Northman's Fury

This sure sounds like a great idea.

The Bush administration is preparing to ask Congress to approve an arms sale package for Saudi Arabia and its neighbors that is expected to eventually total $20 billion at a time when some United States officials contend that the Saudis are playing a counterproductive role in Iraq.

The proposed package of advanced weaponry for Saudi Arabia, which includes advanced satellite-guided bombs, upgrades to its fighters and new naval vessels, has made Israel and some of its supporters in Congress nervous. Senior officials who described the package on Friday said they believed that the administration had resolved those concerns, in part by promising Israel $30.4 billion in military aid over the next decade, a significant increase over what Israel has received in the past 10 years.

So basically, the weapons manufactuerers are asking for permission to sell billions of dollars of equipment to the Gulf Arab states, and as a result of the Arab states getting weapons, the US taxpayer is going to be hit up for even more billions of dollars to buy even more of these weapons sytems to give to Israel. Good deal if you're a bomb-maker.

Forget the Israel lobby, or the Saudi lobby, or even Big Oil. When you follow the money, it's the guys building weapons who are making the most of the US's foreign policy in the Middle East.

After months of legal wrangling and standoffs with Hindu monks, police and a government veterinarian finally seized Shambo the sacred bull on Thursday with plans to kill the TB-infected animal.

. . .

The Hindus running the Skanda Vale temple in southwest Wales revere cattle and have argued that killing Shambo would be a violation of their religious rights. The monks had wanted to keep the animal in a separate, hay-filled shrine.

Two points about this story:

First, as a general rule, I'm of the belief that religious freedoms and practices should be respected unless and until they interfere or endanger the rights, freedoms, or livelihoods of others. In this case, there was a health risk, though it seems that if the monks could have provided an effective quarantine of Shambo, there is an argument to be made for allowing them to keep it.  Bovine TB is occasionally transmittable to humans, so I have no idea how strict such a quarantine would have to be to meet the “not endangering” part of my general rule.

Second, it’s nice to be able to talk about a religious controversy that has absolutely nothing to do with Christians, Muslims, or Jews.

they get things right.

Pope Benedict XVI said the debate raging in some countries — particularly the United States and his native Germany — between creationism and evolution was an “absurdity,” saying that evolution can coexist with faith.

. . .

“They are presented as alternatives that exclude each other,” the pope said. “This clash is an absurdity because on one hand there is much scientific proof in favor of evolution, which appears as a reality that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being as such.”

He said evolution did not answer all the questions: “Above all it does not answer the great philosophical question, ‘Where does everything come from?’”

He's right, and I have no problem with this view. Acceptance of the scientific evidence for evolution, with the question of the supernatural left in the realm of philosophy where it belongs. Quite reasonable.

I can't imagine what kind of system they'll come up with. Stars won't work, because the fractions would just be too small.

Nunavut's tourism bureau wants to bring in a rating system this year for hotels and other accommodations to encourage them to meet basic standards.

Like anywhere else, Nunavut offers a vast range of rooms in hotels, motels, bed and breakfasts, and homestays across the territory. But visitors have complained of varying quality and service, with some finding dirty rooms and poor service in places that charge about $185 to $200 a night.

And the really nasty part about that is that in many places, the charge is for the bed, not the room. Meaning if there are multiple beds in the room, you could wind up sharing it with others paying $200/night for the other beds.

To be fair, some of the communities have pretty decent places to stay, but some others are the subject of true horror stories, and in most, the level of amenities aren't what some people apparently expect,

"Someone who was trying to book a room up here … he wanted to make sure that the room had a hot tub and a fireplace," Richer said. "I said, 'Well, first of all, we have no trees to burn wood in the fireplaces.'"

Heh.

I've been watching stories regarding the situation on the Turkish border with Iraq for some time. For the last couple of months, the rhetoric and military moves on the Turkish side of the border added to the increase in attacks by the PKK seemed to indicate that matters may be coming to a head soon.

Given the rather unfortunate effects of a Turkish invasion, I hoped it wouldn't happen while expecting it would. After all, things manage to get worse everywhere else the Bush Administration is involved; why should Kurdistan be the exception?

Anyway, an article in today's Independent says that the recent victory by the governing party in Turkey's recent election makes the possibility of an invasion more remote.

Apparently the aggressive moves and rhetoric were part of the gamesmanship and appeal to nationalism that are all too common in political campaigns, and with the election campaign safely over, cooler heads will now prevail. It actually makes a great deal of sense when you think about it.

Of course, the rhetoric was part of the army's campaign to undermine the Islamist-leaning ruling parties' chances. It didn't work, and the results seem to indicate a softer line in regards to an invasion. Of course, the Turkish army hasn't been exactly shy about removing governments they didn't like, so there's no guarantees.

In any case, if the invasion rhetoric was just election pandering, I'll be both relieved that the invasion won't happen, and disappointed that leaders feel that its okay to stir such passions for such mundane purposes. Because passions once stirred don't always fade away when the reason behind the stirring no longer applies, and a few well placed attacks by the PKK could quickly make the invasion inevitable regardless of what was intended by those who threatened it.

The EC is in the final stages of agreeing a new Passenger Name Record system with the US which will allow American officials to access detailed biographical information about passengers entering international airports.

. . .

In a strongly worded document drawn up in response to the plan that will affect the 4 million-plus Britons who travel to the US every year, the EU parliament said it 'notes with concern that sensitive data (ie personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, and data concerning the health or sex life of individuals) will be made available to the DHS and that these data may be used by the DHS in exceptional cases'.

Under the new agreement, which goes live at the end of this month, the US will be able to hold the records of European passengers for 15 years compared with the current three year limit. The EU parliament said it was concerned the data would lead to 'a significant risk of massive profiling and data mining, which is incompatible with basic European principles and is a practice still under discussion in the US congress.'

At a guess, Britain isn't the only country whose government is being pressured to hand over this kind of data on its population.

Most privacy legislation, particularly for governments, revolve around two basic principles.

1. Only collect the data you need to fulfill the task at hand.

2. Only use the data for the purpose it was collected.

The agreement the US is pushing for seems to throw both of those principles out the window. Can you see any reason how somebody's sex life is relevant to the threat of terrorism?

Trade union membership and political opinions? Sure, I can see if you're an active member of Hamas or some such that DHS might like that information, but the implication is that everybody who voted Liberal Democrat last election will have that data recorded as well for the next 15 years. I'll leave the fear-mongering to others, but it doesn't take to active an imagination to see how such information could be abused.

The other significant point is how that information is going to be used. The major reason that we even have privacy laws in North America is because Europe made such laws and the protection of private citizens' data that come with them a requirement to continue trading with European countries. Prior to that, information collected on Europeans was being bought and sold by American companies to be used for marketing campaigns, call lists, whatever.

Information about someone's health or sex life or even income level may not be terribly useful in determining a terror threat, but I'm sure there are pharmaceutical companies that would love to get their hands on that kind of data, particularly when combined with addresses to neighbourhoods where others of similar background are probably to be found.

He warned that under the new system the data will be shared with numerous US agencies. 'The data protection supervisor and the European parliament are angry that they were not consulted,' Bunyan said. 'But they are also angry with a number of elements of the plan such as giving the US the absolute right to pass the data on to third parties.'

Kind of sounds like among other things, someone is trying to do an end run around those pesky privacy laws they've been saddled with.

William Lind is one of the founding members of the fourth generation warfare theory, and while I have some disagreements with some of his social views, when it comes to warfare and strategy, he always provides excellent analysis and insight.

He’s written an essay on how the US can salvage a strategic victory in Iraq for the American Conservative magazine.  The strategy he outlines is chancy by his own admission and there is no guarantee of success, but it is one of the best laid-out and realistic plans I’ve seen in some time.

The first step is to throw out the maximalist objectives that include Iraq being a US and Israeli-friendly satellite allowing huge military bases and unlimited access to oil.  That’s just never going to happen.

After that, the game is using the “indirect approach”.  Everyone the US supports nowadays is automatically suspect and loses legitimacy, so the only way an effective government is going to emerge from the chaos of Iraq is in the form of forces who oppose the US.  For Lind, that means the effective strategic answer is to withdraw US forces and get out of those forces way.

The third piece of Lind’s strategy is to reach a form a rapprochement with Iran.  This would have been far easier and less costly to the US back in 2003 when there was still a Reformist President in Iran and the US military was still looked upon as a fearsome force to be reckoned with, but the basic framework for agreement between the two powers is still intact and attainable.  Again, this is an area where the US must stop pursuing maximalist objectives  Getting everything you want is rarely possible, but getting what you need usually is.

It is the second point where this strategy is the trickiest and over which the US has the least amount of control.  I think Lind overestimates al-Sadr’s importance and willingness to work across sectarian lines, but the recent formation of a alliance of major Sunni insurgent groups opposed to both the US and al Qaeda shows that the basic idea is sound, particularly given the groups apparent willingness to reach out to Shia groups, if not currently Sadr’s forces.

Still, this strategy requires the US abandon the current Iraqi government, or at least take them back into exile with them.  Not a very popular move to make and there is still the prospect of a major bloodbath following the US withdrawal.

Still, the recent US military war games seem to indicate that the mess following a US withdrawal may not be as bad as some have predicted, and if the US works behind the scenes with the proper objective of empowering the opposition groups to form a government, the worst excesses can be avoided.

Given that it is more a question of when rather than if the US leaves Iraq, it would be wise to try and find a way to make the defeat merely tactical rather than strategic. 

Unfortunately, I have little confidence in the current administration making the hard choices necessary to bring that about, and the situation may well progress too far down the wrong path for the next administration to make any difference.

Still, it is an idea worth considering.

A good article in the Washington Post exploring some of the reasons for the dislike of the US government's actions, even while most people admire American values. The entire story is worth reading, but I'll excerpt one paragraph near the end.

The challenge that the United States faces today boils down to a choice. It can insist on its primacy as a superpower, or it can accept the universality of its values. If it chooses the former, it will heighten the resentment of foreigners and increase the likelihood of visiting disaster upon distant populations -- and vice versa. If it chooses the latter, it will discover something it appears to have forgotten: that the world is full of potential allies.

That the US isn't hated for its freedoms but for its actions has been said repeatedly, but it bears repeating since too many still haven't got the message. The freedoms the US enjoys are what makes it the desired home of so many. If the US government were to treat those freedoms as truly universal and not something that ends at its borders, (and these days, one can't be certain they extend that far anymore), then a lot of the trouble and grief the US has suffered these last few years could have been avoided.

Also, as the article notes, these kinds of actions didn't start with the current administration; they've been ongoing for some time. The current administration has merely taken them to new heights and carried them out with unprecedented arrogance. Making a bad situation worse, if you will.

When I saw the headline, I thought it was good news. While the saying goes that history is written by the victors, the truth is that it is written by the survivors. If only the winners wrote histories, we'd probably have a far better view of the Huns, Mongols, and Vikings. Instead, the history we have was written mostly by their victims, and their image has suffered accordingly.

It's far from a secret that Arabs have a far different view of the history of Israel than the one the Jewish population has, and that's even quite understandable. Even in North America, the populations of Quebec or the American South have different views on the French and Indian Wars or the US civil war than the rest of their respective countries. To understand that difference in viewpoint is generally a positive thing as it leads to fewer misunderstandings.

But that is not what is happening in Israel. The text giving some statement to the Arab view is only to be used in Arab Israeli schools, not in schools for Israeli Jews. (What about Jewish Arabs?) Basically, they're institutionalizing teaching two different versions of the same events and splitting the teachings on racial lines.

This does nothing to foster understanding, it sharpens the differences between the two peoples. There is a whole other discussion regarding what Palestinian children are taught, but to teach different versions of history within Israel itself seems foolish to the extreme.

This reminds me of efforts in the US and Canada to teach more "culturally sensitive" history courses that give greater emphasis to minorities like blacks or women. While I'm generally of the view that more information is always better, that's only true when the information is widely distributed. If the courses are structured in such a way that only the minority itself learns the information, it causes an even wider gap in world-views, and that helps no one.

UPDATE: The attached story is a good example of a one-sided view of Israel's creation. I have no reason to believe that anything in the story is false, mind you, but there is a preponderance of facts showing what the Jewish population was doing and nearly none about Arab actions. The result is a skewed viewpoint. While I generally feel that the discussion in North America generally favours the Israelis to too large an extent, this article goes too far the other way.

As with many contentious issues, people tend to take sides, and once they do, they tend to overlook the worst excesses of their chosen side. The truth is somewhere in between, and neither side comes out looking very good.

I just came across an article noting that the Copyright Board of Canada has just released a decision that may allow the big music and movie studios to apply a copying levy on devices such as iPods.

Even worse, the decision seems to indicate that the levy could be applied to any device capable of making private copies of music or video content. Given the nature of digital media, that means just about any device with memory, such as a personal computer, cellphone, flash drive, or anything else that files can be loaded on.

Basically, they want us all to pay them money for every device we buy that could possibly play or hold a copy of their music or movie whether or not we use it for that purpose, and even if we pay separately for the media in question.

And this certainly isn't about protecting the artists, because you can be quite certain that none of the artists are going to see a penny of a this kind of broad based levy. This is simple greed by the big labels, possibly linked to the move to DRM-free music downloads. After all, if you can no longer force people to buy multiple copies of the same music, you have to find some other way to squeeze more money out their pockets. Finding a way that cuts out the artists' take as well is just gravy.

U.S. Needs to Devise a Different 'Brand' to Win Over the Iraqi People, Study Advises

Maybe if they called themselves “The Fluffy Bunny Liberation Brigade”?

Seriously. It’s not the brand; it’s the job. The US military is trained to fight and kill enemies using the maximum amount of available firepower. All well and good when you’re fighting another military force trained to fight the same way; not so good when trying to mount a counterinsurgency campaign.

In an urban insurgency, for example, civilians can help identify enemy infiltrators and otherwise assist U.S. forces. They are less likely to help, the study says, when they become "collateral damage" in U.S. attacks, have their doors broken down or are shot at checkpoints because they do not speak English. Cultural connections -- seeking out the local head man when entering a neighborhood, looking someone in the eye when offering a friendly wave -- are key.

And they only had to spend $400,000 to be told that, proving once again that consultants are highly paid people who tell you what you already know.

One other point at the bottom of the article:

Adversaries are doing their own shaping on Iraq's urban battlefields. While intimidation, coercion and assassination might not make them beloved, such techniques effectively limit public outreach to U.S. forces, the Rand study notes. Enemy forces have also learned that "doing good works is a classic approach to winning friends and influencing people" and frequently provide basic services that the U.S. military is unable to match.

$12,000,000,000 a month, and the US can’t match a bunch of mostly self-financed insurgents in the provision of basic services. Compared to that, $400 grand for stating the obvious doesn’t seem like that bad a deal.

The Economist's political cartoonist believes that Fred Thompson's chances may improve were he to cover up the shiny dome nature has given him.

Now while I admit the Maggie looks like it suits Fred quite well, I am very much offended by the implication that voters will only consider those with a full head of hair to be worthy candidates. This is just as bad as the recent discovery that Hillary Clinton has breasts! Discrimination against an entire subset of the population based on a physical characteristic!

Actually, this distaste for shiny-topped leadership is even more serious than the breast issue. To quote the great Canadian philosopher Red Green, "This is the worst kind of discrimination. It's against me!"

Please excuse me while I go mourn my receding hairline and the end of my dreams for political office.

Why do you need to sign a decree prohibiting torture when you've repeatedly assured everyone that you never torture?

Just curious.

I honestly don’t know what to say about this.  The same people who like to say that if you’ve done nothing wrong, you should have nothing to hide, have basically stated their will to do everything in their power, and as much beyond that power that they can get away with, to hide everything about themselves that they can.

The arrogance and contempt for accountability has managed to short-circuit my outrage meter for the time-being.  Fortunately, there all a whole host of other folks who have found the words. Some good examples can be found here, here, and here. From the last:

As long ago as 1215, the notion that there ought to be and were limits, that others could over-rule the King, was established.  No wonder Dick Cheney seems so cranky all the time; it must be hard to feel personally responsible to correct a mistake made eight centuries ago.

For myself, all I can do for the moment is watch and see if the recent signs of vertebrate behaviour in the Democratic leadership will continue and if they’ll use the powers they have in Congress to bring this issue to a head.  If they don’t, then the Bushies will have succeeded in pushing the Presidency outside the bounds of accountability, and the US slips that much closer to the kind of authoritarian government that they revolted against and fought to oppose elsewhere.

The General does his usual excellent job of skewering the Bush Administration regarding the recently announced capture of a top al Qaeda aide. A sample:

in a stroke of sheer luck, interrogators were able to get him to confirm all of the Administration's talking points about Al Qaeda's involvement in Iraq just as the Democratic leadership in the Senate was moving to end a Republican filibuster of the Levin-Reed Troop Withdrawal plan.

Unfortunately, the mediaslumunistofascists at CNN only read you the first page of the press release. Abu Shahid had much more information to share. Here are a few of his quotes the media failed to report:

. . .

1,357 of our best terrorist trainees lost all hope and abandoned their training when your mighty and fearsome president commuted Scooter Libby's sentence.

[...]

We are undermining your society with gay marriage, evolution, and environmental regulation.

[...]

Our ultimate goal is to punish Americans by providing them with single-payer health care.

[...]

Tinky-Winky and Spongebob Squarepants are important mullahs in our organization.

You know, until I saw this little story, I had completely forgotten that Bush had appointed a War Czar.

I remember now that several top generals refused the position, and I'm sure I made some snarky comment about finding a scapegoat when Gen. Lute accepted the position, but the guy has completely dropped off the radar since then.

Kind of makes you wonder just how important this "war czar" is in regards to the war effort.

As a note, I would like to say that I agree fully.

Further, to avoid confusion, I'm starting a list for easy reference for any other stupid questions.

Eric Martin posted an excellent comment over at American Footprints regarding the increasingly tense situation in Kurdistan and its probable effect on the US strategic position.

Also, can we stop talking about Kurdistan as a viable destination for any such ill-advised residual force?  We would be putting ourselves in a massive lose-lose situation - stuck, hapless, in the middle of a conflict that would pit a NATO ally against our potential patrons (and part of the country we just "liberated").  If we side with our NATO allies, the Kurds won't be the most hospitable of hosts.  Yet if we side with the Kurds, we would alienate a country that is far more essential to a wide range of US interests - beyond its NATO status even. 

Neither side would really accept neutrality either, especially inaction from such proximity.  This counts moreso the Turks, who we would be relying on to provide routes of re-supply for our Kurdistan garrisoned troops (already a shaky proposition given Turkey's likely anger at our decision to move north regardless).  If not for the Turkish routes, the re-supply would have to run through Iran (uh, not gonna happen), or up through the entire expanse of Iraq (where we would have just left due to the difficulty of occupation). 

Not to mention the fact that our presence would likely inspire the Kurds to overreach in connection with controversial issues like the status of Kirkuk - and even PKK-related activities in Turkey and/or Iran.

Come to think of it, it would be such a colossally bad decision that I fully expect the Bush administration to make it.  Kurdistan, here we come.[emp. added]

Seems he has the same high opinion of the Bush Administration’s decision-making process that I do.  More and more, it is beginning to look like David Brin may be right:

Yes, there probably is some kind of a conspiracy at the very top, that aims to make the US government fail. The perfect consistency of this administration, never making any decisions that even tangentially or accidentally benefit the people or commonwealth of the United States, beggars any other explanation, including the “standard model” of dogmatic and corrupt ineptitude.

I ask because apparently they're considering it:

The Bush administration, after publicly demanding that Musharraf rein in militants linked to al Qaida, on Wednesday threatened to launch attacks into Pakistani territory if it sees fit.

"We certainly do not rule out options, and we retain the option especially of striking actionable targets," said White House spokesman Tony Snow.

Given the rather nasty blowback the assault on the Red Mosque has caused and the warnings about possible disintegration within this nuclear power, I wonder if an outside attack might be just the thing to create a little unity in the country.

After all, there’s nothing like an outside enemy that can be used as a scapegoat to unify a people. Hell, its one of the arguments people use to dissuade attacks on Iran. The “rally ‘round the flag” reflex is strong in our species.

Of course, there is also the unfortunate fact if the US strikes did unify the Pakistani people, it would be unified against US interests, which would quickly turn Afghanistan into NATO's graveyard.

Of course, this assumes that a US attack is considered an attack on Pakistan as a whole, and not as support for Musharraf. Because if the US attacks and Musharraf moves against the militants at the same time, it won’t stave off the disintegration of Pakistan, it will accelerate it.

A large Pakistani military operation in the tribal regions, coupled with American officials' calls for action, could lead many Pakistanis to believe that Musharraf is acting as a U.S. surrogate, said analysts and officials in Islamabad. That in turn, they said, would make it easier for radical Islamists to legitimize terrorist attacks as strikes against a Western conspiracy to control an Islamic state.

"The U.S. lawmakers are absolutely oblivious of the ground realities," said Gul, the retired general. But, Gul said, Musharraf's political base has been badly shaken recently — by the controversial suspension of the Supreme Court's chief justice, and then the mosque raid — and he might bend to American pressure to launch large-scale military strikes in the border region.

"He is so weak internally that he needs the American support," Gul said.

It's one of the few things about which many officials in both the government and in opposition parties agree.

"The more the United States approves of such actions, the more problems we have with the public," said one senior Pakistani government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of U.S.-Pakistan relations. "It needs to be purely our own internal matter."

Imran Khan, a former Pakistani cricket star turned political upstart who has been vocal in his criticism of Musharraf, said approximately the same.

"Extremism is rising, because you don't fight extremism with a man perceived as an American stooge, you don't fight extremism with suppression — you fight it with a genuine democratic process," said Khan, a parliament member. "The tribal areas are out of his control, whatever leverage he had is gone now."

Probably the most damning point about the Bush Administration’s tactics and foreign policy ineptitude, is that it has lost the legitimacy that the US once had, and has caused anyone associated with them in whole swathes of the globe to lose legitimacy as well.

So the choices now seem to be to allow the Taliban and al Qaeda a safe haven in Pakistan and risk further attacks against the US and failure of the Afghan mission, or to launch attacks against that safe haven and risk the overthrow of a allied government with nuclear weapons.

Of course, the way things have been going so far, it wouldn't surprise me that the Afghan mission fails and Musharraf is overthrown regardless what the US does, but if the Bush Administration's history is any guide, they'll pick the surest way to accelerate both outcomes.

When did they suddenly grow a pair? They keep this sort of behaviour up and we may have to re-admit them as vertebrates. I particularly like this little snippet:

"In the meantime, we will continue to work with our Republican colleagues who are saying the right things on Iraq but aren’t yet committed to voting the right way."

So saying you're against Bush's policies in Iraq is no longer good enough, you're actually going to have to start acting like it, too.

And just to be clear, that is going to apply even more to Reid and the Democrats themselves. If they return to form and cave to the White House, they're going to deserve every nasty epithet thrown their way.

On Sunday, I posted a quick blurb about the laugh-inducing article by William Kristol in the Washington Post. Today, David Corn rips Kristol a new one with his rebuttal article, "Why Bush is a Loser".

The Bush-Cheney years have been marked by ineptitude, miscalculation, and scandal. A successful presidency? Bush will be lucky if he gets a public elementary school in his adopted hometown of Crawford, Tex., named after him. He has placed this country in a hole. Yet Kristol, with shovel in hand, points to that hole and says, Trust me -- we're about to strike oil!

If it's true that history repeats first as tragedy and then as farce, Kristol has short-circuited the process and gone straight to parody. His Bush boosterism -- an act of self-justification -- would be amusing were it not for all the damage he has helped Bush to cause.

Read the whole thing, it's well worth it.

I posted a few days ago a warning from British generals about Afghanistan that stated that if Afghanistan were to fail and fall back to warlords and extremists, Pakistan would follow it into disintegration and Islamists would likely come to power there.

However, since then, the fallout from the assault on the Red Mosque has been producing several attacks on Pakistani troops, with another ambush being reported today.  If John Robb is right, Pakistan may just unravel without any assistance from Afghanistan.

The emerging open source insurgency in Pakistan may have found its plausible promise: to defeat the Pakistani military establishment. Here's how it developed.

The first incident was the assault on the Red Mosque in Islamabad (which militants claim took the lives of 1,500 people, mostly students). This incident fixed the target of the insurgency (the Pakistani military and not NATO next door in Afghanistan). It also generated sufficient motivation for violence. The second has been a series of examples of successful attacks against the Pakistani military. Specifically, suicide-bomb attacks against military targets (at a recruitment center, a convoy, a patrol, and several checkpoints -- with over 100 killed).

With a plausible promise in place, all that is needed is a pool of new groups to participate. That may already be present. The intrepid Syed Shahzad, of the Asia Times, reports that there is a host of rapidly growing networks of insurgents outside of the control of traditional groups (which makes them relatively immune to government coercion/negotiation):

I’m still not certain that if Afghanistan goes down the tubes that Pakistan must follow it, but I do know if Pakistan goes down, the situation in Afghanistan quickly turns to hopeless for NATO.

And it always bears mentioning that we’re talking about a nation with a functioning nuclear weapons program and a known history of trafficking in proscribed technology related to that program.  Not that this wasn’t a dangerous place before, but it is moving rapidly to become the most dangerous place in the world and for the world.

So there Democrats have finally decided that if the Republicans are going to filibuster every bill, then they're actually going to have to do it physically rather than rely on procedure. They picked a bill regarding troop drawdowns in Iraq to fight over, which is a fairly good idea since the country is behind them on this.

Now this is mostly political theatre, but it is theatre of the right kind. It calls attention to the refusal of the Republicans to vote for cloture on just about anything in the hopes that the Democrats will look like a "do nothing" Congress, and the tactic was working, since few people understand that not voting for cloture is the procedural equivalent of filibustering of every bill. Bringing attention to this by forcing an actual filibuster was the right thing to do, and the Democrats should continue to do this for several more bills until the message is rock-solid in everyone's mind who is responsible for the deadlocking of Congress.

And since this all-night debate on Iraqi withdrawal could cause a boost to the Democrats and very likely hurt the Republicans supporting Bush, it didn't come as too much of a surprise that this morning comes an announcement of the capture of one of a seemingly endless supply of "top al Qaeda leaders" in Iraq. Sure, he was captured last month, but announcing it now has nothing to do with trying to dominate the news cycle with this story rather than the fact the Democrats might have grown a spine. Oh, and the fact that the capture of a "top al Qaeda in Iraq" leader was announced at the very time that the Senate is debating a withdrawal motion on Iraq is total coincidence as well.

This should be pretty cool to watch, even if I'm unlikely to find myself in Cambridge Bay next year, Iqaluit will get a pretty good show.

It's still more than a year away, but avid skywatchers from as far away as Japan are already booking flights to Nunavut to see next summer's total eclipse of the sun.

The moon will cross the sun on Aug. 1, 2008, creating the eclipse. In North America, the best places to see the event are the Nunavut hamlets of Grise Fiord, Cambridge Bay and Resolute Bay, as they will see total or near-total darkness.

Arctic Bay and Pond Inlet will see partial darkness during the eclipse, while Iqaluit will see about 80 per cent of the sun eclipsed.

I can sympathize with these people. I've felt the same way for a few recent elections. The choice always seems to come down to who you think will do the least amount of damage.

Smugglers trying to sneak alcohol into Sweden are unwittingly helping fuel the country's public transport system and reducing its greenhouse emissions.

Almost all of the 700,000 litres of smuggled alcohol seized by the customs service last year was turned into alternative fuel and used to power buses, trucks and a biogas train, officials said Friday.

. . .

Lilliehook said one litre of pure alcohol is enough to make about half a litre of biogas. And it is good business, because the material to make it is free.

Jerlebrink said the customs service was happy to get rid of the smuggled alcohol, which was taking up a lot of space before the biogas program was started a few years ago.

"We pump it into a big tank that we jokingly call 'the giant cocktail' and then a truck just comes and picks it up," she said.

I suppose Canada Customs could make a booming business of this.  Trying to get cheap booze across the border is practically a national pastime, or at least it was when I was growing up in Saskatchewan.

If this can be effective on a smaller scale, it would be highly useful here.  We have almost ridiculously strict liquor laws, which have the effect of driving a booming bootlegging industry.  I’m betting we could power most of the vehicles in the territory this way, and it would be a lot cheaper for the government; not paying for the import of oil and gas and having to heavily subsidize both so people can afford it.

On the other hand, it would also encourage keeping those ridiculously strict liquor laws in place.  There’s always has to be trade-offs, doesn’t there?

While the bulk of the government’s - and the world’s - attention is focused on the insurgency-ridden south, Afghanistan’s northern provinces are becoming increasingly troubled.

Over the past few months, incidents of violence are becoming a regular occurrence in a region previously thought to be relatively stable. Commanders clashed violently in Faryab, leaving several dead, dozens injured, and necessitating the call-out of national troops. A protest in Jowzjan turned bloody, killing ten and wounding many more. A member of parliament was attacked in Samangan, and persistent rumours are circulating that weapons are being distributed in Sar-e-Pul.

“According to our information, some former commanders in Sar-e-Pul province have recommenced their activity,” said Colonel Mir Ali Nadem, who heads the DIAG (Disarmament of Illegal Armed Groups) programme in Sar-e-Pul. “Our intelligence shows that weapons have been distributed to some parties and individuals.”

Although these groups have not yet taken overt action against the government, added Nadem, the distribution of weapons is a serious threat to security. It also compromises the DIAG process, which, over the past two years, has managed to collect a mere 30,000 weapons. While no one has exact figures for how many guns, grenades and other types of military hardware existed in Afghanistan before the DIAG programme was launched in June 2005, the estimates run into the millions.

Illegal or “irresponsible” armed groups, as they are termed by officials, have left a dark legacy in the country. After the fall of the communist-backed Najibullah regime in 1992, the country disintegrated into armed camps belonging to various commanders who governed their fiefdoms with an iron hand. It was, in large part, revulsion at their despotic and corrupt rule that gave rise to the Taleban, who promised to rid the country of the “warlords” and bring some measure of security to the people.

This is not just disturbing in the sense that these groups pose a possible threat to the US-backed government, it is also an indicator that the people are increasingly likely to view that government as illegitimate and are focusing on building up power bases for the next round of a multi-sided civil war.

The other major concern I have seeing this news, is that many of the NATO countries involved in Afghanistan have purposely stayed in the north to avoid having to take part in combat operations. If the north becomes unstable and violent, the trends point to those governments pulling out entirely rather than offering increased support to the US, British, Canadian, and Dutch forces fighting in the south.

If that happens, then the nightmare scenario outlined by senior British generals becomes that much harder to avoid.