John McCain knows the horrors of war but he still can’t seem to kick the addiction
June 2008
Monthly Archive
June 22, 2008
June 22, 2008
Stephane Dion seems insistent on bringing Stephen Harper into the floodlights over climate change.
Dion has struck back, challenging our Furious Leader, Mr. “We’re Screwed” Harper, to an adult debate on the Liberals’ “Green Shift” plan to reduce carbon emissions.
“I call on the Prime Minister to debate with me any time on TV on this issue in a respectful, meaningful and adult way.”
No word yet on whether the Great Greasy Spot will take Dion’s challenge.
June 22, 2008
And it’s a safe bet most of them will be voting for John McCain in November.
The Washington Post and ABC News conducted a poll in which three in ten interviewed admitted to harbouring some racial bias. Not surprisingly, slightly more Afro-American respondents, 34%, admitted to holding some racial bias.
The good news for Obama, if it’s credible, is that nine in ten white respondents said they would be comfortable with a black president. Half that number said they would be comfortable with someone coming into the Oval Office at age 72.
The overall responses make it obvious that Obama will have to overcome a significant racial bias if he’s to win in November.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/21/AR2008062101825.html?hpid=topnews
June 22, 2008
Remember a recent clash at the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan in which the Pakistanis claimed American forces had attacked and killed a dozen of their soldiers and the United States insisted it had attacked Taliban insurgents?
Turns out they were both right.
A story in today’s Guardian claims Pakistan’s border troops have been massively infiltrated by Afghan Taliban insurgents:
“The Pakistani Frontier Corps has been heavily infiltrated and influenced by Taliban militants, sometimes joining in attacks on coalition forces, according to classified US ‘after-action’ reports compiled following clashes on the border.
According to those familiar with the material, regarded as deeply sensitive by the Pentagon in view of America’s fragile relationship with Pakistan, there are ‘box loads’ of such reports at US bases along the length of the Pakistan-Afghan border. Details of the level of infiltration emerged yesterday on a day when five more US-led soldiers were killed in southern Afghanistan. Four of the soldiers died in a bomb and gunfire attack outside the southern city of Kandahar.
Nato officials have reported a dramatic increase in cross-border incidents compared with the same period last year. The US documents describe the direct involvement of Frontier Corps troops in attacks on the Afghan National Army and coalition forces, and also detail attacks launched so close to Frontier Corps outposts that Pakistani co-operation with the Taliban is assumed.
‘The reality,’ said a source familiar with the situation on the ground, ‘is that there are units so opposed to what the coalition is doing and so friendly to the other side that when the opportunity comes up they will fire on Afghan and coalition troops. And this is not random. It can be exceptionally well co-ordinated.’
Frontier Corps personnel have in the past been implicated in the past in murdering US and Afghan officers. In the most high-profile case, a Frontier Corps member ‘assassinated’ Major Larry J Bauguess during a border mediation meeting. In another incident, an Afghan officer was killed. Since then the problem appears to have worsened as the Taliban renew their insurgency on the Afghan side of the border.
The allegation that senior Pakistani officials continue to offer lukewarm assistance to the coalition while offering help to the Taliban is also reiterated in Descent into Chaos, a new book by the veteran Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid.”
So, there it is. We now have Pakistani forces not only aiding the Taliban but joining them in firing on us. What are we to do? Help Musharraf stage a coup and restore martial law? Attack Pakistan?
We don’t seem to have any good choices left. Don’t count on NATO coming up with another two or three-hundred thousand combat troops. Don’t count on the US so long as it’s stuck in Iraq. We’re spread so thin we can’t even control our zones in Afghanistan. We hardly have the masses of troops it would take to extend our war into Pakistan. Perhaps the worst part is that we know it and so do they.
June 22, 2008
There are two things George Bush desperately wants to achieve before he’s evicted from the White House and they’re both huge concessions from Iraq. One is the national oil deal that lets the select Big Oil companies (Exxon, Chevron, Shell and BP) “manage” Iraq’s oil and the other is the Status of Forces Agreement whereby Iraq accepts a massive and permanent American military presence in the country.
The feckless Iraqi prime minister Nouri al Maliki made some noise about the Status of Forces agreement, even suggesting that the Iraqi parliament might just prefer the Americans to leave by the end of the year, but that was a negotiating ploy at best designed to blunt the wrath of Iraqi nationalists before the country’s national elections this fall.
Cutting these deals is somewhat bizarre. Arab leaders have learned never to conclude major agreements involving Washington in an outgoing president’s final year in office. The lame duck has little to offer in the long-term. They understand that rude surprises can also follow an American election and change in presidents. Best to keep as many bargaining chips as possible for that first meeting with the new guy.
It’s hard to see that these deals are truly in Iraq’s or America’s interests. Reverting Iraq’s oil resources to the very type of colonial management overthrown by every Middle East state, including then Baathist Iraq, seems to play into the hands of Iraqi nationalists like Muqtada al Sadr. Allowing American forces to establish and operate out of 58-bases in Iraq with virtual impunity merely throws fuel on the fire.
Adding these stressors at a time when Iraq’s central government is still fumbling the unity problem much less the equally problematical distribution of the nation’s oil wealth seems ludicrous. Why would Maliki worsen his own vulnerability and hand over such powerful ammunition to his rival, al Sadr?
This whole business sounds eerily like the Anglo-Iraqi treaties of 1922 and 1930. Why two? Here’s a hint. The Brits found big oil fields in Iraq in 1927.
The 1930 treaty enshrined British commercial and military rights in Iraq for which Iraq got – zip, nada, zilch. It gave the Brits almost unlimited military basing and unlimited mobility rights throughout Iraq and a colonial power over Iraqi oil.
Is any of this beginning to sound familiar? To protect their interests, the Brits ensured that the minority Sunnis would run the place, compliantly they hoped. That lasted until the Baathist nationalists took over the place after WWII.
Endless comparisons are being drawn between the British experience in the 20th century and America’s Iraq predicament of the 21st. Reading too much into them can be misleading. Britain had a vast colonial empire stretching through Asia, the Middle East and Africa at that time. Today’s Middle East has thrown off the shackles of colonialism but still harbours bitter memories of subjugation. Even the House of Saud is no longer dancing to Washington’s tune.
In fact, America today may more closely resemble the Ottomans following WWI than the Brits prior to WWII. Like the Ottomans, American prestige, power and influence are in retreat as new players such as China emerge to stake out their own turf. America’s military prowess was always more potent unused than when it took the field in Iraq and revealed its enormous limitations. America’s ability to maintain a conflict such as Iraq entirely on borrowed money and without implementing a draft has been exposed as its ruin.
The next few months promise to be a fascinating time for Iraq and the United States alike. There’s a chess game underway and, unfortunately, Washington still has Dick Cheney at its side of the board. At the end of the day, Cheney’s hardball tactics may do neither country any good.
June 21, 2008
Coal, oil and gas – their days are numbered. They’re non-renewable and, especially in the case of coal and oil, really dirty. One part of Canada, which conveniently just happens to be my part, is blessed with another source of limitless, clean and relatively cheap energy – geothermal. It’s the upside of being part of the Pacific “Rim of Fire.”
When gas prices were cheap (back when George w. Bush was first appointed monarch), government and industry dragged their heels on developing this resource. Times change and, if you’ve noticed, so do prices at the gas pump.
The map shows BC’s geothermal resource belts and the red swathes are the prime territory for letting our own planet earth get us off the fossil fuel habit. Studies show that it’s a win-win-win proposition.
The US Department of Energy reports that geothermal electricity comes in at under 4 cents per kWh compared to between 5-6 cents for wind and 7-8.5 cents for biomass energy. Recent technology advancements have dropped geothermal costs by close to 25% and a further 20% drop is forecast by 2020.
Unlike wind power, geothermal provides a constant supply of energy and the existing technology is said to achieve a 95-98% efficiency. It’s not affected by weather or climate changes.
Geothermal power provides a significant environmental advantage over fossil fuel power sources in terms of air emissions because its production releases no nitrogen oxides (NOx) or sulfur dioxide (SO2), and much less CO2 than fossil-fuelled power. The reduction in nitrogen and sulfur emissions reduces acid rain, and the reduction in CO2 emissions reduces the contribution to global climate change.
A typical 100 MW plant will reduce CO2 emissions by 600,000 tonnes/yr, and NOx and SO2 emissions by 120,000 tonnes/yr compared to a natural gas plant of equal size. (Western GeoPower Corp, 2003). Emission reductions would obviously be far greater yet when compared to oil or coal-fueled plants.
And whereas oil and natural gas prices are expected to keep increasing, geothermal is expected to become less expensive.
Two demonstration projects are now underway to establish the commercial viability of large-scale geothermal production. At one drill site, they’re encountering subsurface temperatures of 275 C.
June 21, 2008
The Guardian has managed to get a copy of the British government’s $250-billion renewable energy strategy. The goal is to produce 15% of the country’s energy from renewables by 2020 while reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20% and reducing dependency on oil by 7%.
“The proposals include:
· New powers to force people to improve the energy efficiency of their homes when they renovate them;
· A 30-fold increase in offshore wind power generation;
· New loans, grants and incentives for businesses and households;
· An area the size of Essex to be planted with trees and other crops to produce biomass energy;
· Forcing people to replace inefficient appliances such as oil-fired boilers [furnaces].
Although the proposals are contained in a consultation document, the government has committed to hitting the 15% target and ministers accept most of the measures will have to be introduced to achieve it.
The government says the transformation of the country’s energy policy will have “significant impacts on all our lives” but claims it will create big new markets and 160,000 jobs.”‘
June 21, 2008
The latest Newsweek poll shows Barack Obama leading John McCain among registered American voters by a 51-36% margin. The poll shows a surge in Obama’s popularity since the Democratic nomination bloodletting was brought to an end.
Worse news for Senor McSame – only 14% of Americans said they were satisfied with the direction the country has been following. Given that the atrophied Arizonan wants to pursue the current failure’s insane Iraq policy and the same tax cuts for the rich, it would appear that Mr. McCain has already fallen well behind the American electorate.
Worse yet. 55% of voters polled now call themselves Democrats or supporters of the party compared with just 32% willing to identify themselves with the Republicans.
June 21, 2008
One Step Forward, Two Back – Marching Through Afghanistan
Posted by MoS under Afghanistan, NATOLeave a Comment
In this weekend’s Sunday Times, Max Hastings reviews Ahmed Rashid’s new book, Descent into Chaos: How the War Against Islamic Extremism Is Being Lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia.
I usually wouldn’t be inclined to review a review of a book but this is Max Hastings writing about the writing of Ahmed Rashid so warrants an exception.
“Rashid is no foaming leftist, still less an enthusiast for Islamic militance. He merely tells a story from the viewpoint of a highly informed Pakistani who knows intimately almost all the leading players, including Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, many of the Afghan warlords, and, of course, key figures in his own country.
The severest criticism that can be made of his tale is that we know some of it already. A group of ignorant, immensely powerful and thus dangerous men in Washington, of whom Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, was probably the worst, sought to exploit America’s shock after 9/11 to pursue their own global agenda, on which taking out Saddam Hussein was tops.
Rashid inks in much detail about the post-conflict failure in Afghanistan after Kabul fell to the Northern Alliance in December 2001. Rumsfeld’s rejection of nation- building, matched by America’s willingness to deliver much of the country to warlords paid by the CIA, destroyed any chance of achieving post-Taliban stability, or making a Karzai national government work.
Americans on the ground ladled out cash to the wrong people, ignored mass killings of prisoners and presided over systemic and illegal brutality to captives. “Suspects” as old as 88 and as young as 13 were shipped to Guantanamo Bay. The neocons cared about only one objective, hitting Al-Qaeda, and were indifferent both to collateral damage and to the importance of salvaging the Afghan society that they had overrun.
Coupled to failure on the Afghan side of the border was Washington’s decision to give Musharraf carte blanche to rule Pakistan as he chose, in exchange for his declared support in the “war on terror”. The Americans were extraordinarily naïve, says Rashid, in failing to realise how far Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI, continued to give active support to thousands of Taliban fighters escaping from Afghanistan. Washington even allowed Pakistani military aircraft to cross the border and evacuate ISI personnel, Arabs and key Taliban just before Kabul fell.
Pakistan’s intelligence service is still playing a deadly double game. It provides just enough assistance to its western counterparts, especially the British security authorities, to keep alive hopes of a working co-operation to crush Al-Qaeda. But the ISI stays deep in bed with the Taliban, and shelters all manner of dangerous people.
The difficulty in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as in Iraq, is how now to undo the consequences of years of policy blunders. Even generous cash aid, were it to be made available, is hard to use well when western Pakistan has succumbed to law-lessness, and anti-western sentiment is endemic. In Afghanistan, the drug industry is all- powerful and the Taliban widely resurgent.
A growing body of western critics such as Simon Jenkins argues that we must recognise failure in Afghanistan, and quit. It seems impossible to dispute their view that defeat is the most likely outcome. Yet, as Rashid so vividly shows, the consequences of abandoning the region to anarchy are so awful — above all, for its own peoples — that it seems to me we must keep trying. “
Wouldn’t it be refreshing to hear our leader, the prime minister hisself, discuss these problems and come up with some answers, some leadership for Canada and for NATO? That’s what leaders are supposed to do. Instead he won’t even acknowledge these realities, glaring as they are. Nor will our top dogs at National Defence Headquarters who just keep grinding out horse crap about how we’re winning in Afghanistan. Hucksters and fixers always play to their script.
So our game plan is to swat at flies (the Taliban) while we build an Afghan army or at least pretend to just that. It ignores the fundamental problem that an army without a viable government can’t do much good except to seize power itself. Then again, that would probably be a rare sign of progress in Afghanistan.
June 20, 2008
Arms Race Update – Space in India’s Crosshairs
Posted by MoS under arms race, China, India, spaceLeave a Comment
The Chinese-Indian arms race is one of the least mentioned but most interesting now underway (yes there are a few others).
The world’s two most populous states have been pursuing military co-operation even as they stoke the boilers of military rivalry. There’s a great naval race underway with both countries eager to deploy true “blue water” naval muscle to secure their sea lane access to the Persian Gulf and the oil that serves as the lifeblood of their economic miracles. Washington is actively courting India to assist it in containing China.
It’s Chinese advances in space, however, that now have India’s military worried. China has already achieved manned space flight and has developed proven anti-satellite missiles. From The Times:
“General Deepak Kapoor, India’s Chief of Army Staff, has spoken publicly for the first time of his fears about China’s military space programme and the need for India to accelerate its own.
“The Chinese space programme is expanding at an exponentially rapid pace in both offensive and defensive content,” he told a conference attended by India’s military top brass this week. “The Indian Army’s agenda for exploitation of space will have to evolve dynamically. It should be our endeavour to optimise space applications for military purposes.”
Beijing’s space programme is already several years ahead of Delhi’s: China sent its first man into space in 2003, the third country to do so after the Soviet Union and the US. The Indian Space Research Organisation said last year that it aimed to send a manned mission to the Moon by 2020 — four years before China — but did not plan to send its first astronauts into orbit until 2014.
What really shocked India was China’s shooting down of one of its own weather satellites in January last year — again placing it alongside Russia and the United States as the only countries capable of such a feat. By comparison, India does not yet have a single dedicated military satellite, relying instead on the dual-use telecommunications satellites for surveillance and reconnaissance.
One of the military’s priorities is to match the technology China used to shoot down its satellite with a ballistic missile about 860km (535 miles) above the Earth’s surface. Abdul Kalam, a former President of India and missile engineer, said in February that India already had the capability to “intercept and destroy any spatial object or debris in a radius of 200km”.
The Mound of Sound 