The Mound of Sound

Much as I find Con-victed Felon Con-rad Black the egomaniacal equivalent of ten pounds of solid waste in a five pound, soggy paper bag, I do find his journalism at times amusing. I found myself dwelling on that as I read Lord Crossharbour’s pre-incarceration op-ed piece in the National Spot endorsing John McCain as the next president of the United States.

Having recently torn a strip off two former friends, Henry Kissinger and William F. Buckley, it appears Con Con is in the mood to lay waste to all and sundry who may have the misfortune to catch his eye.

Here are a couple of his observations from primary night in New Hampshire:

“Though quite enterprising, Wolf Blitzer, when he worked for us at the Jerusalem Post, was one of the most avaricious journalists I have known. After about 40 assertions from him in 20 minutes on New Hampshire night, that CNN has “the top news team on television,” I had either to change channels or find a sick bag. Prevention prevailed over convalescence, but the other channels weren’t much better.”

On, “… the greatest American political myth-maker of the last 35 years, Bob Woodward“:

“He it was who first gave us the story of the cloven-footed, horned, trident-tailed Richard Nixon, (undoubtedly, in fact, one of America’s 10 greatest presidents, despite his ethical and stylistic frailties). Woodward completely fabricated a visit to the hospital room of dying CIA chief William Casey, after the Iran-Contra side-show in 1987, in his supposedly non-fiction book, Veil. But Last Tuesday night, he not only admitted error, but volunteered what he had expected to say when Obama had won. He was the only honest commentator that I saw in hours of almost prayerful channel-surfing in search of one.”

On Michelle Obama:

“With trepidation, but not embarrassment, I offer the thought that Mrs. Obama, a formerly disadvantaged alumna of Princeton and Harvard, to judge from her well-strategized appearances on national television in exiguous dresses and trousers, is as callipygian as Jennifer Lopez. (That is my only concession to political correctness for 2008; you look it up if you must.) I saw her on YouTube saying that, “Reform must be from the bottom up.” In her well-favoured case, this could be a double-entendre.”

On the glory of a commander-in-chief of proven, military mettle:

“In 29 of the 43 U.S. presidential elections prior to 1960, someone best known as a senior army officer was a serious nominee for national office and winner of electoral votes; successfully in 19 of those elections. These included some of the greatest names of U.S. history: Washington, Jackson, Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Eisenhower, (successful, as a group, in 10 of 12 national elections.) Being demonstrably patriotic, brave, successfully commanding in crises and untainted by political log-rolling has never lost its appeal to Americans.

Since the Second World War, the only popular and successful war the country has had, the first Gulf War, yielded a hero who did not choose to run, General Colin Powell, (though he probably would have won if he had run). So since 1960, the parties have usually nominated men proud of their military background, but not in high command positions: Kennedy, Nixon, Johnson, Goldwater, McGovern, Ford, Carter, Bush Senior, Dole, Gore and Kerry (not to mention George Wallace’s 1968 vice-presidential running mate, Air Force General Curtis “Lob one into the men’s room in the Kremlin … and turn North Vietnam into a parking lot” Lemay).”

“McCain, an authentic hero, though irascible and burdened with a bogus campaign-finance bill and unacceptable views on immigration, is in the best of the military-political tradition of integrity. He doesn’t speak in clichés or adjust his views for the fluctuating polls, and he does have a sense of humour. If he is the presidential nominee, the genius move would be to invite Bloomberg to be his running mate. At this early point, if the office, in a phrase from Washington’s time, is seeking anyone, (i.e. being successfully sought by anyone), it is John McCain.”

It’s easy to understand Con Con’s attachment to McCain. As Conrad’s own appointment behind bars approaches, the Arizona senator’s years of captivity and torture at the hands of the North Vietnamese must be enormously inspirational. For McCain made his imprisonment an ordeal endured in great nobility. Doubtless Mr. Black aspires to nothing less for himself.

What I wonder now is whether mister/inmate/Lord Black will continue to deliver himself of his views via the National Spot whilst a guest of the US penitentiary service. He’ll undoubtedly have access to newspapers and television, even the internet perhaps. What a grand opportunity to extract revenge on those who have slighted and wronged him and to show the rest of us lesser mortals the true light of his brilliance?

Greenpeace claims that its vessel, Esperanza, has chased Japanese whalers out of their southern ocean hunting grounds disrupting plans to take up to 1,000 whales. From The Guardian:

As the more restrained Greenpeace dogs the Japanese whalers, the much more aggressive Sea Shepherd Society’s ship Irwin is closing in for what could be a more violent clash. From http://www.seashepherd.org/:

“I’m counting on Greenpeace to slow the poachers down until we can catch up. I’m hoping they can block some harpoons and harass them enough until we can arrive to shut the criminals down.”

George w. Bush, head of the nation that has single-handedly destabilized the Middle East, says that Iran is threatening the security of the world and that the US and its Arab allies must confront the danger “before it’s too late.”

According to the word of the man whose credibility means somewhat less than nothing, fundamentalist Shiite Iran funds state terrorists, undermines stability in Lebanon and even, get this, arms the radical Sunni Taliban, its very own arch enemy. Where did he get that last one, from Peter MacKay?

Being careful to deliver his speach in Abu Dhabi, not Saudi Arabia or Egypt, Bush said (unnamed) governments will never build trust by harassing their citizens. ”You cannot expect people to believe in the promise of a better future when they are jailed for peacefully petitioning their government,” Bush said. ”And you cannot stand up a modern, confident nation when you do not allow people to voice their legitimate criticisms.”

This from a guy who asserts he has an unfettered prerogative to take people, even Americans, off the street, declare them “enemy combattants” and have them imprisoned, secretly, indefinitely and without representation. George Bush, the most fascist president in American history, the very type that Thomas Jefferson most feared, is lecturing others on democracy.

There really is no end to this jackass.

Canada got involved in Afghanistan, or so the story goes, as a member in good and long-standing of the North American Treaty Organization, NATO.

We, Canada, got involved through NATO as part of ISAF which stands for the International Security Assistance Force, a hobbled together coalition of nations serving under a dysfunctional maze of individual national mandates complex enough to give Rube Goldberg a migraine (if Rube was still around to get a migraine but, sadly, Reuben passed away in 1970 survived by wife Irma and sons Thomas and George).

At first NATO and ISAF did pretty well if only because their job was limited to securing the Afghan capital, Kabul, against a thoroughly devastated Taliban insurgency. We were going to protect the central government while American forces prowled the hills hunting Osama bin Laden, his al-Qaeda militants and the remnants of the former Taliban government and militia.

It all might have had a happy ending if we just stuck with that script. In Washington, however, George w. Bush and Dickster Cheney, decided that Afghanistan was peanuts and thought they’d rather go after Saddam Hussein in Iraq. So, they painted Saddam as just another part of al-Qaeda terrorism and took off, after getting NATO members to agree to take over in most of the Afghan countryside.

We didn’t have to worry. Rumsfeld and Cheney assured the American people that they would have the whole Iraq business wrapped up in six weeks, six months at the outside.

That was 2003, this is 2008 and America is still stuck in Iraq, leaving us, by default stuck in Afghanistan.

We told NATO we’d mind the store in Kandahar province for a couple of years while the Americans were away and then that couple of years gave way to a couple more and now we’re supposed to leave in 2009 but everybody knows that’s a joke. NATO knows we’re only pulling their leg because we haven’t been screaming at them about leaving even though they (NATO) have been doing bugger all to find a force to relieve our own soldiers.

We can’t leave. We’re constantly warned that if NATO fails in Afghanistan, it’ll be the end of NATO. That gives rise to two questions. Is it true and, if it is, is that a bad thing?

I don’t believe that a NATO pullout from Afghanistan is a failure. The failure is Washington’s failure to be honest with us about Iraq. The Pentagon is effectively AWOL from Afghanistan. Stuck in Iraq by its president’s needless war of whim it has the gall to point fingers at NATO.

Will leaving Afganistan truly be the end of NATO? Who can tell? NATO has already failed in Afghanistan. It has failed to provide an adequate force for the job it confronts. It has failed to deliver a coherent, effective multinational force. It has been completely unable to supply badly needed reinforcements and new contingents to relieve those already strained and nearly worn out. NATO’s outspoken Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has certainly been an abject failure except at one job – mouthwork – cheerleading and hectoring.

It was Washington that drove the push to expand NATO to admit the eastern European nations into the alliance but, now that NATO is under existential threat, where are those countries, Rumsfeld’s “New Europe”? They’re sure as hell not lining up to pull their weight in Afghanistan. So we’ve taken on a solemn obligation to defend these countries – for what? It seems that was all just a ploy to advance Washington’s geo-political interests against Moscow’s.

No I think NATO has allowed itself to become George w. Bush’s water boy for his delusional foreign policy adventures. If NATO can’t find a role beyond that of serving as America’s Foreign Legion, it’s already finished. Maybe we should be content to remember fondly NATO’s good old days and allow what remains to die with some dignity.

Even monkeys sometimes pay for sex. From Time.com:

Oh my God, we are not alone!

Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf and US president George w. Bush both take the line that Islamist extremists assassinated Benazir Bhutto. It’s the only narrative that can distance Musharraf himself, the Pakistani military and the military’s Inter-Service Intelligence Agency from becoming the prime suspects.

Reports today from McClatchey Newspapers and the British paper The Independent indicate that, try as he might, Musharraf isn’t getting off the hook.

McClatchey’s Jonathan Landy and Saeed Shah write of a mystery crowd that slowed and then blocked Bhutto’s car at the point of her assassination:

A police officer who witnessed the assassination said that a mysterious crowd stopped Bhutto’s car that day, moving her to emerge through the sunroof. And a document has surfaced in the Pakistani news media that contradicts the government’s version of her death and contains details on the pistol and the suicide bomb used in the murder.

The witness was Ishtiaq Hussain Shah of the Rawalpindi police. As Bhutto’s car headed onto Rawalpindi’s Liaquat Road after an election rally Dec. 27, a crowd appeared from nowhere and stopped the motorcade, shouting slogans of her Pakistan Peoples Party and waving party banners, according to his account.

It was Shah’s job to clear the way for the motorcade. But 10 feet from where he was standing, a man in the crowd wearing a jacket and sunglasses raised his arm and shot at the former prime minister. “I jumped to overpower him,” the deputy police superintendent said later. “A mighty explosion took place soon afterwards.”

Who organized the crowd is only one of the mysteries two weeks after the assassination. “I don’t know who they were or from where they came,” the Rawalpindi officer told Dawn newspaper. “They just appeared on the road.”

A Pakistani daily, The News, claims to have a report about the weapons used to kill Bhutto:

According to the document, which the paper described as a “top agency” preliminary report, a pistol made by Norinco, a Chinese brand, was recovered from the scene, with the lot number 311-90. An MUV-2 triggering mechanism for the bomb also was found, as had been used in 15 previous suicide bombings in Pakistan, with the same lot number and factory code.

Bhutto, and her security adviser Rehman Malik, had complained repeatedly that she was given inadequate official security, including mobile phone jammers that didn’t work and less than the four-vehicle escort that she thought was needed to protect the four corners of her car. In an e-mail to her U.S. lobbyist, Mark Siegel, in late October, Bhutto wrote that if anything happened to her “I would hold Musharraf responsible,” in addition to four individuals she named as plotting to kill her in a letter sent to Musharraf on Oct. 16.

There was no security cordon around Bhutto — who’d escaped a suicide bombing attack Oct. 18, the day she returned to Pakistan from self-imposed exile abroad — as she left the park in Rawalpindi. The crime scene was cleared immediately and hosed down, destroying vital evidence. Doctors at the hospital where she was taken, who announced the night it happened that she’d died of bullet wounds to the head and neck, changed their story the next day. There was no autopsy.

Scotland Yard detectives, whom Musharraf called in under pressure from home and abroad, have been told that they’re to investigate only the cause of death, not the killer’s identity. “Providing clarity regarding ‘The precise cause of Ms. Bhutto’s death’ is said to be the principal purpose of the deployment,” said Aidan Liddle, a spokesman for the British High Commission in Islamabad.

“Both the state and the internal security of the Pakistan Peoples Party failed miserably,” said Masood Sharif Khattak, who was the head of the Intelligence Bureau, Pakistan’s top civilian intelligence agency, while Bhutto was prime minister and now is retired. “But state responsibility (for her security) stands first and foremost.”

“The fact that there are so many suicide bombings taking place in the country, and the security and intelligence apparatus is unable to prevent them, only leads to one conclusion: The jihadists have enablers within the system that allow them to do their stuff,” said Kamran Bokhari of Strategic Forecasting, a consultancy based in Austin, Texas.

Veteran Middle East reporter Robert Fisk, writing in The Independent, also points the finger at Musharraf and his military apparatus:

“Over all this, however, looms the shocking power of Pakistan’s ISI, the Inter Services Intelligence.

This vast institution – corrupt, venal and brutal – works for Musharraf.

But it also worked – and still works – for the Taliban. It also works for the Americans. In fact, it works for everybody. But it is the key which Musharraf can use to open talks with America’s enemies when he feels threatened or wants to put pressure on Afghanistan or wants to appease the ” extremists” and “terrorists” who so oppress George Bush. And let us remember, by the way, that Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter beheaded by his Islamist captors in Karachi, actually made his fatal appointment with his future murderers from an ISI commander’s office. Ahmed Rashid’s book ‘Taliban’ provides riveting proof of the ISI’s web of corruption and violence. Read it, and all of the above makes more sense.

So let’s run through this logic in the way that Inspector Ian Blair might have done in his policeman’s notebook before he became the top cop in London.

Question: Who forced Benazir Bhutto to stay in London and tried to prevent her return to Pakistan? Answer: General Musharraf.

Question: Who ordered the arrest of thousands of Benazir’s supporters this month? Answer: General Musharraf.

Question: Who placed Benazir under temporary house arrest this month? Answer: General Musharraf.

Question: Who declared martial law this month? Answer General Musharraf.

Question: who killed Benazir Bhutto?
Er. Yes. Well quite.

You see the problem? Yesterday, our television warriors informed us the PPP members shouting that Musharraf was a “murderer” were complaining he had not provided sufficient security for Benazir. Wrong. They were shouting this because they believe he killed her.

Two months ago, Republican Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, decided it was time to look into America’s mega-churches with a view to finding out how much of all those tax-free millions is finding its way into the pockets of the pastors.

He began with six churches. From AlterNet.Org:

– Benny Hinn, a TV preacher who runs the World Healing Center Church in Grapevine, Texas. Hinn, who travels the globe conducting faith-healing revivals, lives in a seven-bathroom, eight-bedroom mansion overlooking the Pacific Ocean valued at $10 million. It is claimed as a parsonage.
– The Rev. Creflo Dollar’s World Changers Church International in College Park, Ga. Dollar drives a Rolls Royce and has large homes in Georgia and New York. He is asked to provide a list of all vehicles provided for himself, his wife, board members and ministry employees.
– Paula and Randy White’s Without Walls International Church in Tampa, Fla. In a letter to the ministry, Grassley asks the couple to provide a list of expense account items “including, but not limited to, clothing expenses and any cosmetic surgery for years 2004 to present.”
– Joyce Meyer Ministries in Fenton, Mo. Grassley asks Meyer and her husband David to explain expenditures like a $23,000 commode with a marble top, a $30,000 conference table, an $11,000 French clock and a $19,000 pair of vases for the ministry headquarters.
– Kenneth Copeland Ministries in Newark, Texas. Copeland is asked to explain how cash offerings are handled during overseas crusades and to explain the use of a ministry jet for “layovers” in Maui, Fiji and Honolulu.
– Eddie Long’s New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Ga. Among other things, Long is asked to explain a church official’s 2005 claim that Long no longer accepts a salary from the church but does take a “love offering.”

What led Grassley to take this step? “The six ministries that received letters from me were chosen based upon reported allegations of wrongdoing reported by investigative journalists and brought to my attention by interested third parties, sometimes acting as whistleblowers. Some of the accounts were disturbing because of the lack of transparency regarding how these ministries spend millions of dollars, and as an industry, billions of dollars that have been exempt from federal tax.”

Not surprisingly, the Iowa senator isn’t getting the co-operation he’d hoped for:

“The ministries were generally cagey in their replies. Hinn said he had referred the matter to his attorneys, an approach that Dollar, the Whites and Meyer also took. Copeland refused to talk to the media. Some also began complaining of government interference.
“Are we saying the First Amendment is null and void by allowing this to happen?” Dollar asked in the Journal-Constitution.

Long, in brief remarks before his congregation Nov. 11, called the Grassley request “an attack on our religious freedom and privacy rights.”

As of Crassley’s deadline of December 6, only Copeland and Meyer submitted information, but some evangelists are warning that it’s unwise to place too much faith in financial statements.

“Ole Anthony, head of the Texas-based Trinity Foundation, an evangelical group that for years has spoken out against the excesses of television evangelists, told Church & State that these statements do not guarantee accountability.

“The public has no idea,” Anthony said. “The ministries say we have an audited financial statement. But it’s a very friendly auditor.” In the case of many mega-ministries, Anthony said, church accounting is “woefully lacking.”

Added Anthony, “I wish the legitimate church would demand that there be some accountability. These [mega-church] organizations, for the most part their accountability is a relative or just yes men – and if anyone disagrees with them, they’re touching the anointed of God or some other B.S.”

Douglas Laycock, an expert on church-state relations who teaches at the University of Michigan Law School, said tax exemption does not mean that religious groups surrender their constitutional rights. But, he added, government must have the power to investigate allegations of fraud.

“As I understand it, the allegations here are that money is being diverted from the exempt charitable purpose to the personal benefit of individuals,” Laycock told Church & State. “That is simply tax fraud, if done knowingly. The government has to be able to police that; otherwise, tax exemptions would be so easily abused it couldn’t grant them to anybody.”

Ah the plot thickens.

“If the investigation deepens, the Trinity Foundation’s Anthony is hoping it becomes an opportunity for changing the status quo. He said his group supports laws similar to those in England, where any claim made over the air for the purpose of raising money must be verifiable.

“For 20 years I’ve been hoping that the leaders of the legitimate church would stand up and say, ‘this is enough,’ but they haven’t,” Anthony said. “It breaks my heart that we have to do this but no one else will.”