February 2007
Monthly Archive
February 22, 2007
It’s only human nature for us to see places from a generational perspective. We adapt to places based on how they’ve been for the past generation or two.
Florida is a great example. It has a hurricane cycle. For a couple of decades the incidence of hurricanes diminishes. Then they return again, in full force. Florida’s population has grown tremendously in recent decades, a period of hurricane retreat. That period seems to be ending. Now, houses are being damaged by hurricanes before they’re completely rebuilt from a previous hurricane.
The reconstruction, of course, was funded by insurers who now refuse to write hurricane insurance. Governors or Washington can declare disaster zones and send some funds but not on a continual basis. Eventually places must become economically unviable places to live.
Even more devastating than hurricanes, however, are severe droughts. The American southwest has been experiencing a multi-year drought evident in the levels of the Colorado River. Lake Mead, pictured above, shows a “ring around the bathtub” effect from falling water levels. This has caused real alarm.
The Colorado River Compact, negotiated among several states in 1922, relied on water flow records going back about three decades. They assumed an annual flow of about 16.4 million acre-feet. Now it turns out the Colorado River’s historic norm is closer to 13 million acre-feet per year and even less during sustained drought.
The Canadian prairie is also susceptible to severe drought. Here again we’ve taken a generational perspective on the region. The 20th century was unduly wet for the Canadian prairie, sort of a freak condition. However, it allowed a thriving agriculture to take hold and, along with it, settlement of villages, towns and cities.
We’ve already had droughts that caused Alberta ranchers to dispose of their herds, sometimes down to their breeding stock.
These areas have been settled on the assumption of a continuation of a status quo that never really was the status quo. This means new solutions must be found to counter the effect of drought on water resources. That’s not easy to do.
When the people of Saskatchewan and Alberta settled the prairie lands no one had “mega-drought” in mind. Yet that region has been afflicted by these phenomenon regularly in the past. These are droughts that persist from 40-to 60-years at a stretch. There was a mega-drought in 1300 and another around 1600. What happens when the next one arrives, perhaps accelerated by global warming?
A drought of two or even three-generations in duration could easily undermine the viability of prairie habitation. Vast swathes of the prairie, including a number of cities, could become unlivable.
This isn’t fantasy. It’s a reality that led former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed to write a lengthy op-ed piece in the Globe & Mail a few years back urging that Canada not let the genie out of the bottle by permitting the sale of fresh water to the US. Lougheed argued that we’re going to need that water for the survival of the prairie – Alberta and Saskatchewan. He envisioned a water transpotation grid, mainly canals, to feed water to the prairie by diverting it from running off into the oceans instead.
I think the global warming problem is going to teach us that, if our societies are going to survive, we’re going to have to stop thinking generationally, accept the realities of nature and her cycles of storms, mega-droughts and massive earthquakes, and begin to adapt our lives for what will be needed in centuries to come, not merely a couple of generations.
February 22, 2007
Iraq and Afghanistan have proven or are proving a fundamental flaw in American nation-building: unrealistic expectations.
It all began with the hubris on which the Project For The New American Century was constructed. P-NAC, the neo-con Montessori, had a vision of a world transformed by American economic and military might. It envisioned the creation of “wedge” nations in the Middle East, transformed into American mini-clones – secular, free enterprise, liberal democracies, with democratic constitutions and the rule of law, pro-West, and pro-Israel – little bastions among a sea of lesser nations by whose mere presence the others would, in turn, be transformed until the whole region was a shimmering mass of mirror-images of American democracy.
This philosophy became embedded in the Bush administration’s approach to both Afghanistan and Iraq. It arrogantly assumed that the populations of these countries were ready and willing to adopt such sweeping reformation. This became Washington’s delusion, one to which it still clings, the very essence of quagmire.
The Bush administration thought it merely had to topple the existing regime, pronounce the arrival of reformation and leave the details, the execution of the dream, to the locals. This was an assumption built on indifference, ignorance and the tragic belief in American exceptionalism.
Bush enabled the Northern Alliance to rout the Taliban. Then, his work done, he left a legion behind and prepared to move on to Iraq. Iraq was, likewise, supposed to be a hit-and-run, drive-by conquest. Defeat the Iraqi army, topple Saddam, put your own folks in power and split – six months at the outside. No need for 300,000 soldiers because there was to be no occupation. That wouldn’t be necessary.
Five years after the 9/11 attacks Afghanistan is still unstable with an insurgency that now risks morphing into a civil war; Iraq is in the throes of civil war and at risk of partition; and al-Qaeda is resurgent and spreading with its leadership, notably bin Laden, still alive and well. This is more than a net sum loss.
It is the Bush administration’s inability to shake its delusion that condemns these tragedies to continue, unresolved. The Bush/Cheney/neo-con cabal cannot and seemingly will not accept anything less than fealty from their doomed experiments. Stable governance and peace simply won’t do, there isn’t enough return in it.
The Bush regime is crippled by denial, still struggling for a goal beyond its reach while refusing to grasp accomplishments it can achieve. It’s like a boy treading water while clutching a bag of gold that he refuses to let go. He can drop the gold and make it to the safety of the beach but he won’t and so he sinks, winding up with neither the gold nor the beach.
Why should we care? Because the Western nations are all being dragged into this delusion, expected to play their part in one disaster or the other. We’re constantly being hectored about carrying our weight as though we have some obligation to perpetuate this fantasy.
It would be terrific if this could all be turned around by adjusting expectations but it can’t because the whole, miserable venture has been shaped by those very expectations and this state of denial has had too many years to take its toll. Are we to start again, sweep the slate clean? Do we invade Kabul, turf out Karzai and the warlords, arrest or destroy the corrupt security forces? That would seem to be child’s play compared to the challenges of Baghdad.
No, we have to become realistic. There are too many forces in play in both of these countries that managing the overall conflicts is beyond our grasp. What is the purpose in fighting one war if everything we hope to achieve can be negated by other struggles beyond our influence? It is as purposeless as it seems.
Perhaps we should inventory our (Washington’s) expectations and whittle them down to what can be achieved while having the courage to admit what is beyond our means and circumstances to achieve. Imagine what that would mean. It would mean giving up the idea of imposing secular democracy, of our concept of the rule of law, of the liberation of the peoples, especially their women, and the reversion of Afghanistan to medieval feudalism and Iraq to either tribal, mini-states or unified, strongman rule, out of which, eventually, they will find their own liberation.
What do we really need from these countries? I think we should be content with stability and effective governance. Modest as those goals sound, they’re far ahead of where we are today. What’s the point of having the people of Afghanistan vote for a government that is too often meaningless to them or even despised by them? How long can we allow the ongoing turmoil in Iraq to destabilize the entire Middle East? We’ve already wasted far too many years. It’s time to set a new course, time to head for the safety of the beach.
February 22, 2007
David Ignatius wrote a terrific op-ed piece in today’s Washington Post about how America has run off the road and is now mired in a ditch in the Middle East:
“During the Doha conference, speakers put into words the attitudes summarized by the poll numbers. Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a fiery Sunni preacher who appears regularly on al-Jazeera, said that America acted as if ‘some people were created to lead and others to be led,’ and that America had ‘lost the trust and confidence’ of Muslims. Well, okay, he’s notorious for his anti-American and anti-Israeli views. But I heard the same thing from Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League, who said Arabs were ‘losing confidence in the U.S. role’ as a peace broker.
“And my friend Rami Khouri, who is one of most balanced journalists in the Arab world, warned that a broad popular front is emerging to challenge American hegemony. Iraq ‘discredits what America tries to do in the Mideast,’ he said. Khouri explained that Arabs admire Hezbollah because it represents ‘the end of docility, the end of acquiescence.’
“You don’t have to agree with these Muslim critics to recognize that the anger they express represents a serious national security problem for the United States. That’s what President Bush seems not to understand in his surge of troops into Iraq, his bromides about democracy and his strategy of confrontation with Iran. It isn’t a tiny handful of people in the Arab world who oppose what America is doing. It’s nearly everyone.
“To get out of the ditch, America must change its Iraq policy, soon. That doesn’t mean pulling out of Iraq quickly, as many Democrats in Washington seem to favor. I found few people here who thought a quick American pullout made sense. But it does mean shifting the American focus — so that we are talking with Iraq’s neighbors and negotiating with the Iraqis on a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops. Tellingly, the one American who got loud, sustained applause here was Chris Kojm, a senior adviser on the Baker-Hamilton Report.
“And to get back on the road, for real, America must broker a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. I winced when I heard Prime Minister Olmert say last weekend in Jerusalem that ‘the American and Israeli positions are totally identical’ on the terms for recognizing a Palestinian unity government. The Israelis are right in insisting that Hamas must recognize Israel’s right to exist. But how to get there? What if Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had responded: America is a mediator in this conflict. Its positions are independent of either side, and it is willing to talk to all parties to achieve peace.”
Sadly, the US will probably have to wait for a fresh, intelligent president before any of this wisdom will ever sink in.
February 22, 2007
Researchers think they’ve figured out why Einstein was such an Einstein. The team from Lausanne University has identified a previously unknown role for a type of brain cell of which Einstein was particularly well endowed, the glial cells.
The glial cells were thought to just hold neurons together but now they seem to be instrumental in brain activity by transmitting messages around the brain.
About 20-years ago UC Berkley scientists ran a comparison between a sample of Einstein’s brain and the brains of some deceased (I hope) doctors. The only difference found was that Einstein had a lot more glial cells.
February 22, 2007
If you’ve got a mortgage, a car loan, an oustanding credit card balance, you’re going to love this one.
The board of the Bank of Japan has voted 8-1 in favour of raising the nation’s interest rate. Okay, wait for it. They’re actually doubling the interest rate, that’s right doubling it. It’s going up to… exactly one half of one percent. That’s right, the massive increase will leave the Bank of Japan interest rate at 0.5%.
You have to understand the way the Japanese economy is structured to make sense of this sort of thing and that’s way too complicated for something like a blog. But, for the last several years the lending rate has been nearly 0%. It was bumped up in July to 0.25% and now, in a display of unbridled confidence in the restored strength of the Japanese economy, it’s 0.5%. Calm down, it’s probably not going to go much higher.
February 22, 2007
Iraq’s president sees the looming departure of British forces from his country as a genuinely positive development. Jalal Talibani says the British departure will serve as a catalyst to Iraqi security forces “to stand on their own feet.”
The British withdrawal may offer a blueprint to Washington on how and when to get US forces out of Iraq. The political will at home to continue the war is gone and the pressure to end it is growing.
The lead editorial in today’s Guardian supports Blair’s decision:
“Britain is nevertheless right to withdraw, because its forces have become part of the problem. Winston Churchill’s solution to the problem of difficult wars was to declare victory and then leave, and that is more or less what Mr Blair tried to do when he announced the proposed troop reductions in the Commons yesterday.”
As for Blair’s claims of “mission accomplished”, the paper noted, “…this is a case of being able to declare the mission fulfilled only by constantly redefining and reducing it.”
“Britain’s soldiers will come home, but the Iraqis have to stay. Britain and America began by offering them liberation. The best that can be done for them now is to find a little extra time, but even that will be limited. We cannot do much more, we cannot do better. The prime minister is right when he says that the next chapter in Basra’s and Iraq’s history will be written by Iraqis. That passes the responsibility to them, but it should not take away from Britain’s responsibility for the chapter that is closing.”
February 22, 2007
The glimmer of hope for a stable, peaceful Somalia is dimming rapidly. The nation appears about to relapse into the state of anarchy that has plagued it for 16-years.
There was hope for a reborn Somalia in December when the forces of the transitional government, backed by soldiers from Ethiopia, drove Islamist forces out of Mogadishu. Defeated but far from destroyed the rebels transformed themselves into an insurgency that the government is simply far too weak to contain.
Clan warfare appears to be the norm today in Somalia. Much of the unrest is blamed on the authoritarian leader, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, a former warlord himself. The transitional president has failed to reach out to the clan heads, leaving himself isolated and eroding his popular support.
Much of the northeast quadrant of Africa has descended into chaos from Somalia to Sudan, Chad and the Central African Republic. Peacekeeping forces from the African Union have been unable to control insurgents, terrorists and bandits that have beset the region.
The deaths and displacement of civilians in these countries has been truly catastrophic but the West has shown no interest in intervening, probably because we’re all tied up with George Bush’s garden party in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Global War Without End on Terror. Hey, this is terror too and on a much grander scale than anything that has or may befall the Middle East! Oh, I forgot – these are Africans. What was I thinking?
February 21, 2007
Iraqi militants have begun to use chlorine gas as a weapon against civilians in the Baghdad area. Today a bomb was planted beneath a chlorine tanker truck. The explosion killed nine and sent over 150 people hit by the chlorine cloud to hospital. This is the third time chlorine has been used in conjunction with bombings.
In another incident, a pickup truck carrying cannisters of the gas exploded, killing 2 and sending 32 to hospital. Chlorine gas can be lethal if inhaled. Fortunately the terrorists don’t seem to have figured out how to disperse it effectively.
The Shiite neighbourhood of Sadr City received another car bombing. Some locals are blaming the American soldiers for driving the Mahdi Army underground thus stripping them of the militia that had been defending them.
February 21, 2007
Canada’s role in Afghanistan is vague to the point of being blurry – and deliberately so.
Are we there to see this war through or are we there for just a couple of years? Who knows? That’s a really fundamental question but the answer is that no one knows. How the hell do you get into a war without a clear understanding on that point?
Are we trying to fight a war on the installment plan? Is this all going to be decided during another sham debate in 2009? Have we got some other nation lined up to take over Kandahar province if we leave in 2009 or are we effectively stuck there without either adequate resources or clear committment? Do we now “own” this damn war?
With Hillier and Harper in command we’re drifting along in a rudderless ship. On behalf of his soldiers who are over there risking their lives, Hillier ought to be demanding answers to all of these questions and more. Asking politicians to make fundamental decisions that he needs taken falls well short of the line of crossing over into the political sphere. Generals are supposed to ask their civilian masters for orders and direction and answers when they need them.
Because no decision has been taken to actually leave in 2009 our chances of being over there indefinitely grow as each month passes. Our military is already stretched thin and we’re rotating our soldiers through combat assignments in Afghanistan and elsewhere far too often. If we’re in Afghanistan indefinitely, we’re going to need to expand our army – now. As I understand it, that’s not going very well at the moment.
Is Afghanistan going to become our all-consuming obsession? Are we going to turn our back to the world in places where our soldiers could actually do more good? If not, how many more soldiers are we going to need, how are we going to recruit them and how are we going to fund all that?
There’s already discussion of a major draw on Canada’s military for the 2010 Olympic games in BC. How do we handle that committment and keep the Afghan mission going?
Most importantly, what is our exit strategy for Afghanistan? We’ve had the likes of Lewis MacKenzie aping George Bush to proclaim that “as they stand up, we’ll stand down” but how long are we willing to wait for the Afghans to stand up so we can leave?
We seem to be running this war on cruise control and maybe it’s time that changed.
February 21, 2007
Zimbabwe’s Mugabe regime has banned all protests while the boss celebrates his 83rd birthday. Mugabe and wife, Grace, shown above, could barely conceal their joy at the event.
Zimbabwe set another first last week. Its inflation rate that had been languishing in the 1300 percent mark the week before shot up to a respectable 1600 per cent. Gradually Mugabe’s state apparatus is falling apart. His soldiers and police officers continue to go AWOL.
The government reportedly has been skimming civil servants’ wages and strongarming businesses for contributions to cover the cost of Mugabe’s birthday celebrations. Meanwhile famine and disease is sweeping the country.
The price of bread shot up 136% yesterday alone. Four loaves equal an average farm worker’s monthly wage.
Mugabe defiantly refuses to step down. One diplomat is reported to have said, “Mugabe, he’s like King Canute, ordering the sea to go back.”
I’ll bet Mugabe will never see his 84th birthday. Tyrants of his kind usually get assassinated. Unfortunately, toppling Mugabe won’t do much to help the people of Zimbabwe.
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