Northman's Fury

I have to admit that I never followed the Padilla case too closely. Beyond the fact that it I believe it is inherently wrong and very troubling for the government to be able to take one of citizens and lock them away for years without trial, and that the crimes for which he was accused kept changing and ultimately had nothing to do with what he was convicted of, I never paid it much attention. I never paid too much attention to how he was treated, but as I was going through the coverage of the verdict, I found this:

He [Padilla] had developed really a tremendous identification with the goals and interests of the government. I really considered a diagnosis of Stockholm syndrome. For example, at one point in the proceedings, his attorneys had, you know, done well at cross-examining an FBI agent, and instead of feeling happy about it like all the other defendants I’ve seen over the years, he was actually very angry with them. He was very angry that the civil proceedings were “unfair to the commander-in-chief,” quote/unquote. And in fact, one of the things that happened that disturbed me particularly was when he saw his mother. He wanted her to contact President Bush to help him, help him out of his dilemma. He expected that the government might help him, if he was “good,” quote/unquote.

The second thing was his absolute state of terror, terror alternating with numbness…It was as though the interrogators were in the room with us. He was like…a trauma victim who knew that they were going to be sent back to the person who hurt them and that he …would subsequently pay a price if he revealed what happened…

In this very small cell, he was monitored twenty-four hours a day, and the doors were managed electronically….He had no way of knowing the time. The light was always artificial. The windows were blackened. He had no calendar or time, as you mentioned earlier. He really didn’t see people, especially in the beginning. He only had contact with his interrogators. (LZK Note: Padilla had to be charged with a crime. He was experiencing this as a presumed innocent man.)

AMY GOODMAN: Did you conclude he had been tortured?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, “torture,” of course, is a legal term. However, as a clinician, I have worked with torture victims and, of course, abuse victims for a few decades now, actually. I think, from a clinical point of view, he was tortured.

This was the first time I ever met anybody who had been isolated for such an extraordinarily long period of time. I mean, the sensory deprivation studies, for example, tell us that without sleep, especially, people will develop psychotic symptoms, hallucinations, panic attacks, depression, suicidality within days. And here we had a man who had been in this situation, utterly dependent on his interrogators, who didn’t treat him all that nicely, for years. And apart from — the only people I ever met who had such a protracted experience were people who were in detention camps overseas, that would come close, but even then they weren’t subjected to the sensory deprivation. So, yes, he was somewhat of a unique case in that regard.

AMY GOODMAN: How afraid was Jose Padilla?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: How to capture that in an apt metaphor? He was terrified. For him, the government was all-powerful. The government knew everything. The government knew everything that he was doing. His interrogators would find out every little detail that he revealed. And he would be punished for it.

He was convinced that — I mean, I think in words he endorsed — even if he won his case, he lost, because he was going back to the brig if he managed to prevail at trial. And essentially, if hypothetically one were to offer him a really long prison sentence versus — with a guarantee that he wouldn’t go back to the brig — versus risking going back to the brig, the chance that he might go back to the brig, he would take the prison sentence for a very long period of time. I think he would take almost anything rather than go back to that brig.

AMY GOODMAN: What happened in the brig?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: What happened at the brig was essentially the destruction of a human being’s mind. That’s what happened at the brig. His personality was deconstructed and reformed.

One of the things that came out in the course of my evaluation was, he was required to sign his name John Doe. This kind of thing and the whole notion of dependency and the cultivation of dependency, the impact of sleep deprivation, stress positions, all of that was so coordinated it’s impossible for me to imagine that at least at some phase there wasn’t some mental health professionals involved.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And what was the reason for wanting to have him sign his name John Doe?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: He’s no longer a person. He’s no longer an individual. There will be no record that he was ever there, that the interrogators — this is from my knowledge of torture around the world — that the interrogators essentially will be absolutely immune to any accountability.

I've heard others describe Padilla as the character Winston Smith at the end of 1984. Broken and loving the government who broke him. From the above, that's no exaggeration, in any of the particulars. Is that the kind of world you want to live in?

John Cole on the Padilla case.

Already the battle over the report has begun. It doesn't really matter what happens in Iraq; it hasn't for quite some time. The White House is the one writing this report, but even if they weren't, any honest report is going to have enough points that both sides of the debate will be able to latch on to some of them and say it proves their point It will certainly be filled with just enough "progress" for the war's supporters to call for another Freidman to "allow the strategy to work". Muddy the waters long enough, and it will be somebody else's problem.

The Democrats in Congress will be goaded into stupidity yet again and pass more money for the failure to continue.

Since there is no real prospect of this war ending under the current administration, I'm now turning my curiosity to how the rabid, pro-Bush supporters of the war, who I figure will spend all of their not inconsiderable energy and influence over the next (seemingly unending) 14 months of the US Presidential campaign to convince the Democratic leadership to "moderate" their opposition to the war and support some kind of strategy that will allow it to continue, will turn into savage opponents of the strategy and the war as soon as a Democrat sits in the White House.

Because as soon as that happens, you can be sure they will all remember their Clinton-era opposition to nation-building; their wish for a more humble foreign policy; and their dislike of foreign interventions lacking an exit strategy. And they'll do all of that while claiming they deserve none of the blame for the mess Iraq is.

You know they'll do it. It's consistent with how they've been operating so far. I'm just really curious to see how they'll pull it off.

Back in June, I posted a short note by Chet Richards of D-N-I.net, where he more or less complained that use of the term terrorism was a form of "mental laziness". He also noted that uniformed state military organizations also kill civilians, sometimes accidently or as "collateral damage", but also at times on purpose such as the strategic bombing campaign against Germany and Japan that culminated in the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Despite this, state militaries aren't called terror organizations by very many people.

The Bush administration has just watered down the term further by labeling the entire 125,000 man Iranian Revolutionary Guards a "terrorist". While I have little illusion that the Guards are a less than savoury force, calling them a terrorist organization goes beyond laziness. Its now just a short hand term for opponents of the US. "Terrorists are bad, and all our enemies are terrorists, (because we say so). Therefore we can do whatever we please to oppose them and anyone who criticizes us is supporting terrorism."

Really not too different to the story-line to date, but they've now managed to make it official.

So Peter MacKay will be replacing defence industry lobbyist Gordon O'Connor as Defence Minister? Why is it all I can think about is this quote from Harper when O'Connor was being slammed for the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan?

Mr. Speaker, once again, the Minister of National Defence is a veteran of the Canadian Forces. He has served this country courageously in uniform for 32 years. When the Leader of the Opposition is able to stand in uniform and serve his country, then I will care about his opinion of the performance of the Minister of National Defence.

So does that mean Harper won't care about his new Defense Minister's opinion? For that matter, how much does Harper care about his own opinion in this matter? Hmm.

It's been awhile since I checked in on the situation in Somalia. Of course, part of that is because it doesn't get the kind of press coverage that places like Iraq or Afghanistan, or really anyplace outside Africa, gets. Of course, back when the Ethiopians invaded, that was supposed to be a good thing.

What we and the Israelis seem to lack right now, and which the Ethiopians apparently have, is the political will to win without worrying overmuch what the so-called internation[al] community thinks.

And nothing like a lack of press coverage to ensure that its real easy to ignore the international community. And you certainly can't say that the Ethiopians aren't doing their damnedest to win using tactics the international community doesn't much like.

Ethiopian commanders flouted international humanitarian law by firing "inherently indiscriminate" Katyusha rockets into civilian neighborhoods, the report found, and by "routinely and repeatedly" firing rockets, mortars and artillery in a manner that failed to distinguish between civilians and military targets.

The report found "strong evidence" that the indiscriminate bombardment was intentional, carried on day after day even after it was clear that scores of civilians were being killed.

In some areas, witnesses told the group, rockets and heavy artillery shells fell in a systematic pattern, as if the Ethiopians were attempting to level entire neighborhoods.

And you can add possible attempts to starve out Ethiopia's ethnic Somalis in the Ogaden region.

Oddly, this has made the US- and Ethiopian-backed Somali government increasingly unpopular, and the fighting has continued apace. As a result, the Ethiopians' plans to leave Somalia quickly and be replaced by troops from the African Union have stalled. Most AU members are no doubt reluctant to send their troops in to get shot at.

Of course, the Somali public hates the Ethiopians, and by extension, the new government has no legitimacy since they're seen as Ethiopian and American puppets. So, while the Ethiopians stay and use tactics that increasingly turn the people against them; they can't leave, or the government they installed will be overthrown.

There's something about all this that sounds familiar.

Arctic sea ice is expected to retreat to a record low by the end of this summer, scientists have predicted.

. . .

A team of scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the University of Washington, and McGill University, found that "positive feedbacks" were likely to accelerate the decline of the region's ice system.

Sea ice has a bright surface that reflects 80% of the sunlight that strikes it back into space. However, as the ice melts during the summer, more of the dark ocean surface becomes exposed.

Rather than reflecting sunlight, the ocean absorbs 90% of it, causing the waters to warm and increase the rate of melting.

Nothing out of the ordinary with the above story. Over the last few years, such stories have become almost commonplace.

Here's why it worries me. A few days ago, climate scientists unveiled a new ten-year climate model that would take into to effect short-term cycles such as El Nino. Here's what it had to say:

the Hadley Centre researchers said that the influence of natural climatic variations were likely to dampen the effects of emissions from human activities between now and 2009.

But over the decade as a whole, they project the global average temperature in 2014 to be 0.3C warmer than 2004.

Meaning that right now, natural cycles are conspiring to make the climate cooler than it would be normally, and yet despite this, the Arctic sea ice is still shrinking. The positive feedback mechanism is apparently already in action. One wonders how much more rapidly the sea ice will shrink after 2009 when we cycle into a warmer period.

On a highway north of Kabul last month, an American soldier aimed a machine gun at my car from the turret of his armored Humvee. In the split second for which our eyes locked, I had a revelation: To a man with a weapon, everything looks like a threat.

. . . It's not something I'll forget. It's not the sort of thing ordinary Afghans forget, either, and it reminded me that heavy-handed military tactics can alienate the people we're trying to help while playing into the hands of the people we're trying to defeat.

Welcome to the paradoxical world of counterinsurgency warfare -- the kind of war you win by not shooting.

The objective in fighting insurgents isn't to kill every enemy fighter -- you simply can't -- but to persuade the population to abandon the insurgents' cause. The laws of these campaigns seem topsy-turvy by conventional military standards: Money is more decisive than bullets; protecting our own forces undermines the U.S. mission; heavy firepower is counterproductive; and winning battles guarantees nothing.

The New York Times has a long article on how the “Good War” in Afghanistan has went bad. The really short version can be found in the emphasized text above from Nathaniel Fick’s article in the Washington Post. Rather, the short version is that we haven’t been following those rules, and as a result, the situation is deteriorating.

One of the things I sensed from reading Fick’s article, is that when he first talks to other American soldiers, their total focus is on finding and killing the bad guys. In much the same way, most of the war’s supporters will talk about how we’re there to fight, kill, take out, or destroy the Taliban and/or al Qaeda.

The truth is more subtle. We’re there to defeat them, and to do so in a counterinsurgency campaign means finding out what we can do for the people, not what we can do to the enemy, because all too often in this kind of warfare, the two categories can shift and merge dependant upon your actions.

Reconstruction funds can shape the battlefield as surely as bombs. But such methods are still not used widely enough in Afghanistan. After spending more than $14 billion in aid to the country since 2001, the United States' latest disbursement, of more than $10 billion, will start this month. Some 80 percent of it is earmarked for security spending, leaving only about 20 percent for reconstruction projects and initiatives to foster good governance.

Very much like in Iraq, money allocated to build or rebuild infrastructure for the civilian population gets spent mostly on security, and the actual projects themselves are too few and too poorly funded to make much difference, which leads to episodes like this one with our troops.

Canadian soldiers found no weapons or Taliban during a recent foray into a region considered an insurgent stronghold, but they did get an earful from villagers who accused them of failing to keep their promises.

"Canadians have come here three times before and promised (to give us a well) but they've done nothing,"

Reconstruction never gets the kind of press combat does, and digging a well isn't going to win you any medals. But if we’re going to have any chance in winning over the population, its the well-digging and school-building that will do it, not driving by on patrol or going through people’s houses hunting for weapons.

The counter-argument usually goes that without security, reconstruction can’t proceed, which segues nicely into point two:

The second pillar of the academy's curriculum relates to the first: The more you protect your forces, the less safe you may be. To be effective, troops, diplomats and civilian aid workers need to get out among the people. But nearly every American I saw in Kabul was hidden behind high walls or racing through the streets in armored convoys.

. . .

Of course, mingling with the population means exposing ourselves to attacks, and commanders have an obligation to safeguard their troops. But they have an even greater responsibility to accomplish their mission. When we retreat behind body armor and concrete barriers, it becomes impossible to understand the society we claim to defend. If we emphasize "force protection" above all else, we will never develop the cultural understanding, relationships and intelligence we need to win. Accepting the greater tactical risk of reaching out to Afghans reduces the strategic risk that the Taliban will return to power.

“Force protection” is the byword for much of our operations. This is, to some extent, brought upon by the Canadian public, or at least our politicians' perception of the public. Every time a soldier dies, the question is raised whether or not we think the mission is worthwhile. Harper tried to ban the media from the repatriation ceremonies to keep the deaths out of the public eye as much as possible.

The thought being that if Canadians see too many flag-draped coffins being unloaded, they’ll demand a withdrawal from Afghanistan. It may be true, but the result is that the leadership worries more about what will cause casualties rather than what will make the mission more successful.

One of the major resources in counterinsurgencies is intelligence from the local population. How are you going to get that intelligence if the only time Afghans see your troops is over the business end of a machine gun? When you speed through town in an armoured convoy and shoot any vehicle that gets too close?

Protecting the force means isolating them, and isolation means defeat. To win, you must expose yourself to greater casualties, which is probably the hardest thing to ask our soldiers to do, particularly given there is no guarentee it will actually work.

This also ties well into the third point, where heavy-handed military operations, and particularly air strikes, do more harm than good to our mission.

This issue seems to get the most press, and the US attracts the most criticism, even from allies, and this year particularly has not been a good one for foreign forces in this regard. More civilians have died because of coalition actions than by those of the Taliban.

Sending in the infantry to dig enemy fighters out of villages is risky and would cause higher casualties, something the leadership wants to avoid, and there is the simple fact that the coalition has far too few troops on the ground to be able to engage in that type of attritional fighting anyway. If your emphasis is on protecting your own troops, then calling in an air strike simply makes the most tactical sense. When civilians are killed in those strikes, the oft-heard excuse for this is that the enemy “hides behind civilians” or some other such reasoning that puts the blame for civilian deaths on the targets rather than the bombers. But it doesn’t really matter who we blame for these deaths, it's who the Afghan people blame that counts, and they’re blaming the people dropping the bombs, not whoever the intended targets were.

And when the emphasis on force protection means that the isolated foreign troops don’t have good local intelligence and the target turns out to have been a mistake, . . . Saying it wasn't intentional doesn’t really make much difference to the people that are killed. What makes sense tactically sets us back on the strategic level, which is why Fick and others call counterinsurgency paradoxical. To win, you need to do what doesn't make conventional sense.

The reason these firepower over manpower tactics work against us is somewhat simple. They send a message to the Afghan people that their lives are worth far less than ours. When we suspect that enemy fighters are in a village or residential neighbourhood, we’re more willing to cause some “collateral damage” and kill civilians by dropping large amounts of high explosives on mud-brick houses, than risk our soldiers by sending them in to dig the enemy out.

Basically, “We’re here to protect you. But, you know, we’re willing to kill you rather than risk getting hurt doing it.” Not the truth, and not how the decision gets made, but its still the kind of message that those whose houses are on the receiving end of those air strikes hear.

High explosives are an indiscriminate weapon, and in counterinsurgency, indiscriminate weapons are just another recruiting tool for the insurgents.

“The Americans are killing and destroying a village just in pursuit of one person,” said Mahmadullah, 24, referring to Osama bin Laden. “So now we have understood that the Americans are a curse on us, and they are here just to destroy Afghanistan. They can tell the difference between men and women, children and animals, but they are just killing everyone.”

A trained mullah from the village of Kutaizi, half an hour from Sangin, Mahmadullah reacted with sarcasm to the idea that reconstruction and assistance could change the minds of the people.

“First they kill me, and then they rebuild my house?” he said. “What is the point when I am dead and my son is dead? This is not of any worth to us.”

So we call in air strikes to win battles without losing too many soldiers, but lose the support of the (surviving) population. Point four:

Just as it did in Vietnam, the U.S. military could win every battle and still lose the war.

And losing the war is where we are headed in Afghanistan if the tactics don't change.

Cross-posted to BlogsCanada: E-Group

I actually thought when Lute was appointed as "War Czar" a few months ago, that he was to be the scapegoat for failure in Iraq. Maybe he was actually appointed to be the scapegoat for re-instituting the draft?

I was thinking while reading this, about a story from back in early 2005 that reported that Citizenship and Immigration Canada had gotten a surge of hits on their website from the US after the 2004 election, and wondering if the number is about to go up once again?

And that leads me to something else I read today:

For no reason at all, I’m sure, you’re probably wondering if Stephen Harper will extradite your kids.

Heh.

Capt. Fogg on the central banks pumping billions into the market to keep them from crashing further:

Maybe it will work, maybe it won't, but calling it a recovery is only slightly less honest as seeing a sign of strength in the turning on of the Titanic's bilge pumps.

One of the things I actually liked about the Conservative's budget was the initiative to help Canadians move to more efficient vehicles, but apparently the leader of the CAW thinks we should all shut up and continue to buy big, expensive gas guzzlers, because apparently that's all the North American auto companies know how to make.

Maybe Hargrove simply has too much money to notice the price of gas, and that the workers he supposedly represents are a lot less eager to buy big gas-guzzlers these days when there are more efficient options available.

If Hargrove really wants to save the Canadian auto industry, he should start telling the former "Big 3" to invest in their future and start working to build vehicles that people actually want to buy, not attacking the government for making new fuel-efficient technology more financially attractive.

Shorter Stu Bykofsky:

Because Americans are tired of seeing soldiers die in Iraq, we need to have a few thousand of them killed so the rest will be too mad to remember what a screw-up the war is."

It appears that instead of building a new port for the north in a location that may actually have some economic benefits, the Conservative government is going to claim and refurbish the Nanisivik mine’s facilities.  Now, I can’t argue that this isn’t a really cheap way to provide a port facility for the Canadian military and Coast Guard.  All the real work has already been done.

For those lacking the background, Nanisivik was a mining company town, emphasis on the was; nobody lives there anymore.  For the last several years, they’ve been tearing down the buildings and cleaning up, but the site still boasts a dock and an airstrip, which is being used by the community of Arctic Bay, a little over ten miles away with a population of roughly 400 people. For them at least, this is good news, as the expense of keeping the road connecting the two communities in good repair is beyond the resources available to them.

If the planned refurbishment of the mine goes ahead, it would deviate slightly from the Conservatives' promise during the last election campaign to build a new military deepwater port in Iqaluit.

Slight for those who are ignorant of the situation, which unfortunately describes most people who don't live here, but I have to go to the CNN story on this to get the reason why its such a disappointment.

"Our government has an aggressive Arctic agenda," said Dimitri Soudas, the prime minister's spokesman.

"Economic development -- unleashing the resource-based potential of the North, environmental protection -- protecting the unique Northern environment, national sovereignty -- protecting our land, airspace and territorial waters."

Now, if anyone can explain how refurbishing an abandoned mine’s docking facility will help “unleash the resource-based potential of the North”, I’d love to hear it. One of my points in my last post about Arctic sovereignty was that the lack of infrastructure kept many potential mine sites from being developed.

Now if Harper had announced he was building a docking facility at Nanisivik 30 years ago before the mine was there, and it allowed the mine’s development, we could talk about him unleashing the resource potential. A port in Iqaluit would save millions every year in off loading supplies during the summer sealift and we could talk about the economic benefit. Nanisivik now offers no new resource development and little in the way of savings even for the nearby community of Arctic Bay.

Also, the docking facilities at Nanisivik are already being used by the Coast Guard. I’m all for maintaining the site, or even expanding it, but just as building the patrol boats are only an enhancement to our Arctic presence if they are in addition to recapitalizing the icebreaker fleet, (Note how Denmark is sending an expedition to the North Pole. I wonder why we aren't doing that. Oh yeah, we don't have an icebreaker capable of getting there. Boy, we're sure showing them!) Nanisivik as a deepwater port only enhances our presence if it is in addition to another facility. Using it alone only maintains the status quo.

Basically, if Harper was actually building a port somewhere, I could give him some props. Instead, he’s going to take over a docking facility somebody else built and take credit for how “building” it enhances Canada’s presence.

The first makes him cheap, the second, a bastard.

Cross-posted to BlogsCanada: E-Group

More than half of Americans say US news organizations are politically biased, inaccurate, and don't care about the people they report on, a poll published Thursday showed.

And poll respondents who use the Internet as their main source of news -- roughly one quarter of all Americans -- were even harsher with their criticism, the poll conducted by the Pew Research Center said.

More than two-thirds of the Internet users said they felt that news organizations don't care about the people they report on; 59 percent said their reporting was inaccurate; and 64 percent they were politically biased.

The only surprise for me is that so many people apparently still trust the news media, and I can see why internet users would be more likely to feel that it's biased. After all, people on the internet tend to both access media outside the US, and to access the on-line Op-Ed industry that are political blogs.

Of course, the real issue is determining what the media bias actually is. Right-wingers claim liberal bias, and left-wingers claim some combination of corporate or government right-wing leanings, and as this poll is worded, both sides can use it to reinforce their beliefs. People only ever point out bias in articles they disagree with, never when they reinforce their own opinions.

Personally, I feel that all media is biased. Which way depends on the source and the issue. It's one of the reasons I try to read my news and opinions from a wide variety of sources, though of course I'm forced to admit that I enjoy reading people who agree with me a lot more.

Global markets have been rattled by worries over financial institutions' exposure to bad credit in the US sub-prime mortgage market.

. . .

The European Central Bank injected cash into the money market for a second day, as did other central banks worldwide.

The ECB move was to "assure orderly conditions in the euro money markets".

The bank injected 61.05 bn euros (£41.65bn; $84.2bn) into the eurozone money markets on Friday.

Japan's central bank had earlier pumped one trillion yen ($8.5bn; £4.2bn) into the financial system to boost liquidity.

How long the central banks can continue to pump cash in to keep the markets from collapsing is debatable, and the cash infusions themselves can cause more inflation. Add to the sub-prime mess the jitters over the unregulated hedge fund market, throw in the growing spat between the US and China over currency valuation, and the growing push for oil-producing countries like Russia to stop selling their oil in dollars but instead demanding euros, and you can begin to see why this crash is going to be ugly.

Too many negative factors converging at once.

It's nice to see that Bush has finally decided that fiscal responsibility is a virtue. I wonder if Congress would have his support if they decided to treat bridge repair like Iraq's reconstruction? Give out no-bid contracts to friendly contractors without pesky oversight to see if the jobs are actually getting done properly. They always seem to find money for that.

There are all sorts of things wrong with this story. Coming from the Moonie Times, I suppose that should be expected. First is the fact that they're using a report that's at least two years old, and then there's the assertion that Middle Eastern Arabs are going to be able to merge unnoticed into a Mexican National community just because both happen to be about the same shade of brown.

But at least the kernel of the story; that terror networks and drug networks have a lot in common and tend to work with each other is a valid one. It also shouldn't be all that surprising to anyone following the campaign in Afghanistan to deal with the heroin trade, or the fight in Columbia with FARC and the cocaine trade.

Personally, I think the story has more to do with the fact that the US is working to put DEA agents into Mexico. Tie things to the "War on Terror" and you should far less trouble getting funding.

"The next few months in Iraq are critical", or words to that affect have been repeated every few months since before the war even started to give the impression that, somehow, victory is just around the corner. Somehow, the war's supporters never get tired of hitting the reset button on the phrase regardless how often they've been wrong.

Now, there's a handy timeline with pictures cataloguing just how often we've heard this refrain. It's an impressive display.

But don't worry. I'm sure this time they really, really mean it. (/snark)

The Chinese government has begun a concerted campaign of economic threats against the United States, hinting that it may liquidate its vast holding of US treasuries if Washington imposes trade sanctions to force a yuan revaluation.

There's a fair number of caveats to go along with this story. The major one being that China and the US are in a sort of symbiotic relationship where the Chinese can't afford to devalue the dollar too much and cause inflation is the US because that would in turn hurt their ability to sell goods to American consumers.

Of course, the same logic holds true with upping the value of the yuan, except that it won't be just American consumers that will find Chinese goods more expensive, and while China and the US do have a great deal of trade between them, China still has more trade with neighbours like Japan and South Korea. So for China, losing a share of the American market has to seem like a better option than losing market share everywhere.

More to the point, the US dollar has already dropped a great deal in the last few years without any let-up in the American trade deficit with China, and the dollar's continued weakness means that China dollar reserves keep losing value the longer they hold them. Diversifying makes sense, even if it has a negative effect on your consumer base, because like it or not, the US is due for a correction of its market regardless what the Chinese do. If you spend more than you earn, and the US has been doing so for years now, at some point the bills come due and spending has to be tightened. Or you go bankrupt. either way, your credit isn't going to be that good.

And the Chinese have one other ace up their sleeve; regardless how bad the US dollar gets, they are still going to need to buy plenty of manufactured goods, and all of the factories are still in China. That's the reason the weakness in the US dollar hasn't affected the trade imbalance, and why it will take a long time for even a collapse in the dollar's value to change it. Money valuation can change rapidly, factories don't move nearly as fast.

The situation on Iraq's northern border remains tense, and the reported warning delivered to Iraq by Turkey is in some sense, just more of the same of what has been coming out of Ankara for, really, the past four years. What caught my eye, though, was this point:

Baran and some others expect U.S. forces to join in if Turkey does act against the rebels in northern Iraq. The scenario most often cited is an operation involving U.S. and Turkish special forces already in northern Iraq.

"I do believe that the Americans . . . are probably getting ready to do something jointly with Turkey, but they really don't want the Turks to go on their own," Baran said.

It has always been something of a given that if Turkey was to launch a full-scale attack across the border, that the US would get dragged into the conflict, but this is the first time I've heard plans for the US to help start the ball rolling. Given the potential can of worms such a conflict would open for the Americans, I have a hard time believing that they would want to start conducting military operations in the area.

On the other hand, given their record, and the whole, "if all you have is a (military) hammer, every problem looks like a (bombing target) nail" approach to foreign policy problems, this has the ring of possibility.

Updated below

Take it from this old KGB hand: The left is abetting America's enemies with its intemperate attacks on President Bush.

Well, this certainly sounds like it should be a treat to read.

My father spent most of his life working for General Motors in Romania and had a picture of President Truman in our house in Bucharest. While "America" was a vague place somewhere thousands of miles away, he was her tangible symbol. For us, it was he who had helped save civilization from the Nazi barbarians, and it was he who helped restore our freedom after the war--if only for a brief while. We learned that America loved Truman, and we loved America. It was as simple as that.

Now, not to be a nitpicker, but I thought the reason that Bush kept comparing himself to Truman is because America at the time hated him, but history has over time turned him into a great President. The guy has barely started his article and he's already destroyed his premise. If America's reputation was really tied to how Americans felt about Truman, it would have started out the Cold War in a much worse position.

For communists, only the leader counted, no matter the country, friend or foe. At home, they deified their own ruler--as to a certain extent still holds true in Russia. Abroad, they asserted that a fish starts smelling from the head, and they did everything in their power to make the head of the Free World stink.

. . .

For once, the communists got it right. It is America's leader that counts. Let's return to the traditions of presidents who accepted nothing short of unconditional surrender from our deadly enemies.

Sometimes you just can't get away from your upbringing. Deifying your leader is the way of totalitarian governments the world over. America's great strength has ever been the ability to tear down leaders who were found wanting. The American President was never as important to his country as his Communist counterparts were to theirs. Back in the day when the US Constitution was still thought of as more than an obstruction to Executive Power, he was even supposed to be constantly checked by the other branches of government. Sometimes the head of the Free World did stink, but America remained strong because everyone knew he didn't count for everything; that he could be checked and balanced and ultimately replaced.

All of the Presidents the author lists were slammed and opposed on policies at home. None had the blank cheque those who continue to support Bush demand he should get. That oversight, that ability to recognize mistakes in time to correct them, the give and take and raucous debate, are what makes democracies so much better at governing.

When only the leader counts, you wind up where this ex-KGB employer's do, in the dustbin of history.

UPDATE:

One more point to this story. One of the reasons the, "criticizing the leader helps the enemy" meme continues to have such strength, is that it is at least partly true. If the people of a country doesn't support their leadership enough to follow it into battle, then defeat becomes far more likely. (Interestingly, it is that same point that gives weight to the "chikenhawk" meme, as in, if it's so damned important, why aren't you fighting for it?)

The difference between myself and the author above is that when the people's support isn't forthcoming, he blames the people for not following their "glorious leader", while I blame the leader for not providing sufficient reason to earn the following.

Back in April, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling wrote:

The general is responsible for estimating the likelihood of success in applying force to achieve the aims of policy. The general describes both the means necessary for the successful prosecution of war and the ways in which the nation will employ those means. If the policymaker desires ends for which the means he provides are insufficient, the general is responsible for advising the statesman of this incongruence. The statesman must then scale back the ends of policy or mobilize popular passions to provide greater means. If the general remains silent while the statesman commits a nation to war with insufficient means, he shares culpability for the results.

Bush has neither scaled back his desired ends, nor has he mobilized popular passion to provide greater means. While others at the top may share culpability, the responsibility lies wholly with the nation's leadership, not its public. To try and shift the blame to others in simply excuse-making of the worst kind.

I still hold to the conservative principal that people should take responsibility for their actions. It is shameful that the current leaders seem to have forgotten that.

The news that Guiliani’s daughter doesn’t think enough of her Dad to vote for him causes me to do my best Nelson Muntz impression and give a good “HAW Haw!” It’s not really a surprise after all that Rudy’s kids hate him. Otherwise, it isn't a terribly important piece of news.

It does bring to mind a post by Michael van der Galien where he wishes for more substance in the US electoral campaign. Given that so far, the major news of the campaign seems to be Obama's skin colour and what kind of school he attended when he was five, Edward’s haircuts, Romney’s facials and how he treated the family dog, Hillary’s cleavage, Fred Thompson’s wife, and now Guiliani's daughter's Facebook page, I think he, and everyone else, may be wishing in vain.

The major media organizations are now mostly in an entertainment mode, and stories like those above are far more entertaining than what candidates actually plan to do once they’re in office. Outside of that small minority of us in the blogosphere that actually pay close attention to what candidates say about their policies, most people don’t have enough information to get beyond the, “who would I like to have a beer with?” stage.

It does explain why we all seem to have such trouble finding good leaders, though.

Yes, while this date is important for mushroom cloud-related reasons, it also turns out that it was six years today that somebody dropped off a briefing note for W titled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US". This was apparently not important enough to interrupt Bush's vacation, but the consequences of ignoring it were enough to launch two wars, and somehow ensure the re-election of the guy who did the ignoring.

For more on the anniversary, you can read this post by Dave at TGB, or for a somewhat snarkier, but maybe even more potent posting, check out Bing's take at Happy Jihad's.

The Pentagon has lost track of about 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, according to a new government report, raising fears that some of those weapons have fallen into the hands of insurgents fighting U.S. forces in Iraq.

There's really not too much you can say about such a story, though it almost makes you wonder if any of the other purported suppliers of weapons to the Iraqi insurgents like the Saudis or the Iranians, have managed to match the US military in volume?

So how bad will the fallout from the sub-prime market be? It's hard to say, but I came across a couple of stories today that indicate it won't be nice.

First, you have to watch Jim Cramer lose it. It's almost funny how worked up the guy gets.

On a more serious note, this news:

American Home Mortgage Investment Corp. became the second-biggest residential lender to file for bankruptcy protection this year, adding to signs that late payments have spread to homeowners with good credit records.

The company sought federal court protection from creditors in Wilmington, Delaware, today, saying it had assets of more than $100 million and debts of more than $100 million owed to more than 100,000 creditors. The filing comes after the company announced Aug. 2 it would halt operations and slash staff.

American Home specialized in mortgages for people who fall just short of top credit scores. More than half a dozen competitors have declared bankruptcy this year as defaults spilled over from ``subprime'' borrowers with the worst repayment records to those with more reliable payment histories.

All this leads me to an excellent post at the Agonist where Numerian lays out the issues and possible effects of the sub-prime collapse. Read the whole thing if you want a good understanding of the situation.

I'm no expert on the markets, but the feeling I have is that this is going to be ugly.

My personal beliefs notwithstanding, I thought this was pretty damn funny.

An atheist was walking through the woods… when he stopped and thought: “What majestic trees! What powerful rivers! What beautiful animals!” Then, as he was walking along the river, he heard a rustling in the bushes behind him. He turned to look and saw a 7-foot grizzly charging towards him! He ran as fast as he could up the path. He looked over his shoulder and saw that the bear was closing in on him. He ran faster when he looked over his shoulder again, and saw that the bear was even closer! He tripped and fell on the ground. He rolled over to pick himself up but saw that the bear was right on top of him…reaching for him with his left paw and raising his right paw to strike him.

At that instant the Atheist cried out, “Oh my God!” Time Stopped! The bear froze… And the forest was silent. As a bright light shone upon the man, a voice came out of the sky…

“You deny my existence for all these years… and try to teach others I don’t exist… and even credit creation to a cosmic accident? Do you expect me to help you out of this predicament? Am I to now count you as a believer?”

The atheist looked directly into the light, “Well, it would be hypocritical of me to suddenly ask you to treat me as a Christian now… but perhaps you could make the BEAR a Christian?

“Very well,” said God.

The light went out. The sounds of the forest resumed… And the bear dropped his right paw, brought both paws together, bowed his head and spoke: “Lord bless this food, which I am about to receive from thy bounty through Christ our Lord, Amen.”

The big story about the Arctic this week was the planting of titanium Russian flag by submarine on the seabed at the North Pole to further their claim on the region.  While the flag planting itself was mostly a stunt, it is only a small part of what the Russians are doing to stake their claim to the region.  Their big operations involve sub-sea scanning to determine the extent of the Russian continental mass.  If they can prove it extends far enough, their claim to the area, and the resources that come with it, will be strengthened.

Canada, in the meantime, is conducting a small “Sovereignty Exercise” in the eastern Arctic on the southern part of Baffin Island.  Not that these exercises don’t serve a purpose, but they are only one small part of what is required to assert Canadian sovereignty over the North.

Harper, for whatever reason, has focused almost entirely on military presence as the means for asserting Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic.  His biggest announcements have centered over the construction of little patrol boats for the Navy.  The boats, if they are ever built, will only be of very limited use until the end of the century when there’s no ice left in the Arctic.  In the meantime, the Coast Guard’s icebreakers, whose responsibility it is to patrol the coasts and, more critically, support commerce by opening up the sea lanes in summer, and who can better move through the heavier ice that covers the Arctic for most of the year, are rusting out with little or no attention to their replacement.

Russia has several nuclear-powered icebreakers capable of punching through much heavier ice than the best Canadian vessels.  In fact, most of our Arctic competitors have better ice-breaking capability than we do. More and better icebreakers, and not limited use naval boats, are what is required to properly patrol Arctic waters.

Canada is also failing to do the kind of scientific research required to get a clear picture of what the under-ice landscape looks like, and what it says about our claims. We are working on a deadline to prove the extent of the continental shelf and submit a claim to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Russia will be finalizing its data and submitting its claim by the end of this year. Denmark, with whom we have a pleasant little grandstanding dispute over a small rock between Elsmere and Greenland, considers that dispute low priority and is more focused on the North Pole claim. What Canada's priority is in the region isn't entirely clear.

In addition to the scientific work, there are the diplomatic maneuvers necessary to claim the Northwest Passage as internal Canadian waters, something that appears easy enough to do if anyone would actually make the efforts needed to satisfy the conditions required. The major condition I see Canada needing is the ability to monitor and patrol the area.

Oh, and the monitoring and patrols should be year round, meaning limited summer patrols by “ice resistant” vessels won’t do the job.

But even more important than sending out a few patrols; on land, air, or sea, is having a permanent presence in the Arctic and sustainable economic activities in the region.  If patrols were all that is required to make an area your sovereign territory, Iraq and Afghanistan would belong to the US and NATO, respectively.  It is the people living in an area that determine who has control over it, and in the Arctic, Canadians are pretty thin on the ground.

One of the major reasons that the islands in the Arctic archipelago are still considered Canadian territory is because of the presence of several small communities placed on them. The discussion these days tends to ignore these communities, which, given how many of them came to be, causes understandable resentment from their residents. A not inconsiderable number of Inuit lives were sacrificed so that Canada could maintain its claim on this region. We would be wise to remember that.

Nunavut has 30,000 people living in 26 communities scattered across the territory.  It crosses four time zones and the north-south distance between its furthest points is the same as that between Winnipeg and Mexico City.  None of these communities have a deep-sea port, or even rudimentary wharves.

The cost of living is very high, and economic opportunities are all but non-existent. While there are rich mineral resources by southern standards, the lack of infrastructure means that any company wanting to open a mine also has to build a docking facility, road system, and airstrip just to reach it. That very quickly puts most projects out of the profitable category, even with recent increases in commodity prices.

Attempts to create a fisheries industry run into the same hurdle. Where to offload the catch? Where to dock for rest and refueling? You either head south for Newfoundland or head over to Nuuk, Greenland, which has all the docking facilities that Canada's northern communities could wish for.

Even something as simple as tourism suffers from the lack of infrastructure. Cruise ships that ply the Arctic sail right past the communities because there is no way for them to put in for a stop. Air travel costs are prohibitive, and accommodations in many communities remain rather primitive as a result.

The days when the government could displace people and force them into remote locations are long past. If the people living in these communities decide to pack up and leave, and more and more of them are doing just that, there is very little the Canadian government can do about it. Without any future prospects for employment or other opportunities for people, the communities will disappear.

If the government is truly serious about maintaining and exploiting Canada’s claims to the Arctic, then it is going to have to start investing massively in the North, and most of that investment is going to have to be in infrastructure that will stimulate economic activity, not in questionable toy purchases for the Navy. The Canadian government has ever been long on promises for the Arctic, and ever short on any real action. That had better change.

Because if the Arctic communities cease to be viable, Canada will not only lose its claim to the waterways and undersea resources, but quite possibly to the islands themselves, regardless how many soldiers it sends on the occasional walkabouts. “Use it or lose it” indeed.

Cross-posted to BlogsCanada: E-Group

Poppy production in Afghanistan has increased yet again, now supplying 95% of the world's opium. The US continues to pursue a strategy of crop eradication, turning the region's farmers against them and their allies, meaning us, rather than taking the more realistic step of licensing the poppy crop for production of legal drugs like morphine.

You would think that with poppy production increasing every year since the US started their eradication campaign, they would want to try a different approach, but with the Bush Administration, to change strategy is a sign of weakness. One must continue to appear strong and resolute and hold to the original strategy regardless how ineffective it turns out to be. If it were actually true that willpower could trump stupidity, Bush would be a great President.

The State Department has a message for White House candidates wanting to expound on sensitive diplomatic issues: Shut up.

Apparently talking about what they may do once they're in office isn't helping diplomatic efforts overseas. When Obama ssaid that he would send troops into Pakistan with or without Musharraf's consent, I said that the domestic posturing of the US candidates may turn out to be the most dangerous threat of all to their foreign policy. It's kind of nice to know the US State Department agrees with me.

Of course, Obama's statement is the tamest of the current round of rhetoric. Hillary's refusal to rule out nuking Afghanistan or Pakistan is worse, and both pale to near irrelevance compared to Tancredo's threatening to wipe out Mecca and Medina, a long expressed wish of the nut-roots, and quite appropriately nuts. I'm sure that little speech is going to be very popular on the jihadist's version of YouTube for propaganda purposes.

But the warning is clear, all Presidential candidates should stop telling anyone what it is they plan to do about terrorism, how they will conduct diplomatic negotiations, or otherwise give any indication of what they will do internationally once they are elected to the most powerful political position on the planet. Apparently knowing these kinds of things could adversely affect the fine job the Bush Administration has been doing the last six and a half years.

From now on, all stupid and threatening comments about international affairs will be confined to their proper place, the Vice President's Office. Thank-you for your attention.

I know I criticized Obama’s threat to launch an attack into Pakistan, but Hillary’s criticism of his refusal to consider nuclear weapons is a good illustration of why he’s still my favourite candidate.

Asked about Obama's speech and his comments about nuclear weapons, Clinton chided her fellow senator about addressing hypotheticals.

"Presidents should be very careful at all times in discussing the use or non-use of nuclear weapons. ... I don't believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or non-use of nuclear weapons," Clinton said.

Asked about the notion of unilateral U.S. military action in Pakistan to get al-Qaida leadership: "How we do it should not be telegraphed or discussed for obvious reasons."

As John Dickerson said in Slate, Obama isn’t afraid to answer the hypothetical; to give answers to questions that the President will likely have to face and to allow voters to get a clear picture of the candidate they will be asked to trust with making those decisions.

Look at Hillary’s response to the same questions. A non-answer about whether or not she may launch nuclear missiles against a current ally, no discussion of what she may or may not do in the case of actionable intelligence on al Qaeda leadership.  It reminds me of the confirmation hearing for Alito and Roberts; avoid every question that might pin down your position by claiming them to be hypothetical and therefore something you can’t address.

In short, they are not really terrible answers; they are not even answers at all.  They are just words to avoid having to respond to the questions.  All you get from Hillary and the other candidates is guesswork about how they will respond to crises that have every chance of coming to pass.  Under such circumstances, it is little wonder that few people are willing to vote or that the choices tend to be less than inspiring.

But all of the important questions are hypothetical, and the decisions that voters are asked to make at the booth are based on what they think the candidates responses will be to those hypothetical scenarios.  Giving straight answers to tough questions was one of the reason John McCain was able to do as well as he did back in 2000.  Now it’s Obama who isn’t afraid to give people answers to the important questions.  And wouldn’t it be nice if you could vote for someone whose views you were actually aware of and not guessing at?

It’s little wonder the other candidates are moving against Obama on this.  If he keeps answering the tough questions, the press could get used to it and may stop allowing the others to get away with their avoidance techniques.  Of course, that’s probably too much to hope for.

Admittedly, all I got out of this is a bit of a chuckle, but that's because I've been aware of the fact for some time.

The soft drink giant Pepsi has been forced to make an embarrassing admission: Its bestselling Aquafina bottled water is nothing more than tap water.

You have to admit, they've done a damn fine job of marketing and selling the product, and you can't argue with the profit margins.

A half-liter of Pepsi's Aquafina at a Tucson convenience store costs $1.39. The bottle contains purified water from the Tucson water supply. From the tap, you can pour over 6.4 gallons for a penny. That makes the bottled stuff about 7,000 times more expensive, even though Aquafina is using the same water source.

Well, look on the bright side, given that municipal water sources are far more strictly regulated than bottled water is, this at least ensures that the water is safe to drink. You do have to admire the marketing genius behind all this though; figuring out how to charge people a massive premium to buy what they get practically for free out of the tap. As with many things, you're not paying for the product, you're paying for the packaging. And as the article notes, in this case the packaging is in the form of plastic bottles derived mainly from petroleum and often thrown into landfills, which makes the cost of bottled tap water even more costly than it seems.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would possibly send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists, an attempt to show strength when his chief rival has described his foreign policy skills as naive.

To paraphrase a saying: It is better to stay silent and be thought naive, then to open your mouth and prove it.

Now, in the context of his entire speech, this was a pretty minor point, but it is still the one that everybody has seized upon. One hopes it was just rhetoric; a way to appear tough. Because right now, Musharraf is hanging on by a thread. His support amongst the people of Pakistan is nearly as low as Bush's is in the US and his legitimacy weakens with every aggressive statement or action by the US towards Pakistan that he doesn't counter.

I like Obama. Currently he's my favourite candidate of those running for the US Presidency. But January, 2009 is still a long ways off. One of the worst aspects of the US election system is that it is forcing candidates to commit to positions this far in advance of their taking power. The circumstances will have undoubtedly changed by the time the actual election rolls around. There's every chance the Bush Administration will launch the attacks on Pakistan themselves, clumsily and with excessive "collateral damage" given their record, and given how bad an idea it is, I would expect them to do just that, along with launching attacks on Iran.

Obama made no mention of widening the Iraq war to Iran, but widening the Afghan war to include Pakistan would be just as disastrous, if not more so. I do find Obama's promise to focus on the actual people who attacked the US to be laudable, and the strategy he laid out in his speech is a good one on nearly all of its points except this one. Nobody wants there to be safe havens for terrorists, but the real challenge of foreign policy is that sometimes you have to pick the least bad option; to risk the occasional sting to avoid kicking open a hornet's nest.

Naiveté is dangerous, but the posturing required of US domestic politics may yet prove to be the most dangerous aspect of US foreign policy there is.

Not entirely surprising given the rest of the Bush administrations actions. More like a another signpost of their Corporation-friendly policies, and another nail in our collective coffin.

Fewer U.S. environmental cops are tracking criminal polluters these days, their numbers steadily dropping below levels ordered by Congress.

. . .

The EPA's overall criminal caseload - investigations that could lead to prosecutions later - is declining, according to the agency's figures. It has opened fewer investigations every year since 2002, when there were 484 new investigations and 216 agents. Last year, the number of new cases fell to 305.

The 1990s saw an overall increase in new criminal investigations and increases in the number of agents during seven of 10 years.

"It is difficult to believe that environmental crime suddenly declined precipitously after Bush took office. It is more likely that the administration's enthusiasm for criminal prosecution declined," said Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce committee, who spearheaded the 1990 law.

Fewer agents doing fewer investigations. What could possibly go wrong?

This is consistent with just about every other action this Administration has taken. If you don't like how something is going, stop releasing reports on it, or stop investigating it, or block oversight of it. Basically, remove the accountability. I don't even want to think how long it will take to repair the damage these guys have wrought.