The Big Melt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Depressing Talk and Laissez Faire Suicide

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I digress.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Russia To Step Back Into Afghanistan?

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Recession Hits US Could Be Worst In Half Century

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Without NATO, America's Global Standing Plummets

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cruising Kandahar

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

Help Yourself

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

Brooks On Spitzer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where There's Smoke - There's More Smoke

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tony's Desperate Search for Relevance

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

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

That hasn't exactly worked out, has it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AfriCom Really Is AfriKom After All

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

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

What sharp teeth you have, Grandma!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Namibians Understand Global Warming

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

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

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

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

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

China - Far Dirtier Than We'd Imagined

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Fine Tribute to A Much Maligned Woman

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

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

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

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

It's a good read, check it out.

And He Was Expecting - What?

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

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

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

From the Toronto Star:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enough Is Enough, Except When It's Not

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

William Fallon - Milestone to War on Iran?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wake Me When It's Over

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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