Accepting Failure in Afghanistan

We went in full of self-righteous anger, the images of jetliners flying into office towers burned into our brains.   The idea was to eradicate al-Qaeda and topple the Taliban government that had sheltered them and it all seemed to happen in an instant save, perhaps, for the part about exterminating al-Qaeda.

When we found ourselves in desperate need of a second act, we struck upon a narrative about bringing peace, democracy and human rights to the Afghan people.   We were going to give the Afghans a real stake in something that they would cherish and want to defend to prevent those Talibs from sneaking back.

We spent years trying to pull off that conjuring act because, after all, we were never offering the Afghan people more than an illusion of peace, democracy and human rights, one we tried to buy on the cheap.   We never invested enough troops and money to secure the country, not even close.   Those troops and that treasure needed to secure Afghanistan was squandered in Iraq instead.  And so we had no choice but to fall back on the old warlord structure that, in a nation as wracked with ethnic tensions and tribalism, guaranteed that the place would loosely hold together right up until the day we left.

Now we're getting ready to pull out of Afghanistan.   At least most of the coalition is doing that.   It's unclear what Canada is doing.   Our Ruler says he'll make up his mind on that one sometime next year.

The Americans want to wind things down but, then again, they want many things including a deal with the Taliban that will simply stop the civil war.   Plan B is to just hand over the war to Afghan forces we've laboured so hard to train and equip.   We've trained hundreds of thousands of them in only twice the same time it took us to fight and win WWII.  So now the plan is to have the Afghans step up so we can step down.   And how's that going?

According to The Washington Post, it's not going all that well.

Afghan commanders have refused more than a dozen times within the past two months to act on U.S. intelligence regarding high-level insurgents, arguing that night-time operations to target the men would result in civilian casualties, Afghan officials say.

The defiance highlights the shift underway in Afghanistan as Afghan commanders make use of their newfound power to veto operations proposed by their NATO counterparts.

Hey, what's this?   Don't they know that we know what's best for them?  Apparently not.

But the resistance to American guidance on night operations represents the clearest indication to date that Afghan military commanders are heeding a directive from President Hamid Karzai last month. Just a day after signing a 10-year bilateral agreement with the United States, Karzai said Afghan soldiers should discard questionable information provided by the U.S. military.

“If you have any doubt about an American intelligence report, do not conduct any operation based on it,” he told officials at the Interior Ministry.

And the latest trend, Green on Blue attacks on Western troops by their Afghan counterparts, continues.   Two British servicemen were killed Saturday in an attack by two Afghans in Afghan Police uniforms while guarding a meeting with local leaders at a patrol base.

American forces are now gearing up for what is expected to be their last major campaign of the Afghan war in Ghazni province.

Instead of trying to reform the Afghan government, protect the civilian population and conduct security operations until Afghan forces are ready to take over — all of which Americans sought to do as recently as last year — a newly arrived brigade from the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division plans to spend the summer attacking Taliban redoubts before departing in mid-September, regardless of whether Afghan soldiers are capable of holding their own.

The last of six American commanders, General John Allen, is overseeing the effort to get American forces out of combat in Afghanistan.

Unlike his predecessors, who had the luxury of troops and money, he has been forced to triage. He has narrowed targets for the development of local government, the pursuit of graft and the development of the country’s economy. His pragmatic focus is on the one prerequisite for America to head to the exits, as defined by the White House: Afghan security forces that are strong enough to keep the Taliban, which continues to enjoy sanctuary in neighboring Pakistan, from toppling the Kabul government. Although much of the Afghan army remains raggedy, with weak leadership and persistent supply shortages, he is betting that shifting responsibility sooner will increase the odds that Afghans will be able to stand their ground once the U.S. presence shrinks.

That sounds like wishful thinking but, at this point, General Allen has to play the crappy cards he's been dealt and the highest card he's holding is hope that it won't go all to hell.

Allen’s predicament has no equivalent in modern American warfare.

In Iraq, U.S. troops departed in a far less violent environment. In Vietnam, Creighton Abrams, the general who presided over America’s withdrawal, had more troops at his disposal and more time to transfer responsibility to local forces.

By the early 1970s, according to historian Lewis Sorley, South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu’s government was more effective, and the country’s army was more competent, than Karzai’s administration and the Afghan security forces are today. Allen “has a much more difficult job,” said Sorley, the author of “A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam.”

Allen, 58, is an avid reader of military histories and sees the Vietnam analogies — the insurgent safe havens across a national border, the plummeting public support back home — but he is studying a different withdrawal: that of the Soviets from Afghanistan in 1989.

“We’re fighting on the same ground,” he noted.

Afghanistan’s Communist government remained in power through the pullout, falling only three years later, after the Soviet Union collapsed and its economic aid to Kabul ended. To Allen, that fact argues for sustained American assistance to Afghanistan, particularly to pay for its army and police, which will grow to a combined strength of 352,000 this year.

In some ways Allen is having to ad lib the closing act of our Afghan war.   He figures the West will need to fund the Afghan Army and Afghan National Police to the tune of $4-billion a year indefinitely even as other nations, like China, saunter in to exploit Afghanistan's considerable mineral wealth all on our security tab.   No matter how much lipstick you put on it, staging a chequebook withdrawal from Afghanistan is simply a drawn out admission of defeat.

Let'em Eat Cake

When the going gets tough, the tough tell the weak to "shove off."

Apparently overlooking the fact that Britain is officially in a double-dip recession and wracked with unemployment, the country's conservative foreign secretary said the only way Brits can drag their country out of recession is to "work harder."

In an interview published on Sunday, [William]Hague said Britain's national work ethic had been declining for decades, with people convinced they could "live on expanded debt forever, rather than having to earn what we spend".

Britain sank back in recession last month after the economy shrank again in the first quarter, but the government has stuck by its deep spending cuts despite concerns they undermine growth.

 

"There's only one growth strategy: work hard," Hague told The Sunday Telegraph newspaper.

He urged people to "get on the plane, go and sell things overseas, go and study overseas".

The foreign secretary must have missed the memo that there's another growth strategy, his government's own, to drive the country into ruin under the crushing weight of austerity measures.

Hague, of course, has a very well-paid job that a majority of Brits would like to put him out of, along with the rest of his government, if only they could have an election.   Perhaps someone could reserve a plane for his caucus to go and sell their wares overseas.

Shouldn't the RCMP Mind Its Own, Long-Neglected Business?

I have found it puzzling that the Commissioner of the RCMP, the federal top cop, is writing letters to provincial chief firearms officers (CFOs) warning them not to start setting up provincial long gun registries.

First of all, isn't this a matter for the guy who oversaw the scrapping of the federal long gun registry, Vic Toews?  If Toews doesn't like what they're doing, don't we have courts to handle that sort of complaint?

I'm not sure Toews would succeed if he took it to court and I'm guessing he's got his doubts too.   When the feds chose to legislate provisions for the registration of long guns, the courts upheld the federal power concluding that the act had a valid criminal law purpose because control of firearms had traditionally been a criminal law purpose.  In that case Alberta was arguing the jurisdiction was theirs, not Ottawa's, under the "property and civil rights" power.

But what's never been tested, certainly not to my knowledge, is today's situation in which the federal government has specifically chosen not to legislate controls over ownership and registration of long guns.   In other words, those matters are no longer what could be termed an "occupied field" which might then give rise to a right on the part of provinces to maintain their own long gun registries along the same lines as the federal registry only without the same criminal law sanctions.   There are other ways to skin that cat.

Yet that's for our courts to decide if Vic Toews really believes he's right.   To me, there's something eerily politicized in the federal top cop jumping into this fray.  It's his job to enforce the law, not meddle in laws that have ceased to exist.

We've had enough politicking by the RCMP going back to Zaccardelli's apparent gambit to skew the election against Martin by smearing Ralph Goodale in mid-campaign.    The level of confidence and trust in the RCMP in my province is at rock bottom, coming in around 30%, and for very good reasons.  Maybe the Commissioner should concentrate on restoring some integrity and public respect in his own force and forget about being Vic Toews' water boy.

The Only Good Muslim Is a Dead Muslim. Did We Just Say That to the Muslim World?

I'm afraid that's just what we did tell the Muslim world with the exposure of a course taught at America's own Joint Forces Staff College that suggested the only way to secure America might require wiping out the Muslim population.   Nuking Mecca for starters.

And that's from the West's military head office, the US Defense Department.   We can't take it back now.   The course materials have been posted online.   Every Muslim with computer access is going to be able to read every demented line of it.

Now let's say you're a Muslim doctor with a wife and three kids.  You've been barraged with all this Jihadi stuff for years but you've chosen to sit passively on the fence.   And now all that "Crusader" stuff that's been thrown in your face for so long, why it's true.   There it is, in writing.   They're talking about wiping out your wife and kids because that's necessary for their own security.   Hell, they're talking about genocide of your entire Muslim population.   That's 1.4-billion faithful from North Africa to Indonesia.

Now how do you feel about Iran getting a nuclear weapon or twenty or a hundred?   Every Muslim nation could use a little thermonuclear insurance policy now, couldn't they?   Time's a wastin.

And what if you're a farmer working your fields in Afghanistan?   How do those "peacekeepers" look to you now?

Oh dear.   We, or rather the Americans, have really stepped in it this time and they may have undone any good they have achieved in quite a long time.

Now That It's Out in The Open, Pentagon's Not So Keen On "War on Muslims"

The Pentagon has launched an investigation into why its Joint Forces Staff College has been teaching a course advocating tomorrow's generals  prepare to inflict genocide on the Muslim world.

Sound bizarre?   Unbelievable?   Well, guess what?   It happened and it's been going on for a while.  The story came to light recently when Wired magazine's terrific blog, Danger Room, broke the story and even posted the course materials advocating the annihilation of the world's Muslim population, including nuclear strikes on targets like Mecca.   That's genocide to the order of 1.4-billion people.

How is that thinking even possible in what is the ringmaster of the modern military circus Canada serves?   It's the almost inevitable result of a transformation that has swept through the United States armed forces since 9/11.  There have been plenty of warnings this was happening and we have largely ignored them all.  I began writing about this in August, 2010 after reading Andrew Bacevich's, "The New American Militarism" and works by others on point.   You can find some of those posts here, and here, and here.   You can find any number of other articles on the advance of this malignancy on this blog.

To put it in a nutshell, this course made it to the curriculum of the American's military's staff college through the powerful perversion of that military itself.   Scrapping this course, burning all the course materials, retiring a few senior officers, won't change a thing.  This course is only a symptom of a problem that has been allowed to metastasize throughout the American military establishment from the bottom ranks to the top.

What is exposed here is the result of a horrific marriage of neoconservativism, evangelical fundamentalism, and an ascendant military/industrial/commercial warfighting complex all under the umbrella of a corporatist federal government.   And this is how a nation is created in which military force supplants diplomacy as the preferred instrument of foreign policy.   This is madness writ large.  It represents the evolution of a fourth branch of American government, a military that is gradually taking political powers that rival those of what are supposed to be its civilian masters.  It's a genie out of its bottle.

And what of Canada?  We should finally see what's happening in the Pentagon, its staff colleges and in the field and we should be making tracks in the opposite direction, putting safe distance between ourselves and the Americans until they cure themselves of this contagion.   But what are we doing?    Just the opposite.

Canada is integrating our military with that of the Americans in a manner that ties our foreign policy to theirs.   Nothing makes that point more powerfully than the F-35 stealth light bomber.

Our opposition parties have done a shamefully poor job of handling the F-35 issue.  Being the lazy bastards they are, they've gone for the low-hanging fruit - what does it really cost, who knew what and when?  Here's a hint - the cost issue is almost irrelevant compared to the greater issues the F-35 raises.

What matters about the F-35 is what it does and what it doesn't do in the broadest terms.   You begin by accepting it's a medium range, stealth light bomber.   It's not a long-range interceptor.  It's not an air-superiority dogfighter.  It's a bomber with some questionable high-tech advantages that are designed for it to be used offensively in penetration strikes into the territory of sophisticated adversaries.  If it works as claimed it only works in conjunction with very expensive and sophisticated support aircraft that Canada neither has nor intends to acquire.   That means the F-35 works in support of the country that does have those sophisticated support aircraft which, by process of elimination, means the United States - the same military that's staff college lectures on wiping out 1.4-billion Muslims.   So, when you harness your military to the F-35, you're actually hitching your horse to America's war wagon.   You're just taking on blind faith that the guy with the reins won't steer you wrong.   Good luck with that.

But, as I said, the F-35 is also about what it isn't, what it doesn't do.  It isn't a long-range interceptor aircraft of the type Canada needs to secure our vast, empty northern airspace.   And it isn't a dogfighter capable of holding its own against the best our potential adversaries can toss at us.   So what does that mean?   That means to sign on to the F-35, we transfer those essential defence, security and sovereignty roles to someone else and who would that be?   Full points for guessing the United States.   The same "end of days", hyper-militarized United States.  The same United States that still doesn't recognize Canada's territorial claims in the far north.  Do you like the fit?

I wish I was making this up, I really do.   But I can't wish it away.  This is happening and it's been happening for most of this 21st Century.   It is a contagion and it needs to be quarantined.   And that is what the opposition needs to zero in on. 

Tar Sands - The Great Canadian Giveaway

When Tar Sands sludge leaves Canada so does most of the wealth associated with it.   Most of the Tar Sands is foreign owned, most of the revenue goes straight into foreign pockets.

More than two-thirds of all oilsands production in Canada is owned by foreign entities, sending a majority of the industry's profits out of the country, says a new analysis released Thursday by a British Columbia-based conservation group.

The research by Forest Ethics Advocacy was based on an analysis of shareholder information in January 2012 from Bloomberg Professional of more than a dozen companies, including nine with headquarters in Canada, and six with their head offices in other countries. It found 71 per cent of the ownership of oilsands production was foreign, while the foreign-based companies controlled 24.2 per cent of the sector's production.

"Some notably Canadian oil companies, such as Suncor, Canadian Oil Sands and Husky, are predominantly owned by non-Canadians," said the report. "The data also shows us that more than half of Canada's oil and gas revenue goes to foreign entities."

Forest Ethics Advocacy said that its own analysis on ownership demonstrates that recent efforts by Harper's government to weaken Canada's environmental protection laws and speed up approval of industrial projects are not in the national interest.

"Since the beginning of the year, our federal government has either cut or gutted every piece of environmental legislation designed to protect our land, air, and water while aggressively pushing for the expansion of the tar sands and the building of new pipelines, such as the controversial Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline and supertanker project," concluded the report. "Harper has claimed to do this in the name of Canada's national interest while attacking anyone who disagrees."

So just who are the Harper Conservatives toiling so assiduously for?   For you?   For me?   For Canada?  No for Foreign Oil and, in Comrade Steve's case, for the People's Republic of China.

Hey Vic, Be Sure to Tell Steve. He Thinks You're An Idiot Too.

"I am prepared to consider all legislative and regulatory measures necessary to give effect to the will of Canadians."

That pearl of wisdom and efficacy from the Minister of farcical family values er, public safety, Vic Toews.   The guy whose party three out of five Canadians did not support now choses to give effect to the will of Canadians.   The will of some Canadians?   The will of the minority of Canadians who clamoured for an end to the long gun registry?   The will of Canadians howsoever Vic Toews' tortured mind chooses to perceive it?

Vic Toews has no more interest in giving effect to the will of Canadians than my beagle has in poring over an encyclopedia.   And it doesn't help that he's just so damned creepy.

Toews is vowing to end any and all powers, including local and provincial, to record and register long gun data.  He's way out of his depth on this but he's always been an overenthusiastic little peckerhead.

As Though We Need Another Reason to Ditch the F-35

Listen up, this is serious.   The American Warfare State, the very one that any country buying the F-35 is signing on to serve, has achieved a degree of madness that we cannot afford to overlook.   This much is plain from details emerging of a course at the Pentagon's Joint Forces Staff College that taught America's future military leaders that American security required total war on Muslims, all of them.  They've been advocating genocide, mass extermination.

"The U.S. military taught its future leaders that a “total war” against the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims would be necessary to protect America from Islamic terrorists...  Among the options considered for that conflict: using the lessons of “Hiroshima” to wipe out whole cities at once, targeting the “civilian population wherever necessary.”

"The course, first reported by Danger Room last month and held at the Defense Department’s Joint Forces Staff College, has since been canceled by the Pentagon brass. It’s only now, however, that the details of the class have come to light. Danger Room received hundreds of pages of course material and reference documents from a source familiar with the contents of the class."

...The commanders, lieutenant colonels, captains and colonels who sat in Dooley’s classroom, listening to the inflammatory material week after week, have now moved into higher-level assignments throughout the U.S. military.

"For the better part of the last decade, a small cabal of self-anointed counterterrorism experts has been working its way through the U.S. military, intelligence and law enforcement communities, trying to convince whoever it could that America’s real terrorist enemy wasn’t al-Qaida — but the Islamic faith itself. In his course, Dooley brought in these anti-Muslim demagogues as guest lecturers. And he took their argument to its final, ugly conclusion.


“'We have now come to understand that there is no such thing as ‘moderate Islam,’ Dooley noted in a July 2011 presentation (.pdf), which concluded with a suggested manifesto to America’s enemies.

“'It is therefore time for the United States to make our true intentions clear. This barbaric ideology will no longer be tolerated. Islam must change or we will facilitate its self-destruction.”

Dooley could not be reached for comment. Joint Forces Staff College spokesman Steven Williams declined to discuss Dooley’s presentation or his status at the school. But when asked if Dooley was responsible for the course material, he responded, “I don’t know if I would classify him [Dooley] as responsible. That would be the commandant” of the school, Maj. Gen. Joseph Ward.

That makes the two-star general culpable for rather shocking material. In the same presentation, Dooley lays out a possible four-phase war plan to carry out a forced transformation of the Islam religion. Phase three includes possible outcomes like “Islam reduced to a cult status” and “Saudi Arabia threatened with starvation.” (It’s an especially ironic suggestion, in light of today’s news that Saudi intelligence broke up the most recent al-Qaida bombing plot.)

International laws protecting civilians in wartime are “no longer relevant,” Dooley continues. And that opens the possibility of applying “the historical precedents of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki” to Islam’s holiest cities, and bringing about “Mecca and Medina['s] destruction.”

If you find this shocking, you shouldn't.   It's the very sort of thing that some, like retired US Army Colonel turned professor, Andrew Bacevich, has warned of in books like his "The New American Militarism."   America has descended into a true "warfare state" -  a hellspawn of neoconservatism, evangelical fundamentalism, and corporate warfighting/military industrialism -  in which military subordination to the country's political leadership, including its executive branch, has become subverted.   This is merely one example of America's military leaders taking upon themselves planning and policy-making even going to annihilation of civilian populations.

We need to be distancing ourselves from this maniacal, messianic militarism and that absolutely mandates rejecting the F-35 and all its dire implications for Canadian foreign policy.

Mitt Romney - Bully? Hell Yes! Homophobe? Maybe, Maybe Not.

Mitt Romney admits bullying a classmate but swears he never thought the guy was a homo.

There's plenty of rich character detail in Jason Horowitz's profile of Mitt Romney, prep schooler. The part that Romney has to deal with now is up at the top.* In 1965, an effeminate student named John Lauber showed up with "bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye."

“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.

Romney was a high school senior; he turned 18 in the spring when this happened. Horowitz has the story cold, and Romney isn't even trying to deny it. Phil Rucker, the Post's Romney beat reporter, has tweeted out the governor's measured response.

"Back in high school, I did some dumb things & if anybody was hurt by that or offended, obviously I apologize. I participated in a lot of hijinks and pranks during high school and some might have gone too far and for that, I apologize. I certainly don't believe that I thought the fellow was homosexual. That was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960s." 

Oooh, This Could Get Nasty

China has provoked outrage in the Philippines by deploying this oil platform, the country's first deepwater drilling rig, into the South China Sea.

The rig, CNOOC 981, began drilling operations yesterday in disputed waters 320 km from Hong Kong.

According to Reuters, civil society and political groups with links to Philippine President Benigno Aquino III's political allies plan to take to the streets on Friday to "protest the Chinese presence" in waters near Huangyan Island.

The Chinese embassy in Manila has issued a safety alert, advising Chinese nationals to enhance safety awareness, avoid going out and stay away from protesters.

Ctrip.com International Ltd, a leading online travel service provider in China, decided to suspend trips to the Philippines Wednesday, citing safety risks of tours as tensions over Huangyan Island escalate.

A Global Times correspondent in Manila said the Chinese communities there are calm despite Friday's looming protest.

"Issues concerning sovereignty are non-negotiable for China. The Philippines took China's restraint for granted and kept staging provocations," a researcher surnamed Ma with the Southeast Asian Institute of the Guangxi Academy of Social Sciences, said.

"The planned global protest against Chinese embassies has shown Manila's intention to internationalize and complicate the issue. Beijing will lose its patience if Manila doesn't back off," Ma said.

Hard as this may be for Canadians to believe, the BBC is reporting that the Chinese do seem to be spoiling for a military confrontation.

War talk, it seems, is all the rage in China at the minute.

Yes, there are serious people in serious publications seriously advocating war.

...At the heart of the issue is what is called Scarborough Shoal by the Philippines and Huangyan Island by China, a little more than 100 miles (160km) from the Philippines and 500 miles from China.

...The odd thing here is that the Philippine navy consists of just one proper ship and that is an ancient US Coast Guard cutter which is hardly a match for China's navy, as this online commentary by "The Comparativist" makes clear.

The Comparativist writes: "I think this is happening because the Philippines is so weak. The Chinese government can beat the war drums all they want, and as loud as they want, and no war is going to happen. It's akin to bullying someone in a wheelchair that you know can't punch back."


But there are dangers here too. The president of the Philippines has tweeted this statement this week, making clear that the Philippines believes America will help protect it from any Chinese aggression. So a dispute could lead to a very tense situation.

China's policy in the South China Sea is not a simple matter, directed clearly from the top as the International Crisis Group has detailed, but affected by many different players.

It's a dangerous dynamic that could escalate much further yet.
A few other things to consider.   The United States recently conducted Operation Chimichanga, a stealth bomber, fighter live-fire exercise simulating a first strike against China.   There are escalating tensions developing between an ascendant China and a U.S. is slow decline that could quickly transform into a new Cold War. And last month The Guardian reported on recent war games between US and Chinese military leaders during which Chinese hostility toward the United States seethed to the surface.

Switzerland, My Sincere Condolences

The Swiss have a new countryman, er countrywoman.   She's Michelle Bachmann who, thanks to her marriage to flamboyant, gay-curing psychologist, Marcus Bachmann is entitled to claim Swiss citizenship.   The kids wanted dual citizenship so Michelle went along.

I wonder if this is the end of Bachmann's political aspirations or if she'll show up yodeling a different tune in 2016.

Cornering Rupe With His Own Words

Poor Rupert Murdoch, will his demons never go away?  Unfortunately, for him, no because the demons plaguing him at the moment poured out of his own mouth at the Leveson inquiry.

The focus now is on contradictory statements Rupe made about his lunches with Margaret Thatcher.

Robert Jay QC, counsel for the inquiry, highlighted the issues on Thursday as he opened its third module - dealing with relations between media figures and politicians.

 

Referring to Murdoch's statement last month that he had "no recollection" of the event, Jay said: "One does at least have to question whether this is selective amnesia. Mr Murdoch told us in evidence that he did not enjoy frequent encounters with Baroness Thatcher.

"The acquisition of the Times and its associated titles must have been one of the most important in his commercial life.

"This was a time of heightened emotion. Could an intimate lunch at Chequers really have been forgotten?

And then counsel employed a rhetorical device that I find quite brilliant - 

"Human recollection is notoriously patchy and unreliable, we all know that. The fact that I, for example, would be 100 per cent certain of being able to remember an event such as this occurring 30 plus years ago is not going to assist you in coming to a conclusion either way."

Oooh, ouch!

Jay said if the inquiry accepted Mr Murdoch's evidence the "point goes not further".

"But if you do not the consequences are capable of being wide ranging," he went on.

"Not merely would the selective amnesia appear to be convenient but inferences might be drawn as to Mr Murdoch's true motives and intentions seeking out the prime minister's ear in January 1981.

"Furthermore this case is capable of bearing on Mr Murdoch's integrity."

If, in fact, the inquiry decides that Rupe did indulge in a bit of highly-selective memory, a very delicate term for lying, then straight out the window go his other self-serving denials about not knowing anything about the voice-mail tapping or corruption of police officers and on and on and on - the sort of stuff most of us have long assumed he was lying through his teeth about.

The Big Three - Global Dilemmas Pegged By Science

The Athabasca Tar Sands controversy is about three key things - energy, carbon emissions and water usage and contamination.   Oddly enough those three are the very "global dilemmas" identified as needing urgent government action by the heads of the national science academies of 15 countries, including the UK, the US, China, Germany, Russia and India.

"On water and energy, the scientists recommended that governments should look at both resources as being interlinked. They said the efficient use of these resources would be key, and recommended developing ways of managing demand for them, as well as investing in scientific research on energy efficiency and the sustainable use of water.

"They also recommended that governments should make key data on energy and water freely available, and that the indirect costs associated with energy – which could include the relationship between greenhouse gases and climate change – and the costs of the degradation of water supplies should be accounted for . These costs should also be included in the development of policy.

"Natural disasters have been taking an increasing toll in recent years – last year's economic losses owing to natural disasters were the highest ever.

"In order to mitigate these risks, the scientists recommended that governments should undertake systematic assessments of disaster risks, and conduct research to improve our understanding of the underlying causes of such disasters."

Hmm, that all sounds entirely sensible I guess, unless you're a Petro-Pol digging in, waiting for The Rapture.

Harper, You Punk, Man Up!

Those goddamned self-righteous Tories like nothing better than to preach responsibility except when they get a chance to dodge it themselves.   And, when a chance does arise, they'll use their full bag of tricks - secrecy, deception, manipulation, fear mongering - to get really stuck into their dodge.

And so far I figure Harper's biggest responsibility dodge, perhaps the greatest one in our history, is the Athabasca Tar Sands/Northern Gateway scam.  On that one, he's in full-bore, balls to the wall, EnRon mode.

The Northern Gateway (and the Kinder Morgan scam through Vancouver's inner harbour) are all about one thing, shipping dil-bit, or diluted bitumen, to Asian markets in the holds of supertankers.

The operation sees these tankers arrive at our docks carrying dilutents that are pumped to Alberta where they're mixed with lightly processed bitumen.   As their name suggests, these liquids dilute bitumen enough that it can be pumped through pipelines back into those supertankers' holds.   From our docks that toxic, carcinogenic sludge passes through and grievously endangers our British Columbia coastal waters so that it can be shipped all the way to Asia for refining into synthetic crude oil.

Do you see all the effort involved here?   It begins with tankers full of dilutents produced offshore that have to be shipped all the way to British Columbia in tanker holds and then pumped all the way to Alberta so that they can be mixed with bitumen into a sludge that can then be pumped all the way back to British Columbia docks for loading into supertanker holds for shipment all the way back to Asia so those dilutents and all the other bitumen crap can be refined out to create synthetic crude oil.   The carbon emissions in the shipping alone are enormous and all the extra expense and environmental risks make that so much worse again.

Is there an alternative?   Of course.   We could skip the dilutent/dil-bit trans-oceanic dance altogether and, instead, do the full refining operation right on site, in Alberta.   Take the sludge, upgrade it into raw bitumen, refine that into synthetic crude oil and pump that to our foreign customers if need be.   Why do we have to transport all these abrasives, corrosive acids, heavy metals, carcinogens and other toxins in an impossible to treat goop that sinks right to the bottom in the event of a spill?   What's the motivation to do that?   After all it's more expensive, more complicated and far more dangerous to transport dil-bit sludge than it is to ship refined synthetic crude.   So why are Harper and the Oil Patch so insistent on doing something so obviously unproductive, unnecessarily expensive and risky, boneheaded even?  Why?   Well, as near as I can figure it, it's an accounting error, a la EnRon.

You may remember EnRon, the Texas energy giant that feigned mega-wealth and profitability by carrying giant liabilities "off the books."  It was all the brainchild of this whiz kid, Jeffrey Skilling, seen here doing the "perp walk" that was all the rage back then:

So why isn't the Alberta Oil Patch building refineries to handle all this Asian trade?  My guess is that Big Oil and the Alberta and federal governments would much prefer to "offshore" the carbon emissions and other environmental impacts of refining that bitumen sludge.   Just as Jeffrey Skilling taught EnRon to keep massive liabilities off the books, so offshoring dil-bit keeps  massive carbon emissions and other enviro impacts off Canada's and Alberta's books.   And that's just wrong.

It's wrong to expose vast tracts of Alberta and British Columbia to the inevitable pipeline spills for which Enbridge has such a proven reputation.  It's wrong to expose coastal British Columbia to the godawful risks inherent in dil-bit spills from the tanker disasters that are inevitable.    It's just wrong to generate unnecessary supertanker traffic to carry dilutent/condensates that aren't really needed.  It's just wrong to deprive Alberta/Canada of the jobs, revenues and profits of those refinery operations.

But, above all else, it's wrong for Canada to "offshore" our responsibility for the carbon-emissions and other environmental fallout of transforming tar sand into synthetic crude oil.   We know how poorly China handles this sort of thing.   If you knowingly hand the keys to a drunk driver in the middle of a parking lot full of baby carriages, you're doing the wrong thing.   That's irresponsible.

If Harper is going to ram through pipelines to carry Athabasca petroleum products through to Asian markets, it's his responsibility to see that done at the absolute minimum risk to Canada and, in particular, to the province and people of my own British Columbia.  He has no moral right to place us and our pristine coastline in dire risk so that he can "offshore" the environmental implications of bitumen processing.   It's time for that despicable weasel to Man Up.

Do You Really Need to Ask?

The question is why a CIA officer, Jose Rodriguez,  mechanically shredded 92-hours worth of video of captives being waterboarded.

"It's not a pretty sight when you are waterboarding anybody or using any of these techniques, let's be perfectly honest," Rodriguez admitted.

 "John Rizzo, the CIA's top legal counsel who oversaw the legalisation of the techniques in an exchange of memoranda with the Department of Justice, wanted to be certain that what was happening at the black site was in accordance with what had been legally agreed.

He had not anticipated that waterboarding would be used as often as it was. And he sent one of his most experienced colleagues to the black site, believed to be in Thailand, to find out.
Rizzo's colleague viewed all the 92 hours of video and concluded that the techniques were being legally applied, but he was uncomfortable about what he saw.
"He did say that portions of the tapes, particularly those of Zubaydah being waterboarded, were extraordinarily hard to watch," Rizzo told me. 

 Rodriguez knew the tapes were potentially a ticking time bomb and wanted to destroy them. He waited for three years with increasing exasperation at the apparent unwillingness of anybody on high to take responsibility for authorising their destruction.

Then when news of the CIA's secret black sites leaked, Rodriguez's patience ran out. 

Why did Rodriguez destroy the recordings?   Because they were proof of serious crimes, torture committed by the CIA and because those crimes undermine the very legitimacy of the tribunals now prosecuting those torture subjects.   The tribunals are supposed to be "trying" the charges against these accused terrorists but, by refusing to allow any mention of the torture, the tribunals have themselves become prosecutorial.   The whole thing is a sham.

About That Balmy Winter Weather - Part Deux

Most of Canada had a delightfully warm winter and enjoyed an early spring.   Now the bill has come due.

In Ontario, farms face the loss of millions of dollars worth of crops.

The early warm weather in March, followed by sudden flash freezes, has caused devastating losses to tender fruit and apple growers in a large part of southern Ontario.

Steve Smith says there are no blossoms on his apple trees in Port Elgin, about 40 kilometres southwest of Owen Sound, which means there will be no apples.

Agriculture specialist John Cline at the University of Guelph says the apple industry alone in Ontario is worth up to $400 million.
Roughly 2,800 people are employed in the province’s apple orchards, including 2,300 foreign workers hired during the growing season.

Phil Tregunno of the Ontario Tender Fruit Producers Marketing Board in Niagara says about 30 per cent of peaches and nectarines have been affected, with damage totalling about $24 million to those two crops alone.

Growers won’t know the impact on the grape crop until early June.

In Britain there's news of another climate change impact, the migration of southern fish species into local waters.   Bluefin tuna, Thresher sharks, stingrays and anchovies are migrating northward.  We're seeing a similar migration here in coastal British Columbia.

Shark Fins, check. Bear Gall Bladders, check. Dead Baby Tissue, check.

Asians have long had a bad reputation for some of their eating habits.   Their love of shark fin soup is contributing to the decline of global shark populations.  Their fondness for bear gall bladder as a supposed virility enhancer has led to a serious poaching problem.   Now the tonic du jour may be dead babies.

"South Korean customs said it had confiscated more than 17,000 health capsules smuggled from China that contain human flesh, most likely extracted from aborted foetuses or stillborn babies.


"The Chinese Ministry of Health said it had been investigating allegations that capsules were being manufactured from human remains but had found no evidence.


"The South Korean customs agency said pills had been smuggled into the country through parcels and luggage carried from China. The pills were composed of ''ground stillborn foetus or babies that had been cut into small pieces and dried in gas ranges for two days, then made into powders and encapsulated'', the report said.

 ''Flesh pills have been continuously smuggled into [South Korea], camouflaged as health tonics,'' the statement said.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/human-flesh-found-in-chinese-health-pills-20120509-1ycyv.html#ixzz1uOHsPwtQ

Who Do Conservatives Hate Alternative, Clean Energy?

More evidence of how far today's radical right is prepared to go to subvert the adoption of alternative, clean energy.

"A network of ultra-conservative groups is ramping up an offensive on multiple fronts to turn the American public against wind farms and Barack Obama's energy agenda.

"A number of rightwing organisations, including Americans for Prosperity, which is funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, are attacking Obama for his support for solar and wind power. The American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), which also has financial links to the Kochs, has drafted bills to overturn state laws promoting wind energy.

"Now a confidential strategy memo seen by the Guardian advises using "subversion" to build a national movement of wind farm protesters."

"These documents show for the first time that local Nimby anti-wind groups are co-ordinating and working with national fossil-fuel funded advocacy groups to wreck the wind industry," said Gabe Elsner, a co-director of the Checks and Balances, the accountability group which unearthed the proposal and other documents.

"Among its main recommendations, the proposal calls for a national PR campaign aimed at causing 'subversion in message of industry so that it effectively because so bad that no one wants to admit in public they are for it.'

"It suggests setting up "dummy businesses" to buy anti-wind billboards, and creating a "counter-intelligence branch" to track the wind energy industry. It also calls for spending $750,000 to create an organisation with paid staff and tax-exempt status dedicated to building public opposition to state and federal government policies encouraging the wind energy industry."

World Bank, Countries Must Value Their Natural Capital

Hey, Steve Harper, are you listening?   The World Bank is calling.   They want Canada, and every other country, to start putting values, okay price tags, on all their natural capital.  

Forests, peatlands, coasts, water, wildlife - everything should be costed out.   That way you can do a bit of math and figure out the mega-billion giveaways you've been doling out as freebies to industry- outfits like the Tar Sanders.   You should be handing them an invoice, payment due in 30-days.

It's not a tax, nothing of the sort.  It's simply them paying the value of what they're getting that belongs to Canada and the Canadian people.   Yes it may be reflected in somewhat higher prices but that should be more than offset by the funds remitted by the users of our natural capital.

"Placing a monetary value on natural ecosystems is a key step on the road to "green" economic growth, according to the World Bank, which published a report on green growth on Wednesday at a conference in Seoul, Korea.

"By making such estimates, countries can develop policies that ensure the pursuit of economic growth does not occur at the expense of future growth potential, by destroying natural assets such as water sources or polluting air, rivers and soil.

"Rachel Kyte, vice president for sustainable development at the bank, said that the patterns on which economic growth had been achieved in recent decades were unsustainable, because of the amount of environmental degradation involved.

"She said: 'At current rates, we are in danger of undermining the basis on which growth has been achieved in the last decades. We do not believe that current growth patterns are sustainable.'"

And let's not forget, Steve, to start putting realistic prices on carbon emissions and the second part, collecting that from major emitters.   And you can start all this in the Athabasca Tar fields.   Those suckers have got a huge water bill coming and a bigger bill for environmental degradation costs and for impacts on forests and wildlife (don't forget to bill the pipelines) and for imperilling coastal British Columbia.   What?   That would shut the whole thing down?   Why, of course it will.  That's because this is all a giant Ponzi scheme in which you're robbing Peter, the Canadian people, to line the pockets of Paul, the fossil fuelers.

Is Harper Giving British Columbia Real Cause to Secede?

Some weeks ago Conservative senator Mike Duffy dismissed opponents of the Northern Gateway bitumen pipeline as "anti-Canadian."   The more  I think about it, he may just have a point.

Does the prime monster's insistence on grievously imperilling the British Columbia coastline and fisheries with dangerous supertanker traffic not give British Columbia cause to secede from Canada?  It was, after all, only our entry into Confederation that vested in Ottawa many of the powers it now holds over our coast.   Surely it was implicit in the yielding of those powers to Ottawa that they would not be exercised to the detriment of the province and people of British Columbia.   Surely Ottawa's paramount duty to the province and people of British Columbia is to safeguard our coastal waters, not to expose them to catastrophic risks.

If Ottawa breaches its fundamental duties of care owed the province and people of British Columbia in respect of our coast, our coastal waters and our marine habitat and fisheries on what basis should we consider ourselves bound to remain within Confederation?   The deal is breached, repudiated, torn up and trampled underfoot by Ottawa itself.

This is all hypothetical now but it may not be for long.   That all may change when Harper begins tossing otherwise law-abiding British Columbians by the hundreds, perhaps even thousands, into his jails for civil disobedience.   Each of those victims of Harper's rampage will have family and friends and colleagues, many of whom will not stand for a crackdown.   What happens when they join ranks?

And bear in mind when this dissent does erupt there won't be a rightwing government in Victoria either.  No, the next British Columbia government is already on record as firmly, in fact unanimously, opposed to this supertanker madness.