January 2008
Monthly Archive
January 19, 2008
And the winner is… Alberta premier Ed “Special Ed” Stelmach.
Only a man utterly bereft of a scintilla of intellect could fly to Washington, have a special audience with Cardinal His Holiness Cheney, and emerge, his clothes in disarray to announce that Alberta can rest assured, America won’t turn off Atabasca’s Tar Sands tap.
Gee Ed, are you sure? You got that in writing? Remember to give Dick a “happy ending?”
“We are the No. 1 gas supplier and soon to be the No. 1 oil supplier,” Stelmach told the Calgary Herald.
“There’s a long-term future not only in supply of oil and natural gas, but I am of the strong opinion there is a long-term future in us supplying the research and the technology that Americans will be looking to our expertise in terms of extracting oil out of shale in the United States.”
Hey Ed, word to the wise. Next time you head south for assurances, try to pick someone who’s not the most reviled man in his own country and make sure you’re talking to someone whose days in office aren’t a toss up between a wall calendar and a chronically diseased cardiovascular system. Cheney’s toast pal, someone at home should’ve told you that. In just twelve months the crews will descend, toss every remaining trace of Dick into a hazmat bag, and haul it all off in the middle of a very dark night to a Homeland Security incinerator in Jersey. Don’t worry Ed, they’ll probably burn the polaroids too.
January 19, 2008
Ross Perot has come out of seclusion, if only to denounce Republican presidential candidate John McCain. Perot recently called Newsweek reporter Jonathon Alter out of the blue to give his first interview in years.
The diminutive Texan wants to settle old scores recalling how McCain called him “nuttier than a fruitcake” in 1992.
“Perot’s real problem with McCain is that he believes the senator hushed up evidence that live POWs were left behind in Vietnam and even transferred to the Soviet Union for human experimentation, a charge Perot says he heard from a senior Vietnamese official in the 1980s. “There’s evidence, evidence, evidence,” Perot claims. “McCain was adamant about shutting down anything to do with recovering POWs.”
Other remarks Perot made suggest he’s still a tad nutty.
“When I asked about Barack Obama, Perot said he admired his eloquence but thought it “a little odd that we would be less concerned about his background than being a Mormon.” Perot was pleasantly surprised when I told him that Obama was a Christian, not a Muslim, and relieved when I informed him that the e-mail Perot (and untold others) received about Obama not respecting the Pledge of Allegiance was a fraud.
Perot isn’t a Hillary hater, but he’s not a fan either, relating the bumper sticker he received that reads: “Monica Lewinsky’s Ex-Boyfriend’s Wife for President.”
Perot is appalled at the specter of big banks having to borrow from foreigners to stay afloat: “We have to go around the world with a tambourine and a tin cup.”
January 18, 2008
Japan is legendary as the country where men routinely grope women in crammed subway and train cars. Well now Japan has identified a new form of sexual harassment – public display of a man’s hairy chest. From the Sydney Morning Herald (where else?).
“JR East, the biggest train company in the world, slapped a ban on a poster featuring a man’s moderately hairy chest – an image it considered so shocking to Japanese women that it constituted an open-and-shut case of sexual harassment.
“As sexual harassment becomes more of a problem, the standards for displaying posters in public spaces are becoming stricter,” a representative of the Morioka branch of JR East instructed the Mainichi Shimbun.
The poster, an advertisement for a 1000-year-old nudity festival where men in loincloths attempt to ward off plague and ensure good harvests, “wasn’t just out of line because there was nakedness; the pictures showed things that were particularly unpleasant for women, such as chest hair, and it was decided that showing them things they didn’t want to see was sexual harassment”.
One woman told the paper that Japanese women loathe chest hair by a 4 to 1 margin.
January 18, 2008
Western policitians pretty much fall into one of two camps today: those who are relieved they kept their nation’s forces out of Afghanistan and those who wish they had.
When career bureaucrat, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates lashed out at NATO this week for not being properly trained for the counterinsurgency role it was a sign of frustration, even exasperation.
The Liberal leader Stephane Dion returned to Canada with a muddled idea, depending on how you interpret his words, that NATO forces should assist Pakistan in the tribal lands although he was vague to the point of meaningless about what that meant. His words naturally set off a wave of controversy.
Maybe Afghanistan has reached the critical mass achieved in Iraq that led US military commanders to bemoan that there were no options, merely varying degrees of bad options. I suspect they all see the same thing but can’t bring themselves to say it – we’re losing.
The Dutch, who were supposed to conclude their combat assignment this year, have extended to 2010 to save face. We’ve already extended once, to 2009, but now confront the awful reality that we might have to bear the blame for pulling the plug on the NATO mission if we actually go.
Gates, of course, is saddled with the incompetence and irresponsibility bequeathed to him by his predecessor Rumsfeld and the delusional adventures of Bush/Cheney. He only has to juggle his way through the remaining year but there’s still a great risk that “the mission” will come undone before he can make his getaway.
NATO faces a make or break moment when the next summit is held in Bucharest this April. If NATO is going to back the Afghan mission that will have to be written in stone at this summit. So far there’s not much sign that will happen.
Asia Times suggests that Gates’ frustrations are a reflection of the criticisms in a recent paper written by the US general who commanded forces in Afghanistan from 2003 until 2005, Lt. Gen. David Barno.
He chose to begin his paper devoted to the counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan, citing lines by ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu, “Strategy without tactics is the slowest road to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”
Barno wrote that Afghan people’s tolerance for a foreign presence was “a bag of capital [that was] finite and had to be spent slowly and frugally” and, therefore, under his charge US forces took great care to avoid Afghan casualties, detainee abuse, or transgressions in observance of respect to tribal leaders or causing offence to traditional Afghan culture.
According to Barno, the slide began in mid-2005 after he and [Zalmay] Khalilzad were reassigned. Washington then decided to publicly announce that NATO was assuming responsibility for the war and that the US was making a token withdrawal of 2,500 troops.
“Unsurprisingly, this was widely viewed in the region as the first signal that the United States was ‘moving for the exits’, thus reinforcing long-held doubts about the prospects of sustained American commitment. In my judgement, these public moves have served more than any other US actions since 2001 [the fall of the Taliban] to alter the calculus of both our friends and our adversaries across the region – and not in our favor.”
Barno implied NATO messed up the top-notch command structure he created. The result is, “With the advent of NATO military leadership, there is today no single comprehensive strategy to guide the US, NATO, or international effort.” Consequently, he says, the unity of purpose – both interagency and international – has suffered and unity of command is fragmented, and tactics have “seemingly reverted to earlier practices such as the aggressive use of airpower”.
Barno makes some chilling conclusions. First, he says the “bag of capital” representing the tolerance of Afghan people for foreign forces is diminishing. Second, NATO narrowly focuses on the “20% military dimension” of the war, while ignoring the 80% comprising non-military components. Third, the “center of gravity” of the war is no longer the Afghan people but the “enemy“. Fourth, President Hamid Karzai’s government is ineffectual “under growing pressure from powerful interests within his administration”. Fifth, corruption, crime, poverty and a burgeoning narcotics trade have eroded public confidence in Karzai. Finally, “NATO, the designated heir to an originally popular international effort, is threatened by the prospects of mounting disaffection among the Afghan people.”
The worst part of Barno’s observations is that he’s probably right. He may gild his own performance and overlook the fact that NATO got handed a bag of dirt but his conclusions seem well borne out by the facts. The solution, according to Asia Times, appears to be in reconciliation with the Taliban.
“The heart of the matter is Pashtun alienation. The Taliban represent Pashtun aspirations. As long as Pashtuns are denied their historical role in Kabul, Afghanistan cannot be stabilized and Pakistan will remain in turmoil. Musharraf said, “There should be a change of strategy right away. You [NATO] should make political overtures to win the Pashtuns over.”
This may also be the raison d’etre of UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon’s intriguing choice of a Briton as his new special representative. Conceivably, the inscrutable Ban has been told by Washington that Ashdown is just the right man to walk on an upcoming secretive bridge, which will intricately connect New York, Washington, London, Riyadh, Islamabad and Kabul.
The point is, Britain grasps the Pashtun problem. Britain realizes that the induction of US special forces into the Pakistani tribal areas, or the custodianship of Pakistan’s nuclear stockpile, or an al-Qaeda takeover in Pakistan isn’t quite the issue today.
By any measure Washington blundered in demonizing the Taliban. Despite all the propaganda it’s well known that the Taliban weren’t supporting al-Qaeda, it was actually the other way around. There’s been no sign whatsoever that the Taliban were aware of the al-Qaeda attacks of 9/11. Sure they’re Islamic fundamentalist nutjobs but that description also fits the Northern Alliance warlords they were fighting until the end. Karzai has no intention of dragging Afghanistan out of fundamentalism.
The Americans have heralded their great success in Iraq in getting the Sunni resistance to turn on the Sunni al-Qaeda terrorists in their midst. There has been some success in that initiative, unquestionably. The Taliban may now be the key to undercutting al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan if a way can be found to drive a wedge between the two. We’ve tried the stick – over and over again – and it hasn’t worked. Maybe it’s time to see what we can do with a few carrots.
January 18, 2008
It’s not so much that there’s a shortage of food but, instead, it’s a shortage of money to afford it in the face of rapidly rising food prices.
The UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs reports a crisis looming in West Africa.
“Almost all farming in West Africa is rain-fed, meaning farmers experience an intense burst of activity during the June to November rainy season, when they must grow and sell enough food to see them through until the next year.
By June, many of the poorest families in the region have run out of money and food. The period is known as the “hunger gap” or “lean season” and is usually accompanied by quickly accelerating malnutrition rates as families skip meals and in extreme cases rely on wild foods like weeds, leaves and berries and rubbish for sustenance.
For some families, the lean season starts as early as January or February. Even slight shifts in market prices can have a dramatic impact on peoples’ ability to get through the lean season, as all their reserves and credit are already used up.
The hardest hit people are in Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad which are among the poorest countries in the world and together form West Africa’s semi-arid Sahel region. The World Food Programme estimates that there are 1.5 million children under five suffering from under-nutrition in those countries.”
“Traders are still buying in as much as possible to hold onto it until the price has doubled or more,” said Salif Sow, regional representative of the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) food monitoring group. FEWS NET has recorded rising prices at important markets in northern Nigeria, Ghana, Togo and Benin.
Sow suggested the increase in maize prices could prove to be the most serious factor for the poorest families.
“Maize is what people usually buy during the lean season because that is what is cheapest. This year maize will still be on the market but it is going to be really expensive,” he said.
January 18, 2008
Yesterday an elite group of Italy’s labour force held a protest and to make their point they kept their clothes
on.
Italy’s 300 or so nude, artist models have gone on strike. The complain that only one in six has a proper contract, the rest being hired by the hour at roughly 25 euros per. From The Guardian:
Antonella Migliorini, 42, told Italy’s La Stampa newspaper: “Our work is not recognised. We pose for eight hours a day and still the colleges treat us like teaching tools.
“We do a difficult job, with a great tradition resting on our shoulders, which requires both imagination and great physical concentration.”
She added that being a life model was a “tough, cold job” and that most models who were lucky enough to have a full-time job only made around €900 a month.
An official from the Italian education ministry has agreed to meet with the models.
January 18, 2008
President George w. Bush has just the cure to avert America’s looming recession – borrow money. It’s the same answer he uses when he wants to wage war without end or let the very richest people in America slip their fair share of taxes – borrow money (just make sure you put it on the little guy’s tab). Oh sure it causes big deficits and enormous long-term debt but, hey, that’s for the kids to worry about 20 years from now, huh?
So here’s the deal. Bush wants to borrow America’s way out of recession to the tune of about $145-billion. That would be doled out in the guise of tax “rebates” although the idiocy of purporting to rebate money you don’t have isn’t being mentioned in the White House or in Congress for that matter. From the New York Times:
“Letting Americans keep more of their own money should increase consumer spending,” the president said, repeating a theme he has embraced time and again during his presidency, although perhaps never when, in the opinion of many analysts, the economy was teetering on the brink of recession.
There was speculation beforehand that the relief package would amount to $800 rebates for individual taxpayers and $1,600 for households. Based on the $140 billion to $145 billion range of the entire package, it appeared that the rebates would not exceed $800 and $1,600.
The president called again for Congress to make permanent the tax cuts that were enacted several years ago and are to expire in the next three years. Otherwise, he said, there will be such uncertainty that jobs and economic growth will be jeopardized. But the president did not insist on getting his way as a condition of negotiations on short-term relief.
Letting Americans keep more of their own money? No, chum, you’re doling out money you’re borrowing in their name, loans a lot of them couldn’t get right now. All you’re giving them is some cash and an equivalent in interest-bearing debt – leaving aside the question of how the working and middle class are going to repay that faux largesse to be sorted out by another government at another time. Meanwhile, let’s enshrine those tax cuts for the rich. They deserve them after all, they’re rich aren’t they?
January 18, 2008
These days the leaders of Canada’s two top parties – and no, that doesn’t include the NDP – are eager to avoid having to set actual policy. With their support wobbling like jello in the low to mid-30’s, it’s as though each sees the way forward as something of a minefield where one mistep could be fatal.
Harper has done almost nothing of consequence this past session of parliament save to lower the GST by one point. He doesn’t dare bring out his social conservative agenda for fear he might hand the Liberals a solid majority by default. He talks about global warming and greenhouse gas curbs but ducks and weaves his way around any concrete action. He even dodges Afghanistan, the one issue where his opinions are fixed.
Then there’s Stephane Dion, the man most responsible for Harper maintaining even a slim lead in the polls. He says he’s green but won’t say what that means in terms of the Athabasca Tar Sands and its pending expansion. He says he wants Canada out of its combat role in Afghanistan but wants NATO to somehow kick ass inside Pakistan. He too seems to have less to offer by the day.
Nobody has a coherent policy save, perhaps, for Smilin’ Jack, the guy whose greatest ambition is to advance out of the political cellar. Safe from the prospect of ever having to govern, Layton is the very image of clarity and decisiveness. Policies are wonderful things when you’ll never have to enact any of them. Wind and noise, that’s all there is to Jack Layton.
Mr. Layton’s posturing, however insincere and opportunistic, lets neither Dion nor Harper off the hook for failing to express coherent, effective and acceptable policies of their own.
My guess is that Harper truly doesn’t want to act. He certainly doesn’t want to betray his ideological fellows by being responsible for withdrawal of the Canadian contingent in Kandahar. That may account for the deft way in which he backed Canada into a “too late to leave” corner. It may be duplicitous, manipulative, even despicable but it’s been done and, for the far right, it is at least a temporary victory.
On global warming and carbon emission reductions, I suspect that Harper only feigns his conversion to belief. He probably still sees the potential advantages of also backing Canada into a deadlock where economic growth is only notionally balanced against emissions. After all, when it comes to carbon curbs, it’s a charlatan’s paradise. That’s not to say he won’t set some emission reduction targets. He will. Yet they’ll likely be little more than “intensity based” tomfoolery, mere window dressing.
In these things, Harper will be aided and abetted by Stephane Dion. The well-intentioned but timid Mr. Dion has shown that he’s unwilling to genuinely press Harper because that would require him to spell out clear and meaningful policies of his own. That is a risk only to be taken by someone who can capture the public’s imagination, confidence and support. That is the work of a leader of a nation, not a mere party boss.
There’s talk of Mr. Dion triggering an election. Maybe that’s just what we need to get the long overdue debate on so many important issues.
January 18, 2008
Stephane Dion’s ability to communicate in English isn’t poor, it’s awful. His skills in the first language of most Canadians are awkward and halting. He struggles to find the correct word. Sometimes he says things he later has to retract.
On Afghanistan, Dion clearly talked about NATO getting involved in Pakistan. He now says he didn’t mean military action inside Pakistan but that certainly was the impression he gave in his comments. That’s also the way the government of Pakistan took Mr. Dion’s words, calling his suggestion “irrational.”
Pakistan’s High Commission released a scathing rebuke. “We are dismayed by the statement of the leader of Opposition. It shows a lack of understanding of the ground realities.”
Mr. Dion does not connect with the Canadian people, not even in his home province. He trails Harper and Layton by a large margin in polls.
At this point, the Liberal Party should not expect to form a government under this leader. This is one point on which the party and the Canadian people are seriously at odds.
The Reuters news service is running a story this morning claiming that the Liberals are eyeing an election and claiming that their chances of ousting Harper have improved. Why not? Let’s get it over with. Stephane Dion has had plenty of time to establish himself as a leader in the eyes of the Canadian voter. Might as well let them have their say.
January 18, 2008
We’re just now finally coming to grips with the realities of Afghanistan’s ethnic melange but we also need to understand what’s next door, in Pakistan. The name gives it away.
The name of the country was crafted by a bunch of university students at England’s Cambridge. It’s an acronym. P for the Punjabis, A for the Afghans, K for the Kashmiris, S for Sind, and the “tan,” they say, for Baluchistan.
The country is essentially run by and for the military which is predominantly Punjabi. Benazir Bhutto and her ancestors belonged to the Sindhs. The Pashtun are blended into the Afghans and the Balochs are, of course, the tribesmen of the part of Balochistan that Pakistan shares with Afghanistan. Out of those five groups, the Punjabis and Sindhs vie for power. The others – Kashmiri, Pashtun and Baloch are beset by a variety of insurgents, terrorists and nationalist secessionists.
You don’t just go into one part of Pakistan to clean up insurgencies. You effectively take one side against one or more or even all of the others. If the Punjabis can’t bring order and security to the Baloch and Pashtun tribal lands, just what do we think NATO is going to accomplish? There’s a reason the Punjabi-run military keeps trying to negotiate ceasefires with these tribes.
So let’s drop the fanciful notions of bringing a little Western “know how” to sort out the tribal lands once and for all. That place isn’t like southern Afghanistan with its level, wide open spaces and largely passive farmers. The tribal lands are extremely rugged, mountainous territory. It’s the sort of terrain that doesn’t lend itself to armoured vehicles, artillery and air support, the high tech firepower we so depend upon. In fact it’s the sort of place where tanks and helicopters go to die.
By the way, another point of misunderstanding I’ve noticed popping up concerns Pakistan’s military. Some suggest they just need a few extra soldiers from NATO to drive the Taliban out of their country. Think again.
The Pakistani military consists of 602,000 active duty personnel. Add in the coast guard and paramilitaries and it just clears 1,000,000 in total. They’re all volunteers and they make up the 7th largest military in the world. They also have a reputation as very capable fighters. That’s the military that hasn’t been able to tame the tribal lands.
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