September 2007
Monthly Archive
September 20, 2007
Most Canadians are thoroughly exposed to American media and we’re therefore quite used to Americans blaming cold, wet conditions on weather sweeping south out of Canada.
Oddly enough there are some Americans right now who are thrilled to be on the receiving end of Canadian cold wet. They’re in southern California where there last measurable rain in Los Angeles fell on April 22.
Firefighters in the Southland area are hoping the area will get at least an inch of Canada’s finest over the next two days to dampen the spreading brush fires.
September 20, 2007
” . . . all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily (and) adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
– H.L. Mencken, Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1920.
“After all, if a country with relatively few public opinion concerns or moral compunctions about its tactics cannot beat a bunch of ill-equipped Afghan tribesmen, what does that say about the ability of the United States – with its domestic constraints, statutory limitations, moral inhibitions, and zealous investigative reporters – to carry out a successful action against a guerrilla force?”
– David Petraeus, doctoral dissertation, Princeton University, 1987
“A democracy cannot fight a Seven Years War”
– General George C. Marshall
September 20, 2007
That’s decided then, Canada is staying the course in Kandahar. Who decided that you might ask? The decision that we can’t and won’t leave Afghanistan was apparently taken by NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.
In an interview with the Dutch newspaper NCR Handelsblad Scheffer made this pronouncement, “There are 40 countries participating in the NATO mission in Afghanistan (ISAF). And nobody can leave, nobody will leave.”
What Scheffer really seems to be saying is that he doesn’t have a clue what to do if NATO’s handful of members who are bearing the brunt of this thing – the US, Britain, Holland and Canada – decide that some of those other 36 ought to take their turn at the oars for a while. With no idea what else to do, Scheffer is reduced to cheap and hollow rhetoric. It doesn’t help that he’s sounding a lot like OJ Simpson.
September 20, 2007
What do Peter MacKay, Hamid Karzai and Robert Gates have in common? They’re all trying to shame us into “staying the course” in Afghanistan.
Karzai is whining that the sky will fall down if we leave. Given the breathtaking lack of progress by his government in the six years since the (now resurgent) Taliban were driven out, Karzai’s pleas sound increasingly self-serving.
Then there’s this latest load of nonsense from US Defence Secretary Robert Gates:
“It will be a mark of shame on all of us if an alliance built on the foundation of democratic values were to falter at the very moment that it tries to lay that foundation for democracy elsewhere – especially in a mission that is crucial to our own security.”
Sorry, Bob, but if Afghan democracy was so important to you guys why did you undermine any chance it had way back in 2002 when you drained all your forces and promised civil aid to indulge in your sandbox fantasies in Iraq? That, Bob, is a true “mark of shame” and it’s all yours.
The shame is the six invaluable years and all the lives and goodwill associated with them that were squandered by our leaders since 2001.
“We want to be seen as an army of liberation and not an army of occupation…There is a half-life on our role here, you wear out your welcome at some point. It doesn’t matter how helpful you are. We aren’t here to stay.” – David Petraeus on Iraq, November, 2003.
Screw these bully boys. All they’ve got left is to try to make us feel guilty when they’re the ones who should bear all the guilt.
September 20, 2007
Yeehaw, the loonie is just a fraction of a cent within parity to the US dollar!
Who do we insist on saying our dollar is “rising” when it’s merely treading water while the US dollar sinks?
Is the loonie rising against the Euro or the Yen or any other currency? Some maybe (Zimbabwe for example) but none that really matter. If our dollar was genuinely rising it would be rising against those major currencies and it’s not so it’s not rising at all.
I know, I know – it’s all semantics if you’re looking at hitting the outlet malls south of the line or you’ve been waiting to buy that Harley. Fair enough. On the other hand, if your job depends on selling stuff to Americans the reality is frightening.
Last week I was in Victoria, B.C. There was a time when Americans flocked to its trendy downtown shops in search of bargains. A lot of them came on shopping day trips via high-speed catamarans that linked Victoria and Seattle. As the US dollar declined those exchange-rate bargains became steadily less enticing and the flow of greenbacks in Victoria cash registers dried up.
Given that our economy is so dependent on American buyers, the debt-driven collapse of their dollar is hardly cause for exuberance. Oh sure they’ll keep buying our oil, they can’t help themselves on that score, but oil aside maybe it’s time that Harpo started looking around for other prospective customers instead of trying to score political points by snubbing them.
September 20, 2007
Trust the CBC’s Neil MacDonald to point out this sort of thing. He notes that the War on Terror has moved on to become something more suitable to the guys who can’t find a way to win it:
…as the people who run focus groups here are no doubt telling their masters, the average citizen expects some sort of resolution to a war. You win a war, or you lose a war. At some point, though, and that point has clearly come in the U.S., people start asking when they can reasonably expect a VE Day. Or in this case, VT Day.
The answer to that, of course, is maybe never. Certainly not in this lifetime. Because the phenomenon the West commonly calls terrorism is not militarily defeatable. It stems from ethnic nationalism, tribalism and religion, forces as powerful and primordial as sex.
And when governments all over the world are calling their political opponents terrorists, the word loses its impact and, eventually, even its meaning.
The Pentagon knows that very well and has been trying to modify its message for some time.
The U.S. military dropped the phrase “the long war” last spring, and, as Ackerman noted this week, it generally avoids “War on Terror,” too.
In 2005, at the behest of the military, then defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld tried to phase out War on Terror and test drove the phrase “global struggle against extremism” instead. It didn’t take. His boss smacked it down in that Texas speech a few days later.
Now, though, even President Bush has come around. He’s still clearly fond of Global War on Terror, and uses it from time to time, but “global struggle against extremists,” or a variation on that theme, is now making it into his speeches, too.
This rhetorical shift at the top can seem a bit rich to journalists, many of whom had reservations about using the term War on Terror, or even the word terrorist, in the first place.
Many reporters preferred to use words like, yes, “extremists,” and took tremendous blasts of heat from conservative and special interest groups for doing so in the early years following 9/11.
September 20, 2007
There are signs that the jury is hopelessly deadlocked in the Phil Spector murder trial. After deliberating for seven days without a verdict, the jury is going to get new guidance from the judge.
Superior Court Judge Larry Fidler, after denying a second defence motion for mistrial, has decided he will withdraw an instruction he gave the jurors before they began weighing the evidence. Fidler may well have wrecked the trial and he’s certainly given the defence pretty good grounds for appeal if Spector is convicted.
The Los Angels judge says he’ll withdraw an instruction that had said prosecutors must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Spector pointed a gun at Clarkson and the gun ended up inside her mouth while in Spector’s hand.
September 20, 2007
It’s hard to know quite what to make of the CSIS blunder in erasing as many as 150 wiretap tapes of the conversations of Air India bomber, Talwinder Singh Parmar.
The Canadian spy agency claims it was just a bureaucratic bungle in keeping with its policy of erasing recordings within 10-days of transcription. The former head of the counterterrorism branch said his service’s focus was to collect intelligence, not evidence. Say what?
The line goes that CSIS underlings erased the tapes because they hadn’t received orders to the contrary from above. We’re talking about the worst terrorist act in Canada’s history and the worst air bombing in the world – ever. Surely that alone attracts the sort of gravitas that would ensure that every possible scrap of evidence would be preserved.
This isn’t just an “oopsie” or is it? That may depend on just what was said on those tapes. There are transcripts of a sort just not verbatim. That destroyed the evidentiary value of the tapes so they couldn’t be used in prosecutions of other plotters. But, of itself, that doesn’t mean that anything truly significant was erased. That’s merely an assumption.
There are a lot of unanswered questions. Why did CSIS underlings not seek authorization from their superiors before erasing these tapes? Do the sketchy transcripts reveal comments that were probative to the prosecution of others? Just what is in those transcripts that can be safely made public?
Inquiry chairman Justice John Major has to walk a fine line on this one. Secrets are secrets after all. Yet he has to let us in on whether there was really much in those erased tapes that could have made a difference to the prosecution. CSIS won’t tell us that but somebody should and the guy to do that is John Major.
September 19, 2007
BBC reports that the Pope has given Condoleeze Rice the cold shoulder, refusing her recent request for a meeting to discuss the Middle East and Iraq.
Pope Benedict XVI is said to be miffed with the Bush regime. Apparently Rice and Bush snubbed a papal envoy sent from Rome prior to the invasion of Iraq saying they weren’t interested in the views of the late pope about the immorality of their planned war. The Vatican is also displeased at the Americans’ failure to protect Iraq Christians.
Instead of a sit down chin wag with the Big Hat, Rice had to settle for a phone call with his number two guy, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.
September 19, 2007
Stephen Harper didn’t choose John Baird as EnviroMin because of his commitment to the environment. Baird was given the job for any number of reasons, just not that one.
Canada’s New Government, awash in cash thanks to Liberal management, has plenty of bucks to throw around but not to Baird’s minions. A CBC report indicates that Baird’s department has has “slashed spending on wildlife protection and monitoring of ecosystems because of budget problems at the federal environment ministry.”
…a program monitoring the health of bird populations lost half its budget, while the budget for an operation that protects significant habitats for wildlife and birds was reduced to zero.
The network observing changes in ecosystems lost 80% of its budget.
The CBC noted that, despite its budgetary crisis, the environment ministry was able to scrape up $60,000 to hire a consultant to study why employee morale has tanked. Any guesses?
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