It's one thing to launch a war but it's another thing altogether to politically inherit a war, especially when it's two wars, two wars that are going very badly, two unpopular wars, too wars that are bleeding your country dry. Welcome to the world of Barack Obama.
The American people have a low tolerance for defeat. It's why they tell themselves they won the War of 1812 and Korea. You probably don't fully grasp this point unless you were around to see America go through the aftermath of Viet Nam. This is a reality that ties the hands of the new American president.
Obama needs a way out but it has to be one that can give the illusion of, if not victory, at least something less than defeat. Truth be told, Iraq isn't much more of a victory today than it was when Bush appeared in front of the Mission Accomplished banner in 2003.
There's a sizzling, popping sound in Baghdad and it's the fuze burning on the Kurdish constitution which, when it reaches the powder (also known as Kirkuk), could blow Iraq into pieces. Right now everything's on hold - the unresolved Kurd versus Arab struggle; the Sunni versus Shiite conflict and the in-house Shia contest between the nationalists of Sadr and the pro-Iran moderates of Maliki.
Getting out of Iraq is going to be tricky. It's a question of optics, a problem that bedeviled Richard Nixon three decades ago. He talked about "vietnamizing" the war and literally chanted "peace with honour" like a mantra but there weren't many who believed it and those that did were crushed when Russian-made tanks rolled through the gates of the presidential palace in Saigon. In America, somebody had to pay and, with Nixon in the death grip of Watergate, he got tagged. Nixon resigned and the Marine helicopter took out the trash.
Obama needs to get out of Iraq quickly because that's his only chance to pin what's coming on Bush/Cheney. It's also why Petraeus is said to be working to undermine Obama's plans. The Pentagon is in "musical chairs" mode too and Petraeus doesn't want to be the general tagged with losing Iraq. Generals associated with defeat don't tend to have successful political careers afterward.
But, even if Obama does manage to slip the noose of Baghdad, he's still got Kabul to confront. The American public might tolerate watching Iraq explode but they probably aren't ready to accept a defeat in Afghanistan.
A key problem with Afghanistan is trying to figure out just what a victory would look like. It doesn't help that neo-con morons like Bush and Harper defined the objective as defeating the Taliban and establishing a secular democracy. Based on what these clowns so loudly promised us, we've already suffered a double defeat.
To weigh Obama's options it's necessary to consider where Afghanistan was on 11 September, 2001 and where it is today. In 2001, Afghanistan was still wrestling with the power vacuums left over from the ouster of the Soviet Union years earlier. The Taliban were the titular government but were caught in a stalemated civil war with what we came to call the "Northern Alliance" (there were others). It was rebellious warlords versus the Pashtun administration of the Taliban backed by Pakistan.
So stalemated was the civil war that the exhausted adversaries had lapsed into trench warfare, reduced to a daily ritual of lobbing artillery barrages at each other. That's why the CIA with just a small number of agents and the enormous firepower of the United States Air Force was able to transform the stalemate into a full-bore Taliban rout that went so quickly that America couldn't keep up with it. They literally begged (unsuccessfully) the Northern Alliance warlords to slow down, to let them catch up.
Washington really didn't have a post-Taliban game plan and, in fairness, there wasn't time to come up with one. So they grabbed a compliant Pashtun warlord named Karzai, installed him in power and left it to him to forge a suitable government.
What Washington never thought to do, and probably never had the means to accomplish, was to dismantle Afghan warlordism. To the contrary, warlords quickly demanded and achieved stations of power in the central government while others were installed as provincial governors.
The warlords are a key factor to the future of Afghanistan. They're beyond the scope of this post but it's enough to understand that they are warlords in every sense of the word - lords of war. In conjunction with Afghanistan's tribalism (Pashtun, Uzbek, Tajik, Hazara, Turkmen, etc.) their very existence creates divisions and power struggles that inevitably undermine the prospect of a viable central government in Kabul. Warlordism plus tribalism is the recipe for civil war. Complicate that with a corrupt government and a massive criminal enterprise, not to mention a growing insurgency, and the prospects of a viable, central government ruling the country begin to approach nil.
These warlords are not illiterate peasants. Many of them, such as the Pashtun warlord we know as Hamid Karzai, are university educated. They're also incredibly skilled in the dark arts of betrayal and treachery. It is said there isn't one among them who hasn't, at some point, been at war with and allied with each of the others. Some of those who purport to back Karzai today are weighing their future with the insurgency instead.
What began as an insurgency a few years back is inching ever closer to an actual civil war. The Taliban aren't just planting roadside bombs and firing on NATO convoys. They're actually establishing power structures - political, even judicial - either in place of or in parallel to the Kabul government.
This is the dilemma facing Barack Obama. Maybe just holding the Taliban to a mere insurgency, preventing a full-blown civil war, is a real victory but it won't be politically satisfying at home. The American people need to see bin Laden's head on a pole especially if they see Mullah Mohammed Omar's right beside it.
Maybe Obama can persuade the American people that there was never going to be the sort of victory promised by the Bushies in either Iraq or Afghanistan. Maybe Obama can persuade the American people to accept that the future of Iraq and Afghanistan will be decided by the Iraqis and Afghans and, in all likelihood, through plenty of violence. Maybe Obama can persuade the American people to simply let go.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Iggy's Strange Courtship of "The West"
It's sort of like he's inviting the fat girl to the prom because her folks have a pool. He'd rather not but he just can't wait to go swimming.
Maybe Michael Ignatieff doesn't know that we Westerners read papers and that we also read between the lines but it sure sounds like he didn't get that memo.
“Sometimes we've fallen prey to the temptation to run against the West, you know, to run against Alberta, to run against the Saskatchewan energy sector. This is not the way to go.”
“The Western economy is the beating heart of Canadian progress in the future. This is where the action is. And, if this is where the action is economically, then we have to be there, too.”
So, in Iggy-speak, opposing the environmental disaster of the Athabasca Tar Sands is, "...to run against the West." I guess that twisted logic explains why Tar Sands Mike has become far less critical of the devastation than even Stephen Harper or, for that matter, Ed Stelmach.
Then, in an ass-backward way, he assures Ontario with a wink and a nod that he'd rather not pander to these damned Westerners but, "...if this is where the action is economically," he'll do whatever it takes to win votes.
Iggy seems to be a man of unconditional love. He showered unconditional love on Israel when it smashed its way through the Gaza Palestinians and now he's lavishing the same thing on the Tar Sands.
Will it work? Probably. I suspect Iggy's going to get invited to the pool but I think he's going to be restricted to the shallow end and Tuesday mornings only... and he's going to have to keep dating that girl.
Unless he stumbles badly I think Iggy can probably defeat Harper in an election but I think that's as much due to Harper's inherent weakness as Iggy's strength. Ignatieff would probably discover that he's painting himself into a "minority" corner.
And then there's Obama. I think Canadians are less troubled that Harper is to the right of the American president. He's from Calgary, he worshiped at the altar of Bush/Cheney - we get that. Iggy's the one who'll really come off looking bad. He's a Liberal and Liberal leaders aren't supposed to stand to the right of American presidents, even Democrats. That's something we notice.
Ignatieff's comments come off as simply patronizing. If we have to... well then okay. And there's one other thing he needs to understand. There's a hell of a lot more to "the West" than the Tar Sands and a lot of us think he's dead wrong on Athabasca.
Maybe Michael Ignatieff doesn't know that we Westerners read papers and that we also read between the lines but it sure sounds like he didn't get that memo.
“Sometimes we've fallen prey to the temptation to run against the West, you know, to run against Alberta, to run against the Saskatchewan energy sector. This is not the way to go.”
“The Western economy is the beating heart of Canadian progress in the future. This is where the action is. And, if this is where the action is economically, then we have to be there, too.”
So, in Iggy-speak, opposing the environmental disaster of the Athabasca Tar Sands is, "...to run against the West." I guess that twisted logic explains why Tar Sands Mike has become far less critical of the devastation than even Stephen Harper or, for that matter, Ed Stelmach.
Then, in an ass-backward way, he assures Ontario with a wink and a nod that he'd rather not pander to these damned Westerners but, "...if this is where the action is economically," he'll do whatever it takes to win votes.
Iggy seems to be a man of unconditional love. He showered unconditional love on Israel when it smashed its way through the Gaza Palestinians and now he's lavishing the same thing on the Tar Sands.
Will it work? Probably. I suspect Iggy's going to get invited to the pool but I think he's going to be restricted to the shallow end and Tuesday mornings only... and he's going to have to keep dating that girl.
Unless he stumbles badly I think Iggy can probably defeat Harper in an election but I think that's as much due to Harper's inherent weakness as Iggy's strength. Ignatieff would probably discover that he's painting himself into a "minority" corner.
And then there's Obama. I think Canadians are less troubled that Harper is to the right of the American president. He's from Calgary, he worshiped at the altar of Bush/Cheney - we get that. Iggy's the one who'll really come off looking bad. He's a Liberal and Liberal leaders aren't supposed to stand to the right of American presidents, even Democrats. That's something we notice.
Ignatieff's comments come off as simply patronizing. If we have to... well then okay. And there's one other thing he needs to understand. There's a hell of a lot more to "the West" than the Tar Sands and a lot of us think he's dead wrong on Athabasca.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Growing Older and - Dimmer
Damn! It'll be the Big Six Oh (as in "Oh How Did This Happen - To Me?") this year and, on that account alone, I'm entitled to this Pity Party.
I am a genuine Boomer, the second son of a returned Canadian soldier home from the war in Europe. Dad was a few years older than most going in and I guess he felt that left him with a tad more catching up to do once he got back. That accounts for why the "first" son and I are just 10-1/2 months apart. Then again, three and a half-years overseas separation from his stunningly beautiful, newly-wed wife might have had something to do with it I suppose.
Growing up we didn't have "everything" but I'll be damned if we didn't have an awful lot of most everything. I sometimes think parents back then - the good ones anyway - were both more loving and more indifferent to their kids. They really wanted the best for their kids because they'd spent a lot of their lives with the worst but they weren't afraid to let their kids find the best on their own too.
We made our own way to school, made our own way home too - even elementary school. We were free to play in vacant lots amid the dirt and rusty nails and - gasp - microbes. When we got bikes we received the true gift of mobility and its handmaiden, independence. We hit the streets with full force and rode, separately and together, to wherever whim took us. Moms would say "be home for dinner" and, beyond that, we were free to do pretty much as we pleased.
My kids never got that. Parents drove their kids to school and back home again at the end of the day. Parents didn't let their kids find their own amusements but, instead, enrolled them in this programme or that. For girls, backyard baton twirling gave way to leotards, funny shoes and ballet. For boys it was soccer and such, always under the watchful eye of a parent or coach.
Maybe that made all the difference for, when I was a kid, I was bursting for adventure. Long before I made it to the RCAF Aircrew Selection Centre, all my senses were not merely alive but on fire. I had the eyes of a hawk and the hearing of a rabbit and the reactions of a Swift, Swallow or Purple Martin in high mosquito season.
All of those skills or, perhaps, "gifts" paid off huge returns. In conjunction with the optimally focused training regime (essential disipline I couldn't have bought) they imbued a sense of confidence (neither arrogance nor hubris) uncommon to those my age yet remarkably common in those of the previous generation that had been through the forge. Some pretty unusual things happened, almost by understated force of will.
Maybe it was because so many things came to hand so easily that I became smitten with doing so many things, like a wayward chrome ball on a pinball table. Factory worker (many varieties), bartender, gravedigger, pilot, schoolkeeper, fundraiser, refinery worker, journalist and broadcaster and - for many years - motorcycle wanderer - before it all came to wrack and ruin and I turned into a lawyer.
Today we spend too much time trying to keep our kids safe (as in "isolated") from the perceived perils of the world, real and imagined, and far, far too much time trying to shape shift them into "doctors and lawyers and such." In this we do society and them no service. No good will come of it.
Today's "tweens" face a future far more ominous than either Hitler or Stalin presented in their grandparents' day. The world they'll inherit will be vastly more challenging than the Great Depression/World War calamity met and mastered by my Dad's generation. It will be devoid of the comfortable ease and plenty of my own.
I do not wish I could live another 60-years but I would give anything if my children and their children, each in turn, could somehow live the past 60.
Now before you heap me with your rebuke, remember I'm clearly "past it" and therefore deserving of your quiet indulgence. No matter your age, I hope this gives you something to ponder, something both pleasant and just a tad rewarding.
P.S. I guess this rant is appropriate this year. Late last summer I buried my best friend, my Dad, and tomorrow is my late mother's birthday. They really were pretty neat parents for the "Ozzie & Harriet" thing.
I am a genuine Boomer, the second son of a returned Canadian soldier home from the war in Europe. Dad was a few years older than most going in and I guess he felt that left him with a tad more catching up to do once he got back. That accounts for why the "first" son and I are just 10-1/2 months apart. Then again, three and a half-years overseas separation from his stunningly beautiful, newly-wed wife might have had something to do with it I suppose.
Growing up we didn't have "everything" but I'll be damned if we didn't have an awful lot of most everything. I sometimes think parents back then - the good ones anyway - were both more loving and more indifferent to their kids. They really wanted the best for their kids because they'd spent a lot of their lives with the worst but they weren't afraid to let their kids find the best on their own too.
We made our own way to school, made our own way home too - even elementary school. We were free to play in vacant lots amid the dirt and rusty nails and - gasp - microbes. When we got bikes we received the true gift of mobility and its handmaiden, independence. We hit the streets with full force and rode, separately and together, to wherever whim took us. Moms would say "be home for dinner" and, beyond that, we were free to do pretty much as we pleased.
My kids never got that. Parents drove their kids to school and back home again at the end of the day. Parents didn't let their kids find their own amusements but, instead, enrolled them in this programme or that. For girls, backyard baton twirling gave way to leotards, funny shoes and ballet. For boys it was soccer and such, always under the watchful eye of a parent or coach.
Maybe that made all the difference for, when I was a kid, I was bursting for adventure. Long before I made it to the RCAF Aircrew Selection Centre, all my senses were not merely alive but on fire. I had the eyes of a hawk and the hearing of a rabbit and the reactions of a Swift, Swallow or Purple Martin in high mosquito season.
All of those skills or, perhaps, "gifts" paid off huge returns. In conjunction with the optimally focused training regime (essential disipline I couldn't have bought) they imbued a sense of confidence (neither arrogance nor hubris) uncommon to those my age yet remarkably common in those of the previous generation that had been through the forge. Some pretty unusual things happened, almost by understated force of will.
Maybe it was because so many things came to hand so easily that I became smitten with doing so many things, like a wayward chrome ball on a pinball table. Factory worker (many varieties), bartender, gravedigger, pilot, schoolkeeper, fundraiser, refinery worker, journalist and broadcaster and - for many years - motorcycle wanderer - before it all came to wrack and ruin and I turned into a lawyer.
Today we spend too much time trying to keep our kids safe (as in "isolated") from the perceived perils of the world, real and imagined, and far, far too much time trying to shape shift them into "doctors and lawyers and such." In this we do society and them no service. No good will come of it.
Today's "tweens" face a future far more ominous than either Hitler or Stalin presented in their grandparents' day. The world they'll inherit will be vastly more challenging than the Great Depression/World War calamity met and mastered by my Dad's generation. It will be devoid of the comfortable ease and plenty of my own.
I do not wish I could live another 60-years but I would give anything if my children and their children, each in turn, could somehow live the past 60.
Now before you heap me with your rebuke, remember I'm clearly "past it" and therefore deserving of your quiet indulgence. No matter your age, I hope this gives you something to ponder, something both pleasant and just a tad rewarding.
P.S. I guess this rant is appropriate this year. Late last summer I buried my best friend, my Dad, and tomorrow is my late mother's birthday. They really were pretty neat parents for the "Ozzie & Harriet" thing.
Obama and the Law of Gravity
For eight years the White House and Congress floated along, aimless and bloated, defying gravity. They waged unwinnable wars (on borrowed money), granted lavish tax cuts to those who needed them least (again, on borrowed money), paved the way for an insanely lethal housing bubble (inflated, once again, with borrowed money), jury-rigged the nation's financial system to exploit the cheap, borrowed money game, and generally spent borrowed money like drunken whores.
Then, just as the nest of scams collapsed under its own, massive weight, the executive branch took its leave and handed the mess to the new kid, Barack Obama.
Barack Obama, the man who promised hope and a better day, landed in a mess so bad that he can afford to deliver neither. Just how bad is the mess? That depends on who you listen to. There are the false prophets who ginned the whole thing - going back to Reagan whiz kid David Stockman and Fed boss Alan Greenspan and an enormous supporting cast with names like Abramoff, Gramm and Cheney. Or you might prefer to listen to some people that last bunch used to dismiss and ridicule - people like Nobel prize economist Joe Stiglitz or Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman - the guys who were yelling "fire" while everyone sat comfortably in their seats and chomped the popcorn. I think I'm going to give those guys a chance this time.
According to these guys, "bad" doesn't begin to describe America's fiscal catastrophe. Stiglitz has worked out that Bush's War on Terror will cost America's taxpayers about three-trillion dollars when all the hidden costs are worked in. That's a 3 followed by 12 of these - 0.
It is so bad that Barack Obama will be the first Democratic president since WWII who will have to increase the federal debt as a percentage of gross domestic product. That will put him in the club with the fiscal lunatics who prescribed his fate - Ronald Reagan, George H.W.Bush and his idiot son, W.
Obama had a plan for a trillion dollar stimulus package to help free the American economy from the muddy bottom of recession. The idea was that,if you could just get it moving upward, it would find the surface on its own. All it takes is enough lift.
Krugman has maintained a trillion isn't enough to free the hull from the sticky mud - but he said it's a start. The floaters in Congress didn't see it the same way. They trimmed over 200-billion dollars worth of lifting power from the package and, worse, demanded that tax cuts be built into a huge chunk of the remainder. Tax cuts? Don't these idiots understand that it was irresponsible tax cuts that helped drive their nation's economy straight to the bottom?
For a guy who hasn't been in the job a full month yet, it's a pretty shitty situation but there's worse to come. There's a move afoot in Congress, being spun like crazy by rightwing think tanks, to offset the stimulus spending by raiding the unpillaged remainder of American workers' Social Security fund.
You hear the word "entitlements" floated around a lot these days and it's being transformed into a dirty, socialist word. Entitlements are just the undeserving public sucking at the dry teats of government, a throwback to the nanny state.
Now the first three years of the Iraq war have proven one thing beyond any doubt. If you tell the American people a blatant lie, even a whole bag of lies, and you feed it to them often enough, from every direction - they'll believe it. Much as Americans claim to be the best informed people on the planet, they're actually the most readily misinformed, the most disinformed, the most gullible and the least skeptical folks to evolve since the end of WWII. The far right know that, they know how to exploit it and they're counting on it to convince the American working public (as in the "American people") that they're somehow undeserving of the entitlements they've already paid for in full.
Imagine if you walked up to a bank teller, pulled a gun and said "give me all the money, your bank doesn't deserve it", and the teller sheepishly handed it over with a simple "okay" and then just let you walk out of the bank to freedom.
The Social Security programme is holding on to about 2.5 trillion bucks in workers' payroll tax contributions. There ought to have many times that much on hand, invested and generating even more income except that congress stole it. For decades the American congress has been siphoning off the Social Security surpluses, popping those trillions into general revenue and issuing IOU's in exchange. This is, of course, the very same congress that allows a White House to wage enormously expensive failed wars on borrowed money while simultaneously granting tax cuts to the most advantaged few, again with borrowed money. These were the surpluses that were supposed to be amassed for the day when the Baby Boomers began to retire. Gone.
But there's still a bit of meat left on the Social Security skeleton and the right wingers are fixin' to steal that too. The way they'll do it is by making the blue and white collar classes believe that they're not actually entitled after all.
Now, imagine you go up to that same teller, this time to withdraw your savings. But the teller says you really don't deserve it and explains that the bank simply can't afford to pay it. What the teller leaves out is the fact that the bank has stolen your savings and handed it over to the rich folks. There's only one way to pull off that scam. They have to make you believe, actually believe, that you don't deserve what you've had to pay for all your working life.
Some American observers think this will be the defining and possibly the most daunting challenge for Barack Obama. Will he stand up for the American people or will he turn his head while they're raped again by their own congress in order to buy support for stimulus spending?
Then, just as the nest of scams collapsed under its own, massive weight, the executive branch took its leave and handed the mess to the new kid, Barack Obama.
Barack Obama, the man who promised hope and a better day, landed in a mess so bad that he can afford to deliver neither. Just how bad is the mess? That depends on who you listen to. There are the false prophets who ginned the whole thing - going back to Reagan whiz kid David Stockman and Fed boss Alan Greenspan and an enormous supporting cast with names like Abramoff, Gramm and Cheney. Or you might prefer to listen to some people that last bunch used to dismiss and ridicule - people like Nobel prize economist Joe Stiglitz or Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman - the guys who were yelling "fire" while everyone sat comfortably in their seats and chomped the popcorn. I think I'm going to give those guys a chance this time.
According to these guys, "bad" doesn't begin to describe America's fiscal catastrophe. Stiglitz has worked out that Bush's War on Terror will cost America's taxpayers about three-trillion dollars when all the hidden costs are worked in. That's a 3 followed by 12 of these - 0.
It is so bad that Barack Obama will be the first Democratic president since WWII who will have to increase the federal debt as a percentage of gross domestic product. That will put him in the club with the fiscal lunatics who prescribed his fate - Ronald Reagan, George H.W.Bush and his idiot son, W.
Obama had a plan for a trillion dollar stimulus package to help free the American economy from the muddy bottom of recession. The idea was that,if you could just get it moving upward, it would find the surface on its own. All it takes is enough lift.
Krugman has maintained a trillion isn't enough to free the hull from the sticky mud - but he said it's a start. The floaters in Congress didn't see it the same way. They trimmed over 200-billion dollars worth of lifting power from the package and, worse, demanded that tax cuts be built into a huge chunk of the remainder. Tax cuts? Don't these idiots understand that it was irresponsible tax cuts that helped drive their nation's economy straight to the bottom?
For a guy who hasn't been in the job a full month yet, it's a pretty shitty situation but there's worse to come. There's a move afoot in Congress, being spun like crazy by rightwing think tanks, to offset the stimulus spending by raiding the unpillaged remainder of American workers' Social Security fund.
You hear the word "entitlements" floated around a lot these days and it's being transformed into a dirty, socialist word. Entitlements are just the undeserving public sucking at the dry teats of government, a throwback to the nanny state.
Now the first three years of the Iraq war have proven one thing beyond any doubt. If you tell the American people a blatant lie, even a whole bag of lies, and you feed it to them often enough, from every direction - they'll believe it. Much as Americans claim to be the best informed people on the planet, they're actually the most readily misinformed, the most disinformed, the most gullible and the least skeptical folks to evolve since the end of WWII. The far right know that, they know how to exploit it and they're counting on it to convince the American working public (as in the "American people") that they're somehow undeserving of the entitlements they've already paid for in full.
Imagine if you walked up to a bank teller, pulled a gun and said "give me all the money, your bank doesn't deserve it", and the teller sheepishly handed it over with a simple "okay" and then just let you walk out of the bank to freedom.
The Social Security programme is holding on to about 2.5 trillion bucks in workers' payroll tax contributions. There ought to have many times that much on hand, invested and generating even more income except that congress stole it. For decades the American congress has been siphoning off the Social Security surpluses, popping those trillions into general revenue and issuing IOU's in exchange. This is, of course, the very same congress that allows a White House to wage enormously expensive failed wars on borrowed money while simultaneously granting tax cuts to the most advantaged few, again with borrowed money. These were the surpluses that were supposed to be amassed for the day when the Baby Boomers began to retire. Gone.
But there's still a bit of meat left on the Social Security skeleton and the right wingers are fixin' to steal that too. The way they'll do it is by making the blue and white collar classes believe that they're not actually entitled after all.
Now, imagine you go up to that same teller, this time to withdraw your savings. But the teller says you really don't deserve it and explains that the bank simply can't afford to pay it. What the teller leaves out is the fact that the bank has stolen your savings and handed it over to the rich folks. There's only one way to pull off that scam. They have to make you believe, actually believe, that you don't deserve what you've had to pay for all your working life.
Some American observers think this will be the defining and possibly the most daunting challenge for Barack Obama. Will he stand up for the American people or will he turn his head while they're raped again by their own congress in order to buy support for stimulus spending?
Friday, February 13, 2009
Gunning for Afghan Druggies? NATO Mutinies
NATO's top general, an American as always, recently ordered NATO forces in Afghanistan to target any and all drug traffickers and their facilities. Shoot to kill, kill'em all - that was the intent of the order. From Der Spiegel:
On Wednesday, SPIEGEL ONLINE reported that a dispute had emerged internally among the highest NATO commanders in Afghanistan over the circumstances in which the alliance can apply deadly force. In a classified letter, a so-called, "guidance," which is equivalent to an order on the strategic level, NATO Commander Craddock calls for an immediate offensive hunt for "all drug traffickers and narcotics facilities."
The content of the order is explosive. It is "no longer necessary to produce intelligence or other evidence that each particular drug trafficker or narcotics facility in Afghanistan meets the criteria of being a military objective," Craddock writes in the guidance.
I searched the web sites of the G&M, Toronto Star, National Post and CBC and couldn't find a single mention of General Bantz John Craddock or his "kill'em all" order. While it seems to have caused a near-mutiny at NATO headquarters in Brussels and an uproar in some European capitals, the whole thing went unnoticed in North America.
Craddock's order has now been watered down. NATO forces are to attack traffickers and facilities but only those clearly affiliated with the Taliban. In other words, only those individuals and facilities that could be construed as legitimate military objectives are to be attacked.
The distinction may seem subtle or vague but it's not. Craddock's order would have compelled NATO soldiers to kill ordinary criminals, something tantamount to murder. It would have turned NATO commanders and soldiers acting under this order into war criminals.
It's rumoured that General Bantz John Craddock has worn out his welcome as NATO commander and will be sent packing in short order. The sooner, the better.
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/934/in1.htm
On Wednesday, SPIEGEL ONLINE reported that a dispute had emerged internally among the highest NATO commanders in Afghanistan over the circumstances in which the alliance can apply deadly force. In a classified letter, a so-called, "guidance," which is equivalent to an order on the strategic level, NATO Commander Craddock calls for an immediate offensive hunt for "all drug traffickers and narcotics facilities."
The content of the order is explosive. It is "no longer necessary to produce intelligence or other evidence that each particular drug trafficker or narcotics facility in Afghanistan meets the criteria of being a military objective," Craddock writes in the guidance.
I searched the web sites of the G&M, Toronto Star, National Post and CBC and couldn't find a single mention of General Bantz John Craddock or his "kill'em all" order. While it seems to have caused a near-mutiny at NATO headquarters in Brussels and an uproar in some European capitals, the whole thing went unnoticed in North America.
Craddock's order has now been watered down. NATO forces are to attack traffickers and facilities but only those clearly affiliated with the Taliban. In other words, only those individuals and facilities that could be construed as legitimate military objectives are to be attacked.
The distinction may seem subtle or vague but it's not. Craddock's order would have compelled NATO soldiers to kill ordinary criminals, something tantamount to murder. It would have turned NATO commanders and soldiers acting under this order into war criminals.
It's rumoured that General Bantz John Craddock has worn out his welcome as NATO commander and will be sent packing in short order. The sooner, the better.
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/934/in1.htm
Aussie Soldiers Bag One Taliban and a Whole Bunch of Afghan Civilians
Australian special forces serving under NATO command in Afghanistan took part in a night time gun battle yesterday that bagged just one Taliban fighter but killed and wounded nine or ten Afghan civilians.
In all, five children were killed, at least two children and two adults were wounded and one insurgent was also killed in the raid in Oruzgan province where Australian and Dutch troops operate.
It appears to be the standard story. The Australians were conducting a series of night time raids. Taliban fighters opened up, the Australians responded and, when the dust settled, there was mainly a bunch of dead and wounded Afghans - most of them children - to show for it.
Okay, time to refer to FM3-24, the U.S. Army's new counterinsurgency field manual, pages 47-51, chapter entitled "The Paradoxes of Counterinsurgency Operations":
"Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction"
"Often insurgents carry out a terrorist act or guerrilla raid with the primary purpose of enticing counterinsurgents to overreact, or at least to react in a way that insurgents can exploit—for example, opening fire on a crowd or executing a clearing operation that creates more enemies than it takes off the streets. If an assessment of the effects of a course of action determines that more negative than positive effects may result, an alternative should be considered—potentially including not acting."
C'mon people, this is a no-brainer. The insurgents opened fire on you to goad you into slaughtering civilians. It worked. They won, you lost. Can you possibly be any dumber? They're already winning this war, why do you insist on making that easier for them?
Jeebus, it's right there in the book. It's in the damned book! Hell, it's right in every respected and informed book on this subject written by everyone from T.E. Lawrence, to Guevera and Giap.
You're Australians and special forces at that. You spent years learning these lessons in Vietnam. You know better.
If we're going to insist on losing this war, why don't we just leave and spare the civilians?
In all, five children were killed, at least two children and two adults were wounded and one insurgent was also killed in the raid in Oruzgan province where Australian and Dutch troops operate.
It appears to be the standard story. The Australians were conducting a series of night time raids. Taliban fighters opened up, the Australians responded and, when the dust settled, there was mainly a bunch of dead and wounded Afghans - most of them children - to show for it.
Okay, time to refer to FM3-24, the U.S. Army's new counterinsurgency field manual, pages 47-51, chapter entitled "The Paradoxes of Counterinsurgency Operations":
"Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction"
"Often insurgents carry out a terrorist act or guerrilla raid with the primary purpose of enticing counterinsurgents to overreact, or at least to react in a way that insurgents can exploit—for example, opening fire on a crowd or executing a clearing operation that creates more enemies than it takes off the streets. If an assessment of the effects of a course of action determines that more negative than positive effects may result, an alternative should be considered—potentially including not acting."
C'mon people, this is a no-brainer. The insurgents opened fire on you to goad you into slaughtering civilians. It worked. They won, you lost. Can you possibly be any dumber? They're already winning this war, why do you insist on making that easier for them?
Jeebus, it's right there in the book. It's in the damned book! Hell, it's right in every respected and informed book on this subject written by everyone from T.E. Lawrence, to Guevera and Giap.
You're Australians and special forces at that. You spent years learning these lessons in Vietnam. You know better.
If we're going to insist on losing this war, why don't we just leave and spare the civilians?
A Century of War Looms
The British government's former chief science advisor, Sir David King, has issued a dark warning - we're heading for a century of resource wars. From The Guardian:
The Iraq war was just the first of this century's "resource wars", in which powerful countries use force to secure valuable commodities, according to the UK government's former chief scientific adviser. Sir David King predicts that with population growth, natural resources dwindling, and seas rising due to climate change, the squeeze on the planet will lead to more conflict.
"Future historians might look back on our particular recent past and see the Iraq war as the first of the conflicts of this kind - the first of the resource wars," he told an audience of 400 in London as he delivered the British Humanist Association's Darwin Day lecture.
Implicitly rejecting the US and British governments' claim they went to war to remove Saddam Hussein and search for weapons of mass destruction, he said the US had in reality been very concerned about energy security and supply, because of its reliance on foreign oil from unstable states. "Casting its eye around the world - there was Iraq," he said.
This strategy could also be used to find and keep supplies of other essentials, such as minerals, water and fertile land, he added. "Unless we get to grips with this problem globally, we potentially are going to lead ourselves into a situation where large, powerful nations will secure resources for their own people at the expense of others."
Sir David's warning ought to be a wake up call for all resource-rich, small population nations. Hey, wait a minute!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/13/resource-wars-david-king
The Iraq war was just the first of this century's "resource wars", in which powerful countries use force to secure valuable commodities, according to the UK government's former chief scientific adviser. Sir David King predicts that with population growth, natural resources dwindling, and seas rising due to climate change, the squeeze on the planet will lead to more conflict.
"Future historians might look back on our particular recent past and see the Iraq war as the first of the conflicts of this kind - the first of the resource wars," he told an audience of 400 in London as he delivered the British Humanist Association's Darwin Day lecture.
Implicitly rejecting the US and British governments' claim they went to war to remove Saddam Hussein and search for weapons of mass destruction, he said the US had in reality been very concerned about energy security and supply, because of its reliance on foreign oil from unstable states. "Casting its eye around the world - there was Iraq," he said.
This strategy could also be used to find and keep supplies of other essentials, such as minerals, water and fertile land, he added. "Unless we get to grips with this problem globally, we potentially are going to lead ourselves into a situation where large, powerful nations will secure resources for their own people at the expense of others."
Sir David's warning ought to be a wake up call for all resource-rich, small population nations. Hey, wait a minute!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/13/resource-wars-david-king
Blackwater No More
The infamous security firm, Blackwater, has decided a name change is in order. It's now 'Xe' - pronounced Zeee.
Zeee's president, Gary Jackson, sent a memo to employees saying that Blackwater (oops, sorry!) will no longer be seeking out security gigs but will, instead, focus on training other unemployed would-be mercenaries to shoot up civilians.
"This company will continue to provide personnel protective services for high-threat environments when needed by the US government, but its primary mission will be operating our training facilities around the world, including the flagship campus in North Carolina," Jackson said.
Zeee's president, Gary Jackson, sent a memo to employees saying that Blackwater (oops, sorry!) will no longer be seeking out security gigs but will, instead, focus on training other unemployed would-be mercenaries to shoot up civilians.
"This company will continue to provide personnel protective services for high-threat environments when needed by the US government, but its primary mission will be operating our training facilities around the world, including the flagship campus in North Carolina," Jackson said.
US Judges Sent Kids to Prison - for Kickbacks
It's as Dickensian a story as they come. American judges sentencing wayward kids to private detention facilities in exchange for kickbacks.
From The New York Times:
At worst, Hillary Transue thought she might get a stern lecture when she appeared before a judge for building a spoof MySpace page mocking the assistant principal at her high school in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. She was a stellar student who had never been in trouble, and the page stated clearly at the bottom that it was just a joke.
Instead, the judge sentenced her to three months at a juvenile detention center on a charge of harassment.
She was handcuffed and taken away as her stunned parents stood by.
...The answers became a bit clearer on Thursday as the judge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., and a colleague, Michael T. Conahan, appeared in federal court in Scranton, Pa., to plead guilty to wire fraud and income tax fraud for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care.
From The New York Times:
At worst, Hillary Transue thought she might get a stern lecture when she appeared before a judge for building a spoof MySpace page mocking the assistant principal at her high school in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. She was a stellar student who had never been in trouble, and the page stated clearly at the bottom that it was just a joke.
Instead, the judge sentenced her to three months at a juvenile detention center on a charge of harassment.
She was handcuffed and taken away as her stunned parents stood by.
...The answers became a bit clearer on Thursday as the judge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., and a colleague, Michael T. Conahan, appeared in federal court in Scranton, Pa., to plead guilty to wire fraud and income tax fraud for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care.
While prosecutors say that Judge Conahan, 56, secured contracts for the two centers to house juvenile offenders, Judge Ciavarella, 58, was the one who carried out the sentencing to keep the centers filled.
...For years, youth advocacy groups complained that Judge Ciavarella was unusually harsh. He sent a quarter of his juvenile defendants to detention centers from 2002 to 2006, compared with a state rate of 1 in 10. He also routinely ignored requests for leniency made by prosecutors and probation officers.
“The juvenile system, by design, is intended to be a less punitive system than the adult system, and yet here were scores of children with very minor infractions having their lives ruined,” said Marsha Levick, a lawyer with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center.
The paper reports the pair have worked out a plea bargain to serve just 87-months in a federal prison. Seven years, out in five? That is outrageously lenient. In a nation so fond of life imprisonment and 400-year sentences, these two deserve to spend the rest of their natural lives in the Greybar Hotel.
America's Republican Malignancy
Forget the fact that they hatched, and for three decades nurtured, the Era of Greed that has finally brought the United States to its knees. As the New York Times' Paul Krugman writes, the Republicans aren't finished, not yet.
...it’s now clear that the party’s commitment to deep voodoo — enforced, in part, by pressure groups that stand ready to run primary challengers against heretics — is as strong as ever. In both the House and the Senate, the vast majority of Republicans rallied behind the idea that the appropriate response to the abject failure of the Bush administration’s tax cuts is more Bush-style tax cuts.
And the rhetorical response of conservatives to the stimulus plan — which will, it’s worth bearing in mind, cost substantially less than either the Bush administration’s $2 trillion in tax cuts or the $1 trillion and counting spent in Iraq — has bordered on the deranged.
It’s “generational theft,” said Senator John McCain, just a few days after voting for tax cuts that would, over the next decade, have cost about four times as much.
It’s “destroying my daughters’ future. It is like sitting there watching my house ransacked by a gang of thugs,” said Arnold Kling of the Cato Institute.
What Krugman illustrates isn't Republican perfidy - that much we've come to expect. It's that the Republican message continues to resonate with a sufficient segment of the American electorate that the tax cut/trickle down/Voodoo economics scam still lives.
Maybe Americans have been so dumbed down that they're now just too stupid to save themselves - maybe. It seems that the party that decriminalized the fraud that doomed Wall Street - and the global economy - can still peddle its poison. The Republicans have lost Congress and the White House but they're an insidious malignancy that might not quit until they've destroyed the United States.
...it’s now clear that the party’s commitment to deep voodoo — enforced, in part, by pressure groups that stand ready to run primary challengers against heretics — is as strong as ever. In both the House and the Senate, the vast majority of Republicans rallied behind the idea that the appropriate response to the abject failure of the Bush administration’s tax cuts is more Bush-style tax cuts.
And the rhetorical response of conservatives to the stimulus plan — which will, it’s worth bearing in mind, cost substantially less than either the Bush administration’s $2 trillion in tax cuts or the $1 trillion and counting spent in Iraq — has bordered on the deranged.
It’s “generational theft,” said Senator John McCain, just a few days after voting for tax cuts that would, over the next decade, have cost about four times as much.
It’s “destroying my daughters’ future. It is like sitting there watching my house ransacked by a gang of thugs,” said Arnold Kling of the Cato Institute.
What Krugman illustrates isn't Republican perfidy - that much we've come to expect. It's that the Republican message continues to resonate with a sufficient segment of the American electorate that the tax cut/trickle down/Voodoo economics scam still lives.
Maybe Americans have been so dumbed down that they're now just too stupid to save themselves - maybe. It seems that the party that decriminalized the fraud that doomed Wall Street - and the global economy - can still peddle its poison. The Republicans have lost Congress and the White House but they're an insidious malignancy that might not quit until they've destroyed the United States.
OPEC's Dilemma
The world's oil producers have a problem. For many of them, oil truly is Black Gold. For some of them, oil revenues have become the mainstay of their regimes, the grease that keeps the corrupt and oppressive wheels of their states turning.
Ask Steve Harper. It's a lot easier to rule an unruly electorate when you've got a treasury full of petrobucks to spread around. Pretty much anyone, even Steve Harper, can handle that. It's when those oil revenues stop flowing in that you get to see whether you have a bold leader, someone with vision, or a timid, feckless pretender to the throne (a.k.a. Stephen Harper).
But you can't think of oil without mentioning the Middle East. Saudi oil comes out of the ground so "sweet" that it can be pumped straight into waiting tankers. Total cost of production - ten bucks a barrel! So, even when the world oil price crashes to $40 per barrel, the Saudis still rake in a hefty profit.
When prices soared to $150 per barrel it truly was manna from heaven for the Middle East. And who can blame them for believing what the rest of us were told - that oil prices were only going up with $200 a barrel expected within a year? And so, with that in mind, they began spending like there was no tomorrow.
Even Dubai, which is essentially nothing more than a lovely beach, got into the act, building the world's most opulent hotels and lavish homes. The money was flowing in so fast they even built entire communities offshore in developments created in the shape of palm trees (see above).
Now, of course, that money has dried up and Dubai doesn't have any oil to sell, even at 40-bucks a keg. Thinking it could play banker to all the oil-rich nations around it left Dubai holding the bag with a bunch of banks in Wall Street meltdown mode.
Foreigners are fleeing Dubai as though the place has turned radioactive. The New York Times reported that Dubai's airport parking lot is littered with as many as 3,000 cars simply abandoned by foreigners who once sought to make their fortunes in that country. Apparently the exodus has something to do with Dubai law that sends defaulters to debtors' prisons.
It's a sign of the times. Dubai is a member of the United Arab Emirates and the only one that has no oil. You might have thought its fellow Emirates would come to the rescue to bail out Dubai's banks, Washington or London-style. Nope. There's a message in that.
It's a message that provides the subtext, the back story to OPEC's efforts to cut oil production in hopes of stabilizing and boosting world oil prices. Most producing countries simply can't afford to cut production. They've become utterly addicted to oil revenues to the extent they can no longer say no.
Gwynne Dyer addressed this addiction some time ago in discussing the perceived dangers of encouraging democracy in the Middle East demonstrated by election victories of Islamist parties such as Hezbollah and Hamas.
Dyer's take was that, given the brutal oppression of the Arab people by regimes we've supported (Mubarak, the House of Saud, etc.), it shouldn't be a surprise that Islamists win democratic elections. But he predicts that might last two, possibly three election cycles before moderates would begin to take over. And, in the meantime, the oil would just keep flowing because no Arab government, even an Islamist ruling party, could afford to turn off the taps.
A Reuters article places the producers' problem in perspective. To fund its current social programmes and infrastructure at current production levels, Venezuela needs $100 per barrel, Iran needs $90. Cutting production really isn't an option for those countries. Likewise Saudi Arabia has promised its people to build "economic cities" to offset unemployment and over-reliance on oil revenues (i.e. to prevent mass uprisings) for which it needs $50 per barrel. Apparently Saudi Arabia is already anticipating a deficit in 2009 of more than $17-billion. Even the Saudis aren't in a great position to start slashing production.
Taken in isolation, the Middle East's oil problems are serious but they're greatly magnified when placed in the context of the political and social unrest simmering throughout the region. This might not be the best moment to be a prince of the House of Saud.
Ask Steve Harper. It's a lot easier to rule an unruly electorate when you've got a treasury full of petrobucks to spread around. Pretty much anyone, even Steve Harper, can handle that. It's when those oil revenues stop flowing in that you get to see whether you have a bold leader, someone with vision, or a timid, feckless pretender to the throne (a.k.a. Stephen Harper).
But you can't think of oil without mentioning the Middle East. Saudi oil comes out of the ground so "sweet" that it can be pumped straight into waiting tankers. Total cost of production - ten bucks a barrel! So, even when the world oil price crashes to $40 per barrel, the Saudis still rake in a hefty profit.
When prices soared to $150 per barrel it truly was manna from heaven for the Middle East. And who can blame them for believing what the rest of us were told - that oil prices were only going up with $200 a barrel expected within a year? And so, with that in mind, they began spending like there was no tomorrow.
Even Dubai, which is essentially nothing more than a lovely beach, got into the act, building the world's most opulent hotels and lavish homes. The money was flowing in so fast they even built entire communities offshore in developments created in the shape of palm trees (see above).
Now, of course, that money has dried up and Dubai doesn't have any oil to sell, even at 40-bucks a keg. Thinking it could play banker to all the oil-rich nations around it left Dubai holding the bag with a bunch of banks in Wall Street meltdown mode.
Foreigners are fleeing Dubai as though the place has turned radioactive. The New York Times reported that Dubai's airport parking lot is littered with as many as 3,000 cars simply abandoned by foreigners who once sought to make their fortunes in that country. Apparently the exodus has something to do with Dubai law that sends defaulters to debtors' prisons.
It's a sign of the times. Dubai is a member of the United Arab Emirates and the only one that has no oil. You might have thought its fellow Emirates would come to the rescue to bail out Dubai's banks, Washington or London-style. Nope. There's a message in that.
It's a message that provides the subtext, the back story to OPEC's efforts to cut oil production in hopes of stabilizing and boosting world oil prices. Most producing countries simply can't afford to cut production. They've become utterly addicted to oil revenues to the extent they can no longer say no.
Gwynne Dyer addressed this addiction some time ago in discussing the perceived dangers of encouraging democracy in the Middle East demonstrated by election victories of Islamist parties such as Hezbollah and Hamas.
Dyer's take was that, given the brutal oppression of the Arab people by regimes we've supported (Mubarak, the House of Saud, etc.), it shouldn't be a surprise that Islamists win democratic elections. But he predicts that might last two, possibly three election cycles before moderates would begin to take over. And, in the meantime, the oil would just keep flowing because no Arab government, even an Islamist ruling party, could afford to turn off the taps.
A Reuters article places the producers' problem in perspective. To fund its current social programmes and infrastructure at current production levels, Venezuela needs $100 per barrel, Iran needs $90. Cutting production really isn't an option for those countries. Likewise Saudi Arabia has promised its people to build "economic cities" to offset unemployment and over-reliance on oil revenues (i.e. to prevent mass uprisings) for which it needs $50 per barrel. Apparently Saudi Arabia is already anticipating a deficit in 2009 of more than $17-billion. Even the Saudis aren't in a great position to start slashing production.
Taken in isolation, the Middle East's oil problems are serious but they're greatly magnified when placed in the context of the political and social unrest simmering throughout the region. This might not be the best moment to be a prince of the House of Saud.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
The Neo-Conservative Comedy Hour Comes to Calgary
I can understand people going to hear an address by Bill Clinton or Henry Kissinger or even Tony Blair (gag) but Calgary has its own idea of political luminaries.
George W. Bush is coming to Calgary to tell 1,500 eager Amerophiles all about the great achievements of his eight years in the White House. The Bush address is to take place some time between the main course and dessert.
Geoff Pradella of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce is optimistic of a good turn out for Shrub, ""We've had what I would describe as a pretty favourable response so far."
George W. Bush is coming to Calgary to tell 1,500 eager Amerophiles all about the great achievements of his eight years in the White House. The Bush address is to take place some time between the main course and dessert.
Geoff Pradella of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce is optimistic of a good turn out for Shrub, ""We've had what I would describe as a pretty favourable response so far."
RCMP Taser Guidelines - Sort Of!
Jeebus that was fast - not.
Tory insider/RCMP Commissioner Bill Elliot has unveiled new guidelines on when mounties can use tasers. Now the stun guns can only be used when the officer or a member of the public is in "physical danger."
That still leaves far too much wiggle room. Almost any police-civilian encounter carries at least the possibility of some physical danger to the officer. The more cowardly the cop, the more likely he/she will perceive the risk of physical danger.
Elliot did say that simple refusal to obey an officer's commands will no longer be enough to warrant the use of tasers.
Tory insider/RCMP Commissioner Bill Elliot has unveiled new guidelines on when mounties can use tasers. Now the stun guns can only be used when the officer or a member of the public is in "physical danger."
That still leaves far too much wiggle room. Almost any police-civilian encounter carries at least the possibility of some physical danger to the officer. The more cowardly the cop, the more likely he/she will perceive the risk of physical danger.
Elliot did say that simple refusal to obey an officer's commands will no longer be enough to warrant the use of tasers.
Call the Cops - Kabul 9-1-1
For years American and NATO forces have been doing the work of the Afghan Army in trying to hold back the Taliban and Islamist terrorists. We've done such a lack lustre job at battling the insurgency that we're now going to saddle those same troops with doing the work of the Afghan National Police service - drug interdiction.
NATO has finally taken the plunge, ordering its forces in Afghanistan to go after poppy cultivators, opium processors and traffickers associated with the Taliban. Putting that last little rider in ensures we won't be interfering with the opium interests of the central government and those warlords who aren't supporting the Taliban. I guess that means that Karzai's brother, Ahmed, won't have anything to worry about either.
NATO has finally taken the plunge, ordering its forces in Afghanistan to go after poppy cultivators, opium processors and traffickers associated with the Taliban. Putting that last little rider in ensures we won't be interfering with the opium interests of the central government and those warlords who aren't supporting the Taliban. I guess that means that Karzai's brother, Ahmed, won't have anything to worry about either.
Mid-Space Collision - We Can't Say We Weren't Warned
This article was first posted on October 14, 2006. I brought it back because today it finally happened - a major collision between an American and a Russian satellite resulting in an explosion that launched hundreds of bits of space shrapnel into a heavily used satellite band in low orbit. From Reuters:Space officials in Russia and the United States were on Thursday tracking hundreds of pieces of debris that were spewed into space when a U.S. satellite collided with a defunct Russian military satellite.
The crash, which Russian officials said took place on Tuesday at about 1700 GMT above northern Siberia, is the first publicly known satellite collision and has raised concerns about the safety of the manned International Space Station.
The collision happened in an orbit heavily used by satellites and other spacecraft and the U.S. Strategic Command, the arm of the Pentagon that handles space, said countries might have to manoeuvre their craft to avoid the debris.
The U.S. Joint Space Operations Center was tracking 500 to 600 new pieces of debris, some as small as 4 inches (10 cm) across, in addition to the 18,000 or so other man-made objects it previously catalogued in space, he said.Russian Space Forces said it was monitoring debris that was spread over altitudes between 500 km (310 miles) and 1300 km (807 miles) above earth.
The priority is guarding the International Space Station, which orbits at 220 miles (350 km), substantially below the collision altitude. One Russian and two U.S. astronauts are currently aboard the station.
For years we've been living with the risk of cascade. The feared phenomenon called the "Cascade Effect" refers to what may, perhaps inevitably will, happen when space junk collides.
There is all manner of debris orbiting earth. Bits of old rockets, satellites old and new, space stations and random stuff that has fallen off all of these. The material is all over the place and - here's the problem - it's all going at speeds of up to 20,000 miles per hour. At those speeds, a bolt-sized object ploughing into a satellite will probably blow that device into hundreds of bits, each of them in turn launchd in some skewed orbit. The odds are other space vehicles will start getting hit, transforming them also into hundreds or thousands of destructive bits of debris. Once this begins it won't take long for the satellite systems to be destroyed.
Right now, the cascade effect is a threat but no immediate certainty. There is even talk about developing the equivalent of a space janitor to go around sweeping up these items and rendering them harmless. However, for all the talk, these programmes aren't being funded and so they remain theoretical.
So,who cares? You ought to care and, if you don't, try learning more about this problem. Our societies are dependent on our satellite networks. We need them for our security. We need them for our science and research. We need them for our very communications. They guide our aircraft and our ships. They enable us to respond quickly to downed aircraft. They help us predict weather catastrophes.
We've become utterly dependent upon a functioning space technology system to the point where, if it went down, we don't have effective, terrestrial backups.
Maybe we'd could just put up new satellites, right? Sorry, no. The junk fallout of a cascade pretty much stays up there for many, many years and that would make space unusable for a couple of decades.
Right now the Cascade Effect is something we need to address while we still have time. The last thing mankind needs is to develop ways to make it a certainty.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
And I Thought Mulroney Was The Consummate BS'er
They didn't call him Lyin' Brian for nothing. Yet it seems Deceivin' Stephen isn't going to let his Tory predecessor hold onto the mantle of Prime Prevaricator.
It's getting nigh impossible to keep track of the outright fabrications Stephen Harper has foisted on the Canadian public. It's not just his magnificent string of broken promises either. It's the outright lying.
Hardly a day goes by that we can't log yet another tall tale spun by the Chief Stiff, our Furious Leader himself. Today? Well that'd be Harp's laughable explanation of why he dropped his defamation lawsuit against the Libs. Harper's story? He dropped the suit - no apology, no damages, no injunction, not even a dime in costs - because Stephane Dion is no longer Liberal leader. Groan.
Who does Canada's Prime Bullshitter think is going to buy that one? Why did his former counsel, Rick Dearden fire him, the sitting prime minister, as his client? Oh I know, maybe Mr. Dearden's in-box got too full. And why did Harp drop the law suit just when he was going to have to explain to a judge why he hadn't answered a bunch of questions or produced a ream of relevant documents? Wait, I know, with the deficits and all it wouldn't have been fair to the taxpayers to hit them with an extra twenty bucks in photocopying charges.
No, Steve, let's be honest - just this once. You dropped the lawsuit because it was a loser and you didn't want to risk a court order forcing you to show your hand and reveal potentially troublesome information and documents to the opposition and the voting public. All that Bully Boy nonsense that served you so well, for so long and masked your inability to lead doesn't work any more. And without that Steve, even your friends turn on you.
By the way Steve, do you still get the National Post? That must be a painful read these days.
It's getting nigh impossible to keep track of the outright fabrications Stephen Harper has foisted on the Canadian public. It's not just his magnificent string of broken promises either. It's the outright lying.
Hardly a day goes by that we can't log yet another tall tale spun by the Chief Stiff, our Furious Leader himself. Today? Well that'd be Harp's laughable explanation of why he dropped his defamation lawsuit against the Libs. Harper's story? He dropped the suit - no apology, no damages, no injunction, not even a dime in costs - because Stephane Dion is no longer Liberal leader. Groan.
Who does Canada's Prime Bullshitter think is going to buy that one? Why did his former counsel, Rick Dearden fire him, the sitting prime minister, as his client? Oh I know, maybe Mr. Dearden's in-box got too full. And why did Harp drop the law suit just when he was going to have to explain to a judge why he hadn't answered a bunch of questions or produced a ream of relevant documents? Wait, I know, with the deficits and all it wouldn't have been fair to the taxpayers to hit them with an extra twenty bucks in photocopying charges.
No, Steve, let's be honest - just this once. You dropped the lawsuit because it was a loser and you didn't want to risk a court order forcing you to show your hand and reveal potentially troublesome information and documents to the opposition and the voting public. All that Bully Boy nonsense that served you so well, for so long and masked your inability to lead doesn't work any more. And without that Steve, even your friends turn on you.
By the way Steve, do you still get the National Post? That must be a painful read these days.
Afghanistan - 2011
There's no way to tell for sure what lies in store for Canadian forces in Kandahar in two years. Harper has repeatedly promised that Canada's combat mission in Kandahar will end in 2011 but don't expect those soldiers to actually leave Afghanistan.
Yesterday's happenings in Kabul may give a clue to what lies in store. Eight Taliban fighters launched three, coordinated attacks focusing on the Justice Ministry. When they were finally eliminated they had killed more than 20 civilians.
My guess is that Canadian soldiers will be in Kabul or Kandahar City by 2011, trying to secure them against Taliban attacks. It's been apparent for months that the Taliban are massing around Afghanistan's major cities. The prison break in Kandahar, the Indian embassy bombing in Kabul and now the attack on the Justice Ministry demonstrate that the insurgency is sufficiently well established inside the key cities that it can operate with remarkable freedom.
By threatening the capital the Taliban can force a significant diversion of Western forces from the effort along the Pakistan-Afghan border. In this way, a small contingent of insurgents can effectively tie down a large number of defenders.
If the U.S. and NATO can't secure the cities, the war is essentially lost.
Yesterday's happenings in Kabul may give a clue to what lies in store. Eight Taliban fighters launched three, coordinated attacks focusing on the Justice Ministry. When they were finally eliminated they had killed more than 20 civilians.
My guess is that Canadian soldiers will be in Kabul or Kandahar City by 2011, trying to secure them against Taliban attacks. It's been apparent for months that the Taliban are massing around Afghanistan's major cities. The prison break in Kandahar, the Indian embassy bombing in Kabul and now the attack on the Justice Ministry demonstrate that the insurgency is sufficiently well established inside the key cities that it can operate with remarkable freedom.
By threatening the capital the Taliban can force a significant diversion of Western forces from the effort along the Pakistan-Afghan border. In this way, a small contingent of insurgents can effectively tie down a large number of defenders.
If the U.S. and NATO can't secure the cities, the war is essentially lost.
Stephen Harper's First Real "First"
His deficits sort of rank up there with the Mulroney years but Stephen Harper has just logged a real first - Canada's first trade deficit in 33-years.
Part of the turnaround results from plunging commodity prices. But another part, one that Harper was dead keen on promoting, is our over-reliance on the American market. Exports to the U.S. dropped 10%.
December figures show a trade deficit of just under half a billion dollars where, just months ago, we were accustomed to 5-6 billion dollar monthly surpluses.
The good news is that commodity markets do bounce back. The better news is that, by the time that happens, we'll probably have a new prime minister and a new government.
I think Harper's days are numbered. He's simply too invested in the now discredited Republican ideologies hatched during the Reagan era. Despite his visionless (and hence ineffective) deficit budgets, Steve doesn't grasp that America, and the world, have ditched what he so deeply cherishes.
The struggle between Keynes and Friedman has taken three decades to play out and it ended with the Friedman school presiding over global economic catastrophe. Stephen Harper is a man for the ages - or at least the 80's and 90's. His moment has passed. Now if we can just get through the aftermath.
Part of the turnaround results from plunging commodity prices. But another part, one that Harper was dead keen on promoting, is our over-reliance on the American market. Exports to the U.S. dropped 10%.
December figures show a trade deficit of just under half a billion dollars where, just months ago, we were accustomed to 5-6 billion dollar monthly surpluses.
The good news is that commodity markets do bounce back. The better news is that, by the time that happens, we'll probably have a new prime minister and a new government.
I think Harper's days are numbered. He's simply too invested in the now discredited Republican ideologies hatched during the Reagan era. Despite his visionless (and hence ineffective) deficit budgets, Steve doesn't grasp that America, and the world, have ditched what he so deeply cherishes.
The struggle between Keynes and Friedman has taken three decades to play out and it ended with the Friedman school presiding over global economic catastrophe. Stephen Harper is a man for the ages - or at least the 80's and 90's. His moment has passed. Now if we can just get through the aftermath.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Petraeus Sabotaging Obama
Inter Press News Service reporter Gareth Porter claims that Centcom commander, General David Petraeus, is leaking misleading information intended to manipulate his own commander in chief, Barack Obama:
The Petraeus account, reported by McClatchy newspapers Feb. 5 and then by the Associated Press the following day, appears to indicate that Obama is moving away from the 16-month plan he had vowed during the campaign to implement if elected. But on closer examination, it doesn't necessarily refer to any action by Obama or to anything that happened at the Jan. 21 meeting.
The real story of the leak by Petraeus is that the most powerful figure in the U.S. military has tried to shape the media coverage of Obama and combat troop withdrawal from Iraq to advance his policy agenda - and, very likely, his personal political interests as well.
This writer became aware of Petraeus's effort to influence the coverage of Obama's unfolding policy on troop withdrawal when a military source close to the general, who insisted on anonymity, offered the Petraeus account on Feb. 4. The military officer was responding to the IPS story 'Generals Seek to Reverse Obama Withdrawal Decision' published two days earlier.
The story reported that Obama had rejected Petraeus's argument against a 16-month withdrawal option at the meeting and asked for a withdrawal plan within that time frame, and that Petraeus had been unhappy with the outcome of the meeting.
It also reported that Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and retired Army general Jack Keane, a close ally of Petraeus, had both made public statements indicating a determination to get Obama to abandon the 16-month plan.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45720
The Petraeus account, reported by McClatchy newspapers Feb. 5 and then by the Associated Press the following day, appears to indicate that Obama is moving away from the 16-month plan he had vowed during the campaign to implement if elected. But on closer examination, it doesn't necessarily refer to any action by Obama or to anything that happened at the Jan. 21 meeting.
The real story of the leak by Petraeus is that the most powerful figure in the U.S. military has tried to shape the media coverage of Obama and combat troop withdrawal from Iraq to advance his policy agenda - and, very likely, his personal political interests as well.
This writer became aware of Petraeus's effort to influence the coverage of Obama's unfolding policy on troop withdrawal when a military source close to the general, who insisted on anonymity, offered the Petraeus account on Feb. 4. The military officer was responding to the IPS story 'Generals Seek to Reverse Obama Withdrawal Decision' published two days earlier.
The story reported that Obama had rejected Petraeus's argument against a 16-month withdrawal option at the meeting and asked for a withdrawal plan within that time frame, and that Petraeus had been unhappy with the outcome of the meeting.
It also reported that Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and retired Army general Jack Keane, a close ally of Petraeus, had both made public statements indicating a determination to get Obama to abandon the 16-month plan.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45720
Andrew Coyne's Lament for the Late Conservative Party
It's something I've heard from some of my Conservative friends - a mix of anger, frustration and disappointment at what has become of their party under the leadership of Stephen Harper. But Andrew Coyne sums it up best in the latest MacLeans:
Think back to the late 1990s, and what the Reform party then stood for. Not just balanced budgets, but balanced budget laws. Referendums—on tax increases, on constitutional amendments, on citizens’ initiatives. Tight controls on spending. A flat tax. Abolition of corporate subsidies, and of their “regional development” dispensaries. Reform of employment insurance, of the Canada Pension Plan, of the CBC. A federation of equal provinces and citizens. An elected Senate. Free votes in Parliament. More power for ordinary MPs. Open nomination races at the riding level, free of interference by the leader’s office. Fixed election dates.
By the time Stockwell Day was running for prime minister in 2000—the Canadian Alliance having replaced the Reform party, and Day having replaced Preston Manning—a third or more of these were already gone. But the pace only quickened from there. By the time of the 2004 election, the newly formed Conservative party was still vaguely interested in abolishing corporate welfare, and still mentioned tax cuts. But mostly it was interested in telling you what it wouldn’t do: it wouldn’t cut spending, for instance, or much else that might upset someone, somewhere.
The party’s founding policy convention in 2005 took things still further: gone was any mention of referendums, for example. Spending cuts were out; subsidies were in. The courting of Quebec nationalists, which Harper had once warned against, had begun in earnest. Probably the delegates thought they were making a prudent set of concessions to reality, in a bid to establish themselves, once and for all, as a centrist party, ready to form a government. But in fact they were only softening things up for the next round. The accession to power, after so many years, did not mark the end of the party’s concessions. It merely provided it with the means to make still more, each more jaw-dropping than the last: on Quebec, on Afghanistan, on confidence votes, on foreign takeovers, on fixed election dates, on appointing senators, on corporate bailouts, until at last we arrived at last week’s establishment of a regional development agency for southern Ontario.
So they’ve given up everything they ever stood for, and what have they got in return? Pretty close to nada. They’re stalled in the polls, again. The fabled majority remains firmly out of reach. Those disposed to mistrust them are as suspicious as ever, while their own followers are now thoroughly demoralized. They have not moved to the centre; they have only succeeded in shifting the entire political spectrum to the left. The Quebec experiment, likewise, is in tatters, Quebec more nationalist than ever. The destruction is total. The failure is absolute.
Once, long ago, there was an answer: a new party. But you can only do that once: no one’s got the energy to climb that hill again. The harsh fact is that there is no longer anything resembling a conservative party in this country, nor any prospect of forming one. And conservatives have only themselves to blame.
Think back to the late 1990s, and what the Reform party then stood for. Not just balanced budgets, but balanced budget laws. Referendums—on tax increases, on constitutional amendments, on citizens’ initiatives. Tight controls on spending. A flat tax. Abolition of corporate subsidies, and of their “regional development” dispensaries. Reform of employment insurance, of the Canada Pension Plan, of the CBC. A federation of equal provinces and citizens. An elected Senate. Free votes in Parliament. More power for ordinary MPs. Open nomination races at the riding level, free of interference by the leader’s office. Fixed election dates.
By the time Stockwell Day was running for prime minister in 2000—the Canadian Alliance having replaced the Reform party, and Day having replaced Preston Manning—a third or more of these were already gone. But the pace only quickened from there. By the time of the 2004 election, the newly formed Conservative party was still vaguely interested in abolishing corporate welfare, and still mentioned tax cuts. But mostly it was interested in telling you what it wouldn’t do: it wouldn’t cut spending, for instance, or much else that might upset someone, somewhere.
The party’s founding policy convention in 2005 took things still further: gone was any mention of referendums, for example. Spending cuts were out; subsidies were in. The courting of Quebec nationalists, which Harper had once warned against, had begun in earnest. Probably the delegates thought they were making a prudent set of concessions to reality, in a bid to establish themselves, once and for all, as a centrist party, ready to form a government. But in fact they were only softening things up for the next round. The accession to power, after so many years, did not mark the end of the party’s concessions. It merely provided it with the means to make still more, each more jaw-dropping than the last: on Quebec, on Afghanistan, on confidence votes, on foreign takeovers, on fixed election dates, on appointing senators, on corporate bailouts, until at last we arrived at last week’s establishment of a regional development agency for southern Ontario.
So they’ve given up everything they ever stood for, and what have they got in return? Pretty close to nada. They’re stalled in the polls, again. The fabled majority remains firmly out of reach. Those disposed to mistrust them are as suspicious as ever, while their own followers are now thoroughly demoralized. They have not moved to the centre; they have only succeeded in shifting the entire political spectrum to the left. The Quebec experiment, likewise, is in tatters, Quebec more nationalist than ever. The destruction is total. The failure is absolute.
Once, long ago, there was an answer: a new party. But you can only do that once: no one’s got the energy to climb that hill again. The harsh fact is that there is no longer anything resembling a conservative party in this country, nor any prospect of forming one. And conservatives have only themselves to blame.
Monday, February 09, 2009
Defending His Honour. What Honour?
I figured it wouldn't take long before details began leaking out about Stephen Harper's abandoned defamation suit against the Libs. 72-hours was about right.
A big question was whether the Libs paid a settlement to Harper to make the suit go away. According to the Toronto Star, insiders say there was no payment - no damages, no costs.
Why did Harper, who had pledged to sue the Libs to restore not just his but his family's reputation, run for cover? Again, according to the Star, it seems Harp wasn't eager to hand over documents and answer some pertinent questions about just what did go on in the Cadman affair. The paper claims that side dispute was nearing a court hearing when Steve folded.
Harper just may have placed a pretty low value on his reputation but he did get something useful out of his suit. While the matter was before the court, it prevented the Libs from using it against Harper in the last election campaign.
A big question was whether the Libs paid a settlement to Harper to make the suit go away. According to the Toronto Star, insiders say there was no payment - no damages, no costs.
Why did Harper, who had pledged to sue the Libs to restore not just his but his family's reputation, run for cover? Again, according to the Star, it seems Harp wasn't eager to hand over documents and answer some pertinent questions about just what did go on in the Cadman affair. The paper claims that side dispute was nearing a court hearing when Steve folded.
Harper just may have placed a pretty low value on his reputation but he did get something useful out of his suit. While the matter was before the court, it prevented the Libs from using it against Harper in the last election campaign.
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Scientists Massing For Assault On Politicians
Next month. Copenhagen. Scientists from around the world intend to rally to shake politicians out of their stupor over global warming while there's still time to act.
From The Guardian:
Climate experts from across the world will gather in Copenhagen next month to agree a stark message to policy makers, which they hope will break the political deadlock on efforts to curb rising temperatures. The meeting follows "disturbing" studies that suggest global warming could strike harder and faster than expected.
Katherine Richardson, a marine biologist at the University of Copenhagen, who is organising next month's event, said: "This is not a regular scientific conference. This is a deliberate attempt to influence policy."
One issue to be addressed next month is whether it is still possible to limit average global temperature rise to 2C, which the EU defines as dangerous. Richardson said a key question for politicians is the balance between efforts to limit warming and steps to adapt to the likely consequences. Watson has warned that nations should prepare for an average rise of 4C. The IPCC said temperatures could soar by up to 6C by 2100 if current rates of carbon pollution continue.
A number of "disturbing" trends seem to have accelerated since the IPCC report was published, he said, such as a decrease in the amount of carbon pollution absorbed in the oceans, and an increase in Greenland ice melt. But he denied that the new findings made the IPCC report obsolete. "They are not so radical as to undermine the report. They reinforce it."
Truth be told, if the IPCC reports were a mine canary you would wind up with a lot of dead miners. The reports are consensus based, meaning that their findings - and forecasts (or warnings) - are significantly diluted by just a handful of holdouts. What you're reading are the results the holdouts are willing to accept. That's why the reports continuously understate the magnitude of the problem and the pace of its onset.
But don't worry, we have Stephen Harper to step in to protect Canada and other nations. Sorry, take that back, you should worry.
From The Guardian:
Climate experts from across the world will gather in Copenhagen next month to agree a stark message to policy makers, which they hope will break the political deadlock on efforts to curb rising temperatures. The meeting follows "disturbing" studies that suggest global warming could strike harder and faster than expected.
Katherine Richardson, a marine biologist at the University of Copenhagen, who is organising next month's event, said: "This is not a regular scientific conference. This is a deliberate attempt to influence policy."
One issue to be addressed next month is whether it is still possible to limit average global temperature rise to 2C, which the EU defines as dangerous. Richardson said a key question for politicians is the balance between efforts to limit warming and steps to adapt to the likely consequences. Watson has warned that nations should prepare for an average rise of 4C. The IPCC said temperatures could soar by up to 6C by 2100 if current rates of carbon pollution continue.
A number of "disturbing" trends seem to have accelerated since the IPCC report was published, he said, such as a decrease in the amount of carbon pollution absorbed in the oceans, and an increase in Greenland ice melt. But he denied that the new findings made the IPCC report obsolete. "They are not so radical as to undermine the report. They reinforce it."
Truth be told, if the IPCC reports were a mine canary you would wind up with a lot of dead miners. The reports are consensus based, meaning that their findings - and forecasts (or warnings) - are significantly diluted by just a handful of holdouts. What you're reading are the results the holdouts are willing to accept. That's why the reports continuously understate the magnitude of the problem and the pace of its onset.
But don't worry, we have Stephen Harper to step in to protect Canada and other nations. Sorry, take that back, you should worry.
"Attainable Goals" - Obama's Focus for Afghanistan
"It doesn't need to be a democracy, just secure." That's how a senior NATO official described the new, lower goalposts for Afghanistan. From The Guardian:
Richard Holbrooke, Barack Obama's new envoy for Afghanistan, General James Jones, the new White House national security adviser, and General David Petraeus, the new commander of the Afghan campaign, all stressed that the US president's policy on the Taliban and al-Qaida would be governed by "attainable goals" matched by "adequate resources".
In the first major foreign policy speech from the new administration, the vice-president, Joe Biden, told a security conference in Munich that the strategic review on Afghanistan under way in Washington would "make sure that our goals are clear and achievable".
Notable by its absence in any of the speeches from the American team was any mention of building democracy in Afghanistan. Instead, the emphasis was on creating sustainable security to try to prevent the Taliban from extending their grip on the country.
Is this surrender, a capitulation of the neo-con vision of secular democracy for Afghanistan? Perhaps but, seven years down the neo-con road, you have to ask just how well that vision was advancing?
Obama's pragmatism surfaced at a moment when the United States and Britain are renewing calls for NATO members to increase troop support in Afghanistan.
British defense minister John Hutton argued , "This is not an aberration. This is the pattern of future conflicts. I do not believe we are properly preparing for it."
Nato should show a "wartime mentality" over the campaign in Afghanistan, but instead it possessed a "peacetime culture obsessed with process", he added.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/08/obama-afghanistan-us-foreign-policy
Richard Holbrooke, Barack Obama's new envoy for Afghanistan, General James Jones, the new White House national security adviser, and General David Petraeus, the new commander of the Afghan campaign, all stressed that the US president's policy on the Taliban and al-Qaida would be governed by "attainable goals" matched by "adequate resources".
In the first major foreign policy speech from the new administration, the vice-president, Joe Biden, told a security conference in Munich that the strategic review on Afghanistan under way in Washington would "make sure that our goals are clear and achievable".
Notable by its absence in any of the speeches from the American team was any mention of building democracy in Afghanistan. Instead, the emphasis was on creating sustainable security to try to prevent the Taliban from extending their grip on the country.
Is this surrender, a capitulation of the neo-con vision of secular democracy for Afghanistan? Perhaps but, seven years down the neo-con road, you have to ask just how well that vision was advancing?
Obama's pragmatism surfaced at a moment when the United States and Britain are renewing calls for NATO members to increase troop support in Afghanistan.
British defense minister John Hutton argued , "This is not an aberration. This is the pattern of future conflicts. I do not believe we are properly preparing for it."
Nato should show a "wartime mentality" over the campaign in Afghanistan, but instead it possessed a "peacetime culture obsessed with process", he added.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/08/obama-afghanistan-us-foreign-policy
Harper's Newest No Class Act - Mike Duffy
Maybe it's the short person thing, you know - the Napoleon complex. Or maybe it's just the obese, really greasy short person thing. Whatever, Harper's latest Senatorial hog, Mike Duffy, has shown a real fondness for rolling in his own - well, you know.
His Dwarfship has been running his mouth like a punk on crack ever since he reached the Senate, spewing homo-erotic fantasies of unruly Eastern premiers sporting with each other in bed. If this is what the porcine paddy chooses to mark his first speech in the Senate, one can only shudder to imagine what curious thoughts must go through his tiny warped mind when he's at home, alone.
I mean, let's face it. This is Mike Duffy, the bald little troll himself. But, dirty old man in a raincoat sick as his Senate speech might have been, his performance on the weekend was a gut-buster. He fed a Conservative gathering in Halifax on Saturday this hilarious line about his appointment, "it is not a position I sought, but it is a challenge that I accept with enthusiasm."
As the Conservative Television Network's one-man pitchman for the Harper regime, Duffy doesn't need to explain to anyone how he got his hard-earned Sentate appointment. Maybe that's how he developed his strange fixations too.
His Dwarfship has been running his mouth like a punk on crack ever since he reached the Senate, spewing homo-erotic fantasies of unruly Eastern premiers sporting with each other in bed. If this is what the porcine paddy chooses to mark his first speech in the Senate, one can only shudder to imagine what curious thoughts must go through his tiny warped mind when he's at home, alone.
I mean, let's face it. This is Mike Duffy, the bald little troll himself. But, dirty old man in a raincoat sick as his Senate speech might have been, his performance on the weekend was a gut-buster. He fed a Conservative gathering in Halifax on Saturday this hilarious line about his appointment, "it is not a position I sought, but it is a challenge that I accept with enthusiasm."
As the Conservative Television Network's one-man pitchman for the Harper regime, Duffy doesn't need to explain to anyone how he got his hard-earned Sentate appointment. Maybe that's how he developed his strange fixations too.
Friday, February 06, 2009
What Lurks Behind Harper's Capitulation?
Okay, we all know that Stephen Harper has dropped his defamation lawsuit against the Liberals over the Cadman affair. No costs, no apology, no injunction. No explanation.
The story, released late in the Friday news cycle, raises more questions than it answers. Harper's lawyer, Rick Dearden of Gowlings, withdrew as Harper's counsel last November. A lawyer from a prominent Canadian firm ditches a sitting prime minister? No explanation.
And then, the prime minister retains new counsel who drops the lawsuit altogether? No explanation.
There's a huge back story here. Watch for snippets to leak out in the weeks to come.
http://www.canada.com/news/Lawyer+representing+Grits+withdraws/968058/story.html
The story, released late in the Friday news cycle, raises more questions than it answers. Harper's lawyer, Rick Dearden of Gowlings, withdrew as Harper's counsel last November. A lawyer from a prominent Canadian firm ditches a sitting prime minister? No explanation.
And then, the prime minister retains new counsel who drops the lawsuit altogether? No explanation.
There's a huge back story here. Watch for snippets to leak out in the weeks to come.
http://www.canada.com/news/Lawyer+representing+Grits+withdraws/968058/story.html
Is Chuck Cadman Speaking From the Grave?
Strange to say the least. Harper's defamation counsel, Rick Dearden, withdraws from the PM's case against the Libs and, on a quiet, late Friday afternoon, Harper's people announce the case is settled - no costs, apparently no damages and no injunction - dropped by all appearances.
Imagine a Canadian lawyer representing a sitting prime minister withdrawing - in layman's terms, firing his client.
The news isn't the fact that Harper "settled" but what was so serious that Dearden considered he could no longer represent the prime minister of Canada? Dearden is a partner in a prominent law firm, Gowlings, and it's inconceivable that he would have fired Harper without the approval of the firm's partners.
There are several reasons why lawyers withdraw from cases. The most common is that the client hasn't come up with a suitable retainer - hardly likely in this case. Many of the alternate reasons are far more spicey than that but it would be unfair to Mr. Harper to even canvas those without knowing more of what transpired between Harper and Dearden and Mr. Dearden, quite properly, isn't talking.
Dearden gave Harper the boot shortly after it was revealed by Harper's own experts that the tape of the PM discussing the Cadman case had not been doctored as alleged by Harper.
Maybe Chuck Cadman has returned, speaking from the grave.
Special Ed Stelmach Rides to Rescue the Oil Patch
Alberta's premier has unveiled his own stimulus initiative - tax breaks and drilling incentives for small and mid-size energy companies.
"The future of the energy sector is of critical importance to this city, but as well to our province," Premier Ed Stelmach told a Calgary Chamber of Commerce luncheon.
"The chill in global financial systems is impacting Alberta families and businesses. As government, we can't control our global financial markets or the price of commodities. But there are things we can do."
Thursday's government lifeline is the third financial respite offered to the oilpatch in less than a year.
The oilpatch promptly bit Stelmach in the ass.
"It's meaningless, there's no substance to it, it's not going to do anything," said Marshall Abbott, chief executive of Sabretooth Energy Ltd. "I don't see any relief coming any time soon."
The Stelmach government's oilpatch bailout drew sharp criticism from the Pembina Institute, an environmental policy think-tank.
Marlo Raynolds, executive director, said the government should instead invest in renewable energy development to diversify its petroleum-dependent economy.
"Providing corporate welfare or corporate handouts to a fossil fuel industry in my mind goes directly against where the rest of the world is going,"Raynolds said.
"The future of the energy sector is of critical importance to this city, but as well to our province," Premier Ed Stelmach told a Calgary Chamber of Commerce luncheon.
"The chill in global financial systems is impacting Alberta families and businesses. As government, we can't control our global financial markets or the price of commodities. But there are things we can do."
Thursday's government lifeline is the third financial respite offered to the oilpatch in less than a year.
The oilpatch promptly bit Stelmach in the ass.
"It's meaningless, there's no substance to it, it's not going to do anything," said Marshall Abbott, chief executive of Sabretooth Energy Ltd. "I don't see any relief coming any time soon."
The Stelmach government's oilpatch bailout drew sharp criticism from the Pembina Institute, an environmental policy think-tank.
Marlo Raynolds, executive director, said the government should instead invest in renewable energy development to diversify its petroleum-dependent economy.
"Providing corporate welfare or corporate handouts to a fossil fuel industry in my mind goes directly against where the rest of the world is going,"Raynolds said.
Harper's Stimulus Hammer
Undaunted by the loss of a mere 129,000 Canadian jobs in January, Furious Leader Stevie Harper has announced his government will issue each newly liberated ex-employee a lovely hammer. That way they can all find someone who hasn't yet lost his/her job yet and see if they can get work nailing a deck on his/her cottage.
Before you know it, everybody who still has a job will have a dandy new deck or rec room and all those idle unwashed will be hammering their way straight into the heart of free enterprise.
Harp said he welcomed the news of January's massive unemployment because it guaranteed a steady supply of cheap labour for homeowners. Yippee!
Best of all, said Stiffie Steve, the unemployment numbers south of the border were even worse. The Americans lost 598,000 jobs contrasted with only 129,000 up here. Steve urges Canadians not to trouble their delicate minds comparing America's population to Canada. There's no good to be had in realizing that, on a per capita basis, our job losses are far more than double the American losses.
Steve took a moment to pat himself on the back for his mega-deficit budget which his government expects to "create or maintain 190,000 jobs" which number we'll probably exceed in about a week from now.
Before you know it, everybody who still has a job will have a dandy new deck or rec room and all those idle unwashed will be hammering their way straight into the heart of free enterprise.
Harp said he welcomed the news of January's massive unemployment because it guaranteed a steady supply of cheap labour for homeowners. Yippee!
Best of all, said Stiffie Steve, the unemployment numbers south of the border were even worse. The Americans lost 598,000 jobs contrasted with only 129,000 up here. Steve urges Canadians not to trouble their delicate minds comparing America's population to Canada. There's no good to be had in realizing that, on a per capita basis, our job losses are far more than double the American losses.
Steve took a moment to pat himself on the back for his mega-deficit budget which his government expects to "create or maintain 190,000 jobs" which number we'll probably exceed in about a week from now.
America's Oh So Greasy CEO's Fight Back
The Barons of Wall Street, having just pocketed their 2009 bonuses filched out of taxpayer-funded bailout monies, are feeling the heat. They're also rankled that Obama plans to cap their salaries at $500,000. So, they're fighting back, impudently arguing that why should Obama get a better deal than he's allowing them?
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/CEOProfiles/Story?id=6806414&page=1
Here's an idea. Yes, he does get some neat perks but he's the friggin' President of the United States of America and you're a bunch of greedy, moronic sphincters who've plunged the world into a recession that's running straight up to the edge of a possible depression.
Surely there must be enough lamp posts to hang all these bastards.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/CEOProfiles/Story?id=6806414&page=1
Here's an idea. Yes, he does get some neat perks but he's the friggin' President of the United States of America and you're a bunch of greedy, moronic sphincters who've plunged the world into a recession that's running straight up to the edge of a possible depression.
Surely there must be enough lamp posts to hang all these bastards.
Job Losses Worse in Canada than US?
The numbers don't look good. Sure the US lost a staggering 598,000 jobs in January. But, in the much smaller True North, Canada lost 129,000 jobs.
On the basis of our admittedly simplistic 10:1 comparison ratio, we'd have been keeping up with our American Joneses if we dropped 60,000. Put it the other way, the Americans would have been keeping up with us if they'd lost 1.3-million jobs.
Now a really informative comparison is far more complex than a simple numerical ratio but it sounds like, bad as the whipping America took may be, Canadian workers got flayed.
On the basis of our admittedly simplistic 10:1 comparison ratio, we'd have been keeping up with our American Joneses if we dropped 60,000. Put it the other way, the Americans would have been keeping up with us if they'd lost 1.3-million jobs.
Now a really informative comparison is far more complex than a simple numerical ratio but it sounds like, bad as the whipping America took may be, Canadian workers got flayed.
When Dinosaurs Rampage Like Lemmings
Having played a powerful role in facilitating the global economic collapse and recession/depression that now threatens the world, Congressional Republicans - aided and abetted by a healthy smattering of Democrats - seem determined to finish the job, and America, by gutting Obama's recover/stimulus initiative.
Nobel laureate economist, Paul Krugman, sounds the alarm in today's New York Times. Too bad nobody seems to be listening in Washington:
...Even if a major stimulus bill does pass the Senate, there’s a real risk that important parts of the original plan, especially aid to state and local governments, will have been emasculated.
Somehow, Washington has lost any sense of what’s at stake — of the reality that we may well be falling into an economic abyss, and that if we do, it will be very hard to get out again.
It’s hard to exaggerate how much economic trouble we’re in. The crisis began with housing, but the implosion of the Bush-era housing bubble has set economic dominoes falling not just in the United States, but around the world.
Consumers, their wealth decimated and their optimism shattered by collapsing home prices and a sliding stock market, have cut back their spending and sharply increased their saving — a good thing in the long run, but a huge blow to the economy right now. Developers of commercial real estate, watching rents fall and financing costs soar, are slashing their investment plans. Businesses are canceling plans to expand capacity, since they aren’t selling enough to use the capacity they have. And exports, which were one of the U.S. economy’s few areas of strength over the past couple of years, are now plunging as the financial crisis hits our trading partners.
...We’re already closer to outright deflation than at any point since the Great Depression. In particular, the private sector is experiencing widespread wage cuts for the first time since the 1930s, and there will be much more of that if the economy continues to weaken.
As the great American economist Irving Fisher pointed out almost 80 years ago, deflation, once started, tends to feed on itself. As dollar incomes fall in the face of a depressed economy, the burden of debt becomes harder to bear, while the expectation of further price declines discourages investment spending. These effects of deflation depress the economy further, which leads to more deflation, and so on.
...It’s time for Mr. Obama to go on the offensive. Above all, he must not shy away from pointing out that those who stand in the way of his plan, in the name of a discredited economic philosophy, are putting the nation’s future at risk. The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/opinion/06krugman.html?em
Nobel laureate economist, Paul Krugman, sounds the alarm in today's New York Times. Too bad nobody seems to be listening in Washington:
...Even if a major stimulus bill does pass the Senate, there’s a real risk that important parts of the original plan, especially aid to state and local governments, will have been emasculated.
Somehow, Washington has lost any sense of what’s at stake — of the reality that we may well be falling into an economic abyss, and that if we do, it will be very hard to get out again.
It’s hard to exaggerate how much economic trouble we’re in. The crisis began with housing, but the implosion of the Bush-era housing bubble has set economic dominoes falling not just in the United States, but around the world.
Consumers, their wealth decimated and their optimism shattered by collapsing home prices and a sliding stock market, have cut back their spending and sharply increased their saving — a good thing in the long run, but a huge blow to the economy right now. Developers of commercial real estate, watching rents fall and financing costs soar, are slashing their investment plans. Businesses are canceling plans to expand capacity, since they aren’t selling enough to use the capacity they have. And exports, which were one of the U.S. economy’s few areas of strength over the past couple of years, are now plunging as the financial crisis hits our trading partners.
...We’re already closer to outright deflation than at any point since the Great Depression. In particular, the private sector is experiencing widespread wage cuts for the first time since the 1930s, and there will be much more of that if the economy continues to weaken.
As the great American economist Irving Fisher pointed out almost 80 years ago, deflation, once started, tends to feed on itself. As dollar incomes fall in the face of a depressed economy, the burden of debt becomes harder to bear, while the expectation of further price declines discourages investment spending. These effects of deflation depress the economy further, which leads to more deflation, and so on.
...It’s time for Mr. Obama to go on the offensive. Above all, he must not shy away from pointing out that those who stand in the way of his plan, in the name of a discredited economic philosophy, are putting the nation’s future at risk. The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/opinion/06krugman.html?em
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Tories Gaming Infrastructure Spending
Nearly two out of five Canadians who could bother to show up at the polls voted for them so that explains why 75% of federal infrastructure spending since 2007 has gone to ridings held by Conservative MPs. From CBC News:
The Opposition party's analysis of the $1 billion dispensed from the Building Canada fund found 21 of 26 projects receiving money are in ridings that elected Conservative MPs, Liberal infrastructure critic Gerard Kennedy said.
Kennedy told the House of Commons during Thursday's question period that it leaves the majority of Canadians living in opposition ridings "massively shortchanged."
"Will the minister agree to stop punishing people who did not vote Conservative and to use infrastructure funds to create jobs fairly for all Canadians?" Kennedy said.
Not to be outdone by the likes of Gerard Kennedy, Liberal interim leader Michael Ignatieff puffed himself up, leapt to his feet, and went after Stephen Harper, claiming, "I'm an impatient man." Oh dear.
"I can't help but find I'm an impatient man," Ignatieff told the House. "Can the prime minister assure us that his infrastructure spending will benefit all Canadians, no matter where they live or who they vote for?"
The Opposition party's analysis of the $1 billion dispensed from the Building Canada fund found 21 of 26 projects receiving money are in ridings that elected Conservative MPs, Liberal infrastructure critic Gerard Kennedy said.
Kennedy told the House of Commons during Thursday's question period that it leaves the majority of Canadians living in opposition ridings "massively shortchanged."
"Will the minister agree to stop punishing people who did not vote Conservative and to use infrastructure funds to create jobs fairly for all Canadians?" Kennedy said.
Not to be outdone by the likes of Gerard Kennedy, Liberal interim leader Michael Ignatieff puffed himself up, leapt to his feet, and went after Stephen Harper, claiming, "I'm an impatient man." Oh dear.
"I can't help but find I'm an impatient man," Ignatieff told the House. "Can the prime minister assure us that his infrastructure spending will benefit all Canadians, no matter where they live or who they vote for?"
Harper's "Real, Measurable & Verifiable" Environmentalism a Load of Hooey!
Canada's new Environment Commissioner Scott Vaughn has slammed the Harper cabal's laughable programmes to combat global warming. From The Globe & Mail:
Adjectives such as weak, poor, negligible and disappointing pepper the scathing review of two central and costly pillars of the Conservative climate-change plan.
As a division of the Auditor-General's office, the commissioner examined two of the marquee programs aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the Harper government's Turning the Corner plan.
“Environment Canada has made a claim of expected results even though it is very unlikely that it will be able to claim real, measurable and verifiable results,” Mr. Vaughan writes in his report. “Trying to manage the environment without a coherent measurement system is like trying to guide Canada's economy in the absence of indicators like the gross domestic product, inflation, interest rates and unemployment data.”
But wait, there's more! Auditor General Sheila Fraser has announced she'll be auditing the Harper-Ignatieff stimulus budget, keeping her eye on just how those Deficit Bucks are squandered.
Steve Harper. Not serious about the environment? Say it ain't so!
The Environment Commissioner's audit report, released simultaneously Thursday with an Auditor-General's report, found there is no evidence to support the government's emission reduction claims associated with the $1.5-billion Clean Air and Climate Change Trust Fund and the $365-million Public Transit Tax Credit.
Auditors found the original estimates of success for these programs were flawed. For instance, the government claims its $1.5-billion trust fund transfer to the provinces will eliminate 80 megatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.
“The department conducted almost no analysis to support that figure, and did not perform key types of analysis,” states the commissioner's report.
As for the claim that handing out tax credits to bus users would reduce Canada's annual emissions by 220,000 tonnes, that estimate has now been reduced to 35,000 tonnes, a mere 16 per cent of what Ottawa originally claimed would be accomplished.
“Given the lowered figure, the Tax Credit will have a negligible impact on Canada's greenhouse gas emissions,” the report states.
Well, it's a good thing that Michael Ignatieff has placed Harper "on probation." That should get us back on track in no time. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090205.wPOLag_enviro0205/BNStory/politics/home
California Drying
Unless you've driven through it, it's hard to fathom California's vast agricultural lands. It comes in the form of miles upon countless miles of immaculately laid out fields, orchards and vineyards. It's why California provides fully half of America's supply of fresh vegetables, fruits and nuts. We in Canada also get our share of this bounty.
What's unclear is how much longer this will last.
America's new energy secretary, Nobel Prize winning scientist Steve Chu warns that, if global warming continues, California's agricultural production could literally be wiped out by the turn of the century. From The Christian Science Monitor:
Mr. Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who ran the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory before joining the Obama administration, said that warming temperatures could eliminate up to 90 percent of the Sierra snowpack, which provides water to many of the state’s 76,000 farms.
“I don’t think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen,” he told the newspaper. “We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California.”
“I don’t actually see how they can keep their cities going,” he added.
California is now entering its third consecutive year of massive drought. There have been several reports of agricultural cutbacks this year.
http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2009/02/05/energy-secretary-climate-change-could-wipe-out-calif-farming/
Steve of Sparta
Maybe it's not Harper's fault. Maybe he just missed the lecture about coming home with your shield - or on it.
The way a lot of prominent Cons are dissing Harpo over his half-assed stimulus budget, you would think he'd been caught buggering the Bishop.
It's plain that, to a lot of Stevie's nearest and dearest, the far-right clique that floats in the shallow end of the Conservative gene pool, their guy should have said "no deficits" and stared down the opposition on a confidence vote.
But Sad Steve realized that would mean his cherished, gummy government would fall and his cold, discredited corpse would be ferried home atop his shield. When it comes to that sort of thing, Steve is no Spartan. Harp doesn't mind spartan spending, especially on social programmes, but standing like a Spartan - not so much.
Steve dropped his shield and fled but, like a coward, he didn't have the courage to do the right thing either. Instead he introduced a miserable, horribly flawed stimulus/deficit budget that, by virtue of his total lack of vision, will wind up heavy on the deficit and very, very light on stimulus.
The way a lot of prominent Cons are dissing Harpo over his half-assed stimulus budget, you would think he'd been caught buggering the Bishop.
It's plain that, to a lot of Stevie's nearest and dearest, the far-right clique that floats in the shallow end of the Conservative gene pool, their guy should have said "no deficits" and stared down the opposition on a confidence vote.
But Sad Steve realized that would mean his cherished, gummy government would fall and his cold, discredited corpse would be ferried home atop his shield. When it comes to that sort of thing, Steve is no Spartan. Harp doesn't mind spartan spending, especially on social programmes, but standing like a Spartan - not so much.
Steve dropped his shield and fled but, like a coward, he didn't have the courage to do the right thing either. Instead he introduced a miserable, horribly flawed stimulus/deficit budget that, by virtue of his total lack of vision, will wind up heavy on the deficit and very, very light on stimulus.
A Rose By Any Other Name
The Harper-Ignatieff budget will probably bring not a few surprises, one of them, scandal.
James Travers, writing in today's Toronto Star, recalls what our Conservative and Liberal leaders won't or can't - that tax rebate programmes like the recovery/stimulus budget's provision for home or cottage owners, the 3-billion dollar Home Renovation Tax Credit, usually end up mired in fraud, abuse and scandal:
Tax expenditure programs, as the bean counters call them, have given bureaucrats fits for as long as politicians have used the Canada Revenue system to pursue, if not necessarily achieve, economic and social purposes beyond raising funds.
In theory, credits and rebates are government programs by a less cumbersome, more private sector-oriented method. In practice, they are as difficult to target as the results are hard to measure and, all too frequently, lead to screaming headlines splayed over embarrassing revelations.
Forgetting the worst of what so often goes wrong is easy when a government is fighting for its life, as Stephen Harper's was in last week's budget. So it's understandable that Conservatives, in their headlong rush to spray stimulus at recession, ignored the still seeping wound of Liberal experience.
Even if there are significant differences between writing cheques and granting credits, there's no better time for the rest of us to revisit the Chrétien administration's accident-prone scheme to insulate vulnerable Canadians from rising home heating prices. That 2001 plan went so badly off the rails that the auditor general's reprise ricocheted between comedy and farce. Of the $1.45 billion spent, no more than $350 million went to needy low-and-moderate income families. Worse, cheques were written for 4,000 people living outside the country, 7,500 to the dead and 1,600 in prison.
Renovation incentives pose other problems than mailing cheques. It's also true that since then layers of accountability, some stifling, have been added. Still, it would be born-yesterday naive not to recognize that the two schemes have too much in common for taxpayer comfort. Among the shared denominators are openness to fraud, Swiss cheese controls and, worst of all, the familiar federal illusion that big spending and positive outcomes are synonymous.
What I liked best about Travers' column was his apt description of the Home Renovation Tax Credit scheme as "re-gifting tax dollars to the fortunate few willing and able to hire in hard times."
James Travers, writing in today's Toronto Star, recalls what our Conservative and Liberal leaders won't or can't - that tax rebate programmes like the recovery/stimulus budget's provision for home or cottage owners, the 3-billion dollar Home Renovation Tax Credit, usually end up mired in fraud, abuse and scandal:
Tax expenditure programs, as the bean counters call them, have given bureaucrats fits for as long as politicians have used the Canada Revenue system to pursue, if not necessarily achieve, economic and social purposes beyond raising funds.
In theory, credits and rebates are government programs by a less cumbersome, more private sector-oriented method. In practice, they are as difficult to target as the results are hard to measure and, all too frequently, lead to screaming headlines splayed over embarrassing revelations.
Forgetting the worst of what so often goes wrong is easy when a government is fighting for its life, as Stephen Harper's was in last week's budget. So it's understandable that Conservatives, in their headlong rush to spray stimulus at recession, ignored the still seeping wound of Liberal experience.
Even if there are significant differences between writing cheques and granting credits, there's no better time for the rest of us to revisit the Chrétien administration's accident-prone scheme to insulate vulnerable Canadians from rising home heating prices. That 2001 plan went so badly off the rails that the auditor general's reprise ricocheted between comedy and farce. Of the $1.45 billion spent, no more than $350 million went to needy low-and-moderate income families. Worse, cheques were written for 4,000 people living outside the country, 7,500 to the dead and 1,600 in prison.
Renovation incentives pose other problems than mailing cheques. It's also true that since then layers of accountability, some stifling, have been added. Still, it would be born-yesterday naive not to recognize that the two schemes have too much in common for taxpayer comfort. Among the shared denominators are openness to fraud, Swiss cheese controls and, worst of all, the familiar federal illusion that big spending and positive outcomes are synonymous.
What I liked best about Travers' column was his apt description of the Home Renovation Tax Credit scheme as "re-gifting tax dollars to the fortunate few willing and able to hire in hard times."
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
The End of the Road for the Palestinians
Less than a week from now Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to become the next leader of Israel. Judging by his pre-vote bombast, Netanyahu may just complete the settler takeover of the West Bank that progressed so rampantly during the Bush years. From The Guardian:
Under Netanyahu, leader of the Likud party, Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are likely to grow more rapidly, putting Israel at odds with the new US administration.
In a speech, Netanyahu said that rather than peace talks with the Palestinians about giving up territory, he favoured economic development – a plan of "economic peace". He has stopped short of endorsing a two-state solution that would see the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
It is a stance that is likely to draw criticism from Washington, particularly from new Middle East envoy George Mitchell, who wrote a report in 2001 explicitly calling for a halt to all settlement growth. Since then the Jewish settler population has increased significantly until today it stands at nearly 500,000 settlers in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
Netanyahu has said he will not be bound by current prime minister Ehud Olmert's commitment to withdraw from some West Bank settlements and from large parts of the occupied territory as a whole. "I will not keep Olmert's commitments to withdraw and I won't evacuate settlements," Netanyahu was quoted as saying last week in the Ha'aretz newspaper. " Those understandings are invalid and unimportant."
Netanyahu presents a direct challenge to the Obama administration, one that could lead to a showdown. America alone has the means to compel Israel to comply with international law and end the illegal occupation of the West Bank. It's a challenge that grows harder by the day and unless the Israeli government is really allowing this expansion with any genuine willingness to force settler relocation to Israeli territory, Obama may have to engage Netanyahu in a test of will not previously experienced by Israeli leaders.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/04/israelandthepalestinians-usa
Under Netanyahu, leader of the Likud party, Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are likely to grow more rapidly, putting Israel at odds with the new US administration.
In a speech, Netanyahu said that rather than peace talks with the Palestinians about giving up territory, he favoured economic development – a plan of "economic peace". He has stopped short of endorsing a two-state solution that would see the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
It is a stance that is likely to draw criticism from Washington, particularly from new Middle East envoy George Mitchell, who wrote a report in 2001 explicitly calling for a halt to all settlement growth. Since then the Jewish settler population has increased significantly until today it stands at nearly 500,000 settlers in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
Netanyahu has said he will not be bound by current prime minister Ehud Olmert's commitment to withdraw from some West Bank settlements and from large parts of the occupied territory as a whole. "I will not keep Olmert's commitments to withdraw and I won't evacuate settlements," Netanyahu was quoted as saying last week in the Ha'aretz newspaper. " Those understandings are invalid and unimportant."
Netanyahu presents a direct challenge to the Obama administration, one that could lead to a showdown. America alone has the means to compel Israel to comply with international law and end the illegal occupation of the West Bank. It's a challenge that grows harder by the day and unless the Israeli government is really allowing this expansion with any genuine willingness to force settler relocation to Israeli territory, Obama may have to engage Netanyahu in a test of will not previously experienced by Israeli leaders.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/04/israelandthepalestinians-usa
More Setbacks for Afghan War
The problem with chronicling a war like Afghanistan is that it's so easy to sound like you're somehow gloating over the setbacks.
There's nothing remotely pleasant in the way the Afghan war has been mismanaged under the Bush administration, nothing at all. A lot of lives, plus a great deal of effort and treasure, have been wasted for little if any gain.
Yesterday the president of Kyrgyzstan, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, announced he's shutting down a US air transport operation at one of his country's air bases. That's a route American forces depend on for resupply of troops and critical military supplies. More mundane supplies still roll in from Pakistan. Yesterday the Taliban there destroyed 10-trucks loaded with supplies and a bridge crossing into Afghanistan.
It's the airbase closure, however, that's the most worrisome and it seems to have been manipulated by Moscow. From McClatchey Newspapers:
Bakiyev made his announcement in Moscow, not in his own capital, shortly after the Russian government reportedly agreed to lend Kyrgyzstan $2 billion, write off $180 million in debt and add another $150 million in aid. The timing and place of the announcement indicated the Kremlin's involvement.
"It's a direct challenge to the new American administration. Russia is going out of its way to close an American base," said Pavel Felgenhauer, a Moscow-based military analyst.
Manas is the main transit point through which U.S. troops fly into and out of Afghanistan. As such, it is vital to plans to send 30,000 more American troops to stabilize Afghanistan. A U.S. Air Force Web site calls it "the premier air-mobility hub" for U.S. and allied operations in Afghanistan, with about 1,000 military personnel from America, Spain and France stationed there.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/117/story/61394.html
There's nothing remotely pleasant in the way the Afghan war has been mismanaged under the Bush administration, nothing at all. A lot of lives, plus a great deal of effort and treasure, have been wasted for little if any gain.
Yesterday the president of Kyrgyzstan, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, announced he's shutting down a US air transport operation at one of his country's air bases. That's a route American forces depend on for resupply of troops and critical military supplies. More mundane supplies still roll in from Pakistan. Yesterday the Taliban there destroyed 10-trucks loaded with supplies and a bridge crossing into Afghanistan.
It's the airbase closure, however, that's the most worrisome and it seems to have been manipulated by Moscow. From McClatchey Newspapers:
Bakiyev made his announcement in Moscow, not in his own capital, shortly after the Russian government reportedly agreed to lend Kyrgyzstan $2 billion, write off $180 million in debt and add another $150 million in aid. The timing and place of the announcement indicated the Kremlin's involvement.
"It's a direct challenge to the new American administration. Russia is going out of its way to close an American base," said Pavel Felgenhauer, a Moscow-based military analyst.
Manas is the main transit point through which U.S. troops fly into and out of Afghanistan. As such, it is vital to plans to send 30,000 more American troops to stabilize Afghanistan. A U.S. Air Force Web site calls it "the premier air-mobility hub" for U.S. and allied operations in Afghanistan, with about 1,000 military personnel from America, Spain and France stationed there.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/117/story/61394.html
Pentagon Waves Really Tiny White Flag on Afghanistan
It was bound to happen to a war waged on a shoestring under inept political leadership for the better part of a decade. The mountain has suddenly come to Mohamed.
The Pentagon has issued a new report on the plight of its hapless war in Afghanistan that recommends the Obama administration pare America's goals in that war. The Top Brass want to scupper all that nonsense about bringing democratic freedom to the Afghan people and, instead, focus on whacking Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in the border regions of Pakistan. From the Associated Press:
The Joint Chiefs' plan reflects growing worries that the U.S. military was taking on more than it could handle in Afghanistan by pursuing the Bush administration's broad goal of nurturing a thriving democratic government.
The Pentagon has issued a new report on the plight of its hapless war in Afghanistan that recommends the Obama administration pare America's goals in that war. The Top Brass want to scupper all that nonsense about bringing democratic freedom to the Afghan people and, instead, focus on whacking Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in the border regions of Pakistan. From the Associated Press:
The Joint Chiefs' plan reflects growing worries that the U.S. military was taking on more than it could handle in Afghanistan by pursuing the Bush administration's broad goal of nurturing a thriving democratic government.
Instead, the plan calls for a more narrowly focused effort to root out militant strongholds along the Pakistani border and inside the neighboring country, according to officials who confirmed the essence of the report. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the plan publicly.
"The bottom line is we have to look at what the art of the possible is there," said a U.S. military official who has operated in Afghanistan. The official, who has not seen the Joint Chiefs' report, said the challenge is to craft a strategy that achieves U.S. goals of stabilizing the region and constraining al-Qaida, but also takes into account the powerful tribes that resist a strong central government and the ties among ethnic Pashtuns on either side of the Afghan-Pakistan border.
Okay, so it's back to full Islamic fundamentalism for the men, women and kids of Afghanistan and the nation will be left to the rule of the treacherous and bloodthirsty warlords who came to power during the Soviet occupation.
Unmentioned is the fate of the Afghan Army and National Police. Presumably the Pentagon is confident that a viable army can be created to serve an unviable central government. Brilliant thinking that! And by dropping any pretence of interest in nation-building, the National Police will surely be released to expand their predatory practices against the rural Afghan people.
This country never looked so much like Vietnam as it does in the image of Afghanistan depicted in the Pentagon report. No viable central government, rampant corruption and a security service that preys on the Afghan villagers. Now there's a formula for driving the population into the arms of the insurgency. By the time the Pentagon is finished, the Taliban should probably be restored to home team status for the Pashtun on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border.
Remind me, what in hell is Canada over there for anyway?
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Getting Our Foreign Wars Under Control
A lot of people are grousing that the war in Afghanistan, like the war in Iraq, appears never-ending.
A lot of Americans are grousing that the war in Afghanistan, like the war in Iraq, are so personnel-intensive to require a "stop loss" programme that turns loyal, patriotic citizens into militarized slaves indefinitely prohibited by force of law from leaving the military. These people get rotated in and out of combat tours again and again as their family lives, businesses and futures steadily drain away.
So, what's with these wars? Why aren't they won and over by now? I've got a hunch that there's a problem with the top brass, the Big Chief generals who get to play "war commander" until they're ready to hand the gig on to their successors. Everybody gets to play General MacArthur. Except - here's the best part - nobody every loses. Yes, nobody ever loses and yet, the downside to this endless gravy train, is that nobody ever wins either.
The wars just get handed down like precious family heirlooms and, so long as you don't actually have to win, it's a bottomless well of military goodness.
So, here's an idea. Since we have the kids "stop lossed" to the point where they've become a virtual hostage army, how about we move that same idea straight up the chain of command? Imagine if all those generals who've had their moment of military glory and then slipped away to a gentle life of golf and mojitos had to stay on just like the troops? If they didn't produce results then they'd be relieved and reduced to majors in the logistics branch but they wouldn't get out. They'd stay on active duty until someone actually did the job they were all so generously paid to do.
Imagine if our very own Rick Hillier was "stop lossed" into mandatory, continued military service. If he'd known that fate was in store for those who commanded, would he have been so hot to trot to field his miniscule force in a hellhole like Kandahar in the first place? Today, instead of being Chief of Staff, he'd be in command of some warehouse responsible for getting supplies to Afghanistan and bodies returned home. Somehow that would be fitting, in my view.
I'd bet that wars would get planned a lot differently if a more direct, personal responsibility was carried by those with the greatest authority over the lives of those beneath them. There'd be a sharper, probably more limited focus and always with a clear "exit strategy."
A lot of Americans are grousing that the war in Afghanistan, like the war in Iraq, are so personnel-intensive to require a "stop loss" programme that turns loyal, patriotic citizens into militarized slaves indefinitely prohibited by force of law from leaving the military. These people get rotated in and out of combat tours again and again as their family lives, businesses and futures steadily drain away.
So, what's with these wars? Why aren't they won and over by now? I've got a hunch that there's a problem with the top brass, the Big Chief generals who get to play "war commander" until they're ready to hand the gig on to their successors. Everybody gets to play General MacArthur. Except - here's the best part - nobody every loses. Yes, nobody ever loses and yet, the downside to this endless gravy train, is that nobody ever wins either.
The wars just get handed down like precious family heirlooms and, so long as you don't actually have to win, it's a bottomless well of military goodness.
So, here's an idea. Since we have the kids "stop lossed" to the point where they've become a virtual hostage army, how about we move that same idea straight up the chain of command? Imagine if all those generals who've had their moment of military glory and then slipped away to a gentle life of golf and mojitos had to stay on just like the troops? If they didn't produce results then they'd be relieved and reduced to majors in the logistics branch but they wouldn't get out. They'd stay on active duty until someone actually did the job they were all so generously paid to do.
Imagine if our very own Rick Hillier was "stop lossed" into mandatory, continued military service. If he'd known that fate was in store for those who commanded, would he have been so hot to trot to field his miniscule force in a hellhole like Kandahar in the first place? Today, instead of being Chief of Staff, he'd be in command of some warehouse responsible for getting supplies to Afghanistan and bodies returned home. Somehow that would be fitting, in my view.
I'd bet that wars would get planned a lot differently if a more direct, personal responsibility was carried by those with the greatest authority over the lives of those beneath them. There'd be a sharper, probably more limited focus and always with a clear "exit strategy."
Monday, February 02, 2009
Steve & Mike's Pinata Budget
What irks me most about the Harper-Ignatieff budget is that it's so much like a pinata party.
It's a paper mache figure into which Harper, under the watchful and approving eye of Ignatieff, stuffs tens of billions of dollars in Deficit Bucks and then steps away. He then hands out sticks to those who qualify with his matching fund criteria and they bash away until the pinata breaks and those Deficit Bucks cascade to the ground.
Then those kids drop their sticks, scoop up as many Deficit Bucks as they can carry and scurry off knowing that the rest of the kids, those who didn't get sticks, will have to make good the tax bill at the end of the day.
Stimulus? Maybe, maybe not. There'll probably be some recession-fighting stimulus effect but how much? Who's to say? Will it be 50-cents on the Deficit Buck or 25? Who will ever really know?
What about the provinces and the regions that don't get fairly represented at the Harper-Ignatieff pinata party? They're going to get to pay their fair share of the tax bill for the deficit and that seems to be about all the equality some will get out of this visionless scheme.
I guess the problem is that Harper doesn't have vision and he doesn't have guts. Ditto for Ignatieff. The stimulus budget is a national initiative. It's supposed to do its work nationwide and, presumably, with at least some semblence of equality.
This initiative never should have been transformed into a pinata party. That merely abandons the authority and responsibility for how the Deficit Bucks are spent to provinces, municipalities and cottage owners who are not accountable to us, the Canadian public. Harper shouldn't have hatched this scheme and Ignatieff ought to have put Canada first and opposed it.
Oh well, I hope Steve remembers to hire the Mariachi band so we can all dance around our new deficit while Michael mixes the margaritas.
It's a paper mache figure into which Harper, under the watchful and approving eye of Ignatieff, stuffs tens of billions of dollars in Deficit Bucks and then steps away. He then hands out sticks to those who qualify with his matching fund criteria and they bash away until the pinata breaks and those Deficit Bucks cascade to the ground.
Then those kids drop their sticks, scoop up as many Deficit Bucks as they can carry and scurry off knowing that the rest of the kids, those who didn't get sticks, will have to make good the tax bill at the end of the day.
Stimulus? Maybe, maybe not. There'll probably be some recession-fighting stimulus effect but how much? Who's to say? Will it be 50-cents on the Deficit Buck or 25? Who will ever really know?
What about the provinces and the regions that don't get fairly represented at the Harper-Ignatieff pinata party? They're going to get to pay their fair share of the tax bill for the deficit and that seems to be about all the equality some will get out of this visionless scheme.
I guess the problem is that Harper doesn't have vision and he doesn't have guts. Ditto for Ignatieff. The stimulus budget is a national initiative. It's supposed to do its work nationwide and, presumably, with at least some semblence of equality.
This initiative never should have been transformed into a pinata party. That merely abandons the authority and responsibility for how the Deficit Bucks are spent to provinces, municipalities and cottage owners who are not accountable to us, the Canadian public. Harper shouldn't have hatched this scheme and Ignatieff ought to have put Canada first and opposed it.
Oh well, I hope Steve remembers to hire the Mariachi band so we can all dance around our new deficit while Michael mixes the margaritas.
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