Memories of Tet '68

Another major Taliban attack on an Afghan city today, this time the provincial capital Khost.

The insurgents swarmed the city in a multi-pronged attack comprising foot soldiers and a few suicide bombers. The attack opened with the explosion of a suicide car bomb outside the Governor's compound.

The full extent of the operation isn't yet clear but there was one telling episode. Once the gunfire started, the Americans responded by sending a 'quick reaction force' to the battle. The Taliban were ready for them. They had actually prepared an ambush force that, according to reports, caught the Americans by surprise.

The ambush element reveals this as more than one big, hit and run raid. This was a carefully planned military operation. That sort of thing takes time to plan, organize and even rehearse. It takes some doing to muster and deploy these forces undetected and then infiltrate them into a city in American-controlled territory. The attackers would need a lot of local assistance, probably even some collaboration from within the government.

The actual damage inflicted won't be all that great. They are, after all, limited to small arms and a few suicide bombs, hardly the stuff needed to inflict staggering losses on the defenders or the government infrastructure. But that's not what the insurgents are trying to achieve. Their objective is to demonstrate to the Afghan public that they can attack, at will, in an orchestrated fashion - overrunning a city - and the Afghan government, even with American protection, is helpless to prevent it. They're out to undermine the public's confidence in the ability of their government to protect itself and, by implication, the public either.

Lyin' Brian Gets Up to Bat, Brings Own Pitcher

The Brian Mulroney/Jeffrey Oliphant inquiry really gets underway today when Justice Oliphant hands the proceedings over to Mr. Mulroney for a two-day carnival show intended to "frame" the issues.

If the witness was a mortal, like you for example, he would be called, sworn and then questioned by the inquiry counsel, the guy who's supposed to frame the issues. But in this inquiry there are mortals and there is Brian Mulroney, the guy who lied under oath about the very subject matter of this inquiry, the schmeergelder he received via cash-stuffed envelopes from Karlheinz Schreiber.

Recognizing the divinity of The Witness, Justice Oliphant has decided that the inquiry will grant The Witness the indulgence of being allowed to be questioned, not by inquiry counsel, but by his own lawyer, his own advocate for the first day and a half.

An opening statement is one thing - five, ten maybe even twenty minutes. But a day and a half of spin spread in a thick, smothering blanket by Mulroney counsel, Guy Pratte? You may still think this inquiry, with its artificially narrowed scope (don't look here, don't look there, no talking about that or that or that), is legitimate but I don't. Mulroney is the culprit in this proceeding, it's only because his heart still beats that Stephen Harper was forced to stage this set up at all. That he should then be allowed to run the show leaves little doubt this is a grotesque travesty.

Reviving Kyoto - Because That Worked So Well the First Time

Environmentalists and climate scientists were hoping for a real breakthrough in the fight to slash carbon emissions in the new U.N. climate pact. It doesn't look like they're (we're) going to get it. A report in Reuters suggests that we're more likely to wind up with little more than a slightly improved version of the Kyoto accords:

"There's not a lot of ambition around," said Jennifer Morgan, of the London-based think-tank E3G, of submissions to the United Nations published this month to meet a deadline for consideration in a deal to be agreed in Copenhagen in December.

...plans outlined by developed nations add up to average cuts in greenhouse gas emissions of between 9 and 16 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, according to Reuters calculations. That is nearer the goal of the Kyoto Protocol -- an average cut by industrialized nations of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 -- than the 25 to 40 percent reduction below 1990 by 2020 outlined by the U.N. Climate Panel as the order of cutback required to avert the worst of global warming.

"The economic downturn is putting a brake on the level of commitment and investment to mitigate climate change," said Pep Canadell, head of the global carbon project at Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.

Among developed nations, the European Union says cuts must ensure that world temperatures do not rise more than 2 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above levels that existed before the Industrial Revolution.

"Submissions so far from all countries are nowhere near 2 Celsius," said Bill Hare, a visiting scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a director of Climate Analytics.

"Many countries are slumbering through the climate crisis like Sleeping Beauty," Norwegian Environment Minister Erik Solheim said, asked about the gap between the rich nations' offers and the expectations of developing nations.

http://www.reuters.com/article/wtUSInvestingNews/idUSTRE5463BY20090507

Cheney Slams Powell

Will Dick Cheney please hurry up and die? And, please, when he does go, let's be sure to put him in one of those containers they use for burying spent nuclear fuel rods so that nothing leaks out - ever.

So what's that bald old Dick up to this week? Well he's jumping into Rush Limbaugh's lap to slam his former colleague, Colin Powell. From Associated Press:

Asked about recent verbal broadsides between Limbaugh and Powell, Cheney said, "If I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I'd go with Rush Limbaugh. My take on it was Colin had already left the party. I didn't know he was still a Republican."

Powell, who was secretary of state under President George W. Bush and held the nation's top military post under President George H.W. Bush, endorsed Democrat Barack Obama for president last year. Nonetheless, since the election he has described himself as a Republican and a right-of-center conservative, though "not as right as others would like."

Powell has argued the Republican Party needs to move toward the center and reach out to growing black, Hispanic and Asian communities, but instead has been shrinking because it hasn't changed as the country changed in the face of economic distress. "Americans are looking for more government in their life, not less," Powell said last week.

For months, Powell has urged the party to turn away from the acid-tongued Limbaugh. "I think what Rush does as an entertainer diminishes the party and intrudes or inserts into our public life a kind of nastiness that we would be better to do without," Powell said.
"Colin Powell is just another liberal," Limbaugh retorted. "What Colin Powell needs to do is close the loop and become a Democrat." Limbaugh said Powell is "just mad at me because I'm the one person in the country that had the guts to explain his endorsement of Obama. It was purely and solely based on race."

The dynamics of the Cheney-Limbaugh versus Powell set-up are interesting. Take Viet Nam for example. While Powell suited up for combat, Rush told the draft board he couldn't go because he had anal cysts and might explode spontaneously. Meanwhile Cheney was so intent on serving America that he scored five - that's right, five - draft deferments. He did everything he could short of giving birth to keep his pasty white ass safe and powdered.

God bless the Repugnicans. As long as they've got Limbaugh and Cheney reading their moral compass they'll just drift into slave state obscurity, right where their kind of trash belongs.

All They Have Left to Steal

Africa is well steeped in colonialism. For more than two centuries, European masters from Britain to Belgium carved the place up and helped themselves to the spoils the lands had to offer. Africa has been a bountiful source to meet a great many Western needs from hordes of slaves to gold, diamonds and oil. There's a reason Africans didn't get prosperous from that bounty. We pretty much took what we wanted and, when that got tired, we handed those countries over to petty thugs and criminals who did our bidding in the name of their countrymen. All in all it was a good run, so long as you weren't African.

In taking our leave, we bequeathed Africans the gifts of war, plagues and famine. We had carved up the place into nations that reflected the interests of European rulers, not the ethnic and social realities of the local peoples. The mess we left behind can be measured in the millions of innocents slaughtered in states most of us can't even find on the map - Congo, Rwanda, Chad, Nigeria, the list goes on.

Africa is Ground Zero when it comes to climate change. The wretched irony is that most of those hardest hit have a carbon footprint that's barely discernible. Chalk it up to just another gift the West has bestowed on them. But we're not done with these people, not yet. We've taken their natural riches, we've even taken their bodies but they've still got something left - their land.

There's a looming, global food shortage. World food stocks have been shrinking since 1999. For most of your lifetime, the world maintained grain reserves of about 115- 120 days. By 2006, grain reserves had fallen to 57-days, a situation that's going to get a lot worse very, very soon.

Things are changing. In large swathes of the world's food belt water is becoming a critical issue. The two emerging economic superpowers - China and India - are both facing the prospect of mass famine as the Himalayan glaciers that feed their main agricultural rivers recede. By some estimates, India could be looking at the Ganges turning into a seasonal stream, running dry precisely when its waters are needed to irrigate Indian farmland. It's predicted that India could find itself simply unable to feed up to 250,000,000 of its people. China is looking at the same situation, perhaps even worse. You can't let that many people starve without enduring massive social unrest and you do what you can to postpone the inevitable just as long as humanly possible. Just look at the arms races underway in both India and China. Somebody's gearing up for something very, very bad. (Hint to 'Michael' - this is a reality we ignore at our peril)

But what does all this have to do with Africa? Actually quite a lot. The United Nations Humanitarian Affairs office has released a chilling account of how Big Agriculture is moving in on what remains of Africa's best farmland to meet the world's demand for food and biofuel.

Rich countries and firms are leasing or buying massive tracts of land in developing nations for the production of food or biofuel. An area equivalent to Germany’s farmed land is at stake, and tens of billions of dollars on offer.

On the plus side, agro-industrial production could develop underused land, and broaden the world’s food production base while providing much needed resources for poor countries. But is the land really idle and currently unused? Are small-scale farmers going to be “tractored out” in a murky neo-colonial “land grab”?

Food-importing countries that lack land and water but are rich in capital, such as the Gulf States, are initiating deals to produce food in developing countries, where land and water are more abundant and production costs much lower. Vast tracts of land and huge amounts of money are involved: 15 million to 20 million hectares, almost equivalent to the total area under cultivation in Germany, according to analysts at the US-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Investment so far adds up to $20 billion to $30 billion, dwarfing foreign aid budgets for agriculture.

Joachim von Braun and Ruth Meinzen-Dick of IFPRI point out in a new policy brief that developing countries with large populations, like China, South Korea and India, are seeking similar deals, including growing biofuel crops. The institute warned that there was a "lack of transparency" in many deals, with the amounts involved "often still murky".

... in its 2008 report on "land grabbing", GRAIN, a Spain-based NGO that promotes the sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity, warned that the "very basis on which to build food sovereignty is simply being bartered away" in the deals.

"These lands will be transformed from smallholdings or forests, or whatever they may be, into large industrial estates connected to far-off markets. Farmers will never be real farmers again, job or no job," GRAIN cautioned.

Various Gulf States have struck most of the deals in East Africa, which is facing some of the biggest food shortages globally. IFPRI's von Braun and David Hallam of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) told IRIN it was "too early" to assess the impact of the deals on food security and farmers in the lessor countries.

Unease, resistance and protests Farming and pastoralist communities in the delta of Kenya's Tana River have reacted strongly to reports of government's intention to lease a chunk of this rich coastal land to Qatar. Kenya is facing huge food shortages and high prices after a third consecutive year of drought.

The spectre of poor countries facing famine selling their best farmland to foreigners, exporting the very food products their own people need, is truly depressing. Is this what we've become?

Read more here and be sure to check out the map of which countries are buying and which countries are selling their land:

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=84320

The Curious Case of Ruby Dhalla

I know a bit about nannies. I employed three of them while my kids were very young. Two were Phillipinos. All three were really quite nice and were treated very well. The nanny suite comprised a separate entry, a large bedroom, a sittingroom with stereo and TV and a private bathroom.

I got to meet quite a few Phillipino nannies. It turned out most of them didn't have the sort of suite we provided so they tended to congregate at our place on weekends to socialize. From time to time one of our nannies' friends would have a minor legal problem that I would attend to, giving me a broader insight into their lives.

Most of the Phillipino nannies I met came to Canada indirectly after serving a stint in Singapore or Hong Kong. From their stories it was pretty clear that Canadian employment conditions were a definite cut above what they'd experienced previously. That said there were enough problems for them here in Canada.

What I find particularly curious about Ms. Dhall's situation is that three Phillipino nannies would come forward with allegations against her. Those I've known were very sensitive about authority. Power and authority made them deeply apprehensive. Ms. Dahl is powerful. She has money. They know that. They also know she has some political standing. Remember that Canada is, for them, a foreign country, an unfamiliar place where most hope for nothing more than landed immigrant status. They understand there are many ways to jeopardize that chance and that making waves is one of them.

Nannies are not the sort inclined to make waves, just the opposite. Then what could they possibly hope to gain from exposing themselves in this way? They're not going to get any money out of it. There must be something sufficiently valuable and certain to make them come forward, especially to make all three come forward at the same time.

Jason Kenney says he's not behind this but his assurances are hardly convincing. I think someone is behind this and, as I mentioned, immigration is almost certainly a priority for these women.

These nannies are taking a huge risk. If their complaints are contrived, any skilled trial lawyer should be able to expose them without breaking a sweat. The best liars are the professionals and anyone who's had much experience taking the best down would have a field day with rank amateurs like these three.

There's too much at stake here to leave this to Ms. Dhalla. Michael Ignatieff should, on behalf of the LPC, be hiring his own top guns on this one. If what these women are saying is true and the Tories aren't behind this, that will be apparent soon enough and Ms. Dhalla should go before she can do further harm to the party. However, if this is a set up, that will also be apparent soon enough and then the question will be who lies behind it all? If these women are not telling the truth, there is definitely someone driving this.

Stuck On "Stupid"

When you've been doing something self-defeating for eight years, at some point you begin to look just plain stupid. That's how US forces in Afghanistan look after calling in airstrikes on two villages in Farah province last week that extinguished the lives of 147-Afghan civilians.

So what's the American response? Why, blame the Taliban of course. The Americans say the Taliban used the villagers as human shields, forcing the civilians into homes from which they were shooting at US forces.

The Americans are probably right but that doesn't make their statement any less stupid.

The Taliban does use villagers as human shields. It's all set out in the third chapter of Guerrilla Warfare 101, "Luring the Government Forces Into Attacking the Locals." You see, it's not so much about shielding Taliban fighters as it is about goading the government side to rain down its heavy firepower on the villagers, driving a wedge of shattered bodies between the civilians and their government (that's our side). It's about getting our side to defeat ourselves and, when it comes to that, we're always ready to do our bit.

We're losing this war. In truth, it's probably already lost although we're not yet at the point of understanding that. There are plenty of signs for those willing to look at them and do the math.

We've spent more than two years fruitlessly trying to drive the Taliban out of Panjwai province but we've now ceded that territory to the Taliban, closing up our garrisons and falling back to defend Kandahar City. We 'control' a lot less territory than we did when Rick Hillier first frogmarched Canada's battle group into Kandahar province.

The Karzai government remains terminally corrupt and under the control of warlords, some as dark as anything seen from the Taliban. Karzai has now chosen a brutal warlord as his running mate for the August elections.

Not only has Karzai recruited a nasty warlord as his running mate, The Times reports he's about to ink a 'power sharing' deal with the nastiest of them all, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Until recently, Hek was fighting alongside his one time mortal enemies, the Taliban, happily killing American and French soldiers. Apparently GulHek thinks a few years on our side would be good for his prospects. Remember, the guy we were told so much about who liked throwing acid in women's faces? Yeah, same guy.

And what's the lesson in all this? We've lost control of the Afghan government, a now genuinely 'criminal enterprise.' If the Afghan National Army was stronger there might just be the possibility of engineering a military coup but time is not on our side and the army seems too weak and unstable to be capable of toppling Karzai and his warlords and fighting the insurgency.

But we'll keep plodding on, as we have since 2001, in our grotesque little fantasy where the war in Afghanistan is all about the good guys, us, fighting a valiant battle against the Taliban. We are definitely stuck on 'Stupid.'

Obama's First White House Correspondents' Dinner

The difference between their guy and our guys couldn't be more obvious.

Karzai Courts Hekmatyar? Let's Just Pack Up and Leave Now.

The Times of London reports that Afghan president Hamid Karzai is offering a power sharing deal to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. GulHek is a lot like a monster without the Hollywood special effects.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is on America’s “most wanted” terrorist list, is to hold talks with the Kabul government within the next few weeks.

Hekmatyar is the leader of Hezb-i-Islami, which has been fighting Nato troops alongside the Taliban. The hardline group is responsible for many attacks in the eastern and central regions, including the massacre of 10 French soldiers in Sarobi last year. It controls Kapisa province, just 50 miles north of Kabul.

The party is expected to be offered several ministries and provincial governorships in return for laying down its arms and agreeing not to disrupt the presidential elections due in August.

Hekmatyar is, how can I put this, an evil bastard. From http://www.warlordsofafghanistan.com/:

In a Hollywood movie Hekmatyar would be the evil foil to the heroic Masud. He would be an angry Islamic fundamentalist dressed in black, throwing acid in the faces of unveiled women and assassinating local tribal leaders that might rival his power. He would be the pawn of foreign secret service paymasters like the ISI, CIA, and Prince Turki of Saudi Arabia. He would unfeelingly sacrifice peasants for his cause, rocket the helpless civilians mixed in with his enemies, and his ruthless ambition would prevent the creation of a new peace. Unfortunately, in real life Hekmatyar was all these things.

...When Masud finally defeated Najibullah in 1992, all the mujahideen factions converged on Kabul. Masud outwitted Hekmatyar and slipped into the city before him. A round robin of side-swapping, backstabbing, and massacre among Hekmatyar, Masud, Dostum, and Mazari followed. The citizens and buildings of Kabul were the big losers. The problem was that Masud could not be president as he was a Tajik, not a Pashtun. Afghan kings had been Pashtun for hundreds of years. Hekmatyar was the most powerful Pashtun, and had he not been such an evil sod, Masud might have accepted some kind of deal. In the end neither prevailed. The ISI switched support from the stalemated Hekmatyar and backed Mullah Omar, the new leader of the Taliban.

After years in exile in Iran, Hekmatyar returned to Afghanistan and raised another militia once the Taliban were run out of Dodge. This time, however, he threw his hand in with his former rivals, the Taliban. It should be nice having Hek back in his old stomping grounds (he really did stomp the place), Kabul.

This is it, folks. The warlords have won.

Say "No" Now

It's time to say "no" to Stephen Harper. There's a move afoot to send a squadron of CF-18 fighter-bombers to Afghanistan.

Air strikes have proven the greatest disaster in our self-defeating war in Afghanistan. We have to rely on airpower because we have only a small fraction of the ground force we need there. Air strikes routinely kill Afghan civilians. The insurgents have become expert at making us do just that. They're using our aerial bombs to win their war, the war for Afghan hearts and minds, for them.

It's not just that air strikes are ill-suited to this sort of war, it's the way we're forced to use them that's makes the carnage even more disastrous for the Afghan people and for us.

Ceasefire.ca has an online petition to say "no" to Stephen Harper. I urge you to send your own message to the p.m. Follow this link:

http://www.ceasefire.ca/?page_id=1274

Taibbi's Brilliant Take on Faith Peddlers

This article is too good to paraphrase here. What I will give you is a teaser sample and the link. Enjoy:

I’m always on the lookout for religion’s latest counter-arguments, the new rhetorical approaches that God People are constantly fine-tuning for use in pimping the righteousness of faith (and for demonstrating the moral dissoluteness of agnostics like myself). There isn’t an inherently irresolvable metaphysical challenge that comes close to wasting as much of the world’s time and energy as this particular one. It’s the intellectual equivalent of the eternal R&D quest for a baldness cure: you just never stop being surprised at how many different ways men can find to fail at growing hair.

This latest salvo is fired by author/professor Stanley Fish, a prominent religion-peddler of the pointy-headed, turtlenecked genus, who made his case in his blog at the New York Times. Fish was mostly riffing on a recent book written by the windily pompous University of Manchester professor Terry Eagleton, a pudgily superior type, physically resembling a giant runny nose, who seems to have been raised by indulgent aunts who gave him sweets every time he corrected the grammar of other children. The esteemed professor’s new book is called Reason, Faith and Revolution, and it’s sort of an answer to the popular atheist literature of people like Richard Dawkins and Chris Hitchens. If you ever want to give yourself a really good, throbbing headache, go online and check out Eagleton’s lectures at Yale, upon which the book was based, in which one may listen to this soft-soaping old toady do his verbose best to stick his tongue as far as he can up the anus of the next generation of the American upper class.


http://www.alternet.org/rights/139927/these_god_pundits_can_give_you_a_splitting_headache/

Just Count the Feet and Divide By Two

100, 113, over 130 - who knows just how many Afghans were killed in the recent US airstrike in western Afghanistan? Who cares? Apparently our side doesn't care because we keep doing the Taliban's work for them by bombing villagers and turning the civilian population against us.

Dumb as mud.

Coming on the heels of video of American officers discussing how to poach Muslim Afghans over to Jesus, the mass annihilation of Afghan villagers is just sure to give a real boost to the insurgents - and to Islamist extremists in Afghanistan, Pakistan and throughout the Middle East.

Counterinsurgency wars like the one we're running in Afghanistan are a tough go for conventional, military forces like ours. We almost never win. They almost never lose. When we do win, we stick to a precise set of proven tactics. We know these tactics and so does the other side. We've even written down these rules. They're in military field manuals, especially the American FM3-24. No one can explain why, in Afghanistan, we're flaunting almost every one of those rules. It's impossible to believe that we're trying to lose but it's really easy to believe that we're not, and never have been, in this fight to win.

Where has this ever worked before?

C'mon, that's a simple question, isn't it? Better yet, it has a really simple answer too. And that kids is why the question is never asked. Let that sink in for a minute. We don't ask any of the simple questions because we don't want to hear the answers. We have several examples of our current tactics - French Indochina is probably the best - where our tactics were tried and failed miserably. We've got books stuffed with critiques of France's folly and the victory of the Viet Minh, many of them written by senior officers from the same armies now treading water in Afghanistan.

Here's another point our people never want to discuss. Just what in hell are we hoping to achieve in Afghanistan? And here's the answer. We're hoping to hang on long enough to flip this insurgency over into a civil war. We want to recruit, train and equip an Afghan army that can give the insurgents enough of a run for their money that we can get out 'with honour.' If we really set our sights higher than that we wouldn't tolerate the Karzai government in Kabul, the guys instrumental in organizing their very government as an integral part of the criminal enterprise we know as Afghanistan. The mind reels, it really does.

Why don't we discuss these things? That's because the answers would raise holy hell with the folks at home. You can't go to them after eight years and tell them these things. They'll kill the messenger, even if the generals and politicians who hatched this harebrained nonsense are long gone. George w. Bush's greatest, perhaps only, success was in dragging out these wars long enough to foist them off on his successor, to make the wars and their failure someone else's nightmare.

I suspect we're probably in the last act of this counterinsurgency screw up. This is the part where the military war drags on for a few years well after the important conflict, the political war, has been decided. The military war continues because it's our war, the conventional war the other side can't win. They can't win because they don't have jet fighters and attack helicopters and they don't have artillery or tanks or reconnaisance drones or anything that would be needed to defeat us militarily.

Here's another simple question that never gets asked. Why are they fighting us at all when they don't have any of this high-tech wizardry? Because they don't need that stuff to fight - and win - their war, the political war, the only war that matters. They don't have to defeat us, they merely have to survive and wait us out. Their weapon is the one we can't defeat and can't withstand - time.

Time was never on our side in this war and yet we squandered it as though that didn't matter. We're still carrying on as though we can just begin again from scratch. Eight years. Amazing.

Any time you hear a politician or a general telling you that we can't afford to lose in Afghanistan, remember the simple questions set out here and ask yourself why these hucksters won't and can't answer them.

China & India Returning to Their Rightful Place at Top of the Heap?

Dr Kishore Mahbuani sees nothing surprising at the notion of India and China dominating the world economy. In fact, he says it's merely a return to normal.

The National University of Singapore professor says that for all but the last two centuries of the last two thousand years, China and India have been the world's dominant economies.

"In the 19th and 20th Century, first Europe took off and then North America," he says. "But the last 200 years were historical aberrations."

Just as Genghis Khan once established an empire that covered more than one fifth of the Earth's surface, stretching from Japan to Eastern Europe, many people feel that China and India are creating Asian world powers once again.

"This crisis has had an enormous impact on Asian minds," he says. "The West was telling us they knew how to run the world, telling us how to create the best economies in the world. How can you believe that any more?"

The US model of capitalism has delivered substantial benefits, however, not least in Asian economies. When China and South Korea copied Western ways of thinking and marketing, their economies took off.

Dr Mahbuani believes that one of the fundamental things Asians have learnt from the West, is the virtues of free market economics.

"It is a question of pragmatism," he says. "Asian states are rising because they have finally understood, absorbed, and implemented the best practices."

There are two serious questions about the predicted ascendancy of China and India. First, is the Western model of globalization really going to survive if we become subordinate economies? The whole idea was premised on the West remaining economically (as well as politically and militarily) dominant.

The second question is environmental. China and India are poised to be the nations hardest hit by climate change. The loss of the Himalayan glaciers will leave both countries unable to feed hundreds of millions of their people and beset by destabilizing social unrest. Sea level rise, severe weather events, general warming - both are particularly vulnerable to these also.

The ascendancy of China and India isn't going to be some smooth, seamless transition. I don't see the West agreeing to go gently into the night.

The Debt Tarnished City on the Hill

Don't look at Washington. Forget Wall Street. Detroit, who cares?

The story of America's real fiscal crisis, the one that will define what the US looks like a decade from now, is to be found in the nation's state houses. Yes, Washington is broke but it's not the federal government that delivers most of the core services on which societies and communities are built.

During America's Age of Darkness (Reagan, Bush I, Bush II), the feds paid scant attention to America's burgeoning national debt, its balance of trade deficits, its balance of payments deficits. But the states were hardly any better. They too gorged on cheap money even as artificially skyrocketing real estate prices and sales taxes from mega purchases their buyers couldn't really afford poured money into state coffers. It was the perfect setup for a recessionary collapse.

And it's not just the slave states that are in a terrible mess. California is struggling with multi-billion dollar deficits. Even the colonial states like Massachussets are in trouble. From the also troubled Boston Globe:

The problems are expected to be so widespread, the solutions so elusive, that the state may have to rethink the size of its commitment to big-ticket programs such as its landmark healthcare coverage plan, aid to cities and towns, and education funding, the specialists said at an emergency budget hearing convened yesterday by members of the state Senate.

Several economic specialists who testified advised state officials to prepare for at least four years of budget problems, foreshadowed by dire records: State revenues declined 35 percent this April over last year, the worst ever. The fall in state revenues for this year, projected to be $3 billion less than budgeted, will probably also be the steepest in state history.

"This is going to be the worst fiscal crisis in the state's history," said Michael J. Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. "I think it's fair to say it's a catastrophe. That's not an overstatement."

Widmer projects that state tax collections will not return to 2008 levels until at least 2014, as state revenues lag behind a slowly rebuilding economy.

What's by no means certain is how the looming cutbacks in core services - health care and education - will impact the states in the decades to come. America is at a point where it needs more money for healthcare, more money for education, more money for social services yet will have to make do with less money and degraded or sharply curtailed services. These are the sort of programmes that directly impact the health of a society, that are the foundation for its strength. Societies that cannot provide these things are poorly positioned for the future, especially in the face of rapidly emerging rival economies.

Get It While You Can - the Hand of God

You've got about nine hours left (as of this posting) to bid on the Hand of God (HoG) depicted above. This divine bit of hardrock goodness appeared in the backyard rock wall of some dude from Idaho. The winning bidder gets to carve it out and haul it away. It comes complete with all movie and literary rights included.

So far there've been 130 bids and, right now, it can be yours for a tad over $17,000 US. So don't dawdle. This HoG's for you.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Hand-of-God-Rock-Wall_W0QQitemZ150341780892QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item230111859c&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1205%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318%7C301%3A1%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50

American Troops Proselytize In Afghanistan?

Onward Christian Soldiers has a new meaning in Iraq and Afghanistan where American troops are working to bring Christianity to the Muslim hordes.



This stuff, in the hands of al-Qaeda or the Taliban or any other Islamist group is powerful evidence that the Crusader has returned. When the guy on the corner with the machine gun sends a subtle message that you should drop Mohammed and jump for Jesus instead, he's introducing a troubling and potentially disastrous element into our efforts over there.

To understand the truly dark side of how Christian fundamentalism is coming to hold the levers of power in parts of the US military, read the latest Harper's magazine.

It sure doesn't help anyone over there, including Canadian troops, that this video and other like it are now being broadcast throughout the Muslim world. If Washington is going to allow this nonsense to go on, by all means hand their wars straight back to them.

Why Are We Still Propping Up Karzai?

Great. Just as the furore was dying down over Hamid Karzai getting caught signing into law a matrimonial rape bill, we learn that he's chosen a brutal warlord for his running mate in the upcoming elections. From The Guardian:

Senior diplomats and human rights workers lashed out at Hamid Karzai's decision today to select a powerful warlord accused by western officials of involvement in criminal gangs and arms smuggling as a running mate in Afghanistan's presidential election.

Karzai's decision to defy international pressure and appoint Mohammad Qasim Fahim as one of his two vice-presidential candidates for the 20 August poll showed the world and the Afghan people that the president was "moving the country backwards", said a western diplomat in Kabul, who is close to the UN chief in the country, Kai Eide.

...The former militia leader, who goes by the honorary title of Marshal Fahim, is disliked by many Afghans suspicious of the wealth he has acquired since 2001 and disliked by the west for his opposition to the disbandment of the private armies of Afghanistan's warlords. An official with an international mission in Kabul said Mr Fahim had been linked to kidnap gangs operating in the capital. He is also accused of murdering prisoners of war during the mujahideen government in the 1990s.

At some point we're going to have to face up to the facts. We've been propping up what amounts to a criminal enterprise for the last eight years. Anyone who thinks anything good can possibly come out of that is an idiot. I guess that makes Steve Harper an idiot.

Eight years.

Another fact we're going to have to come to grips with are the indisputable consequences of treading water in a counterinsurgency war for eight years. Our eight years of indifference and neglect has merely served to broaden the insurgency, adding to the Taliban ranks a disparate collection of criminals, warlords and ordinary nationalists wanting the infidels out of their country.

It's too late for us to nuke Karzai. We just don't have enough popular support or even trust among the Afghan people to attempt to install our own replacement and most of the homegrown alternatives to the current president are seen as even worse.

And for this we're willing to risk breaking NATO? Incredible.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/04/afghanistan-president-hamid-karzai-election

Guess Who Ain't Coming to Dinner?

Britain has decided it doesn't want extremists, even if they are American, entering the country.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said she decided to publish the list to show what type of behaviour the government will not tolerate. Those who had the door slammed in their faces between October, 2008 and March, 2009 were determined to be fostering extremism or hatred.

Names on the list include:

Michael Savage (also known as Michael Weiner) – U.S. talk radio host from San Francisco who has called the Qur’an a "book of hate."

Stephen 'Don' Black – founder of a Florida-based white supremacist website.

Fred Phelps – anti-gay preacher at Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., church.

Shirley Phelps-Roper – daughter of Fred Phelps. The pair have picketed the funerals of AIDS victims and said the deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq is punishment for tolerance of homosexuality
.
Yunis Al-Astal – Hamas lawmaker in Gaza.

Safwat Hijazi – Egyptian cleric and television preacher.

Artur Ryno & Pavel Skachevsky – Russian gang leaders.

Mike Guzovsky – An Israeli settler allegedly involved with military training camps.

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/05/05/britain-banned-list050.html

Is Israel Abandoning Democracy?

Israel is something of a pressure cooker waiting to explode. What it values most, its identity as a Jewish state, is under an existential, demographic threat. There are but two ways to relieve the dangerous pressure, neither of them acceptable in Western society.

Israel's problem is that, when it overran territories after its creation, it absorbed a large number of Palestinians who chose to tough it out and stay in their homes rather than flee. This is what we now know as the pre-1967 war Israel. Israel's Arab population, however, is growing much faster than Israel's Jewish population and is expected to become the majority in the near future.

If Israeli Arabs become a majority at the ballot box it won't fare well for the Jewish state. Israeli Arabs haven't always been treated very well by their Jewish masters. They're unreliable, potentially the undoing of what Israel is supposed to be. If Israel is to preserve the nation as a Jewish state it either must ethnically cleanse itself of the Arab population or it must impose some form of apartheid rule, designating its Arab people as a lower order of citizen with sharply reduced political rights. Either way, Israel loses its vaunted claim as the only real democracy in the Middle East. It also stands to lose a lot of what remains of its support in the West.

Like any pressure cooker situation, changes are occurring. One of these is a spreading state repression of dissent and protest among Jewish moderates, intellectuals and peace groups. Read more here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/30/israel-military

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/05/israel-protest-feminism-draft

Another ominous development appeared in reports during the Israeli war on Gaza of fundamentalist Rabbis in the Israeli military egging their troops on to cleanse the Holy Land of these pesky Arabs.

The spread of religious fundamentalism into military forces isn't limited to Israel. Christian fundamentalists are increasingly taking the levers of power within the American armed forces. Many of them see America's military as a weapon to advance their idea of God's will. Read this chilling account from Harper's, "Jesus killed Mohammed: The crusade for a Christian military":

http://harpers.org/archive/2009/05/0082488

It wasn't until I read the Harper's story that I discovered the Christian extremists within the US military go straight up to David Petraeus himself. I can't see how any good can possibly come of this.

Arms Race Update - Australia Goes for Its Guns

When it comes to the arms races now underway Australia is something of a miners' canary and, right now, it's a bird that deserves a lot of attention.

Australia is afraid, seriously afraid of the massive rearmament programmes underway in India and China. Afraid enough that prime minister Kevin Rudd has announced a $75-billion expansion plan for his country's military forces.

Included in the shopping list are 100 F-35 multi-role fighters plus a dozen hunter-killer submarines atop a gaggle of other acquisitions and upgrades. You can find the Australian government's defence White Paper here:

http://apo.org.au/research/defending-australia-asia-pacific-century-force-2030

Sooner or later, some Canadian leader is going to come to his senses and address the global security challenges facing our own country. Strategic balances, especially in Asia and the Pacific Rim as well as the far north, are in a genuine and destabilizing state of flux. Not only are these emerging economies expanding their defensive - and offensive - military capabilities but they're also engaging in quiet campaigns of containment. Ignoring those realities could leave us in a very uncomfortable position.

Canadian Kids Quarantined in China

The Chinese are having qualms about Canadian pork and they're pretty leery about Canadian kids too.

25-students from the University of Montreal have been thrown into a 7-day quarantine in Changchung. From CBC News:

The students, from the University of Montreal, had boarded a plane in Beijing. But when their plane arrived in Changchun an official came on board and asked all the Canadian passengers to present themselves, Martin Deslauriers told CBC News.

Health officials then took them to a room at the airport to have their temperatures taken, said Deslauriers, who is a student at the University of Montreal. No one in his group had a fever, but they were still informed they would be placed in quarantine, he said.

"At first we didn't think it was going to be for seven days and we were finding it very funny. Now it's a bit less funny," Deslauriers said.

They were first taken to a dormitory at a local university for the seven-day quarantine but were moved to a hotel on Sunday where they are the only guests, Deslauriers said.

The group has been told they aren't allowed to leave the facility and meals are being provided, Deslauriers said.

The students have been provided with internet access and have had the opportunity to contact their families, he said.

Recalibrating Our Moral Compass

One of the neatest things about our blogs is that most of them are searchable. Just type in one or two keywords and you can find out what the blogger believed about issues a year or two ago and contrast that to who and what they're supporting today.

For example, most Liberal bloggers were steadfastly against Harper's unequivocal endorsement/absolution of Israeli aggression against Lebanon two years ago... the whole Qana/clusterbomb thing, senseless civilian carnage, etc. But then we had a change in leadership and got our own, unequivocal and absolutist Israel backer and a lot of our expected grievance over the senseless carnage in Gaza evaporated.

Most of us were incensed at the dishonest but effective way Haper skewered Dion's 'Green Shift' carbon tax initiative, the merits of which we staunchly defended. But then we had a change in leadership and got our own anti-carbon tax guy and all that indignation curiously evaporated.

The great majority of us were aghast at the environmental catastrophe known as the Athabasca Tar Sands. But then we got our own, pro-Athabasca leader who relegates the problems to a trifling matter of carbon capture and praises bitumen as a virtual key to national unity.

I guess that's my problem (or at least one of them). I just have a tougher time recalibrating my moral compass.

Americans and their Vaunted Healthcare

I guess healthcare insurance in the United States is great while everyone is awash in cheap money and skyrocketing housing prices but it's not nearly so great when reality sets in. From the soon-to-be-defunct Boston Globe:


As the economic recession persists, people who are unemployed or worried about losing their jobs are putting off medical care and living with illnesses and conditions that aren't critical, but can be debilitating. Some are delaying having precancerous tumors removed; others are forgoing knee or shoulder surgery. While insurance often covers much of the costs associated with such procedures, there are usually deductibles and other out-of-pocket expenses that can add up to thousands of dollars. For those lacking insurance, the price of most elective procedures is beyond their reach.


According to a recent Massachusetts Hospital Association survey, 59 percent of hospitals statewide reported a drop in elective surgeries in 2008 and into the beginning of fiscal 2009. The Red Cross, which supplies blood used in surgery, has also seen a drop in demand, causing it to cancel Massachusetts blood drives scheduled for March and April.

And as more people forgo treatment, hospitals are suffering financially, industry specialists say. Their profits depend heavily on lucrative surgical procedures paid for by private insurers. In addition to seeing fewer patients for elective day-surgeries and overnight treatments, hospital income from investments is dramatically down because of the economy. Profit margins at Massachusetts hospitals have dropped from an average of .7 percent in the last quarter of 2008 to .3 percent in the first quarter of this year, according to the hospital association.


To compensate, hospitals are cutting jobs, and canceling or postponing expansion projects. Nursing jobs, once abundant, for the first time in a decade are in short supply.

Is there a better argument than this for universal, single-payer health care?

Dear Michael - Uniting Canadians Isn't the Only Job

"You have failed to understand that a prime minister has only one job: to unite Canadians."

- Michael Ignatieff on Stephen Harper

I read that line attributed to Michael Ignatieff over at James Morton's blog. It immediately struck me as a curious thing to say, especially for a highly-educated, sophisticated person to say.

It led me to ponder what leaders from history have been most successful at uniting their peoples and just how did they manage to achieve their successes?

It dawned on me that truly great leaders rarely are the best at uniting their citizens. They almost always seem to provoke a visceral opposition. That's probably because they view their prime objective as to lead, not to unite.

Achieving near unity is the classic carrot and stick game. You buy as much support as you can with carrots and beat as many as possible of the remainder into submission. Except you don't use carrots and you don't actually use sticks. There is a vast and far more effective arsenal of weapons wielded by uniters.

Look at the great uniters of the 20th century - odious names like Benito, Adolph, Mao, George w. - people who rallied unprecedented and unquestioning popular support from their people. How did they do it? By instilling fear of foreigners, contempt of unbelievers in their own ranks and a contrived belief in the superiority of their beliefs (naturally as explained by their Uniters).

Unity admits of a unipolar existence, a narrow correctness of thought, a stifling of dissent and protest, a collapse of creativity and a tight, rigid fetter on advancement.

I suppose a unity pitch is easier to swallow if you either hold no strong values and principles or if your values and principles can be brought into line with those of the would-be uniter. All the great uniters of the 20th century had powerful values and principles that were imposed from the top down, invariably with disastrous consequences.

A unity pitch becomes much harder to swallow for those who cannot reconcile themselves to the values and principles of the uniter; who see them as flawed or ill-conceived or self-serving.

A genuine leader seeks to actually lead, not to unite. One of the most sensible things I ever heard Richard Nixon say came during a question on leadership from David Frost. Nixon very eloquently described leadership as the ability to persuade the public to accept and support unpopular or unpleasant measures. It's the gift of rational, honest persuasion, a talent notably lacking among the great uniters of the 20th century.

Global Warming Cooking Salmon to Extinction?

Pacific Northwest salmon stocks are severely endangered by global warming.

Salmon eggs need a steady supply of cold, freshwater in their spawning streams to hatch. If the water flow is interrupted - dead eggs. If the water supply gets too warm - dead eggs. It's why we look anxiously this time of year to the snowpack on our mountain tops. That's what ensures an adequate flow of sufficiently cold water to see hatchlings safely out to sea.

Global warming could spell the end to our salmon stocks. While the region is expected to remain wet in the winter months, snowpacks may decline. And what water does reach the spawning streams may be heated beyond the tolerable limits of salmon eggs. From McClatchey Newspapers:

Climate change already has made rivers warmer and spring runoff earlier, disrupting the life cycle of the fish that are an icon of the region.

No matter what actions the world takes to reduce greenhouse gases, river temperatures in more than half of the lower-elevation watersheds may exceed 70 degrees by 2040 - too hot for salmon.

"The only salmon that are going to survive the century mark are the ones in the large populations in the higher elevations that are still going to have snow and cold water," said Jim Martin, a former chief of fisheries for the state of Oregon.

But even these runs and those as far north as Alaska would be threatened if the world does not reduce gases like carbon dioxide over the next 50 years.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/67402.html

Yielding to the Taliban

Anybody remember Operation Medusa back in September, 2006? That's when Canadian commanders told us we had the Taliban surrounded in Panjwai District, Kandahar province, Afghanistan. At the time we were told the bad guys had two choices - surrender or die. The Taliban, it seemed, discovered a third option - leave and come back when the heat died down.

Didn't matter much. Our leaders didn't have a pile of bodies of dead Taliban or stacks of captured weapons but at least we were assured that they'd driven the Taliban out of Panjwai District, itself a real accomplishment.

Then, in December '06/January '07 we were back in Panjwai District this time for Operation Falcon something or other and, once again, we saved Panjwai for the good, government-supporting (not) villagers. We've been saving that place, off and on, ever since.

Now in May, 2009, we're actually surrendering turf in Panjwai to the Taliban so we can fall back to defend Kandahar City. From the Notional Toast:

Canada's military has conceded hard-won territory west of Kandahar City to Taliban insurgents.

...The police substation [in Mushan village], also called a strong point, was dismantled last week, in a large-scale operation called Munkiredal, the Pashto word for deny.

In a briefing Sunday with reporters at Kandahar Air Field, Canadian officers explained that the 64 Afghans stationed inside the fortress, with a rotation of eight Canadian military mentors, were not able to disrupt insurgent activity in the area.

The village is about 40 kilometres west of Kandahar Air Field.

It is now under Taliban control, the officers said, as is much of the Panjwaii peninsula, an area of some 160 square kilometres where poppy is a major cash crop for insurgents.

The Canadian officers deny that Canada has abandoned the local population. "I can see how it could be [interpreted that way]," said Maj. Stephane Briand, operations planning officer for the Quebec-led battle group in Kandahar. "But the main reason for the draw back was to reassign [troops]."

Yes, indeed. I can see "how it could be interpreted that way" too, especially if you're an Afghan villager who has spent the past two years watching the Taliban drive government and Western forces out of your neighbourhood. It's pretty hard to see any other way it could be interpreted.

It could also be interpreted as an admission of the mounting threat the Taliban pose to Kandahar City and our need to fall back to defend the provincial capital even if that means surrendering the countryside.

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1559427

Iggy's Arctic Dreamland

Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff has a dream - a dream of a pan-Arctic park, a pristine nature enclave where the habitat and ecology of the Arctic will be preserved. Where he came up with that silly idea is anyone's guess. Perhaps he hadn't heard that Russia had already launched the first in what's supposed to be a fleet of ice breaker/supertankers being built specifically to help exploit the massive energy reserves believed to lie beneath the Arctic Ocean floor.

Before Mike wastes more time daydreaming about Arctic parks, maybe he should read The Guardian. It's reporting on Russia's plans to build 'a fleet' of floating and submersible nuclear power plants to exploit Arctic oil and gas reserves. That's 'submersible' as in underwater as in underwater nuclear power plants Mike.

A prototype floating nuclear power station being constructed at the SevMash shipyard in Severodvinsk is due to be completed next year. Agreement to build a further four was reached between the Russian state nuclear corporation, Rosatom, and the northern Siberian republic of Yakutiya in February.

The 70-megawatt plants, each of which would consist of two reactors on board giant steel platforms, would provide power to Gazprom, the oil firm which is also Russia's biggest company. It would allow Gazprom to power drills needed to exploit some of the remotest oil and gas fields in the world in the Barents and Kara seas. The self-propelled vessels would store their own waste and fuel and would need to be serviced only once every 12 to 14 years.

In addition, designers are known to have developed submarine nuclear-powered drilling rigs that could allow eight wells to be drilled at a time.

The British paper notes that Russia has a history of nuclear dumping in the Arctic Ocean.

Countries including Britain have had to offer Russia billions of dollars to decommission more than 160 nuclear submarines, but at least 12 nuclear reactors are known to have been dumped, along with more than 5,000 containers of solid and liquid nuclear waste, on the northern coast and on the island of Novaya Zemlya.

Let's see - oil drilling, gas drilling, seabed mining and nuclear power plants. What more could you want in a nature park? Oh yeah, I know. A permanent Russian Arctic military force would be the icing on the cake. What? They're organizing that too? Oh my.

Wait a Minute - Weren't We All Supposed To Be Dead by Now?

Swine Flu, the Great Plague, the Black Death. That's all we've been hearing from our media since a new strain of influenza was diagnosed as coming out of Mexico. It sounded oh so grim with Mexicans dropping off in the hundreds. Surely it would lay low the strongest of civilizations in its unstoppable path. The World Health Organization screamed warnings of pandemic. The end was nigh.

Or not.

Seems the NewFlu bug wasn't remotely as virulent as feared. Pretty mild in fact and not terribly contagious after all. Now the WHO says there's no evidence of sustained spread in communities outside North America, meaning no pandemic.

Oh well, we can always dream:

Gun Nut Paranoia

Timothy McVeigh lives on.

Long, Hot Summer? - You Betcha

La Nina has finally outstayed her welcome, signalling a return to warmer, dryer conditions. The region of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Peru is coming to be understood as impacting seasonal weather conditions worldwide.

The British met office is forecasting a hot, dry summer for Britain with temperatures routinely spiking into the 30s. The same trend is expected to extend across northern Europe.

Today, Environment Canada issued its outlook for June through August, 2009, depicted in the first map below. Red areas, virtually all of Canada, will be hotter than normal. Only the small pockets of blue are expected to get below normal temperatures.

First It Was Houses, Now It's the Malls

Trying to find the eye in America's fiscal hurricane isn't easy but it is generally considered to be residential real estate and the myriad ways that was gamed by homeowners, mortgage lenders, securities traders and the political establishment.

Now America is on the verge of being hit by another wave - commercial real estate. From McClatchey Newspapers:

Thousands of commercial mortgages valued at hundreds of billions of dollars are approaching their renewal dates, and by some estimates, two out of three no longer will meet the original loan conditions and won't be able to refinance. With prices for commercial properties expected to plunge, a vicious cycle could unfold, much as it has in the nation's housing market.

"It's the next wave to hit. It's the next round of bad news," said Scott Talbott, the senior vice president of government affairs for the Financial Services Roundtable, a trade group for big banks and other financial institutions who are collectively concerned about the coming problems.

A commercial mortgage meltdown is likely to prolong the nation's economic recovery. Falling prices of commercial real estate would lead to additional bank losses at a time when banks already are sapped by home mortgage defaults and soaring credit card defaults. This could lead to future additional taxpayer assistance for the banks.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/67187.html

Writing Off CanWest

Fairfax Financial Holdings has a problem on its hands, an outfit called CanWest Global Communications Corp.

In 2007, Fairfax picked up an 11% interest in CanWest when the shares were trading at $6. The investment firm subsequently doubled that stake.

Now with CanWest shares trading at 28-cents and the future of the company in serious doubt, Fairfax has simply written off its stake in the Winnipeg-based communications company. It sounds like Fairfax isn't holding its breath waiting for Lenny Asper to salvage CanWest.

http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/627037

Know Your Limit - A Trillion Tonnes. Global Warming Gets New Metrics.

Climate scientists have come up with a new approach to measuring anthropogenic (man-made) global warming. They've worked out the maximum quantity of carbon dioxide we can cram into our atmosphere if we have any hope of staying within the 2-degree celsius target. It's a trillion tonnes.

Now that's not another trillion tonnes, but a trillion tonnes all in. A second study just released puts the ceiling at 0.9 trillion tonnes. From the Environmental News Network:

Rather than basing negotiations on short-term goals such as emission rates by a given year, the researchers say the atmosphere can be regarded as a tank of finite size which we must not overfill if we want to avoid a dangerous temperature rise.

Climate policy has traditionally concentrated on cutting emission rates by a given year, such as 2020 or 2050, without placing these goals within the overall context of needing to limit cumulative emissions.

...The first study, led by Myles Allen from the University of Oxford, UK, found that releasing a total of one trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere between 1750 and 2500 would cause a "most likely" peak warming of two degrees Celsius. Emissions to 2008 have already released half of this.

Allen said in a press briefing this week (27 April): "It took 250 years to burn the first half trillion tonnes and, on current predictions, we'll burn the next half trillion in less than 40 years."

David Frame, a co-author of the Allen paper and researcher at the University of Oxford, said that these findings make the problem "simpler" than it's often portrayed.

"[The findings] treat these emissions ... as an exhaustible resource. For economists, this way of looking at the problem will be a huge simplification," Frame said.

"Basically, if you burn a tonne of carbon today, then you can't burn it tomorrow ...you've got a finite stock. It's like a tank that's emptying far too fast for comfort. If country A burns it, country B can't. It forces everyone to consider the problem as a whole."

What's not mentioned directly in the article is the enormously powerful significance of a global ceiling on carbon emissions - rationing. It makes possible arguments we haven't heard much of before. For example, we've got around 6.7-billion people today. If we allocate the remaining half-trillion tonnes on a per capita formula it would be disastrous for the industrialized nations. Even under an international cap and trade system, carbon quotas could become enormously expensive. It brings to mind the situation in California where farmers with water quotas choose to simply sell their quotas to desperate municipalities and give up farming altogether.

I expect these studies could be right. After all, there has to be some limit to the atmospheric emissions the earth can sustain. Everybody pretty much already knows that. But to put a number on it gives the debate an entirely new dimension, a clear yardstick against which each nation can be measured and, in seeking co-operation, clarity could be toxic.

What's Going on With CanWest?

Is it just me? I can't open the web sites for any of the CanWest papers - NaPo, VanSun, OtCitz - the whole bundle.

Every other news site opens just fine. Anyone else having this problem?

Big Oil-Big Coal Need Your Help to Save Global Warming

Don't Count on America to Save The World

The Europeans may be stumbling along independently but the rest of the world, including the three guys who pass themselves off as Canada's political leaders, waits for America to take the lead in the fight against anthropogenic global warming.

Brian Mulroney, to his credit and to what ought to be Canada's embarrassment, was the last Canadian prime minister to seriously embrace environmentalism. His counterpart, Margaret Thatcher, was the first British prime minister to really take global warming seriously.

Canada signed on to the Kyoto Accords and then pretty much put the freshly inked document in some cabinet in Ottawa to gather dust. I'm willing to cut the Libs a good deal of slack. It took time to get Kyoto ratified and, when they took over from Mulroney, they were left to save a nation staring into an abyss of debt and deficits.

Then along came Big Oil's own Stephen Harper who derided Kyoto as a "socialist plot" to effect a massive transfer of wealth. I guess we have to thank everybody's Gods that Harper wasn't from tobacco country or we might be selling cigarettes in elementary schools today. Harper knew the strongest bond he had to his American idols, Messrs. Bush and Cheney, was the Athabasca Tar Sands, a mega project that was the key to Canada's ascent to energy superpowerdom, a dream that would never be fulfilled if Kyoto was enforced.

Steve might not have delivered a majority government to his Conservative Party but he certainly ran interference for Big Oil for more than three years until the rival Liberal Party could come up with its own Athabasca-friendly leader.

When it comes to the global warming issue both Messrs. Harper and Ignatieff (along with their pound hound "Scrappy Jack") have been playing it safe. Iggy, oblivious or indifferent to the distinction between 'informed' and 'misinformed,' has even pronounced that an informed Canadian public has said "no" to carbon taxes and that's an end to the idea. So our (giggle) leaders have decided to await their climate change cues from Washington where, curiously enough, the people with actual ideas now reside while Ottawa remains an empty vessel.

But don't count on America to lead the world out of this mess. There's more than enough opposition in Congress, generously egged on by the Carbon Lobby, to thwart any meaningful action to even marginally reduce America's overall carbon emissions. R.J. Samuelson, writing in today's Washington Post, says the best-possible scenario still sees emissions growing through 2030.

Re-engineering the world energy system seems an almost impossible undertaking. Just consider America's energy needs in 2030, as estimated by the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Compared with 2007, the United States is projected to have almost 25 percent more people (375 million), an economy about 70 percent larger ($20 trillion) and 27 percent more light-duty vehicles (294 million). Energy demand will be strong.

But the EIA also assumes greater conservation and use of renewables. From 2007 to 2030, solar power grows 18 times, wind six times. New cars and light trucks get 50 percent better gas mileage. Light bulbs and washing machines become more efficient. Higher energy prices discourage use; by 2030, oil is $130 a barrel in today's dollars. For all that, U.S. CO2 emissions in 2030 are projected to be 6.2 billion metric tons, 4 percent higher than in 2007. As an example, solar and wind together would still supply only about 5 percent of electricity, because they must expand from a tiny base.

If Samuelson is right and this is America's bottom line on global warming, start investing in those companies that want to put huge mirrors in the upper atmosphere. Because if America takes this position it's going to be almost impossible to get China and India to slash their carbon output. The fate of the world is very much in the hands of those three nations.

If Washington isn't going to take the lead someone else has to and in North America, that comes down to Canada. We have to at least try to lead by example or else accept our fate and the far worse fate we've bequeathed to our children and grandchildren. This is a moment in which we need the strongest possible leadership and it's nowhere to be found.

Republicans' Tortured Logic

The Republican leadership, or what's left of it, has gone off the deep end in its response to the Bush administration torture memos. They all follow the same predictable, even hackneyed pattern we've seen so often over the past eight years. First deny and then justify and attack your critics.

The denial at first was a blanket, "America doesn't torture" rebuttal. Oh there might have been a couple of waterboardings but no biggie because America doesn't torture. Now that we learn that one Qaeda operative was waterboarded a mind-boggling 183-times in the span of two months that story has moved on down the denial line.

Now the denial tactic is to claim that waterboarding isn't torture anyway. They point to the SERE programme, an acronym that stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, in which some military personnel experience waterboarding - sort of. It's the "sort of" that's overlooked although it reflects the difference between being shot with a gun or shot with a water pistol.

I watched the Vanity Fair clip of Chris Hitchens enduring a staggering 10-seconds of waterboarding and it drove home how what Hitchens experienced was nothing remotely like waterboarding. Yes he was strapped to his board. Yes they put a towel over his face. Yes they poured water onto the towel. But Hitchens trial by torture didn't begin to resemble what the al-Qaeda suspects received.

The essence of torture is to make the subject helpless. All power passes to his tormenter. The victim has no control. His fate is totally in the torturer's hands. The victim is psychologically prepared for the experience - incarceration, isolation, beatings, stress positions, deprivations and abuse of all varieties. By the time he comes before his torturer he's been well and truly tuned up. He never knows when his ordeal will end nor does he know how it will end, whether he will even survive.

Hitchens, like the US military's SERE students, were never placed in that position of desperate helplessness. They knew they were there to experience something, to become somewhat familiar with some aspects of it, but never to truly endure it. Hitchens, for example, never lost control, not for a second. He was given a safe word, 'red.' As soon as he said the word the demonstration (the name actually used by his instructors) would immediately stop. He was given two metal rods, one for each hand, that he merely needed to drop and that would also bring the demonstration to an immediate end.

What the Republicans say their own military personnel experience and what the Republican leadership and functionaries inflicted on their captives were as night and day. It's pure sophistry to dismiss one as the same as the other. It's a cowardly, baldfaced lie.

Those more directly in the spotlight, Dick Cheney and former CIA Director Porter Goss, are playing a different game. In a wicked double-team, Cheney is calling for the release of sensitive CIA reports while Goss attacks Obama for exposing the CIA's secrets to America's enemies. This is truly standing logic on its head. What the government has released so far doesn't compromise the CIA's operational secrets unless it's now become a torture agency instead of an intelligence agency. However it's entirely conceivable that the reports Cheney wants made public could well expose CIA operational secrets. Once the bad guys know what the torture victim actually said and put that together with what happened, they'll know what else may be coming and what tactics they need to do to counter the threats.

I have no doubt that Cheney knows Obama can't release the reports he claims will justify his misdeeds. It's because Cheney knows it that he's challenged Obama to do it, to create his excuse. He'll be able to say that anyone prosecuting him is out on a political vendetta that has nothing to do with the waterboarding. Which is precisely why Cheney ought to be the very first indicted. This cowardly, devious bully has done too much, dodged too much to be allowed to get away with this.

What's never mentioned by the Repugs is just what Cheney had in mind when he ordered an individual waterboarded nine score times. The veep who has never been known to be honest says he was after 'intelligence' on the terrorists and their other plots against the United States. The intense scheduling of these inquisitions, however, supports an alternate account of the whys and wherefores. This comes from the interrogators themselves who have come clean and said they were under constant and heavy pressure to extract a confession from their victims of a link between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein.

And that explanation is consistent with the very nature of torture because that's what torture has always been about - manufacturing facts that didn't exist before the thumbscrews were turned. Torture is used for extracting admissions about things real or imaginary. The only thing that matters is what the torturer wants to hear, not what the subject truly knows. That's why torture is the tool of monsters and why its victims are normally executed quiety afterward.

Cheney's lies became too much for an FBI interrogator, Ali Soufan, who recently went public in The New York Times:

One of the most striking parts of the memos is the false premises on which they are based. The first, dated August 2002, grants authorization to use harsh interrogation techniques on a high-ranking terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, on the grounds that previous methods hadn’t been working. The next three memos cite the successes of those methods as a justification for their continued use. It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence.

--There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions — all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process.

--One of the worst consequences of the use of these harsh techniques was that it reintroduced the so-called Chinese wall between the C.I.A. and F.B.I., similar to the communications obstacles that prevented us from working together to stop the 9/11 attacks. Because the bureau would not employ these problematic techniques, our agents who knew the most about the terrorists could have no part in the investigation. An F.B.I. colleague of mine who knew more about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed than anyone in the government was not allowed to speak to him.

False confessions, false accusations, trumped up excuses for war - a veritable vipers' nest of lies, manipulation and betrayal. And how many innocent lives have fallen victim to the connivances of these monsters?
http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/fbi-special-agent-ali-soufan-who-interr

Election Scandal Hits BC Libs

Two scandals have given the British Columbia NDP a chance to get their own back. Turns out our Solicitor General likes to speed - a lot - but isn't so keen on paying his fines. He's had to forfeit his driver's licence.

"He has to go," said Mike Farnworth.
"He is the province's top cop - the minister responsible for road safety and the enforcement of the traffic code. It is unacceptable. He has lost all credibility."

And then there's Mission candidate Marc Dalton and the matter of an e-mail he sent a decade ago that seems to equate homosexuality with pornography.

In an interview, he said his views have changed over the years and that, in any event, he would not impose his views on the public should he be elected an MLA.

"Yes. I have changed. Why? I have gotten older. I've become more open minded. That's where I am as life progresses," he said. "I've changed in the sense of tolerance."

Unlike NDP leader Carol James who pretty much dumped Ray Lam cold after two embarrassing photos came out on Facebook, Premier Gordo Campbell - very much a sinner himself - has decided he'll stand by his man, er men.

Yeah, But It's Still Toronto

Sometimes it's hard for other Canadians to give Torontonians their due but, an experiment conducted by the Toronto Star did find they're remarkably honest.

The paper dropped 20 wallets with identical contents at various spots in the Toronto area. 15 were returned and the paper is trying to get back to two other callers who've said they've found wallets.

Only three wallets have disappeared without a trace. One, it seems, had been dropped in the prestigious Osgoode Hall Law Library. Two others were returned sans the money that had been inside. One of those had been dropped in the lobby of the Globe & Mail.

So, fair enough, Torontonians are genuinely an honest bunch. Now, if they just weren't from Toronto they might even be likeable.

http://www.thestar.com/living/article/624319

Alberta - You're Number One!

Not that being the top of The Guardian's "most viewed" stories list is really something to brag about. Not when that numero uno story is about the environmental catastrophe called the Athabasca Tar Sands. Not when that Tar Sands story is about how the government needed a promo video showing a beautiful, pristine seaside beach.

Seaside Beach? Wait a minute, when did landlocked Alberta get any kind of seaside? From The Guardian:

"We think it's quite funny - a landlocked province in Canada presenting an image of itself as an island," said Sheelagh Caygill of Northumberland Tourism, which is now fondly hoping to piggy-back on the international campaign. News of the gaffe is spreading like wildfire on the internet with tags such as: "Come to Alberta - no, wait, it's Britain."

The curious choice of a seaside beach for a place which has none, was spotted by Peter Bailey, a Canadian looking for places to take his dinghy. He initially thought that the scene might be set on one of Alberta's many lakes, whose sandy shores and unpolluted water are important to the tourism drive.

Oil extraction is concentrated in Alberta's Oil Sands region, which include landscapes vaguely similar to Northumberland's unspoilt coast. But Bailey tracked down the real setting - halfway between the drama of Bamburgh castle and the kipper-smoking village of Craster - after a marathon email session with the Canadian government, tourist authorities and their PR advisers.

Ottawa has responded by suggesting that the choice of Northumberland symbolised the fact that "Albertans are a worldly people". Tom Olsen, head of media relations for Canada's prime minister Stephen Harper, said: "There's no attempt to mislead here. The picture used just fitted the mood and tone of what we were trying to do."

I suppose Exalted Furious Leader really didn't intend to make himself and his home province the laughingstock of Britain. As for the atrociously lame excluse that Albertans are a worldly people? Maybe, that is if you could find an alternative world where everyone had ginormous-assed pickup trucks and drove as though red lights were just one man's opinion.

They've Known All Along - Denialist Lobby Scam Exposed

They called themselves the "Global Climate Coalition," a group of climate experts who represented the fossil fuel industry and their message was clear: "The role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood."

But, within their closed ranks they understood well enough to write this in an internal memo from 1995: "The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied.”

Cannot be denied, it seems, was subject to interpretation depending on who was paying and how much. From The New York Times:

The coalition was financed by fees from large corporations and trade groups representing the oil, coal and auto industries, among others. In 1997, the year an international climate agreement that came to be known as the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated, its budget totaled $1.68 million, according to tax records obtained by environmental groups.

Throughout the 1990s, when the coalition conducted a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign challenging the merits of an international agreement, policy makers and pundits were fiercely debating whether humans could dangerously warm the planet.

Today, with general agreement on the basics of warming, the debate has largely moved on to the question of how extensively to respond to rising temperatures.George Monbiot, a British environmental activist and writer, said that by promoting doubt, industry had taken advantage of news media norms requiring neutral coverage of issues, just as the tobacco industry once had.

“They didn’t have to win the argument to succeed,” Mr. Monbiot said, “only to cause as much confusion as possible.”

They weren't mistaken. They knew the truth, knew it was undeniable, and then proceeded to line their pockets by denying it. Who can tell just how much damage these bastards have done, how many lives will be needlessly lost to their perfidy, how much suffering they and their patrons have inflicted.

Read more here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/science/earth/24deny.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&em

All in Good Fun?

It's become a popular cartoon in Israel - Ahmed and Salim. The South Park-style characters spend their days playing computer games and posting rude messages on Facebook. In the afternoons, however the Arab brothers always find time to bomb buses, gun down Israeli girls and incinerate cafes.



What is this, Rin & Stimpy Wage Jihad?

Since posting this I checked out a couple of other episodes of this on YouTube. They really are pretty racist and are definitely designed to dehumanize Arabs.