Northman's Fury

Ian Welsh at the Agonist uses the easily foreseeable quagmire the Ethiopians admitted to finding themselves in in Somalia to offer this piece of advice:

Really, what the US needs to do right now, is nothing. Don't talk to anyone. Don't invade anyone. Forbid anyone in government from talking to anyone in a foreign government about anything that isn't routine and technical until Bush is out of power. Because there is no situation so bad that the Bush administration cannot make it worse with their Rambo diplomacy, refusal to acknowledge the sovereignty of the people, and their belief that anyone who they think they can shove around, should be shoved around, just on general principles.

Just do nothing.

Unfortunately, the world can't afford an America that doesn't do anything, but its hard to argue that on the whole, not letting Bush and his buddies meddle in other countries in their ham-handed way wouldn't be the best course.

And in Africa, there's no question that the Bush administration's support for the Ethiopian tyrants have made things worse, and not just for Somalia.

Ethiopian soldiers have forcibly drafted hundreds of civilians to fight separatist rebels in the desolate, predominantly Muslim Ogaden region in a shadowy military campaign supported by the Bush administration, according to more than a dozen refugees and former recruits who've fled to neighboring Kenya.

The untrained and ill-equipped draftees — including students, camel herders and tribal leaders who've never fired weapons in combat — are being thrown into pitched battles with ethnic Somali guerrillas and often suffer heavy casualties, the refugees and ex-recruits said.

Men who resist joining these civilian militias — known as "dabaqodhi," or "puppets" of the government — are beaten, locked up in military prisons or killed, the refugees said in interviews. When recruits perform poorly in combat, as they often do, they're abused and accused of aiding the rebels, refugees said.

But no matter. As the story goes, Ethiopia is an ally in the "War on Terror", like those adorable Saudis and the friendly dictatorship of Musharraf, and so they will continue to get the unflinching support of the US to kill and suppress.

And yet, when the inevitable blowback comes, those most vocal in their support for these actions will be scratching their heads and wondering, "Why do they hate us?"

With the increasing focus on the opening up of the Arctic to possible exploration due to the ice cap melting, the countries bordering the Arctic ocean have been playing the old game of flag-planting, among other things, to stake claims to what might be rich resources.

Wired has an article that points out that what ultimately happens in the Arctic may set the precedent for future resource grabs in Antarctica, the seabed, and even the moon and other planets.

But what has gone unnoticed amid the international clamor is that the Arctic battle has implications that reach far beyond the top of Earth. The squabbling will be a prelude to — and even set the tone for — eventual sovereignty claims on the moon. At the same time that it was making Arctic claims, Russia announced plans for manned lunar missions by 2025 and a permanent base there by 2032. Japan might beat them to the punch with a 2030 base. Both will be able to stop over and share a glass of Tang with US astronauts, who are supposed to start setting up shop in 2020. China also has lunar aspirations, though officials will say only that they plan to get to the moon sometime after 2020.

It could get crowded up there, and the rules for lunar landgrabs will likely be patterned on what is happening now in the far north. "The recent Arctic events are relevant," says Joanne Gabrynowicz, an international space law expert at the University of Mississippi. "The seabed, high seas, Antarctica, and space are, as a matter of law, global commons. What happens in one can be argued to be legal precedent in the others."

So how the Arctic claims get settled may set the legal framework for space exploration. It is, at the very least, an interesting thing to think about.

This is really quite funny in a sad way:

Bush has lost his mind and his moral compass. This statement is an outrage. A lie and a blood libel. Israel has never committed any acts of terrorism. What a tool of Islamic jihad. Based on that, Bush is a terrorist, anyone that defends himself, his family, his country is a terrorist.

How short, and how selective, the memories of the pro-Israel crowd are:

Four extremist Jewish settlers have been charged by an Israeli court for allegedly plotting to blow up an Arab girls' school in Jerusalem a month ago.

Or,

A Jewish settler absent without leave from the Israeli army opened fire Thursday on a public bus traveling to an Arab town in northern Israel, killing at least four people and wounding 10. In the immediate aftermath, passengers swarmed the gunman, killing him before he could leave the bus.

In a statement, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called the shooting "a reprehensible act by a bloodthirsty Jewish terrorist who sought to attack innocent Israeli citizens." Israeli police officials suggested that the attack was an attempt to derail the government's planned evacuation of Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and four in the West Bank scheduled to begin later this month.

As I recall, a fair number of right-wing blogs actually applauded Sharon for calling the act for what it was, contrasting him with the Palestinian leaders who refuse to use the "T" word.

Of course, the old saw about one man's terrorist being another's freedom fighter still holds, and Israel is no exception.

The rightwingers, including Binyamin Netanyahu, the former Prime Minister, are commemorating the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the headquarters of British rule, that killed 92 people and helped to drive the British from Palestine.

They have erected a plaque outside the restored building, and are holding a two-day seminar with speeches and a tour of the hotel by one of the Jewish resistance fighters involved in the attack.

Simon McDonald, the British Ambassador in Tel Aviv, and John Jenkins, the Consul-General in Jerusalem, have written to the municipality, stating: “We do not think that it is right for an act of terrorism, which led to the loss of many lives, to be commemorated.”

And it isn't just the old terror attacks that get commemorated:

Militant Jews have gathered at the grave of Baruch Goldstein to celebrate the sixth anniversary of his massacre of Muslim worshippers in Hebron.

The celebrants dressed up as the gunman, wearing army uniforms, doctor's coats and fake beards.

. . .

In 1994 on Purim, Goldstein stormed a mosque and fired on praying Muslims in the West Bank city's Tomb of the Patriarchs - a shrine sacred to both Muslims and Jews.

Twenty-nine people died in the attack, and the angry crowd lynched Goldstein in retaliation.

Israeli extremists continue to pay homage at his grave in the nearby Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, where a marble plaque reads: "To the holy Baruch Goldstein, who gave his life for the Jewish people, the Torah and the nation of Israel."

Ignoring the crimes of those you support is too often the reason those crimes continue. There are militant extremists on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and until they are all called to account, as the statement read by Bush at least promises to do, peace is unlikely.

Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has acknowledged that his troops cannot withdraw from the conflict in Somalia.

Mr Meles said he had expected to withdraw his soldiers earlier in the year, after Islamists had been driven out of the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

But he said divisions within the Somali government had left it unable to replace the Ethiopians, while not enough peacekeepers had arrived.

. . .

"Having done the main work, we had the belief and expectations that a situation would be created for us to be able to withdraw," Mr Meles told MPs.

"However, this belief and expectations could not be met according to our plan."

I can't quite put my finger on it, but something about this situation sounds familiar. [/snark]

Day 3 and spreading

Shamanic believes they're not that big a deal, Michael Van Der Galien thinks it's a war with "street terrorists". In this case at least, I think the truth is somewhere in the middle.

In the comments at Michael's post, someone left a long list of US race riots from the late 60's, all of which were far more violent than the current riots in France. I'm too young to remember any of those, but I do recall the riot in LA following the Rodney King verdict.

There, as in France, the reason for the rioting went much further than the nominal trigger. At its base, the black community in LA didn't trust the police or believe they were being treated fairly by them. The high-profile verdict sparked the underlying rage into full rioting. The same dynamic can be seen in France. The deaths of the two kids triggered the violence, but the rage that's fueling it didn't spring up out of air. It's built on prejudice, perceived or otherwise, and it colours how these events are seen by the communities affected.

Many in Villiers-le-Bel do not believe the authorities' version of events on Sunday night.

The initial results of a police inquiry suggested that officers were not to blame for the accident that killed two teenagers.

The local prosecutor said the boys' motorbike had crashed into a police patrol car at high speed, adding that three witnesses had backed up this version of events.

. . .

One police source said more investigations were needed, but here again the inquiry does not seem to be working on the premise that any "serious error" was committed.

"The cops, they have all the rights," one resident told the newspaper Liberation.

"We must get revenge," he added, "they left [the scene of the crash] as if they'd just run over a pigeon."

These riots and the ones from 2005 haven't reached anywhere near the level of violence and damage that the LA riots reached, but if the situation is left to fester, they will continue, and continue to grow, until they reach that level.

I don't envy the French police the job they have ahead of them to get order restored once again, but I'm fairly sure they'll be able to do that without putting tanks onto the streets. That's when the real work should begin.

They have to find a way to make the people there trust them; to make them feel like they're being treated in a fair manner and not like some second-class citizens. Find some way, some fashion, to properly integrate the immigrant-descended population into the rest of society. Given the current French leadership, I'm not so certain there will be any attempt to do so, which is unfortunate.

Because when your only response is to use force to keep a population under control, the amount of force you need to use keeps rising, as do the costs and retaliations.

Then they will have a war on their hands.

Who asks the more substantive questions? The reporters:

How much flak are you getting for endorsements by Chuck Norris and Ric Flair?
Is the drop in violence in Iraq making it a less important campaign issue?
What’s it like facing the Clinton political machine?
Why aren’t you spending more time in Iowa right now?
What do you think of Romney and Giuliani going after each other?
What’s going to be your strategy coming out of Iowa?

Or the bloggers:

Can you speak about the Arkansas home-schooling bill that came up when you were governor?
How is the Fair Tax likely to affect tourism in Michigan?
What are your thoughts on a parental rights amendment?
How do you plan to make education a bigger issue on the trail?
Can you respond to claims that your economic policies are in line with populist traditions of the Democratic party?
What would you say to immigrants turned off by all the anti-immigration talk among Republicans?

The result should be no surprise to anyone who reads blogs regularly. Regardless of political leanings, complaints about the MSM is pretty much standard fare, (except when they happen to agree with you). It's just rare to see such a glaring example of the MSM's failings regarding political reporting compared to bloggers on display.

After all these years of pandering to the religious right, the damned nutcases might actually vote for somebody who believes all that stuff.

Don Surber's latest plea for the Republicans:

We need our Tony Blair, our Nicolas Sarkozy.

I feel a little sorry for Steven Harper. You have to know he'd love to be held in such high regard among the Bushbots. He's even dressed for the occasion.**



He waxes long and mournful over the two above-named foreign leaders wonderful speeches to the US Congress and laments that none of the current Republican hopefuls can match their impressive rhetoric. Apparently all that Surber believes is required of a good president is the ability to stroke the egos of "patriots".

Curiously, he leaves out the quite carefully crafted State of the Union speeches uttered by the current Republican "Man of Vision" occupying the White House. Speeches quite long on the ideals of "freedom" and "democracy" and the defeat of evil. Themes the Republican candidates continue to parrot as they campaign.

The problem isn't vision, or lofty ideals. It's that their actions speak louder than their words and happen to bear very little resemblance to them.


*This column is in no way meant to disparage the noble Poodle, a breed much maligned by the comparisons made between it and Bush lapdogs, most of whom couldn't match the Poodle's intelligence.

**Picture blatantly stolen from Alison at the Galloping Beaver, which I couldn't resist using, and explains why I added to the maligning of the breed.

Matthew Yglesias turns the tables on the Iranian question:

And, indeed, it's not clear that a policy of appeasement would be wise. True, we've seen rational leadership even from vicious dictators like Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong, but the contemporary United States is led by religious fanatics, which introduces a new element into the equation. What's more, the USA is the only country on earth to have ever actually deployed nuclear weapons. Indeed, current political elites are so war-crazed and bloodthirsty that they not only engineered the 2003 attack on Iraq -- a country that tried to appease the Americans by eliminating its nuclear program and allowing IAEA inspectors to certify that it had done so -- but they continue to deny regretting it to this day. And that includes not only radicals like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, but so-called "moderates" like Hillary Clinton as well.

Key religious leaders like John Hagee explicitly argue that the United States should attack Iran in order to hasten the coming of Armageddon, and Hagee gets not only a respectful hearing at the White House, but also works closely with AIPAC giving him important entrée with many Democrats. All of the incumbent faction's candidates from office have said they'd contemplate a nuclear first strike against Iran, media sources generally lambaste anyone who criticizes American moves to ratchet up conflict with Iran, and in general any responsible Iranian leaders needs to wonder if the USA is really a country that one can risk doing business with.

David Broder in the Washington Post:

The hankering for unity is also palpable and reflects the conspicuous absence of agreement -- and excess of partisanship -- in the contemporary political scene. I have been saying for months that voters care less whether the next president will be a Democrat or a Republican than that the person moving into the Oval Office be someone who can pull the country together to face its challenges.

. . .

Where each party used to have an ideological mixture, each is now more clearly defined in opposition to the other. The result is a Republican Party that is far more universally (and stridently) conservative; and a Democratic Party whose center of gravity has moved equally far to the left.

. . .

The congressional divisions have been heightened by President Bush's strategic decision to govern almost entirely within his own party's relatively narrow political base. He courted mainly core Republicans to power his two trips to the White House, and he has relied almost exclusively on Republican votes in the House and Senate to sustain his program.

While giving him some notable victories, this strategy also solidified the opposition and stiffened the Democrats' determination to oppose him at every opportunity, whatever the consequences.

The first paragraph makes sense; the rest is that peculiar form of beltway wisdom that bears little resemblance to reality. I mean, just where is this Democratic determination to oppose the president at "every opportunity, whatever the consequences"? The Democratic party did virtually nothing while in the minority, claiming they were powerless, and now that they are the majority party, they've still given Bush just about everything he's asked for.

The Republicans, who apparently have different advisors, keep going for party unity over reaching across the aisle, which has cost them, but still allows them to paint the Democrats as weak-willed when they continually bend over backwards and collapse in their attempts for unity across party lines.

And the Democrats have moved as far to the left as the Republicans have to the right? What planet is this guy on? Look at the last election where the Democrats elected several members who were former Republicans disgusted at what their party had become. If anything, the Democratic leadership has shifted rightward. Just because the Republican party has moved to the hardest of hard right positions in most areas doesn't mean that their opponents have done the same.

But, as Brownstein notes, there has been no comparable increase in partisanship among the voters, who cling stubbornly to a common-sense, moderate conservative view and simply want the practical problems that bother them addressed. The things the public worries about -- the Iraq war, health care, energy, immigration -- are not partisan problems but national challenges.

More-or-less true, with the caveat that there aren't any moderate conservatives left in the Republican party. Success for the Democrats will come when they stop trying to court the ultra-partisan Republican supporters and start speaking to the vast majority of Americans who already support their ideas, if they'd only start standing up for them.

Man, the neocon supporters are out in force today.  Along with the VD man’s column, we have this gem from the Times of London.

And much like Hanson’s argument, the author tries to paint Bush and his policies as being very much in line with what his critics are advocating, although in his case, it's to argue that Bush just hasn't been neoconservative enough.

Critics of George W. Bush's Middle East policy are hoping for a change in direction once America's 43rd President has left the White House. The foreign offices of Europe all hope for more multilateralism. More realpolitik. Less sabre-rattling.

The critics have a problem, however. In reality, Team Bush has largely been following European approaches to foreign policy for most of the world's troublespot nations.

Of course! The reason everyone's complaining is because Bush is doing exactly what we want him to do! How could I have missed that?

Take Pakistan. The “realist school” couldn't honestly disapprove of any aspect of Bush's dealings with Islamabad. American taxpayers have financed a military dictator in the hope that Musharraf will suppress the fundamentalists and provide logistical support for Nato operations in Afghanistan. Has this worked? No. Islamic militancy is mushrooming.

Yep, no “realist” could argue that supporting the guy who’s military and intelligence services propped up the Taliban for years and turned a blind eye to the worst nuclear proliferator in human history might not turn out to be a good idea.

And Bush’s standing right on side with the General as he works to crush his secular domestic critics while leaving the Islamists to their own devices is right in line with the foreign offices of other nations, like the British Commonwealth, for instance.

And let’s not forget that this is totally on Bush’s watch.  The Clinton administration cut off ties in protest over Pakistan’s nuclear tests.  Bush reversed the policy after 9/11 and sent billions in military aid that Musharraf has used to arm for possible war against India instead of fighting the insurgents in the Northwest frontier provinces.

Musharraf has often bargained with the political patrons of the madrassas in order to stymie his democratic opponents. If he falls, the Pakistan people may see America as the nation that propped up the regime that introduced martial law and warped the constitution.

May?

It's all too reminiscent of its relationship with the Shah of Iran in the 1970s. [Oh, how much they've learned! - ed] When it comes to present-day Iran, Team Bush has been patiently multilateralist. Washington allowed the years to pass as Europe promised to negotiate an end to Tehran's nuclear plans. As it became obvious that the talks were failing, the Americans turned to the United Nations. Russia and China have vetoed any significant action.

Yup, patiently refusing to “talk to evil” and demanding complete capitulation from the Iranians as the precursors for any possible talks.  Very multilateralest of them.

A couple paragraphs of how the “surge” is turning the tide in Iraq and how we should wait for history’s judgment because Iraq could turn into paradise and if we don’t follow the pre-emptive war policy on Iran, it will be the great nuclear terror of the planet, and then this conclusion:

When it comes to foreign policy the next US president has to remember that America is most effective when the world's only policeman is seen as strong, as in the immediate aftermath of the Iraq invasion. Libya disarmed. The Khan nuclear exchange programme was exposed. Syria withdrew from Lebanon. Problems multiplied when America looked unwilling to commit necessary troops to finish the first battles of the War on Terror. A weak America, tied down by do-nothing multilateralists, is the last thing our dangerous world needs.

I just love how now it’s the mutlilateralists fault that Bush and Co. didn’t send enough troops to do the job.  It’s the multilateralists fault that Bush and Co. pissed away the US’s military strength and tied themselves fighting two insurgencies.  It’s the multilateralists fault that the US finds itself too weakened to properly threaten Iran.  Apparently if we’d just allowed Bush to be more of a neoconservative, none of those problems would have cropped up.

Of course, when you’re trying to argue that talks are useless and that war is the necessary route, some blatant revisionism is pretty much the order of the day.  And the real lie is one of omission, because there is one foreign policy success of Bush’s that the article doesn’t bother to mention at all, North Korea.

The reason is quite simple; the North Korean example directly contradicts the point the author is trying to make.  When Bush and Co. tried the same strategy they’re trying with Iran, refusing to negotiate unless the North Koreans capitulated first, the North Koreans pulled out of the NPT and rushed ahead with a bomb program.  When the US swallowed its rhetoric and sat down at the negotiating table, the North Koreans agreed to dismantle their program and allow IAEA inspectors back into the country in return for US aid.

Normally, supporters of the Bush administration would be happy to tout any and all successes, even ones like the “surge”, whose success is yet debatable, but the North Korean success leaves them in quite a quandary.  Tout it, and it while it could boost Bush’s image, it also touts a strategy diametrically opposed to what they want to do with Iran.  Ignore it, and Bush’s image continues to deteriorate to levels where he can’t do what they want him to do with Iran.  A lose-lose game.

I’m sure the multilateralists are to blame somehow.

Will Neocon Ideas Return?

Somebody should inform the "eminent" scholar that for something to return, it first has to leave. Neocon thought and ideas are well and thriving in the Republican presidential field. Short of Ron Paul, they all toe the line when it comes to the neocons pet projects.

Hanson, of course, does his best to try and camouflage what neocon ideas actually are so he can pretend the Democrats are coming over to their side:

As fear of defeat in Iraq recedes from the political landscape, look to a growing consensus elsewhere. "Neocon" - the term often used to describe "new" conservatives who today support fostering democracy in the Middle East - may still be a dirty word.

But if you take the anger about George Bush out of the equation, along with the Iraq war and the fear of any more invasions by the U.S., why not support democratic reform in the Middle East? We know the alternatives only play into the hands of terrorists.

That's why presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., recently said that America needed to support democracy and pressure Gen. Pervez Musharraf to restore elections in Pakistan.

Few Democrats or Republicans would disagree with his idealistic rhetoric. Although Obama wouldn't express the same support for the struggling Iraqi democracy, he sort of sounded like a softer neocon - more worried about the lack of freedom in Pakistan than the fact we might undermine a strongman with nukes and a restive population.

See! We neocons support "fostering democracy", and that makes Democrats who think we should support democracy just "softer" neocons.

Of course, neocons only want to "foster" democracy after first making their target countries orphans. Thier philosophy isn't about supporting democracy, but about imposing democracy by force.

And further, as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and most recently Pakistan have shown, they're only about democracy "support" when the country in question opposes the US-Israeli hegemon. When it comes to dictators who are allies, the neocons are suddenly willing to accept platitudes about "support for democracy" that don't have to be matched by actions. (Or, they can go completely delusional like Bush and pretend that dictators are democrats! Really!) That glaring hypocrisy, added to an ever-eager willingness to use force to try and solve every problem, is what neoconservatism has come to stand for.

And its that philosophy that most people would be very happy to see the back of.

The election strategy of the Australian prime minister, John Howard, was in turmoil today after members of his Liberal party were caught red-handed in an inept dirty tricks campaign.

Bogus flyers from a fake organisation called the Islamic Australia Federation were distributed through the letterboxes of voters in a marginal seat, claiming the Labor opposition sympathised with Islamic terrorists.

The leaflets referred to the men imprisoned for the 2002 nightclub bomb attacks in Bali, which left more than 200 people dead. The flyers also claimed Labor support for the building of new mosques in the area.

Let's see, the party of staunch Bush ally in the "War on Terror" caught pandering to anti-Muslim sentiment as a ploy to get votes. I wonder where they got that idea?

and another example of how tasers, rather than a means of last resort, are being used to force people to comply simply because it seems so much easier.

And why worry? After all, the manufacturer tells us they're completely "safe".

As I pointed out before, their "safety" isn't the issue. It's how they're being used that's the problem. The increasingly careless use of these weapons to force obedience is the best argument I've seen for banning their use. And Digby says it quite well:

Police in the country are now allowed to torture speeders by the side of the highway in order to get them to comply. The only difference between this officer slugging the speeder in the stomach and putting 50,0000 volts of electricity in him is that the latter doesn't leave any marks. The intent, the pain and the goose-stepping authoritarian message are exactly the same.

Time to take their new toy away.

Bush's grasp of reality seems as spot on as ever, more's the pity.

President Bush yesterday offered his strongest support of embattled Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, saying the general "hasn't crossed the line" and "truly is somebody who believes in democracy."

Well, I suppose when when you consider the Bush definition of democracy . . .

As for the sheer ridiculousness of the "crossed the line" bit, the quote from Biden about sums it up.

"What exactly would it take for the president to conclude Musharraf has crossed the line? Suspend the constitution? Impose emergency law? Beat and jail his political opponents and human rights activists?" asked Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a presidential candidate. "He's already done all that. If the president sees Musharraf as a democrat, he must be wearing the same glasses he had on when he looked in Vladimir Putin's soul."

It's bad enough the US has to deal with people like this as a function of their foreign policy, but the sheer and utter hypocrisy that surrounds those dealings just makes everything else they say about democracy promotion, human rights, and peace initiatives that much more suspect and less credible.

Joseph Galloway - McClatchy

We don’t rush into a war that has cost so many lives and so much national treasure, and has so damaged our standing in the world, based on a tissue of lies. But under the leadership of George W. Bush, that's what we did in Iraq.

We don’t stand idly by, backs turned and eyes closed, while in wartime our friends and political contributors loot the national treasury of billions of taxpayer dollars. But the Bush administration and a Republican-controlled Congress did just that.

We don’t send our soldiers and Marines into combat without enough of everything they need to fight, survive and win. But that's what this administration and its political operatives in charge of the Pentagon did.

We don’t turn the office of the attorney general and key parts of the Justice Department into a branch of a partisan political campaign — gutting offices charged with protecting the civil rights of minorities and directing the prosecution of those of a different political party — but this administration did.

We don’t declare war and then expect that the entire sacrifice will be borne by the half a percent of our population who wear uniforms. We don’t fight a long and costly war by cutting taxes on the wealthiest Americans and borrowing trillions of dollars to finance it from foreign competitors such as China. But this administration did.

We don’t prosecute a war to spread democracy by curtailing democracy and suspending the Bill of Rights at home. We cannot promote our principles abroad by denying the same principles — the right to a lawyer, the right to a fair trial, the right to be secure in our homes — to ourselves. But this administration did.

We don’t beat or torture confessions out of prisoners in violation of our laws and the laws of the civilized world. We don’t lock people up and hold them incommunicado for years without charges or trials. But this administration did and does.

We don’t applaud and cheer an administration and a Congress that make the rich vastly richer, the middle class less secure and the poor even poorer. But this administration has done just that, in violation of our principles and the principles of love, peace and charity that are engrained in the Christianity that these rogues and charlatans embrace so publicly but violate every day.

It will be a good day when they are gone, and good riddance to them all.

Cheers.

Disgusting:

The U.S. Military is demanding that thousands of wounded service personnel give back signing bonuses because they are unable to serve out their commitments.

To get people to sign up, the military gives enlistment bonuses up to $30,000 in some cases.

Now men and women who have lost arms, legs, eyesight, hearing and can no longer serve are being ordered to pay some of that money back.

This must be that new kind of fiscal conservatism that Bush is suddenly a fan of. Screw over the wounded so that you have more money to send Halliburton's way.

Scott McClellan edition:

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan names names in a caustic passage from a forthcoming memoir that accuses President Bush, Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney of being "involved" in his giving the press false information about the CIA leak case.

McClellan’s publisher released three paragraphs from the book “WHAT HAPPENED: Inside the Bush White House and What’s Wrong With Washington.”

The excerpts give no details about the alleged involvement of the president or vice president.

But McClellan lists five top officials as having allowed him inadvertently to mislead the public.

“I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the seniormost aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby,” McClellan wrote.

“There was one problem. It was not true.”

No shit. Once again, thanks for waiting until you could profit from it to tell us all.

Yury Baluyevsky, the chief of Russia's general staff, said in an interview with the Russia Today TV channel on Tuesday that the Russian Armed Forces were under no obligation to protect the world from the U.S. Answering a question as to whether or not the world could count on Russia to defend it from "insidious American plans," Baluyevsky replied, "Today, there is no need to be afraid of the Russian Armed Forces. However, I do not believe that the Russian military is obliged to defend the world from the evil Americans".

There was a time that would have been funny, and of course to some extent it still is, but . . .

This story seems to be getting very little coverage this side of the Atlantic:

The death toll from Sunday's blast at a mine in Ukraine has risen to at least 90, making it the worst mining accident in the nation's history, officials say.

They say 10 miners are still missing in the Zasyadko coal mine in the eastern Donetsk region.

Fires have hindered rescue efforts, and a senior union official has said there is no chance of finding survivors.

Not that there aren't plenty of other stories out there to distract us, but mining disasters usually get more of a reaction, particularly those with large numbers of casualties and ongoing rescue efforts.

Is there any industry with a poorer safety record than mining, I wonder?

One other thing of note.

Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych said on Sunday that there had been a cave-in at the accident site.

He also said a safety watchdog had reported that miners were working in accordance with regulations.

"This accident has proven once again that a human is powerless before the nature," Mr Yanukovych said, according to the Associated Press news agency.

But President Yushchenko said the government had "made insufficient efforts to reorganise the mining sector, particularly the implementation of safe mining practices".

Using a disaster to try and push a partisan political agenda. I wonder where they learned that from?

Modeled on what appears to be a successful "Anbar Awakening" in Iraq, the US is apparently looking to arm Pakistani tribesmen to help in their fight against al Qaeda.

Altogether, the broader strategic move toward more local support is being accelerated because of concern about instability in Pakistan and the weakness of the Pakistani government, as well as fears that extremists with havens in the tribal areas could escalate their attacks on allied troops in Afghanistan. Just in recent weeks, Islamic militants sympathetic to Al Qaeda and the Taliban have already extended their reach beyond the frontier areas into more settled areas, most notably the mountainous region of Swat.

. . .

Historically, American Special Forces have gone into foreign countries to work with local militaries to improve the security of those countries in ways that help American interests. Under this new approach, the number of advisers would increase, officials said.

The problem here is that they're not talking about supporting the Pakistani military. They're talking about arming and supporting local militia forces that don't generally acknowledge Islamabad's authority. Doing so pushes the Pakistani state into greater instability and weakness, which only helps a non-state force like al Qaeda.

And this doesn't sound too encouraging regarding the amount of thought they've put into things:

One person who was briefed on the proposal prepared by the Special Operations Command staff members, and who spoke on condition of anonymity because the briefing had not yet been approved, said it was in the form of about two dozen slides. The slides described a strategy using both military and nonmilitary measures to fight the militants.

One slide included a chart that categorized one to two dozen tribes by location — North Waziristan and South Waziristan, for example — and then gave a brief description of their location, their known or suspected links to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and their size and military abilities.

A couple of dozen slides? One slide to tell people about known and suspected al Qaeda links for the entire region?

It's little wonder the US rarely seems to make any good decisions when they are based on such a paucity of data.

From Harpers

IG investigators were astonished particularly by what transpired in the first ten days of Arar’s detention. Well-defined procedures were not followed. The State Department was consciously kept out of the loop. Steps were taken to circumvent Arar’s rights, and particularly to guard against the prospect that a lawyer for Arar would challenge his highly dubious treatment through a habeas corpus proceeding. Who was at fault in this process? A group of very senior figures, mostly in the U.S. Department of Justice.

Justice Department figures, and particularly those who are fingered and criticized in the early drafts of the IG Report, have been frantic in their efforts to quash it. And they’re succeeding. That, I am told, is why the IG Report has not been finalized and transmitted to Congress.

Arar more than deserves an official apology from the US government, at the very least, but you can guarentee that it won't happen under this administration.

It appears that this won't be going away anytime soon.

Canada's ambassador to Poland has been invited to sit down with Polish officials in Warsaw on Monday to discuss the death of Robert Dziekanski after he was stunned by an RCMP Taser at Vancouver International Airport.

Which I believe is diplomatic-speak for, "reaming you a new asshole for killing one of our citizens". Certainly would be nice if our government cared that much about Canadian lives.

Many Poles view it as a case of excessive force by police using a weapon that may be unsafe, Piotr Ogrodzinski, the Polish ambassador to Canada, said in Ottawa on Thursday

Judging from the comments on seeing the video, I'd say most Canadians feel the same way. Maybe now that it's turning into an international incident, we might see some serious review of police tactics.

Not that I'm too hopeful.