The Mound of Sound

The United States, with its “one size fits all, so long as it’s our size” approach is learning some tough lessons in reality from the Iraq war.

One lesson is that you can only expect so much from multi-ethnic, hobbled together artificial states. When things go really well it’s a lot easier to be an “Iraqi” than when things go badly when it’s much easier, sometimes even safer, to fall back into being an Arab or Kurd, Sunni or Shiite who just happens to live with his or her tribesmen inside some survey lines drawn by the Brits and French a century ago.

Another lesson is that the Middle East is a part of the world where historical grievances have lives of their own. The U.S. itself is still trying, with mixed success at best, to get over its own issues with 18th and 19th century slavery and ingrained 20th, even 21st century racism (see Obama, Barack). Why would it expect peoples with even more recent problems for which there has been no atonement, no forgiveness and healing processes or rituals to just put those grievances aside and forget about them? These are challenges of a generational scale at best and to ignore them or try to sweep them aside is and will be inevitably self-defeating.

Washington has to decide whether it wants a unified, stable Iraq or not. If it wants that sort of Iraq, a properly functioning nation, there are prices that will have to be paid to get there.

One price is recognizing that today’s Iraq cannot accommodate the interests of more than one nation. It’s going to be a Herculean struggle just to address its own interests and the needs of its people. It’s patently ludicrous to believe that Iraq can unify and overcome its internal threats and challenges if America complicates the burden, by an order of magnitude, by leveraging control of Iraq’s oil reserves and establishing permanent military bases in that country. It can’t be done.

The anything but secure Maliki government is being asked (told) to introduce a national oil law that would allow foreign companies, as in American, to control Iraq’s oil fields and exploit its reserves way into the future. Here’s the problem. It’s in essence the same deal that the French and the British imposed on the Arabs when they were Top Dogs in that same region almost a century ago. It’s the same deal that one Arab government after another overthrew in order to establish state control of their oil resources – governments such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran. The wealth from Saudi oil goes to the Saudis, not Texas.

How long will the restive tribes of Iraq put up with an oil regime that’s already been overthrown in neighbouring Arab states? Quick answer – not long although there will probably be years of unstable government and violence before they get there.

The permanent military base issue – the one Washington struggles not to mention – is another landmine to a unified Iraq. These bases are already built or under construction. In a peaceful Iraq they would have just one purpose – force projection and that pretty much targets any and all states within aerial refueled, fighter-bomber range of Iraq. I guess that would mean Iran and Syria to be sure but pretty much all of the Persian Gulf region.

Now some, perhaps only a few, Sunnis might begrudgingly accept an American military presence aimed at Shiite Iran but it’s hard to see how Iraq’s Shiite majority would tolerate it. And here, once again, we have an American policy setting Sunni against Shia – hardly the sort of thing that helps forge unity.

A viable, stable and peaceful Iraq may no more than a fantasy. But if it’s worth trying to achieve then all unnecessary pitfalls have to be removed. That means the current Bremer-crafted oil policy and the notion of permanent US military bases in Iraq. If Washington really wants those things it had better give up the notion of democracy for Iraq and start scouting around for a brutal strongman to run the place, someone a lot like the one they just hanged.

This is from Stephanie Salter, a columnist at the Terra Haute, Indiana Tribune-Star.

“A friend who teaches in public school here in Indiana was appalled not long ago when an e-mail from a colleague went out to everyone in the school’s cyber-address book.

The subject of the e-mail was Barack Obama and how he is “secretly” a radical Muslim bent on destroying the United States from within. A widely circulated pack of lies — e.g., he took the oath of office holding a Koran — the e-mail boasts that its contents are verifiable on the legitimate myth buster, snopes.com, which is the opposite of true.

At least my teacher friend’s colleague didn’t send out one of the popular e-mails that insist Obama shows all the signs of being the antichrist.

I wish I could say I was kidding, but I can’t. I live in the United States of America — a country in which most people are alleged to be literate — and I am about to participate in a historic presidential primary. But I am starting to wonder if some of my fellow citizens have a grasp on reality, let alone the issues.

A jihadist? The antichrist? Oh, for God’s sake.Before anyone is tempted to play the region card, don’t. Indiana has no exclusive claim to people who are spending time this spring telling one another that Obama is a jihadist and/or the antichrist. Google offers about 2.25 million hits on the latter subject. (Mercifully, renunciations are part of the volume.)

…I’m a 1960s feminist who thought I would never live to see the day a woman would make a viable run at the U.S. presidency. I look at how smart, brave, tough and committed Hillary Clinton is, and I see someone who is more than capable of being commander in chief.

But one of the great things about being a feminist is knowing that liberation means searching your head, heart and gut, then acting freely on what you discover there.

Four weeks ago, I watched Clinton go for the cheap shot and turn Obama’s lengthy, measured observations about frustrated working-class Americans into Bittergate. My head, heart and gut yelled, “Blatant foul!”

Clinton chose, repeatedly, to call Obama’s remarks “elitist” and “out of touch” with ordinary Americans. She emphasized, repeatedly, that his excerpted words were made at a private fundraiser in San Francisco — as though she had never been the focus of such an event — and she encouraged her campaign operatives across the country to keep piling on.

Ignoring all the times her words and deeds have been perverted out of context by her enemies, Clinton chose to play the nasty old game in which victorious ends justify crummy means. Knowing that Americans need more division like we need more conspiracy theories, she chose to further divide.

My head, heart and mind said, “Go to Plan B. Barack Obama is smart, brave, tough, committed and capable of being commander in chief — and he struggles mightily against cheap shots to deal honestly with the complexities and contradictions of his country and its people.”

No waffles, no sexist slurs, no al Qaida, no Satan. Just a rational decision. My idea of the American Dream.”

Rumours are surfacing of yet another pending arrest in the Sponsorship Scandal. Okay, now this is eight years and two governments after the fact.

This proceeding, if it comes to pass, needs to be put under some scrutiny. Remember we’re dealing with the RCMP here, the same once-proud outfit whose commissioner gamed the last election with a spurious, mid-campaign press release about a possible scandal involving hinted wrongdoing by Ralph Goodale.

Now that same tattered remnant of a national police force is headed by whom? Why it would be my old lawschool classmate and life-long Tory insider Bill “Bubbles” Elliot. Much as I like Bill it does trouble me that Harper appointed a total partisan to head the RCMP.

Now in the justice system, appearances count. The mantra goes that justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. In other words, it’s all got to be above board and completely beyond suspicion. That’s not being picky. There’s a good reason for it, the best in fact. If the administration of justice is tainted with the appearance of favouritism or bias, it can undermine the one thing the system cannot do without – public confidence in its integrity.

The appearance on this one – well it stinks frankly. You have the Harper Cons now reeling from a succession of scandals – Mulroney, Cadman, In & Out, etc. – and they could really use something to distract the public and turn the tables on the Libs. What have they got? Precious little – unless they can milk that sponsorship scandal one more time, especially now that an election is looming.

The RCMP hasn’t done too well on the smell test lately. If they’re going to launch another politically-charged proceeding – at this late stage – when they’re headed by a lifelong partisan – and having displayed an openness to dodgy interference in the last election – they damn well better come up with a very convincing explanation of the timing and they’d better not count on the benefit of the doubt if their story has that now all-too-familiar stink to it.

Meanwhile the force can explain why it’s not proceeding with perjury charges against Mr. Mulroney. The Commish, after all, worked in Mulroney’s government. Maybe they don’t think that Mulroney’s sworn statements that his only involvement with Schreiber was a few meetings for coffee constitutes perjury. If so, I’d love to hear them come out with it.

Muncie, Indiana florist Judy Benken says she’ll be voting the way her family has voted for generations – white.

Benken told the Toronto Star that she’ll support Barack Obama, claiming, “He’s not really black – he doesn’t have those pronounced features.”

“Muncie, Ind., is divided by rail tracks. Its more upscale north, including Ball State University, is expected to back Obama; its gritty blue-collar south expected to support Clinton.

The south side is also the remnant of a once-proud industrial sector that barely exists these days, supplanted by the north side’s university and service industry.”

http://www.thestar.com/World/Columnist/article/421225

Canada’s clear as mud policy on Afghanistan got just a bit murkier this week. First came the news from Lt.-Col. Gordon Corbould, the new battle group commander, and Sgt. Tim Seeley, a civilian-military co-operation officer for Canada’s Provincial Reconstruction Team, that our military would be reaching out to Taliban members, trying to engage them in talks.

Two days later, speedball DefMin Peter MacKay put the boots to that little bit of insubordination, telling Canadian Press:

“We are not talking to the Taliban. We are not having direct discussions with terrorists. We won’t, will not, that will not change. What we are doing obviously in reconstruction and development and daily contacts that happen is encouraging people to move away from the Taliban’s influence, to renounce violence.”

Pistol Pete told the press that the government – no make that the cabinet – ah hell, make that Boss Harper – will set military policy, not the military and, besides, Harper gets all the quality military advice any Leader could want from Jungle Dick Cheney who’s never more than a scrambled phone call to a secret cellar away! Besides, Pete noted, when it comes to Canada’s rapidly mildewing New Government, if the Taliban want to talk, they’ll first have to go through Furious Leader’s political commissars in the PMO just like everybody else.

After assuring the press that we’re winning in Afghanistan, hands down, DefMin MacKay slipped back into the cardboard shoebox where Furious Leader keeps the rest of his sock puppets. In an adjoining room, the Prime Minister herself, just finishing up a double portion of delicious Taliban short ribs, was heard to utter what most observers suspect was a satisfied belch.

Special Ed Stelmach has a problem and it’s one that’s not going away.

Ed’s problem, or at least his latest problem, is the toxic waste dump also known as the Athabasca Tar Sands. Getting ersatz oil out of Athabasca’s bitumen tar uses an awful lot of water – fresh water that’s turned into a black, oily waste that has to be pumped into tailing ponds built out of earthen walls.

These tailing ponds are big. They can be seen from the shuttle as it orbits in space. And they’re not getting any smaller because no one, it seems, has any plan for dealing with this toxic sludge. Now I don’t know what the lifespan of an earthen wall may be but I’m pretty sure it’s not all that long. No one’s really sure how much of this stuff may seep into the groundwater or when or just who may be effected by it eventually.

When it comes to the Tar Sands and the rich array of environmental threats associated with that boondoggle, Special Ed clings to the “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” school of environmentalism. When native villages downstream get swept with cancer or migratory birds die in the tailing ponds, he proclaims the Tar Sands an environmental triumph and brands his critics as outsiders, sh*t disturbers.

So now Ed has five or six hundred dead ducks on his hands and, of course, it’s not really about the ducks at all but where they died – the tailing ponds. That defeats the “out of sight, out of mind” firewall on which people like Ed rely so heavily. The timing couldn’t have been worse, coming at the same time as Ed had dispatched his Number Two to the US to promote the Tar Sands. How did Ed react? Predictably. Ed tried to set up the province of Alberta as the underdog, the David to the environmentalists’ Goliath. Why not? That kind of bullshit has worked great for the White House for the past eight years. Who cares whether the statement is utterly ridiculous so long as your target audience is willing to swallow.

Now it turns out that a Seattle scientist is calling “bullshit” on Ed Stemcell’s claims that the normal, annual loss from the Tar Sands ponds is only 20-birds. Jeff Wells belongs to a group that conducted research at just one operation in 2003 that found, even with bird-deterrence programmes in place, 705 birds died in just a four week span. That’s one operation, the Albian Sands project, and just four weeks. Albian Sands is a joint venture of Shell and Chevron-Texaco, operator of the Muskeg River mind about 75-kms. north of Fort McMurray.

Makes you wonder. If Ed’s going to deceive the public about a few hundred migratory birds, when it comes to his cherished Tar Sands, what else is he willing to hide and bury and lie about? My guess is that he’ll do whatever he thinks it takes.

No one seems to be asking why these tailing ponds are being left to grow and spread? The wealth associated with those tailings is leaving Athabasca and much of it is leaving Canada with the American oil companies running these mines. Simply leaving these tailings unresolved as a future threat to the region doesn’t sound like much of a plan.

The National Spot ran the predictible opinion piece dismissing the incident as just a few hundred birds that otherwise would have fallen to hunters anyway. What was interesting was the furor that sparked in readers’ letters. People were uniformly incensed with the Post’s whitewash. Maybe there is hope yet.

The satellite picture at the top shows the Albian Sands project. I expect you can figure out for yourself what those black objects are at the top left.

“Once we get rid of the bad people, we can carry on

in terms of the reconstruction and development“

– Stephen Harper, Kandahar, 2006

With those words our Furious Leader, Lardo, swept aside the Taliban insurgents and al-Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan as a gang of unruly imps.

Oh my goodness that how that great lump was full of jingoistic pronouncements about how we would bring democracy to that country and liberate its women and spread freedom throughout the land and we would never, ever “cut and run,” not on his watch. Now there was a Commander-in-Chief for Canada cut from the very same cloth as his American Idol, George w. Bush.

And how things change even for fierce warriors like Mr. Harper, real men of action and resolute principle.

Harper to the UN General Assembly 21/9/2006

“After all, if we fail the Afghan people, we will be failing ourselves. For this is the United Nations’ strongest mission and, therefore, our greatest test. Our collective will and credibility are being judged. We cannot afford to fail. We will succeed.”

Parliamentary Debate on Extension 17 May, 2006