They pretty much speak for themselves:
February 2007
Monthly Archive
February 19, 2007
Diesel Unveils Its "Global Warming Ready" Collection
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February 19, 2007
You gotta give it to the guy, he’s got the nerve of a canal pony.
George Bush likes to summon up the ghost of Harry Truman, making plainly tortured comparisons between himself and the man from Missouri.
Now, the Washington Post reports, he’s comparing his Global War Without End on Terror to America’s Revolutionary War:
“Standing before the Mount Vernon mansion and sharing the stage with an actor dressed as Gen. George Washington, Bush said Washington’s Revolutionary War leadership inspired generations of Americans “to stand for freedom in their own time.”
“‘Today, we’re fighting a new war to defend our liberty and our people and our way of life. And as we work to advance the cause of freedom around the world, we remember that the father of our country believed that the freedoms we secured in our revolution were not meant for Americans alone,’ Bush said.
“He once wrote, ‘My best wishes are irresistibly excited whensoever in any country I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom,”‘ Bush said.”
February 19, 2007
That’s the gloomy assessment of Gary Younge writing in today’s Guardian. He writes that all the predictable signs are showing up again.
“‘A man with a conviction is a hard man to change,’ wrote Festinger in his book on the cult, When Prophecy Fails. ‘Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts and figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.’
“George Bush is a man of conviction and clearly a hard man to change. When reality confronts his plans he does not alter them but instead alters his understanding of reality. …he stands with a tight band of followers, both deluded and determined, understanding each setback not as a sign to change course but as further proof that they must redouble their efforts to the original goal.
“And so we watch the administration’s plans for a military attack against Iran unfold even as its official narrative for the run-up to the war in Iraq unravels and the wisdom of that war stands condemned by death and destruction. As though on split screens, we pass seamlessly from reports of how they lied to get us into the last war, to scenes of carnage as a result of the war, to shots of them lying us into the next one.
“‘It is absolutely parallel,’ Philip Giraldi, a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist, told Vanity Fair magazine. ‘They’re using the same dance steps – demonise the bad guys, the pretext of diplomacy, keep out of negotiations, use proxies. It is Iraq redux.’
“The administration, of course, denies this. Despite the fact it has ordered oil reserves to be stockpiled and has just sent a second aircraft carrier as well as more patriot missiles and minesweepers to the Gulf, they swear these allegations are groundless. Robert Gates, the new defence secretary, recently insisted: “I don’t know how many times the president, secretary [of state Condoleezza] Rice and I have had to repeat that we have no intention of attacking Iran.”
“The sad fact is Gates can say it as many times as he likes because no one believes him. In April 2002, Bush told Trevor McDonald: ‘I have no plans to attack [Iraq] on my desk.’ An $8 cab ride to the Pentagon and Bush would have found the plans on Donald Rumsfeld’s desk. He knew this because he put them there four months earlier. On November 21 2001, he asked Rumsfeld: ‘What kind of war plan do you have for Iraq?’
“‘Targets have been selected,’ says Vincent Cannistraro, a US intelligence analyst. ‘For a bombing campaign against nuclear sites, it is quite advanced. The military assets to carry this out are being put in place. We are planning for war.’
“…the region’s biggest obstacle to peace and stability is not Iran but the US. The invasion of Iraq has both bolstered Iran’s standing by installing a friendly Shia regime in Baghdad, and given Iran every reason to arm itself for fear of imminent attack from US bases now embedded on its border. Each time the White House issues threats against Iran, it strengthens the crude, anti-semitic prime minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who can rally the nation around a foreign enemy – a strategy with which Bush is all too familiar.
“…it seems once Bush has got hold of a bad idea he just can’t let it go. Just because it is irresponsible, irrational, unpopular and unconscionable doesn’t mean he won’t do it.
“‘History does not repeat itself,’ Mark Twain once wrote. ‘But it does rhyme.'”
Pre-deployment of military forces is evidence of a decision already taken to go to war. It’s very expensive. It requires a major logistical supply line. Once deployed, forces in the field either have to be sent into combat or brought back to get put back into shape to be deployed again. In other words, you lose your ability to commit that force again for several months. With the American military already severely stretched, Bush really doesn’t have the option of squandering its remaining resources, even if they are naval air and air force assets, on mere sabre-rattling.
February 19, 2007
They’ve been flying far too close to the flame for far too long. Now, even Republican pollsters say their party may be headed for disaster, the worst since Vietnam and Nixon. From The Guardian:
“‘I believe Republicans are in a more dangerous position than at any time since 1974,’ said Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster and commentator. ‘Back then you had Watergate. You had economic recession, a military collapse in Vietnam and had civil unrest. All those same ingredients are present today.’
“Mr Luntz said his own polling and focus group research in the first two states in the primary process – Iowa and New Hampshire – had persuaded him that most Americans are hungry for a change. That desire, he believes, is unlikely to be met by the Republican candidates for 2008. ‘The Republican party seems to have lost the will to govern,’ he said.
“…despite the war, the country remains evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. Pollsters and strategists expect the 2008 elections to be as close as the last three, and the Republicans have the ability to bounce back.
“‘In the last few elections, in the electoral vote column, they have almost been dead even,’ said Rhodes Cook, who runs a respected political newsletter in Washington. ‘Barring something unusual we will probably have another close election in 2008. So neither party is really starting in a bad position.’
The Republicans’ challenge will be to hold their support in the face of what’s coming in the next 18-months. The Iraq war continues to draw support away from them, certainly among the essential undecideds. Then there is the campaign underway in the Democratic-controlled Congress to get to the bottom of what the secretive Bush administration was really up to over the past six years. Tough times lie ahead for the right.
The Pew Research Centre’s, “…own polls suggest that Mr McCain’s forceful advocacy of a troops increase is not an issue for Republicans. Mr Doherty said: ‘Among the Republicans there has been no slippage at all in support of the war over the last year, and even over the last six months. They still see the possibility of a successful outcome. They still want to keep the troops there.’
February 19, 2007
The group’s name is admittedly geeky, the Global Legislators Organization for a Balanced Environment, or GLOBE, but its heart seems to be in the right place.
The Guardian reports that, at a meeting last week in Washington, “Delegates agreed that developing countries would have to face targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions as well as rich countries.
“The meeting in Washington of the G8+5 Climate Change Dialogue also agreed that a limit should be decided for maximum acceptable carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, the NBC reported. A global market should be formed to cap and trade carbon dioxide emissions, they also said.”
There’s some hope that the group’s principles of a global CO2 cap and bringing developing countries into the same, environmental regime may actually form the basis upon which nations can be encouraged to act both individually and collectively.
Senator Joe Lieberman told the meeting that the US Congress is about to act after many years of “denial and inaction. …I want to make a prediction, which is that the Congress of the United States will enact a nationwide law mandating substantial reductions in greenhouse gases before the end of this Congress or early in the next,” he said. This session of Congress ends late in 2008.
“Senator John McCain said the push to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that spur global climate change was a national security issue, and that voluntary efforts to limit these emissions from vehicles, power plants and other human sources ‘will not change the status quo’.”
February 19, 2007
The good news: current estimates say the worst is probably centuries away. The bad news: current studies suggest there’s an even chance that we’ve already passed the point of being able to stop it.
What they’re focusing on is a major melt of both polar ice caps that would produce a sea level rise of four to six metres. Five years ago IPCC scientists assessed the risk as “very low.” Now they’re calling it an even bet – eventually.
The melting process could take centuries but it’s already underway and there are already a number of areas in immediate danger of submergence. The Maldives, for example, isn’t expected to exist by the end of the century. Bangladesh is extremely vulnerable to any rise in sea levels as are many low-lying cities – little hamlets like London, New York and Tokyo.
This development comes atop news that many British companies have been concealing their true greenhouse gas emissions to the tune of roughly 200-million tonnes of CO2 annually. An organization called Christian Aid reports that only 16 of Britain’s top 100-companies are complying with the government’s reporting guidelines.
February 19, 2007
One of Canada’s great legal minds doesn’t buy Harpo’s plan to stack Canadian courts with judges of his ideological bent or the process he wants to use to go about it.
Former SCC Chief Justice Antonio Lamer says if Harper wants tougher criminal sentencing, he should change the criminal law, not stack the bench.
He’s particularly critical of Harpo’s brainwave about adding cops and lay people to the panels that vet judicial candidates. Pointing out the obvious, he told the National Post:
“‘Mrs. Smith who is on the board doesn’t know what the court is about. What she knows she probably got off American TV and thinks that judges use hammers.’
“Lamer said judges should be screening judicial candidates seeking promotions and lawyers should be vetting other lawyers who want to sit on the bench because they are the ones who know what the job is about. ‘If I were on a selection committee to pick the head of neurosurgery, I wouldn’t know anything,’ he said, by way of comparison.
The reality is that Harper doesn’t understand that judicial independence and judicial integrity are interdependent – or maybe he just doesn’t care how he molests one of the cornerstones of Canadian democracy.
February 19, 2007
Good for the BC government. Provincial government lawyers won’t be mincing any words when they attack Big Tobacco’s right to advertise in the Supreme Court of Canada today.
They intend to depict tobacco ads as akin to the preacher Jim Jones who persuaded his 900-followers to drink poisoned Kool Aid in 1978. From the Globe:
“The federal government, the Canadian Cancer Society and six provinces will lead the charge against a concerted attack by Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd., Rothmans Benson and Hedges Inc., and JTI-Macdonald Corp.
“A federal brief argues that tobacco kills one in every two smokers — about 45,000 people each year — and that the tobacco industry has knowingly concealed this devastating reality, all the while falsely claiming that filtered cigarettes and special “light” brands provide a measure of safety.”
BC argues that, “The use of trigger words to induce the Jonestown massacre mirrors the efforts of tobacco companies to disguise their message — “smoke, smoke, smoke and smoke” — as an absurd, intellectual exercise in brand discrimination.
“It is as if two Jonestown preachers were competing to convince their flock to drink deadly cyanide of one flavour or another, each extolling the virtues of superior colour and taste.
“A person saying: ‘Drink the purple cyanide’ is still saying: ‘Drink the cyanide.’ A person saying: ‘Smoke du Maurier’ is still saying: ‘Smoke.'”
February 19, 2007
Two factors that have driven the sectarian violence in Iraq have been the past, the brutal domination of the southern Shia and northern Kurds by the minority Sunni, and the future, oil wealth that appeared to be almost entirely within the Shia and Kurdish territories leaving the Sunni central area bereft of peteroleum wealth.
Already hostile to the Sunni, the Shiites and Kurds were less than enthusiastic about the idea of sharing what they’ve come to see as their oil resources with the gang who once oppressed them and, worse, had almost nothing to offer in return. In the north and the south, partition was definitely an option.
To the Sunnis, however, the idea of partition was a threat to cut them out of Iraq’s oil wealth and leave this once dominant group with little to show but empty, barren desert.
Now there’s hope that improves the prospects for achieving either a peaceful partition or a peaceful, united Iraq – Sunni oil. Foreign oil exploration companies, using previously unexamined or only partly-examined seismic data, have concluded that the Sunni region may actually have significant, untapped oil reserves.
Initial studies have already identified sites believed to hold 15-billion barrels of oil from one series of wells alone and three trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
At the moment there’s little more than promising studies with actual production years away and then only after peace is restored, but the promise itself may bring political rewards in the near future as great as the financial rewards to be had down the road.
February 18, 2007
Paddy Ashdown, the international community’s High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2002-2006, examines where it all went wrong:
“Since the Cold War ended, the UN has, on average, intervened in the territory of one of its members every six months, and six of the last nine interventions have been in Muslim countries. That is, in Somalia, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Bosnia. What’s more, around 65 per cent of the interventions prevented a return to conflict. Overall, the world is safer because we have intervened. It will be much more dangerous if we stop doing so. Our staying out of Darfur has only resulted in spreading the conflict, first to Chad, with other nations to follow if we cannot stop it.
“The Iraq experience represents the triumph of hubris, nemesis and, above all, amnesia over common sense. We have abandoned experience in favour of a kind of 19th-century ‘gunboat’ diplomacy approach to peace making. And it isn’t working. Getting intervention right is not rocket science and it’s not new. Spend at least as much time and effort planning the peace as preparing for the war that precedes it. Base plans on a proper knowledge of the country. Leave ideologies and prejudices at home. Do not try to fashion someone else’s country in your own image. Leave space for its people to reconstruct the country they want, not the one you want for them. Don’t lose the ‘golden hour’ after the fighting is over. Dominate security from the start; then concentrate on the rule of law. Make economic regeneration a priority. Understand the importance to the international community effort of co-ordination, cohesion and speaking with one voice. And do not wait until everything is as it would be in our country. Leave when the peace is sustainable.
“At present, we intervene as though democracy was our big idea. It is not. We are not even particularly good at it ourselves. Good governance is our big idea; the rule of law is our big idea; open systems and the market-based economy – these are our big ideas. A stable democracy, fashioned to the conditions and the cultures of the country concerned, is what comes afterwards. It is the product of good governance, not its precursor.
“…we have chosen the wrong mindset to defeat al-Qaeda. We have chosen to fight an idea primarily with force. We seek to control territory; it seeks to capture minds. This is, at heart, a battle of ideas and values. Unless we realise that and can win on that agenda, no amount of force can deliver victory.
“We are not winning. In those regions of the world where this struggle is fiercest, civilisation is losing and medievalism is winning. We have to reverse that if we are to give ourselves a better chance of building peace in future. So to be successful, we will need more than the right structures, good intentions and a warm desire to do something to help. International intervention is a very blunt instrument, whose outcomes are not always predictable. It is not for the fainthearted or the easily bored. It needs steely toughness and strategic patience in equal measure. And strategic patience needs strategic vision – and we seem to lack that, too . It also requires a willingness to commit a lot of troops at the start, a capacity to provide sustained international support to the end and an ability to endure a time frame that is measured in decades, not years.
“The only reward for success is that all the expenditure and all that pain will be less than the cost of the war that was avoided, or the price of the chaos which would have ensued if the international community had stayed at home. Leaving early, or doing it badly, may end up making things worse – and nearly always means having to return and do it again.”
One tenet of Ashdown’s message is “go big or go home.” It’s a message that’s being ignored in Ottawa, London and Washington. The US invaded Iraq with about a third of the force it needed for the job. In Afghanistan, the situation is no better but actually far worse. In both countries we’ve committed to delivering their people into the arms of secular, Western democracy.
Afghanistan is a generational task that will easily take two decades to resolve, especially with our emphasis on the combat side. As it is the West that has taken the responsibility for propping up Hamid Karzai, the question needs to be asked which Western nations are prepared to commit to Afghanistan for twenty years? We can’t get any other NATO members to commit troops badly needed for this year’s Taliban offensive.
If we are going to commit to Afghanistan for the long haul are we content to have Canada’s entire military effort overseas consumed by the gaping maw of Kandahar? What about other places where the need for our help will be greater and potentially even more significant to Canada’s global interests? Are we willing to double or even triple the size of our armed forces? What are we willing to sacrifice to do that? Or will we allow Afghanistan to become at once both the anchor around our feet and our excuse for shirking responsibility everywhere else?
These are questions we need to debate, both on the floor of the House of Commons, and among all Canadians. Harpo and Hillier aren’t giving us straight answers. They’re the “stay the course” type whose vision is measured in days and weeks. That’s not good enough, not even close.
The Mound of Sound 