulnerable position, say on final approach for landing where it could be both within range and much less maneuverable.

Meanwhile the siege of the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, in Islamabad continues. Government officials have rejected a surrender offer by Abdur Rashid Ghazi, the leader of the mosque rebellion, which included a demand that he not be prosecuted.

Ghazi told the Associated Press, “We will be martyred, but we will not surrender.” The siege continues marked by intermittent, half-hour long exchanges of automatic weapons fire.

RCMP - Under New Management

The Harper government has picked a bureaucrat to head the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. William Elliott had previously served as Canada's national security advisor. A 1979 graduate of Ottawa U. law school, Elliott has been a career civil servant.

The question is how Elliott, the first civilian to head the RCMP, will operate at the top of Canada's largest law enforcement service. There has already been some grumbling of discontent from within where members see the commissioner's position as reserved for one of their own. There is also concern that the appointment politicizes the force which, in some minds, is supposed to be at arm's length from the government. Elliot has longstanding conservative ties, going back to the Mulroney days.

Will Elliot's tenure be sabotaged from within? That's entirely possible. He's not a policeman and has no experience of policing. That leaves him dependent on the support and goodwill of those he directs.

While this is a clean break with tradition, much will depend on the new commissioner. Is he willing, much less able, to make his own clean break with the bureaucracy and government within which he's worked for the past 25-years? Can he become a mountie first or will he remain Stockwell Day's overseer? I suspect the membership of the force, including the senior levels, will be expecting Elliot to pick sides pretty quickly.

Now I have a confession. I knew Bill Elliot when we were in law school together. We were part of a close knit bunch of students who spent a lot of time quaffing down an awful lot of beer. Bill and I lost touch when I came out to the west coast to practise so I thought I'd find out what others who've followed his career think of him.

I found a piece at HarperBizarro that thoroughly slagged Elliot. I sure hope for Elliot's sake and the future of the RCMP those criticisms aren't true. I had them included in this post but decided to remove them following an assuring comment I subsequently received. Anyway, I've told you where to look if you want to read them.

China's Next Great Revolution?

Usually revolutions are aimed at toppling the very highest authority. In China there's a call for a revolution against local government.

The head of China's environmental agency blames public discontent and riots on pollution and has called for a "struggle" against polluters. Sounds straight out of Mao's Red Book, eh? From The Guardian:

Zhou Shengxian's comments "underscore the frustration of state mandarins at local government officials who ignore environmental standards in order to attract investment, jobs and bribes.

"Beijing is trying to shift the economy on to a more sustainable development track. But factory owners who violate state guidelines are often protected by local officials. ...According to Mr Zhou, the state environmental protection administration chief, many plants build secret pipes to discharge polluting chemicals. Others release toxins when locals are asleep.

"Demonstrations against power and chemical plants have become increasingly common in recent years. In May, thousands took to the streets of Xiamen, in Fujian province, leading to the suspension of a petrochemical plant. In 2005, police killed at least three villagers in Dongzhou, Guangdong province, while quelling a riot over a planned power plant.

"Anger has been fuelled by unfair land grabs and health fears. According to the government, two-thirds of China's 595 cities now have unhealthy air.

"Pollution scandals are common. Earlier yesterday, state media reported that tap water had been restored to 200,000 residents of Shuyang county in Jiangsu after a chemical spill halted supplies for 40 hours. The environment agency said more than a quarter of the seven main river systems were so polluted that the water was unfit for human contact."

China today faces a hellish host of critical, environmental threats ranging from air and water pollution to freshwater depletion and desertification. It is really difficult to conceive how China can bring these threats under control and maintain its planned industrial and economic expansion. It is definitely burning the candle at both ends.

Hey George - Here's Your Mushroom Cloud, Dummy!

Remember when the Bush regime hit the airways with dire warnings about how they weren't going to wait until Saddam's smoking gun turned out to be a mushroom cloud over the US?

It turns out the US might have just had that mushroom cloud after all but federal authorities all but concealed it from the American public. The main player was an outfit called Nuclear Fuel Services of Erwin, Tennessee. NFS, a private company, has a contract to transform weapons grade uranium into a weaker product suitable for use in civilian reactors.

As the New York Times reports, last year NFS had a wee problem:

"...the event at the Nuclear Fuel Service factory was discovered when a supervisor saw a yellow liquid dribbling under a door and into a hallway. Workers had previously described a yellow liquid in a “glove box,” a sealed container with gloves built into the sides to allow a technician to manipulate objects inside, but managers had decided that it was ordinary uranium.

"In fact, it was highly enriched uranium that had been declared surplus from the weapons inventory of the Energy Department.

"In a puddle, the uranium is not particularly hazardous, but if it formed a more spherical shape, according to the commission, it could become a “critical mass,” a quantity of nuclear fuel sufficient to sustain a chain reaction, in this case outside a reactor. According to the letter sent by the lawmakers, the puddle, containing about nine gallons, reached to within four feet of an elevator pit. The letter from the congressmen says the agency’s report suggests “that it was merely a matter of luck that a criticality accident did not occur.'”

Like so many things in the states these days, it wasn't the slip up but the cover-up that's outrageous. The spill was so bad that it kept the NFS plant closed for seven months last year but residents of the area weren't told why.

After the incident the US Nuclear Regulatory Agency altered the NFS licence and ordered that the public have 20-days to request a hearing on the licence changes.

"But no member of the public ever did. In fact, no member of the public could find out about the changes. The document describing them, including the notice of hearing rights for anyone who felt adversely affected, was stamped “official use only,” meaning that it was not publicly accessible. “Official use only” is a category below “Secret” and, while documents in that category are not technically classified, they are kept from the public."

The incident was even concealed from Congress until one of the five NRA commissioners found a way to leak a reference to it in a memo.

Does this sound like a Simpsons episode?

The Grey Lady Slams America's Top Judge

In its lead editorial today, the New York Times castigates the US Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts for betraying the American people:

"In the 1960s, Chief Justice Earl Warren presided over a Supreme Court that interpreted the Constitution in ways that protected the powerless — racial and religious minorities, consumers, students and criminal defendants. At the end of its first full term, Chief Justice John Roberts’s court is emerging as the Warren court’s mirror image. Time and again the court has ruled, almost always 5-4, in favor of corporations and powerful interests while slamming the courthouse door on individuals and ideals that truly need the court’s shelter.

"The Roberts court’s resulting sharp shift to the right began to be strongly felt in this term. It was on display, most prominently, in the school desegregation ruling last week. The Warren court, and even the Rehnquist court of two years ago, would have upheld the integration plans that Seattle and Louisville, Ky., voluntarily adopted. But the Roberts court, on a 5-4 vote, struck them down, choosing to see the 14th Amendment’s equal-protection clause — which was adopted for the express purpose of integrating blacks more fully into society — as a tool for protecting white students from integration.

"On campaign finance, the court handed a major victory to corporations and wealthy individuals — again by a 5-4 vote — striking down portions of the law that reined in the use of phony issue ads. The ruling will make it easier for corporations and lobbyists to buy the policies they want from Congress.

"Corporations also won repeatedly over consumers and small stockholders. The court overturned a jury’s award of $79.5 million in punitive damages against Philip Morris. The Oregon Supreme Court had upheld the award, calling Philip Morris’s 40 years of denying the connection between smoking and cancer “extraordinarily reprehensible.”

"In a ruling that will enrich companies at the expense of consumers, the court overturned — again by a 5-4 vote — a 96-year-old rule that manufacturers cannot impose minimum prices on retailers.

"The flip side of the court’s boundless solicitude for the powerful was its often contemptuous attitude toward common folks looking for justice. It ruled that an inmate who filed his appeal within the deadline set by a federal judge was out of luck, because the judge had given the wrong date — a shockingly unjust decision that overturned two court precedents on missed deadlines."

The Times accuses Roberts of wilfully lying his way through Senate confirmation hearings by claiming he believed in "judicial modesty" and wasn't ideologically bound. The paper gives Roberts a well-earned sharp stick in the eye for having claimed he wanted "to promote greater consensus" only to leave his court hopelessly riven with just about every major judgment a split, 5-4 decision.

"It has been decades since the most privileged members of society — corporations, the wealthy, white people who want to attend school with other whites — have had such a successful Supreme Court term. Society’s have-nots were not the only losers. The basic ideals of American justice lost as well."

Those Other Ticking Time Bombs

Extended exposure to combat can cause serious mental illness. Who can forget the Vietnam vets "going postal"? Today it's called "post traumatic stress disorder" and we know it can be a killer long after the afflicted soldier returns home. That's why militaries like the US Army spend millions treating PTSD in veterans.

There is another group of combat veterans returning home who are too often going untreated. They're private contractors, essentially mercenaries working for the US government in Iraq and, as reported yesterday, they now actually outnumber the total troops deployed in Iraq. Many of these types do support work. Others go directly in harm's way running convoys, gathering intelligence and furnishing security details. All of them live with the reality of violence.

The New York Times reports that many of these civilian war fighters are returning home with psychological damage that is neither monitored nor treated:

"...private workers are largely left on their own to find care, and their problems often go ignored or are inadequately treated.

"...Many work side-by-side with soldiers and are exposed to the same dangers, but they mostly must fend for themselves in navigating the civilian health care system when they come back to the United States.

"With no widespread screening, many workers are not identified as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or other problems, mental health experts and contractors say. And, they add, the quality of treatment for others can vary widely because of limited civilian expertise in combat-related disorders.

“'I think the numbers are in the thousands, maybe tens of thousands,' said Paul Brand, a psychologist and chief executive of Mission Critical Psychological Services, a Chicago firm hired by Dyncorp International, a major contractor in Iraq, to assess and treat its workers. 'Many are going undiagnosed. These guys are fighting demons, and they don’t know how to cope.'

China Fesses Up

Imagine you went into your local grocery store only to learn that one out of five items on the shelves was substandard or tainted. Would you go ahead and shop or turn on your heel and find another store? Dumb question.

It turns out that's the very situation in today's China. From the New York Times:

"The government said, for instance, that canned and preserved fruit and dried fish contained excessive bacteria; that 20 percent of the fruit and vegetable juice surveyed was deemed substandard, and that some children’s products were defective or laced with harmful chemicals.

"The announcement came in the midst of a growing scandal over the quality and safety of Chinese-made exports and follows a series of international recalls involving everything from contaminated pet food ingredients and counterfeit toothpaste to toxic toys, defective tires and contaminated seafood.

"The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said the survey, conducted in the first half of this year, showed quality and safety improvements compared with conditions in the period a year earlier. But the announcement also suggested that Chinese consumers are at serious risk of being harmed by purchasing tainted foods, substandard goods and suspect or defective equipment.

"Regulators said, in effect, that goods sold in China were far more hazardous than the exports that were driving the country’s economic growth and now partly the subject of safety and quality debates."

As part of a general, cleanup campaign, Chinese authorities have closed down 180 food factories. Still, it's nice to know we're getting the "good stuff", eh?

Airstrike Junkies

According to a Reuters report, US and NATO forces in Afghanistan are addicted to airstrikes and we won't be kicking that habit anytime soon:

"Western forces are unlikely to curtail the use of lethal air power against Taliban forces in Afghanistan, despite a wave of civilian casualties threatening support for the mission, analysts and military sources say.

"An aversion in NATO capitals to allied casualties, plus all-too-frequent shortages of ground troops, have forced commanders to turn to the sky in efforts to beat insurgents still going strong six years after the U.S.-led invasion.

"Despite repeated criticism of Western tactics by President Hamid Karzai, and pledges by NATO and U.S. officials to review procedures, few expect an overhaul of strategy by the 50,000 international troops there any time soon.

"Some say more aid and faster probes of accidents might limit the public relations damage from incidents, but would not in themselves reduce casualties.

"Others blame the small size of the troop presence -- less than a third of that in Iraq for a country 1.5 times as big -- for what they see as excessive reliance on air power.

"'If the Taliban withdraw to a village, there is an inability to send troops forward on the ground to clear that village. That is very manpower-intensive,' said Christopher Langton of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Even if further troops were available -- and there are no signs that any of NATO's 26 members or partner nations are in the mood to stump up more -- some analysts sense a preference for air power over riskier deployments of ground troops.

"'Countries such as Canada are already under pressure to reduce troops,' said Matthew Clements, Eurasia editor at Jane's Country Risk report. 'They don't want more casualties.'

"Given the limitations of Western forces and the Taliban tactic of using human shields, Langton said NATO and its allies would do better to adopt a less aggressive approach and consider negotiating ceasefire deals in some cases."

Feeding the Hearts & Minds of Afghanistan

We're in a quagmire in Afghanistan with the "Hearts & Minds" struggle fiercely contested by our side and the insurgents.

Maybe instead of continually trying to bomb our way to victory we should try using food as our weapon. For all the upbeat nonsense regularly spewed out by our politicians and top military leaders, a lot of Afghans are in serious trouble and it's not from our airstrikes or the Taliban . It's food or rather the lack of it.

A recent report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that fully three out of ten Afghans face chronic food insecurity. From Reuters:

"Fifty-seven percent of Afghan households have insufficient food diversity (indicating poor quality) and over 20 percent of households do not have access to enough food, according to a national rural vulnerability assessment conducted jointly by the Afghan government and the UN in 2003.

"FAO says some far-flung provinces such as Bamyan, Daykundi and Ghor face a "critical situation" and require long-term development projects to reduce household vulnerability to food crises.

"Some provinces are particularly food insecure because of factors such as high altitude and long winters, lack of water, or remoteness and difficulties of access. Heavy snowfalls and avalanches during winter months regularly block roads to and from rugged and mountainous provinces such as Ghor, Daykundi, Bamyan and Badakhshan."

Just What Does Poverty Taste Like?

In Bangladesh, the cost of feeding a family a healthy diet runs about three times the average family income. This isn't about luxuries, just a basic healthy diet. And that's three times the total average family income. That means even if the average Bangladeshi family could afford adequate food, which they can't, they'd have nothing for any other necessaries of life.

A study done by Save the Children UK points to the horrific fate now being visited upon the peoples of the third world.

"Costanza de Toma, Save the Children's UK's Hunger advocacy advisor, said: 'The poorest families simply do not have the money to afford to ever feed their children enough good food for them to grow up healthy and strong. Poverty has condemned them to a hand to mouth existence and their children to a future of stunting or early death. In 2000, world leaders promised to halve the proportion of hungry children in the world - but they are failing to deliver.'

"Chronic malnutrition is responsible for 5.6 million child deaths a year. Millions more children around the world will be stunted because of this persistent hunger, which will affect their entire lives - they will be less well developed both mentally and physically, more prone to disease, and when they reach adulthood will be weaker and less able to do manual work. Poverty is the underlying cause beneath this silent emergency."

So, what does poverty really taste like? Why, hardly anything at all.

Putting Terrorism in Perspective, Dyer Style

Trust Gwynne Dyer to point out what we should have known all along - terrorism isn't the big deal our leaders like to paint it to be:

"Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued the obligatory statement that Britain faces "a serious and continuous threat" and that the public "need to be alert" at all times, but there were none of the efforts to pump up the threat, the declarations that civilization itself was under attack, that were standard issue when Tony Blair was running the show. Blair has gone off to bring the blessings of peace to the Middle East, and the British government is no longer compelled to seize on every passing event as evidence that it was right to invade Iraq.

"In almost all [European] countries, despite the efforts of some governments to convince the population that terrorism is an existential threat of enormous size, the vast majority of the people don't believe it.

"Whereas in the United States, most people do believe it. A majority of Americans have finally figured out that the invasion of Iraq really had nothing to do with fighting terrorism, but they certainly have not understood that terrorism itself is only a minor threat. "We have a threat out there like we've never faced before," said actor, former senator and potential presidential candidate Fred Thompson last month–on Fox television, admittedly, but they wouldn't have called him a nutcase or laughed in his face on the other networks either.

"So how have Americans been persuaded that their duty and their destiny in the 21st century is to lead the world in a titanic, globe-spanning "long war" against terrorism?

"Inexperience is one reason: American cities have never been bombed in war, so Americans have no standard of comparison that would shrink terrorism to its true importance in the scale of threats that face any modern society. But the other is relentless official propaganda: the Bush administration has built its whole brand around the "war on terror" since 2001, so the threat must continue to be seen as huge and universal.

"Ridiculous though it sounds to outsiders, Americans are regularly told that their survival as a free society depends on beating the "terrorists." They should treat those who say such things as fools or deliberate liars, but they don't. So the manipulators of public opinion in the White House and the more compliant sectors of the U.S. media will give bigger play to the British bombings-that-weren't than Britain's own government and media have, and they will get away with it. "

America The Vulnerable

The British car bomb attacks served as a reminder that Islamists are intent on bringing the fight to the West. This comes as no surprise to the United States but what is surprising is how vulnerable America remains today. In a recent column, David Ignatius says his country has been perilously weakened by the rift in its society:

"America's political disharmony is scary. But so is the lack of practical preparation for thenext attack. With all the emotional discussion of 9/11 - all the commissions and studies and new federal agencies - you might expect that we had gotten that part right. But we haven't.

"Despite spending billions of dollars on supposed bio-defense, the United States is still woefully unprepared for a biological attack. If you doubt it, listen to Dr. Tara O'Toole, director of the Center for Biosecurity in Baltimore and one of the nation's leading experts on the problem. "More than five years after the anthrax mailings, the US still lacks a coherent plan for conduct of operations to guide the healthcare sector's response to mass-casualty care in the event of a bioterrorist attack or other large-scale catastrophe," she told a House committee in March.

"And nuclear terrorism? Despite repeated warnings by intelligence officials about this threat, the US still is unprepared to detect or counter these weapons. Listen to Fred Ikle, a former undersecretary of defense and the author of "Annihilation from Within" a grim assessment of America's vulnerability to attack. "To detect smuggled uranium bombs, we still lack the right tools," Ikle said in a recent interview. He noted that the Homeland Security Department has not developed such "active interrogation" devices because of possible risk to bystanders, and the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency hasn't done so because of inadequate funding.

"In a politically healthy nation, the news from Britain would have a galvanizing effect. Politicians and the public would pull together and take appropriate steps to prepare for future terrorist attacks on America. There was a moment of shared purpose after 9/11. It's frightening how totally that mood of national unity has dissipated. I can think of lots of people to blame for the current polarization, but that's not the point. The point is to get serious, and get ready."

Musharraf to Open Pakistan's Border to Hunt Taliban?

Asia Times reports that Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf has quietly agreed to allow the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan to begin attacking Taliban and al-Qaeda forces within Pakistan. The news service says Musharraf will be making a major announcement on extremism in the next day or two.

"The [Asia Times online] contacts in Islamabad say that coalition intelligence has pinpointed at least four centers in the tribal areas of North Waziristan and South Waziristan on the border with Afghanistan from which Taliban operations inside Afghanistan are run. These bases include arms caches and the transfer and raising of money and manpower, the latter in the form of foot-soldiers to fight with the Taliban-led insurgency.

"Operations inside Pakistan might be carried out independently by the United States, probably with air power, by Pakistani forces acting alone or as joint offensives. In all cases, though, the US will pull the strings, for instance by providing the Pakistanis with information on targets to hit.

"Musharraf has apparently already told his military commanders, the National Security Council and decision-makers in government of the development."

How Some Americans Saw Independence Day

Say It Ain't So

When it comes to political weasels, a top spot has to be reserved for Harper's Australian chum, prime minister John Howard. If there's one thing that gets this churlish little man from "down under" worked up, it's the mention of energy.

Howard is like Harpo when it comes to fossil fuel restraint. He can't stand it. Australia has a vast store of coal and Howard is intent on protecting that industry even while he says he's committed to fighting global warming with an election looming and his numbers tumbling. Yeah, right.

But Howard couldn't hold himself back today when his own energy minister, Brendan Nelson, contradicted the boss by admitting that oil was and is a factor in Australia's participation in the Iraq conquest and occupation. Brendan Nelson told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that Iraq was "an important supplier of energy, oil in particular, to the rest of the world, and Australians ... need to think what would happen if there were a premature withdrawal from Iraq".

With that, Howard rushed off to find a microphone of his own. He managed to find one at Sydney Radio 2GB where he tried to reinforce his party line, "We are not there because of oil and we didn't go there because of oil. A lot of oil comes from the Middle East - we all know that - but the reason we remain there is that we want to give the people of Iraq a possibility of embracing democracy."

Okay, Johnny, yeah sure. Trouble is, the Australian people seem to have caught on to you.

The Captain and his Faithful Lieutenants

It isn't often a picture tells it all. This one is different.

Layton - A Weasel Opportunist

Jack Layton reminds me of a ferret, a little rodent with sharp teeth who pops out of his hole to exploit an easy kill and then slithers back from whence he came.

Jack's eyes must have literally bulged out of their sockets today when he learned that he had six, a full half-dozen, fresh Canadian soldiers' corpses to exploit. No need for decency when you can grab a headline. Mourning? Screw that, Layton has political hay to make. Get out before the cameras, fast.

What grand enlightenment did Weasel Jack have to share with us that needed to be injected into this tragedy? What wisdom could the Ferret impart that would make this day less burdensome. Apparently the Jackster needed to get before the cameras to tell us that he thinks Canada should get out of Afghanistan. Quelle Surprise!

Was there anyone in Canada who doesn't know that Jack Layton wants Canada out of Afghanistan? There shouldn't be, he's said it often enough. Hell, most of us agree. But does the Ferret really need to intrude on the solemnity of this loss to pump up his political agenda, bolster his profile, suck up cheap publicity? Couldn't he have held off until the day after tomorrow or maybe next week?

Liberals don't forget that it was Layton who paved the way for Harper to slide into power. What a jumped-up little slimeball. Actually, come to think of it, he is Harper, just on the other end of the political rectum.

I Thought It Was Too Good to be True

There was great ballyhoo yesterday about the government of Iraq finally reaching a breakthrough, if only partial, agreement on its controversial oil legislation. This law is considered one of the key benchmarks of Iraqi progress, defined by the US government.

The story that was coming out yesterday had all of Iraq's ethnic groups agreeing to the country's oil reserves being taken over by a federal oil agency. What I couldn't understand was how the Kurds had been brought to accept this deal. Today it turns out they hadn't.

The story in brief. After the Gulf War, the Kurdish north achieved autonomy thanks to US and British airpower that kept Saddam at bay. When the Iraq government was toppled in 2003, the Kurds demanded terms to remain within the new government. Their ultimatum required the Baghdad government to accept and incorporate within the new Iraqi constitution a form of constitution the Kurds had earlier drafted for themselves. The Kurdish constitution provides that existing oil wells within the Kurdish region would remain a national asset but undeveloped oil fields would become the exclusive property of the Kurdish regional government to be administered and developed for the Kurdish minority.

America's proconsul in the occupation, Bremer, didn't see the Kurdish constitution thing coming. The Americans were preoccupied with the Sunni and Shia Arab constituencies and believed (wrongly) that the Kurds would be complacent. They weren't. The constitutional deal was struck but the American occupation went ahead and drafted the proposed oil law as though the snag didn't exist.

Now the Kurds and representatives of al-Sadr and the Shia are crying "foul" and moving to put the supposed breakthrough deal on hold. The Kurdistan Regional Government says the new law is unconstitutional - and it is. The Shia are loathe to share the country's southern oil wealth with the Sunnis of central Iraq.

At Least He Was Driving a Hybrid

Al Gore's son, Al III, has been arrested on drug charges.

Little Al was driving his eco-friendly Toyota Prius at 100 mph on a San Diego expressway when he was pulled over by the police. Inside the car they found a small quantity of marijuana and an array of prescription tranquilizers and pain-killers for which Junior apparently has no prescription.

Al III seems to be a bit of a hellraiser. 2003 - charged with possession of marijuana. 2002 - arrested for drunk driving. 2000 - ticketed for reckless driving. I think Junior needs to retain Rush Limbaugh's lawyer at this point.

100 mph on a San Diego freeway? I rode those freeways on my motorcycle a couple of months back. I managed to find my way into the inside, fast lane because I thought I'd be safer there, removed from the lane-changers. The traffic went to 80 mph in a 65 zone. Before long, the "keep up" speed crept up to 100 mph and I thought it astonishing when we zipped past a California Highway Patrol officer sitting on the side of the road watching it all. So I can say, in Little Al's defence, that he's by no means alone in ripping up those expressways at 100 mph.

Bush's HIdden Army

They escort convoys; guard VIPs including generals; and just about everything else including weapons maintenance, catering, intelligence gathering and laundry. They're all employees of private companies paid out of US tax dollars, George w. Bush's other army in Iraq.

These contractors now number 180,000 - about 20,000 more than the number of American soldiers in Iraq. When you put them together, that's a force of some 340,000 "boots on the ground", a lot of people to lose a war so miserably.

They work for companies such as Haliburton, firms for which the Iraq war is a no-lose proposition at least until it's called off. The survey number didn't include all those other contractors who work for private security firms such as Aegis and Blackwater.

It's the privatization of war and it's no surprise that, front and centre, is Cheney's old shop, Haliburton.

Bush Calls for Victory in Iraq

President George w. Bush is still talking up "victory" in Iraq. He used his 4th of July speech to beg Americans for "more patience, more courage, more sacrifice" adding, "however difficult the fight is in Iraq, we must win it."

Typically, Bush delivered his speech to an audience of Air Force personnel and their families, where he knew he wouldn't get run off the stage.

The frat boy is actually playing out his own "end game" in which he sticks to the victory message so that he can blame the defeat on whoever has the moral decency to stand up and end this fiasco. He's been a weasel all his life and he's not about to change that now.

Six Kandahar Dead Are Canadian Soldiers

Canadian Press is reporting that the six NATO soldiers killed in Kandahar by an improvised explosive device were Canadians.

Brigadier-General Tim Grant says the soldiers were travelling along a gravel road that is used regularly by Canadian forces. The ambush took place in the Panjwai district which has often been pointed out by our leaders as a genuine success story. It's the same area where three Canadian soldiers were killed by a similar device on June 20th.

Down In The Dumps

Let's talk about diapers - no not yours, baby diapers.

For years disposable diapers have been slagged as environmentally unfriendly. Friends of the earth, went the line, chose traditional, cloth, reusable nappies. Turns out that, from an environmental perspective, you can take your pick.

The Brits (who else?) have just completed a four-year study of the relative merits/demerits of disposable versus reusable baby bum wraps and their finding is - it's a draw!

In response to a parliamentary question, health minister Ben Bradshaw, a former environment minister, told the Commons: "Reusable nappies may reduce demands on landfill but they still impact on the environment in other ways such as water and energy used in washing and drying them."

But traditionalists aren't stopping there. At www.tinygem.ca/cloth-vs-disposables.shtml there is more, much more. Their figures claim that disposables for an average baby will total about $2,500 compared to about $833 if you use cloth and wash your own.

GW Threatens Hindus

It's the lifeblood of the Hindu faith, the Holy river Ganges, and its days are numbered. India's 800-million Hindus are intimately linked to the Ganges even believing it can heal.

A UN climate report forewarns that the Himalayan glaciers that feed the Ganges, particularly during the dry summer months, could be gone by 2030. Once that happens, the Ganges will become a seasonal river dependent on monsoon rains.

There's a lot more to this than Hindu ritual. The already heavily polluted river still provides 500-million people, roughly half India's population, with water for drinking and farming. Obviously, a seasonal river isn't adequate for either purpose.

The Himalayan glacier retreat also threatens China where a number of rivers depend on their meltwater. Despite this, both India and China joined with the US at last month's G8 conference in refusing to accept mandatory caps on GHG emissions.

Six NATO Dead in Kandahar

Six NATO soldiers and their Afghan interpreter have been killed by a roadside bomb in Kandahar. The nationalities of the dead soldiers are unknown but Kandahar is the province that Canadian forces notionally control.

The soldiers' vehicle was destroyed by an IED, improvised explosive device.

Africa Needs Revolution More Than Aid

The West's foreign aid policies toward Africa aren't working. Salim Lone of the Daily Nation in Kenya writes that the West's good intentions have mainly worked to improve the lives of the already wealthy. From The Guardian:

"Not a single country in sub-Saharan Africa has met the criteria set by the UN's millennium development goals on poverty alleviation, the centrepiece of the project. Some observers believe the number of poor, and the intensity of the poverty, has actually risen in almost all countries.

"In truth there was never any real prospect that western governments, which have gleefully presided over the creation of new classes of the super-super-rich, would use their considerable influence to push African leaders to pursue policies which would shift resources away from the rapacious national elites towards the poor.

"Nor was it likely the west would permit Africa to stray from the neoliberal orthodoxies prescribed for the continent by the World Bank and the IMF. These policies have generated wealth for elites and created economic growth in a few countries, but have proved over two decades singularly unable to reduce the human misery afflicting hundreds of millions.

"Abutting virtually every African slum are the castles of the unimaginably rich. There is little incentive for those who hold the reins of power to redirect investments away from themselves to the very poor, given the abiding conviction on the continent that they have an unlimited capacity to weather their punishing adversities - with the help of repressive security systems, of course.

"G8-approved plans are not going to end poverty. Africa needs strong, revolutionary leaders popular enough to put pressure on both their elites and international partners to modify their policies, not only in the interest of humanity but also of security and stability. But it is well-nigh impossible for such leaders to get elected.

"In the end, only Africa's own leaders and people can address its rawest suffering. Donors have a minor but vital role to play, but they must get this role right, and that includes recognising that what Africa needs most of all is space to formulate its own policies. To determine what these might be, the donors need to radically alter their approach and engage first and foremost with the grassroots. Despite the rhetoric, Africa's voice is rarely heard. It's the statements of its leaders that reach donors' ears, not the anguish and aspirations of its people.

"Can Gordon Brown make a difference? After the multiple promises Blair made and betrayed, no one will want to get too excited about his successor. He did move immediately to merge the aid and trade departments, which will bring much-needed synergy on two crucial issues. He has also made the extraordinary appointment to the Africa portfolio of Mark Malloch Brown. The former UN deputy secretary-general has proved his capacity to turn bold visions into reality, as when, in 2005, he rescued the battered leadership of his boss Kofi Annan and then audaciously challenged the US policy under Bush.

"Both these Browns are likely to be more firmly committed to the rule of law in resolving international disputes, but they will also have to shed some of their conviction in the power of the free market - even when it is working well - to uplift the poor."

Revolutions? I expect they'll have plenty of those sooner than we can imagine. Global warming and associated evils such as freshwater exhaustion and desertification of farmland are already impacting significant parts of Africa. As these problems spread they'll deliver enough destabilizing force to spark, even necessitate revolutions, and wars, and more suffering.

The Middle East Bush Leaves Behind

If there's anything good to be said for George w. Bush, it's that he has but 18-months left to run roughshod over our planet and an angry Congress that isn't willing to play along any more. The frat boy's administration has caused more damage and suffering, at home and abroad, than any president in decades, perhaps ever. He will leave the United States a much worse place than it was when a court anointed him president.

Bush/Cheney also leave the Middle East in flames. Don't expect the next US president to make everything right. Sometimes things are too broken to fix. Maybe it's best to leave the people of the Middle East to themselves fix what the West has done.

But what lies ahead? Here's Gwynne Dyer's assessment:

"With a Shia-dominated government in Baghdad, post-occupation Iraq will have close ties with Iran, but there will be no Iranian troops there. Nobody in Tehran is crazy enough to volunteer Iranian troops for counter-insurgency duty in Sunni Arab parts of Iraq, and Iran lacks the military capability for adventures in the further reaches of the Arab world even if it had the desire.

"The Sunni Arab parts of Iraq have been turned into a training ground for Islamist extremists from all parts of the Arab world by the American invasion. Once the American troops are gone, however, the action will soon move elsewhere, for the US defeat in Iraq has dramatically raised the prestige of Islamist revolutionaries throughout the Arab world and beyond.

"That is where the price of America's Middle Eastern adventure will be paid: not in Iraq itself, but in the Arab states that still have secular and/or pro-Western regimes. The main (and generally outlawed) political opposition in all these countries – Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Egypt,Libya, Algeria and half a dozen others – has been Islamist revolutionaries for many years already, and now some of them are going to win.

"It's not possible to predict WHICH Arab states will fall under Islamist control, and they certainly aren't all going to: the pipe-dream of a world-spanning Islamic empire remains precisely that. But it will be astonishing if one or more of the existing Arab regimes does not fall to an Islamist revolution in the next few years.

"Islamist-ruled STATES are not the same as bands of freelance fanatics. If they have oil to export, then they will go on exporting it, because no major oil producer can now do without the income that those exports provide; they need it to feed their people. And they would have little incentive to sponsor terrorist attacks outside the region, for they would have fixed addresses, and interests to protect.

"For Israel, however, the situation has changed fundamentally. For the first twenty years of its existence, Israel was a state under siege. For the past forty years, since the conquests of 1967, it has had the luxury of debating with itself how much of those conquered lands it should return to the Arabs in return for a permanent peace settlement. (The answer was always "all of them," but that was not an answer many Israelis would hear.)

"Now the window is closing. Before long, some of the Arab states that Israel needs to make peace with are likely to fall to Islamist regimes that have an ideological commitment to its destruction. (Hamas's capture ofthe Gaza Strip is a foretaste of what is to come.) Israelis trying to evade hard choices have long complained that they had "nobody to negotiate with." It is about to become true.

"It is a mess,and it's too late to fix it."

Rank Hypocrisy

It's not really Helena Guergis' fault, she's merely toeing the party line. Canada's secretary of state for foreign affairs has assured reporters in Rome that NATO regrets the deaths and injuries it inflicts on Afghan civilians.

Then she launched into the now standard business about it all being the Taliban's fault that we wind up calling down air strikes on Afghan villages when they retreat through them.

Isn't it curious? We won't defend the Afghan villagers to keep Taliban insurgents out in the first place but we sure as hell will bomb them into oblivion when the Taliban exploit their vulnerability, a murderous situation largely of our own making.

We're the "government" side in this nasty business. As such, it's our side that's supposed to be defending the villagers, not bombing them. It's our responsibility to maintain an adequate level of security in these villages to ensure the Taliban stays away. We don't do our job, we don't meet our responsibility to these villagers. We can't. We're fighting this war on the cheap with a mere fraction of the force required. We don't want the expense and burden of fielding a truly capable force. We'll content ourselves with our soldiers' genuine heroism and blame the bad guys for everything else.

It's not being soft on the Taliban to be critical of our own forces. It's not unpatriotic. Rick Hillier believes this is the way to wage a counter-insurgency war in Afghanistan. His sort of thinking is where the rot begins.

Brown Better on Terrorism than Blair

Craig Murray was Britain's ambassador to Uzbekistan until he was sacked for publicly commenting on the vicious excesses of the US-backed leader. A self-confessed liberal, Murray takes comfort in the way Britain's current prime minister, Gordon Brown, is handling the country's latest terrorist attacks:

"But my question cui bono? was also helpful in pointing out that these terrorist attacks are not only callous and inhuman, but extraordinarily stupid. Islamic terrorism fills those who hate Muslims with unholy glee. You only have to surf the internet for five minutes to prove that. At the same time it sends those of us who try to improve community relations, and it sends the established Muslim communities in the UK, into deep despair. Those in the security, weapons and mercenary industries who make billions from continued War are rubbing their hands and counting the cash.

"How religious faith can lead people into such a mix of depravity and counter-productive stupidity is impossible for the sane to fathom, even acknowledging the depths of despair caused by the carnage our country has caused in Iraq. I can do nothing today but issue the anguished cry of the liberal in a brutal, unlistening World.

"The only comfort, and this may be wishful thinking, is that the Brown government seems to be handling this all much more sensibly than Blair and Reid, without pushing the melodrama button or making fatuous comparisons with the Second World War. Which is not to say that we do not face yet another attack on civil liberties, but the attempt to stampede people with the psychology of fear does seem less marked. Or is that a false perception?"

The Tragedy of Baghdad

This picture appeared in today's New York Times. It is said to be of Iraqi boys staging a mock execution with a 4-year old playing the condemned. It seems Baghdad boys have created their own version of cowboys and indians but with the sides representing the police and militias.

America Bracing for Next Attack

Al Qaeda is plotting a "terror spectacular" for the US this summer. ABC News reports that a secret law enforcement assessment, prepared for the Department of Homeland Security, eerily resembles some of the intelligence that preceded the 9/11 attacks.

In a graphic display of how inept terrorism intelligence is even today, US officials received word two weeks ago of a possible terrorist attack in Glasgow against "airport infrastructure and aircraft." Apparently the warning wasn't passed along to officials in Scotland. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said that virtually everthing his department gleans is sent instantly to counterparts in the UK. Apparently not, Mike.

First He Loses Klein's Seat, Now He's Losing Alberta

The Alberta Progressive Conservatives appear to have picked a lemon in chosing Ed "Special Ed" Stelmach to succeed Ralph Klein as premier.

The governing party's popularity has collapsed to 39% in recent polls.

The only comforting news for Stelmach's conservatives is that the Liberals have come up just 8 points to 20%.

The numbers don't mean that Stelmach would be at risk of losing in a general election, at least not one held right now.

A Cold Nova Scotia Shoulder for Harper

Our furious leader, Stephen Harper, won't get a big, Nova Scotia welcome when he makes his photo op in Halifax on Thursday. Conspicuous by his absence will be Premier Rodney MacDonald who has decided to give the announcement a pass.

We're Not Even in the Top Ten

When Americans were asked which countries they would want to visit, Canada wasn't anywhere near the top. In fact, Americans' first choice was Australia.

A Harris online poll of 2,300 found Australia first, followed by Britain, France, Ireland, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Spain and Greece.

Now, in fairness, the poll asked respondents where they would like to visit if they didn't have to worry about the cost.

Mugabe's Last Gasp?

It's hard to imagine how he's stayed in power these past few months, but, finally, Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe's days may be numbered in single digits.

In a sign of blatant fear and desperation, Mugabe ordered food prices cut by half. Chaos ensued. From The Times:

"Bags of sugar burst open in struggles between shoppers who had streamed into supermarkets. Computerised checkouts jammed, unable to cope with the rapid price changes. There was further confusion when officials forced their way into storerooms and declared stock items to be “illegal hoarding,” and ordered all goods to be moved on to supermarket floors.

"At one store where the manager tried to restrict sales to two of each item, one worker was seriously injured in the mayhem. Annual inflation reached 4,500 per cent in May, the result of nearly three decades of economic policies devoid of prudence or forethought.

"Economists estimate that the real figure is closer to 10,000 per cent. Prices are more than doubling every month as suppliers and retailers struggle to keep up with the decline of the currency."

In a sign of how Mugabe has lost touch with reality, he blamed his country's economic mess on - the British: This nonsense of price escalation must come to an end. We will never admit to defeat by British tactics.”

The Pardon Game

US Presidents still like their pardon power, although not nearly as much as they did half a century ago. This list from CNN.com:

George W. Bush (2001 - ) Pardons -- 13 Commutations -- 4

Bill Clinton (1993-2001) Pardons -- 396 Commutations -- 61

George H.W. Bush (1989-1993) Pardons -- 74 Commutations: 3

Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) Pardons -- 393 Commutations -- 13

Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) Pardons -- 534 Commutations -- 29

Gerald Ford (1974-1977) Pardons -- 382 Commutations -- 22

Richard Nixon (1969-1974) Pardons -- 863 Commutations -- 60

Lyndon Johnson (1963-1969) Pardons -- 960 Commutations -- 226

John F. Kennedy (1961-1963) Pardons -- 472 Commutations -- 100

Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961) Pardons -- 1,110 Commutations -- 47

Harry Truman (1945-1953) Pardons -- 1,913 Commutations -- 118

First Commutation, Next a Pardon?

George w. Bush hasn't washed his hands of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Yesterday he commuted the guy's jail time but kept the fine and probation terms intact. In essence, Scooter got sprung before the cell door slammed shut even once - anything to keep him from talking.

Maybe Scooter is still a threat. After saying that the fine and probation parts of the sentence were warranted, Bush today refused to rule out an absolute pardon. "As to the future, I rule nothing in and nothing out," Bush said as he left a visit to Walter Reed Medical Center.

A commutation is enough to keep Libby out of jail, and out of Bush's hair, while Shrub runs out the clock on his presidency. On his way out the door in January, 2009, he'll be free to pardon Libby outright.

Merkel Hangs Tough on GW

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is adamant about slashing her country's GHG emissions. By 2020 she wants a reduction of 40% from 1990 levels.

"'We can't just continue with business as usual,' Merkel, of the conservative Christian Democrats, said describing climate protection as the most-important challenge of the 21st century.

"Merkel is calling for a 3 percent annual increase in energy efficiency in Germany as well as a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020 by up to 40 percent in comparison to 1990 levels.

"One of the main ways the government wants to achieve the energy efficiency goal is through better energy savings in buildings. A government energy working group is calling for subsidies for building improvements -- like better insulation -- to be increased from €1.4 billion to €3.5 billion a year.

"Germany also wants to increase the number of co-generation plants that are capable of delivering both electricity and heat to consumers, as well as adhering to the EU goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions in cars from an average of 160 grams per kilometer to 120 grams."

Simmering in the background is the debate over nuclear power. The chancellor is slowly trying to build public support for nuclear power and is prepared to go to the polls on the issue.

Some top global warming experts, such as James Lovelock, contend that nuclear power is the only viable alternative to fossil-fueled electricity generation and must be used, at least until renewable technologies are proven and practical.

How Much Do We Really Care About Global Warming?

This is a question that is going to come to the fore as our governments devise strategies to curb greenhouse gas emissions. We like to think we understand the seriousness of this problem and our furious leader claims he gets it but that's all talk. Action is something else entirely and it will directly test how genuine is our support for the job that needs doing.

Britons were recently surveyed about global warming and the poll findings aren't encouraging. The poll was conducted by Ipsos. It found that, while most were concerned about global warming, actually dealing with it wasn't much of a priority. From The Telegraph:

"...even local issues such as traffic, litter, graffiti and even dog mess registered higher than climate change.

"The survey found that more than half thought scientists were divided on climate change when in fact there is a scientific consenus.

"There was scepticism about global warming and a feeling that the problem is being exaggerated and most people do not believe that it would affect them personally. There was a feeling that climate change was something that would happen elsewhere to other people.

"And while most agreed Britain could make a real difference in preventing global climate change, there was a reluctance to make a change in lifestyle.

The head of the Ipsos environmental team, Phil Downing, said: "'Unfortunately there is a split - not between believers and non-believers but between those who recognise the need to do something and those who have a more passive response. They are a bit concerned by climate change but they think it has been exaggerated and over-hyped.'

"'The idea that the debate is over is not true. There are a lot of people out there who have not bought into the view that climate change is a threat.'"

A Politician Voluntarily Relinquishing Power?

Britain's new prime minister, Gordon Brown, is wasting no time making clear that he's no Tony Blair. In his first week in office, Brown has announced that he's limiting or, in some cases, flatly surrendering executive powers he feels undemocratic, a list that includes:

The power to declare war;
The power to request the dissolution of Parliament;
The power over recall of Parliament;
The power to ratify international treaties;
The power to make key public appointments without effective scrutiny;
The power to restrict parliamentary oversight of the intelligence services;
The power to choose bishops;
The power to appoint judges;
The power to direct prosecutors in individual criminal cases;
Power over the civil service;
Executive powers to determine the rules governing entitlement top passports and the granting of pardons.

In a world in which Brown's counterpart in Washington is seizing every power he can, even flaunting the American constitution to do it, Brown's approach is indeed refreshing.

The Blair Malaise is already receding. Polls today show the Conservative lead has evaporated with both parties now tied.

If It Wasn't for the Damned Oil!

For most of us the Middle East is a genuine enigma. It's a place that seems to defy all efforts at political, social and economic reform. The harder the West tries to change realities on the ground, the more they stay firmly rooted in the past. What to do, what to do?

Edward Luttwak, writing in the May issue of Prospect magazine, says we need to shed our illusions of the importance of the Middle East and our ability to shape it in our own image. He argues that we need to see even the Arab/Israeli conflict with historical clarity:

What actually happens at each of these "moments of truth" - and we may be approaching another one - is nothing much; only the same old cyclical conflict that always restarts when peace is about to break out and always dampens down when the violence becomes intense enough. ...humanitarians should note that the dead from Jewish-Arab fighting since 1921 amounts to fewer than 130,000 - about as many as are killed in a season of conflict in Darfur.

Luttwak argues that concerns over Israel and Arab oil supply are overstated:

For decades now, the largest Arab oil producers have publicly forsworn any linkage between politics and pricing, and an embargo would be a disaster for their oil-revenue-dependent economies.

As for the military threats posed by Middle Eastern states, Luttwak dissects our habit of overstating problems:

The next oft-repeated mistake is the Mussolini syndrome. Contemporary documents prove [that] British and French military chiefs, accepted Mussolini's claims to great power status because they believed he had formidable armed forces at his command. ...Having conceded Ethiopia to win over Mussolini, only to lose him to Hitler as soon as the fighting started, the British discovered that the Italian forces quickly crumbled in combat.

The fraternity of Middle East experts similarly and persistently attributes real military strength to backward societies whose populations can sustain excellent insurgencies but not modern military forces.

He draws as an example, the 1990 defeat of Saddam's forces in Kuwait:

In the months before the Gulf War, there was anxious speculation about the size of the Iraqi army - again the divisions and regiments were dutifully counted as if they were German divisions on the eve of D-Day, with a separate count of the "elite" Republican Guard.

That much of this was believed at some level we know from the magnitude of the coalition armies that were laboriously assembled, including more than half a million U.S. troops, as well as tens of thousands of British, French and Canadians. ...In the event, two weeks of precision bombing were enough to paralyze Saddam's entire war machine, which scarcely tried to resist the ponderous ground offensive when it came. ...A real army would have continued to resist for weeks or months in the dug-in positions in Kuwait, even without air cover, but Saddam's army was the usual Middle Eastern facade without fighting substance.

Now the Mussolini syndrome is at work over Iran. All the symptoms are present, including tabulated lists of Iran's warships, despite the fact that most are over thirty years old; of combat aircraft, many of which (F-4s, Mirages, F-5s, F-14s) have not flown in years for lack of spare parts; and of divisions and brigades that are so only in name. There are awed descriptions of the Pasdaran Revolutionary Guard, inevitably described as "elite", who do indeed strut around as if they have won many a war but who have actually fought only one - against Iraq, which they lost.

Finally Luttwak turns to our penchant for believing we can reshape the Middle East:

The third and greatest error repeated by Arabolphiles and Arabophobes alike, by Turcologists and Iranists, is the simplest to define. It is the odd belief that these ancient nations are highly malleable. Hardliners keep suggesting that with a bit of well-aimed violence compliance will be obtained. Yet what happens every time is an increase in hostility; defeat is followed not by collaboration but by sullen noncooperation and active resistance too. It is not hard to defeat Arab countries, but it is mostly useless. Violence can work to destroy dangerous weapons but not to induce desired changes in behaviour.

Softliners make exactly the same mistake in reverse. ...even the most thinly qualified of Middle East experts must know that Islam, as with any other civilization, comprehends the sum total of human life, and that unlike some others it promises superiority in all things for its believers, so that the scientific and technological and cultural backwardness of the lands of Islam generates a constantly renewed sense of humiliation and civilizational defeat.

The operational mistake that Middle Eastern experts keep making is the failure to recognize that backward societies must be left alone, as the French now wisely leave Corsica to its own devices, as the Italians quietly learned to do in Sicily... With neither invasions nor friendly engagements, the peoples of the Middle East should finally be allowed to have their own history - the one thing that Middle Eastern experts of all stripes seem determined to deny them.

We devote far too much attention to the Middle East, a mostly stagnant region where almost nothing is created in science or the arts...

The Middle East was once the world's most advanced region. These days its biggest industries are extravagant consumption and the venting or resentment.

Death In Droves

How future generations fare from global warming will be determined by a group of key, industrialized nations, one of them China.

In its rush toward economic ascendancy, China has sustained air and water pollution levels we in Canada can't imagine. Air and water pollution in China are now estimated to account for a staggering 760,000 premature deaths each year.

The figures were initially included in a World Bank report entitled "The Cost of Pollution in China." They were subsequently deleted, apparently in response to pressure from the Chinese government.

The Financial Times reports one advisor on the report claiming, "The World Bank was told that it could not publish this information. It was too sensitive and could cause social unrest."

The latest reports indicate that China continues to add two coal-fueled power plants to its grid each and every week.

Arctic Tipping Point Passed

Sad as it is to acknowledge, we may have already gone beyond climate change tipping points in the Arctic. That's the conclusion of Queen's University biologist John Smol and Marianne Douglas of the University of Alberta.

Smol and Douglas have been documenting the disappearance of small ponds in the high Arctic and the drying out of the tundra. The ponds that have sustained life for thousands of years are now dry. As the ponds and tundra dry they're expected to release the greenhouse gases they stored, a vicious cycle.

A key 'tipping point' has now been passed. Arctic ponds that were permanent water bodies for millennia are now ephemeral," the report states. "The ecological implications of these changes are likely severe and will cascade throughout the Arctic ecosystem."

There's no drought to blame for this. The past two summers have actually been wetter than normal.

Harper DeFanged

He's Pointing Left

Since his days as a founder of the Reform Party, Stephen Harper has been a real, red meat, Uber-Conservative. Moderation, to him, was a sign of fatal weakness, a sap to latent socialism. He happily denounced the Canadian people to a fawning American Uber-Republican audience. There lies the heart and soul of Stephen Harper, a consumate, far-right ideologue.

But it seems Stevie took a civics lesson and it sunk in. Now, he's come to be - or at least to appear as - what he once despised, a moderate. Oh Canada, Oh Stevie!

To all you right-wing nutjobs out there, I'm sorry but your guy is doing his damnedest to look like a Liberal. Unlike you, Harpo realizes that he can't hang on to power on the strength of the fringe vote and, when it comes to hanging on to power, all those loudly proclaimed (albeit inane) principles are, well, disposable. The very agenda his core elected him to achieve has been jettisoned and, if you are one of those core supporters, so have you. And that's tough.

The best part - or the worst part if you were a StevieMania fan - is that you've only seen just the start of Harpo's socio-politico-religious conversion. He says he gets "global warming", even calling it the greatest threat facing mankind. Well, eventually, you have to do something about it and, as much as Harpo would like to put that off, that time is just about here. The trouble is that, doing anything meaningful to combat GHG emissions, will strike at the interests of Alberta and its filthy tar sands project. Your boy is hoist on his own petard.

Now Stevie also says he gets the Afghanistan thing. Once again he's read the polls and thrown all his grand pronouncements to the winds of popular opinion. Your guy is literally shelling himself out in front of us. Quelle spectacle!

Add this to his other flip-flops and Harpo appears to be staggering about like the town drunk. That's something he can't afford to continue. He's now got to extract us from Afghanistan (or at least the fighting parts of the country), wrestle global warming to the mat, appease Quebec, appease the Maritimes, appease Ontario and, above all else, appease Alberta for what they've got coming their way.

No, Stephen Harper has been defanged. No more red meat for Stevie, only porridge. Pretty soon his threat from the right might become even greater than those he faces from the left and the centre.

What's In a Name?

Stephen Harper likes to refer to Canada as an "energy superpower." He's very fond of the term almost to the point where it seems to be something of a fetish for the guy.

So, just what is an energy superpower. Well, we know what energy is. In Harpo's parlance it means tar sands. But what about the superpower bit?

Just what is a "superpower"? Lyman Miller (Professor of National Security Affairs at the US Naval Postgraduate School defines a superpower as "a country that has the capacity to project dominating power and influence anywhere in the world, and sometimes, in more than one region of the globe at a time, and so may plausibly attain the status of global hegemon."

There are several definitions for superpower, all more or less close, and they all share the same defining characteristic - the ability to project power and dominate others.

It's not hard to imagine that dreams of superpower sugar plums dance through Stevie's head when he puts on his jammies at night but I don't like the idea of Canada as hegemon. To Harper, we have to elevate Canada's position on the world stage. He wants a Canada that punches above its weight, a power player. He never gets around to explaining why we should be transformed into a more aggressive, more dominant state.

Is there a global shortage of pushy nations questing for power and domination? If so, I've seen no sign of it.

This repeated reference to energy superpower makes me wonder if there isn't a bit of Dick in our Stevie?

Help Me, Pappy, Help Me! I Don't Wanna Go No Jail.

Scooter Libby has a reservation at the GreyBar Hotel. In a unanimous decision, a US Federal Appeals Court dismissed I. Lewis Libby's appeal to put enforcement of his conviction on hold.

No word yet on when Libby may meet Bubba in the padlocked condo but he's already been given his number: 28301-016.

Pundits say this latest setback will really crank the heat up on George w. Bush to speed up Libby's pardon.

Back In The Day

There was a day when people around the world, including most Canadians, believed that freedom from fascism was worth dying for. A generation of young people put their lives on hold and their futures at risk to join the fight.

They put on their new uniforms and prepared to say goodbye to their families for the duration.

Some still found time to get married, putting aside the uncertainty of what might lay in store.

They found as much time together as they could, knowing it wouldn't be much.


And then they were separated, indefinitely, to await what fate held for them. For many, it was the last they would see each other, hold each other.




The lucky came home, some of them less intact than others. Fascism was defeated, or so they thought. They got back on with their lives, the world safe for democracy - or so they were told.

On Fascism

The power of the executive to cast a man into prison

without formulating any charge known to the law,

and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers,

is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation

of all totalitarian government whether

Nazi or Communist.

Winston S. Churchill, 1943