Northman's Fury

Monks return to the streets of Burma

Given what happened just last month, that takes some serious courage.

Speculation over whether or not the Turks are going to launch a major attack across the border into Iraq are still being bandied about, and I came across a couple of interesting articles in that vein.

When I posted regarding the possibility of a Turkish incursion, I used last year’s Israeli war with Lebanon as a sort of template.  I didn’t bother to point out the rather hypocritical positions that the US has been taking over the two scenarios, but Gwynne Dyer has no such problems.

Fifteen months ago, the armed wing of Lebanon’s Hezbollah party, listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and most other Western countries, attacked Israel’s northern border, capturing two Israeli soldiers and killing eight more. Israel replied with a month of massive air attacks all across Lebanon that destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure, leveled a good deal of south Beirut, and killed around a thousand Lebanese civilians.

Washington, London, Ottawa and some other Western capitals insisted that this was a reasonable and proportionate response, and shielded Israel from intense diplomatic pressure to stop the attacks even when Israel launched a land invasion of southern Lebanon in early August, 2006. The operation only ended when Israeli casualties on the ground mounted rapidly and the Israeli government pulled its troops back.

So what would be a reasonable and proportionate Turkish response to the recent attacks by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and most other Western countries, from northern Iraq into southeastern Turkey?

. . .

What’s that? Washington is asking Turkey to show restraint and not attack Iraq at all? Even after the Kurdish terrorists killed or kidnapped all those Turkish people? Could it be that Turkish lives are worth less than Israeli lives?

Of course, the special relationship Israel enjoys with the US is well-known, even if the alliance with Turkey is far more formal, as in Turkey is an official NATO ally who the US, (and Canada), is supposed to support when they are attacked by an outside party.

Still Dyer marks the hypocrisy even further than that:

Never mind. At least the United States officially classes the PKK as a terrorist organization and refuses to let its officials have any contact with it. But what’s this? There is a parallel terrorist organization called the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), essentially a branch office of the PKK, also based in northern Iraq, which carries out attacks into the adjacent Kurdish-populated region of Iran, and the United States does not condemn the PJAK? It even sends its officials to have friendly chats with the PJAK terrorists? How odd!

The PJAK’s leader, Rahman Haj-Ahmadi, paid an unofficial visit to Washington last summer. One of his close associates, Biryar Gabar, claims to have “normal dialogue” with US officials, according to a report last Tuesday in the New York Times — and the American military spokesman in Baghdad, Cmdr. Scott Rye, issued a carefully structured nondenial saying that “The consensus is that US forces are not working with or advising the PJAK.”

Biryar Gabar also said that PJAK fighters have killed at least 150 Iranian soldiers and officials in the past three months. That’s a lot more people than the PKK have killed in Turkey in the same time, and yet neither Washington nor any other Western country has expressed sympathy for Iran. Could it be that Iranian lives are worth even less than Turkish lives?

If you’re even slightly surprised that Iranian lives don’t factor into Washington’s decisions, (at least not maintaining their lives), you really need to read more.  The real factor that Dyer doesn’t quite get around to mentioning, is that the Turks have also found a good number of weapons the Americans supplied to the Iraqi Army, some of them unfortunately "lost", that have ended up in the hands of the PKK. It doesn't take too much of a leap to guess that given the US's cozy relations with PJAK and their intentions regarding Iran, that some of those "lost" weapons were headed to Kurdish territory all along, and that the two terror groups have been working together.

Still, it’s the next part that got the neurons firing:

And here’s something even more peculiar. Iran, like Turkey, is already shelling Kurdish villages on the Iraqi side of the frontier that it suspects of sheltering or supplying the PKK/PJAK. How come President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney simply ignore these actions, when they have been working hard for the past year to build a case for attacking Iran?

That, when you think about it, is an excellent question.  The Bush administration hardly seems shy about attributing all sorts of nastiness in Iraq to the Iranians, even designating their Revolutionary Guards as a “special terrorist organization”, but the one clear, easily provable Iranian military action on Iraqi soil gets almost no attention whatsoever.

Dyer’s hopeful explanation aside, I think it may speak more to just how much the Turks will be allowed to get away with if they do in fact launch a punitive invasion.  When even Christopher Hitchens has trouble defending the PKK, you know the odds of any nation siding with them are practically non-existent.

The second article by Eric Margolis gives a much better picture of just how screwed up the whole situation is, but takes the question of just what the Turks may do quite a bit further.

A new danger looms. The US invasion devastated Iraq and effectively split into three pieces - fulfilling the first step in Israel’s grand strategy of fragmenting Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria. Iraq’s Mosul oil region, which formerly belonged to the Ottoman Empire, is a mere 119 kms from Turkey’s border. Kirkuk is only a bit further. After World War I, the British Empire grabbed this oil-rich region, cobbling together the unnatural state of Iraq to safeguard the oil.

If Iraq slides further into the abyss, Turkey and Iran may partition Iraq. Today, Turkey has no oil. Its fragile economy is hammered by having to earn US dollars to buy oil. But if Turkey repossessed Iraq’s northern oil fields, this nation of 70 million with 515,000 men at arms would become an important power that would reassert traditional Turkish influence in the Mideast, Balkans, Caucasus, and Central Asia.

`Pan-Turanism,’ the idea of spreading Turkish influence from its eastern border across the Turkic lands of Central Asia to the Great Wall of China remains dear to the hearts of many Turkish nationalists and far rightists. Iraq’s huge oil reserves are a big temptation Ankara cannot ignore. After all, if the US can invade Iraq for oil, why not neighboring, ex-owner Turkey?

I don’t pretend to be an expert on Turkey or its people’s ambitions, but I can say that any attempt to try and control northern Iraq’s oil fields will prove disastrous for Turkey.  The PKK engender no sympathy, and the evidence points to Turkey not suffering too badly on the diplomatic front from a quick, punitive campaign, but if they are foolish enough to turn things into a long-term occupation, the price will far outweigh any possible benefits from their “control” of the oilfields.

For one, the diplomatic blind eye I believe most countries will turn towards a short campaign will turn to an intense glare in short order if it appears the Turks are planning to stay.  A not insignificant fraction of the EU is looking for excuses to keep Turkey out, and a Turkish occupation will ensure they succeed.  And the oil around Mosul and Kirkuk aren’t worth as much to Turkey as open trade with Europe.

As for the oil itself, even the Sunni Iraqi insurgents have been successful in shutting down the flow from northern Iraq on a repeated basis.  One can safely assume the Kurds themselves can do a far better job denying the oil resources to an occupying Turkish army, not to mention giving them even greater incentive to expand their campaign to the BTC pipeline running from the Caspian to Europe, making Turkey an unreliable source for oil transport.  It’s not inconceivable that a Turkish occupation could roil oil markets just as much as an American attack on Iran.

And for those who think that the Turks are capable of some special brand of brutality that the US and Israelis just can’t muster anymore, and that that will allow them to somehow crush any opposition where other Western powers have failed, I would remind them that this is the same argument used by some after Ethiopia invaded Somalia, and that certainly hasn’t worked out according to plan.

That’s not to say I don’t find the scenario entirely unlikely.  After all, if the last several years have taught us anything, it’s that we can’t trust governments, and particularly governments who have their people whipped up into a jingoistic rage, (even a justified one), to make rational choices when they see an opportunity to enrich themselves.

But I stand behind my contention that if the Turks do anything beyond a short, sharp shock attack into Iraq followed by an immediate withdrawal, they will learn to regret it.

And the average intelligence of the Republican Party takes another major hit.

Former prime minister Brian Mulroney attempted to cover up cash payments of $300,000 he received from a secret account, Karlheinz Schreiber told CBC's The Fifth Estate.

That, unfortunately, isn't the cover-up I'm talking about. The $300,000 in cash Mulroney eventually admitted to receiving in hotel rooms, is linked to an investigation into the Airbus kickbacks scandal. At the time, the investigation into Mulroney's involvement didn't go anywhere and Mulroney sued the Canadian government for damaging his reputation and got a cool $2.1 million for his troubles.

So now that it is known that Mulroney actually did receive cash payments from Schreiber, just what is our intrepid RCMP doing about it?

Documents obtained by CBC News show that the Justice Department looked into whether or not it could attempt to recover the $2.1 million-settlement Mulroney received after revelations Mulroney had accepted cash payments from Schreiber.

But the RCMP shut down the investigation into Mulroney, even saying he'd never be charged again, without confirming whether or not Mulroney even got the money or what it might have been used for.

Shut the investigation down? The guy scammed the Canadian taxpayer out of an additional two million dollars based on his claim that he didn't receive any money from Schreiber, and after he is forced to admit that he did receive a quite nice sum from the man, in cash, the RCMP doesn't even think its worth looking in to. Whose right are these guys defending?

The United States is starting to look like a slowpoke on the Internet. Examples abound of countries that have faster and cheaper broadband connections, and more of their population connected to them.

What's less clear is how badly the country that gave birth to the Internet is doing, and whether the government needs to step in and do something about it. The Bush administration has tried to foster broadband adoption with a hands-off approach. If that's seen as a failure by the next administration, the policy may change.

The US is definitely falling behind, dropping from 4th to 15th between 2001 and 2006 for the number of households with broadband access. Even more to the point, broadband access in many other countries is both much faster and much cheaper than in the US.

The reason?

Now, ten years ago Japan had slower internet than the US. So they looked to the US to see how to do it - and they saw that the US had open access laws (where in the old days, companies could buy access to the lines at wholesale rates - which is why there was an ISP on every corner in the 90's) and decided they were key.

So they opened up broadband access - mandated that phone and cable lines had to be available to whoever wanted access. As SaveTheInternet points out:

If this quaint idea of “competition” seems familiar, that’s because America invented “open access” policies in the first place. And open access worked for decades to bring lower prices and more choices in long-distance phone service and dial-up Internet access.

The Japanese first adopted open access because they were worried about falling behind us. But under pressure from our own phone and cable monopolists, the Bush administration abandoned open access – and the fundamental protections for Net Neutrality along with it.

Now they’re standing idly by as America drops further and further behind the rest of the world in every measure of broadband progress.

. . .

When you don't have competition, with few exceptions, you don't get progress or better products. And so the US has worse broadband. It has worse wireless. It has worse (and deliberately crippled) phones. It's falling behind in the very industry it invented. All because a few gatekeeper corporations don't want to have to compete and because the Bush administration and conservative justices believe in concentration of wealth rather than progress and competition.

Net neutrality isn't just about fairness; it's about competitiveness, and the big telecoms in the US don't want to have to deal with competitors. As long as their government allows them to set the rules, the US as a whole is going to keep falling behind.

Canadian officials are taking the unprecedented step of asking a judge to install closed-circuit video cameras inside a terrorism suspect's family home, arguing national security necessitates the scrutiny.

. . .

Canadian officials accuse Mr. Jaballah of playing a "communications relay" role in a major terrorist massacre - al-Qaeda's 1998 African embassy bombings. His potential access to fax machines, computers and telephones inside his family home, where he lives with his wife and five children, deeply worries the government.

Mr. Jaballah, who was never charged with a criminal offence, spent nearly all of 1999 to 2007 in jail. Attempts to deport him to Egypt, a country known to torture fundamentalists, failed on humanitarian grounds.

Maybe it's just me, but I was under the, apparently mistaken, impression that I lived in a country where people actually had to be charged or convicted of a offence before we were allowed to throw them in jail for several years or turn the house where he lives, with his family, into a closed-circuit version of Big Brother.

Like four other alleged al-Qaeda-affiliated foreigners held under controversial "security certificate" powers, he has recently agreed to live under extraordinary surveillance, in return for being let out of jail.

Past measures have included the suspects submitting to being followed by federal agents during their few weekly excursions, having their calls monitored, staying away from computers and having video cameras installed - but outside the home. Never before has any Canadian prisoner on bail been known to have had to countenance cameras inside the household.

What's the saying about giving an authoritarian an inch? Allow your rights to be taken away, and they'll just keep taking them.

It's for the Daily Mail, but a few substitutions, and I'm sure it would just as well for the New York Post or Fox News.

Check it out.

Via the comments at Balloon Juice, an article regarding the lack of recent debate over the Iraq War strategy.  The recent drop in US casualties has been used to claim a success for the “surge” strategy, without any real analysis whether or not the strategy being employed is actually the same as the surge proponents promised at its beginning or if it bodes well for future development in the country.

Body counts are only one small part of a much larger puzzle.  What I want to know is not the day to day casualty trends, or good news stories from some carefully selected hamlet, or the latest assassination of an Awakening shaykh.   I want to know:   does the devolution to the local level make strategic sense, even if it reaps short-term tactical sense?  Towards what endpoint are the tactics leading?   Do we want to see a unified Iraq with a sustainable political accord - the official goal of American policy, as Undersecretary of State Nick Burns reminded the DACOR audience yesterday?  If so, are American political and military tactics encouraging or discouraging such an outcome? . . .



I was surprised at the consensus on our panel yesterday (among three people who have never discussed the issue before, and from much of a very knowledgeable and experienced audience based on post-session conversations) about where Iraq was heading:  towards a warlord state, along a Basra model, with power devolved to local militias, gangs, tribes, and power-brokers, with a purely nominal central state. 

As I've argued repeatedly, this is the most likely effect, intended or otherwise, of the Petraeus-Crocker tactics.   The US is empowering local actors at the expense of the national level, while both communities are fragmenting at a remarkable rate.  The Sunni side is divided among the various insurgency factions (their efforts at forming a Political Council notwithstanding), the various Awakenings (which are themselves internally divided, bickering over power and personalities), tribes and local leaders looking out for their own, and an al-Qaeda movement which peaked last fall when it launched its abortive and self-defeating bid for hegemony with its ill-fated Islamic State of Iraq project.   On the Shia side, the UIA has fragmented, the Mahdi Army has fragmented (though reportedly Sadr has used the ceasefire period to try to sort things out), Badrists and Sadrists are fighting in the streeets, Sistani has lost influence and his aides are being murdered at an alarming rate, and as Jon Alterman has pointed out there are some 144 competing militias in Basra alone. 

This kind of fragmentation might help the US in its tactical maneuvers at the local level, and buy local stability in the short term.  But it is absolute anathema to any kind of national deal.  As Jim Fearon, one of the leading political scientists working on civil wars, recently put it, "a power-sharing deal tends to hold only when every side is relatively cohesive. How can one party expect that another will live up to its obligations if it has no effective control over its own members?"   It also deeply complicates any neat ideas about partition, of course, since there are no unified blocs to which one could easily devolve power.

Tactics working against strategy - that's been the concern I've been expressing for many months now. I haven't been reassured.  Instead of getting sucked into debates over body counts, or clutching at whatever good or bad news crosses the headlines each morning, the national debate should be looking at the big picture.  It isn't about how we are doing day to day - what are we trying to achieve? 

The complete fragmentation of the Iraqi state into myriad competing militias now seems a foregone conclusion, particularly given the US has decided to support those local militias in an attempt to reduce violence and its own casualties.  This has worked in the short term in places like Anbar, where the local leadership used the opportunity to rid themselves of AQI, but the local leadership is no more supportive of the central government than they were before, or, for that matter, than AQI was.

Add the recent kidnapping of Sunni sheiks by an offshoot of al-Sadr’s Shiite forces, and you can see that this model isn’t exactly inspiring national reconciliation and cooperation.

The situation in Basra, which the British have basically abandoned to the Iraqis, is thought by some to be a model of just what may happen in all of Iraq when the US and what’s left of the coalition pulls itself out of the cities and leaves them to Iraqis.  The British experience is instructive.

The British Army campaign in Basra is exhausted and looking for a way out. That is the conclusion of one of the most senior Army officers in Iraq, in a necessarily anonymous interview with our foreign correspondent Gethin Chamberlain today.

"We are tired of firing at people," the officer said. "We would prefer to find a political accommodation."

The report paints a bleak picture of an Iraq in which the British have ceded control of Basra city, and must even ask the local Shia militias for permission to skirt its edges. The Iraqis within Basra have been effectively surrendered to rule by paramilitary squads, and the British-trained Iraqi police are ineffectual and compromised. Politically, the British are placing their faith in a Shia general, Gen Mohan al-Furayji, and negotiating with him in preference to the elected provincial governor.

They;re not even trying to fight anymore, and a recent story in the Washington Post makes it apparent the US Army is doing much the same, if not in an official capacity.

And this does all lead to a drop in casualties, if only temporarily, but achieves virtually nothing else. As for the last part of Marc's post:

UPDATE:  one of the commenters below brings up the point that the sheer magnitude of oil resources in Iraq makes control of Baghdad so valuable that an Afghan or Somali style warlordism is unlikely.  That's a good point, which actually did come up in the DACOR panel discussion, made by Jim Planke I believe.  The upshot is that the model for Iraq's future may most plausibly by Nigeria.  So, as before it's worth thinking about whether a Nigeria outcome (as opposed to Somali or Lebanese or any other outcome) is compatible with US interests (and Iraqi aspirations) and worth the expenditure of US resources to achieve.

The question is more whether Nigeria will start looking like Iraq than the other way around. Both the insurgents in Iraq and in the Nigerian delta have proven a remarkable capability to limit the transport and production of oil by targeting infrastructure and occasionally oil workers. This disruption of oil supplies has helped push the price into record territory, which makes profits from oil bunkering and other black market opportunities much more lucrative. Indeed, this is a large part of how the Iraqi insurgency funds itself.

Given the very real possibility that Peak Oil is here or very soon approaching, oil prices aren't about to diminish significantly, which allows small groups to effectively hold their governments ransom by denying them the ability to get the oil to market. That not only makes their black market sales even more lucrative, but denies the central government the revenue it needs to provide the services it has to in order to win over the population.

And if you think that this kind of disruption will encourage the oil companies to come to the aid of that central government to exert its control, you might want to remember that some companies are already negotiating separate contracts with Kurdish authorities because the central government can't agree on an oil bill favourable to them. Which is to say that the oil industy will make its accommodations with whoever they need to so they can get their oil, the Iraqi government be damned.

The current "strategy", if it can be called that, is a holding pattern. The end result is no longer in American hands, and hasn't been for quite some time.

Obama fields a question on Net Neutrality.



And he didn't use the word "tubes" even once.

A co-worker of mine mentioned the other day hearing that fiction is harder to write than fact, because fiction has to at least seem real. The following story made me thing of it:

On the eve of an important Senate committee meeting to consider the legislation, Nancy A. Nord, the acting chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, has asked lawmakers in two letters not to approve the bulk of legislation that would increase the agency’s authority, double its budget and sharply increase its dwindling staff.

. . .

Ms. Nord, who before joining the agency had been a lawyer at Eastman Kodak and an official at the United States Chamber of Commerce, criticized the measure in letters sent late last week and this afternoon to the Democratic leaders of the committee. . . .

She opposed making it easier to bring criminal prosecutions of companies that knowingly sell defective products and also criticized a measure that would make it easier for the commission to publicly disclose reports of faulty products.

While manufacturers had agreed on another provision that would give independent company laboratories the authority to test products and certify their safety, Ms. Nord said she objected to the provision and preferred that the legislation give the commission the authority to defer to the work of the laboratories, should it choose to.

Some of Ms. Nord’s complaints were similar to the ones that business groups and manufacturers have raised, including that the legislation would be unnecessarily burdensome. But in other areas, such as whistleblower protection for company employees, her complaints went beyond those of industry.

It would be one thing if she was playing toady to industry. One kind of expects such things from political appointees. But to oppose measures even the industry thinks are good ideas? That's ideology run amok.

Apparently, she isn't actually being directed by the White House who appointed her. There isn't any need since they believe in the same thing, which apparently doesn't include the safety of consumers. It might seem an odd choice for the head of a consumer safety commission until you remember this is the Bush administration. These are the same people who just appointed somebody to be in charge of U.S. contraception programs. who is opposed to contraception. Putting people in charge of agencies whose efforts they are diametrically opposed to is what this administration does. The rest of us be damned.

Apparently we Canucks are becoming quite the little arms merchants:

Canada's military exports have more than tripled over the past seven years, a CBC News investigation has learned.

Over the past seven years, Canada has exported $3.6 billion in military goods. Canada now exports more arms and military goods than it imports.

The CBC analysis is based on customs data on exports specifically for military use, such as tanks, rocket launchers and munitions.

The surge in exports has made Canada the sixth-biggest supplier of military goods to the world, according to the most recent report by the U.S. Congressional Research Service.

The government's last annual report to Parliament, for 2002, showed that military exports had climbed to $678 million from $304 million in 1997.

Of course the real story is just how much we don't know about.

But the full extent of Canada's military exports is hard to track with precision, because for the past four years the federal government has not released annual reports providing detailed information to Parliament.

. . .

Epps cited a recent report by the Small Arms Survey, a Geneva-based monitoring group, which dropped Canada's transparency rating on arms controls to just above that of Iran.

"Canada's rating is 11 on the scale out of 20 this year and the rating for Iran is 10.5," Epps said. "What does that say to you?"

Add in the fact that weapons sales to the US don't even need a government permit and aren't even tracked and you begin to get the feeling that some of those weapons may be going places they shouldn't; if not directly, then because we don't bother to keep tabs on them after we've sold them to people who could be middlemen.

Still, its nice to know at least one industry doesn't appear to be hurt by the high dollar.

Heavy fighting has been ravaging the capital for three straight days now, and the Somali Prime Minister has been turfed.

Somalia's transitional Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Ghedi has resigned.

Mr Ghedi told MPs of his decision after handing a note to President Abdullahi Ahmed Yusuf.

Mr Ghedi had been blamed for failing to quell the Islamist insurgency in Somalia and for bringing Ethiopian troops onto Somali soil.

The Ethiopian troops are fast making themselves new friends,

On Sunday, thousands fled the capital, Mogadishu, after Ethiopian troops opened fire on protestors.

And to think that there were people telling us just how much we could learn from the Ethiopians and their brilliant tactics. It was easy to tell they didn't have a clue then, and now that the real lessons are coming home, they won't be listening. Still, it's worth revisiting what they should be learning about counterinsurgency from the Ethiopians, (if they were still paying attention).

Interestingly enough, despite Ethiopia's penchant for unrestrained brutality and disregard for international norms, as well as relatively inattentive media coverage, it appears that an insurgency is taking root and thriving regardless. To such a degree that Ethiopian forces are heading for the exits and the current Somali government can barely take up residence in the nation's capital.

Why, it's almost as if insurgencies can get by without the aid and comfort of American leftists, humanitarian groups, the UN and the treasonous Western media. One might even conclude that, at times, insurgents have goals and motivations that provide their own animating impetus - not derived solely from the domestic political situation in the occupier's home country. Imagine the implications.

Perhaps we could extrapolate that Iraqi insurgents would be fighting on regardless of whether or not Jamil Hussein is a real person, or whether or not six Sunnis were set on fire that one time?

You just can't go a day without somebody saying something about Iran, for good or ill. Today Maureen Dowd had a little column playing off the hype of the lead-up to the Iraq War to show up the same kind of lead-up for Iran.

Newsbusters decided that she was being dishonest somehow and decided to try and set her straight:

Whereas Saddam's possession of WMDs was a matter of reasonable but ultimately erroneous surmise, no one doubts that Iran is assiduously going about developing nuclear capability.

Reasonable my ass, and they apparently hope their readers are too stupid to realize that there’s a difference between a nuclear program and nuclear weapons program. The weapons program the IAEA chief El Baradei once again came out to say there isn’t any evidence of.

Of course, we don’t want to listen to a guy like Baradei. After all, he’s been right before.

Besides, Bush has said he can't allow the Iranians the knowledge of how to build a nuclear weapon; actually having the weapon isn't quite so important anymore. And look! There are Iranians going to school, where knowledge comes from!

THE Foreign Office has cleared dozens of Iranians to enter British universities to study advanced nuclear physics and other subjects with the potential to be applied to weapons of mass destruction.

In the past nine months about 60 Iranians have been admitted to study postgraduate courses deemed “proliferation-sensitive” by the security services. The disciplines range from nuclear physics to some areas of electrical and chemical engineering and microbiology.

Additionally, figures obtained by David Willetts, the shadow secretary for innovation, universities and skills, show that in 2005-06, 30 Iranians were doing postgraduate degrees in subjects covering nuclear physics and nuclear engineering.

Bloody Brits! Its probably why they're all leaving Iraq now. They're selling the US out to mullahs in Teheran and don't want their guys caught in the crossfire.

Earlier this year, a leading security think-tank estimated Tehran was two to three years away from acquiring a weapon.

Yeah, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I can come up with quotes from think tanks and US and Israeli officials about Iran being two to three years away from a nuclear weapon since, let’s see, 1984, this might mean something other than the fact that some people have a vested interest in hyping Iran's intentions and capabilities.

That corollary to the Satayana rule I was talking about? It's the notion that each presidential election is an attempt to cure the ills of the preceding presidency. In the post-Watergate world of 1976, reliance on that rule brought us President Jimmy Carter. Let's see -- how did his Iran policy turn out?

Was it different from Nixon’s before the Revolution?

Admittedly, launching an attack with poor intelligence probably wasn’t the best idea, and I wish at least one of your Presidents would learn that lesson, but do you think it was better than Reagan’s idea to support and supply Saddam Hussein? How’d that work out for you?

Oh, and you must be delighted to find out that the administration has actually been calling Carter for advice recently.

Note: The Dowd crowd urges diplomacy with Iran. But as Ed Morrisey has noted at Captain's Quarters, an Iranian dissident discourages negotiations on the grounds that "it establishes [the Iranian regime] even more as legitimate and it damages the morale of those who work to rid Iran of oppression."

Hmm, does the name Chalabi sound familiar to anyone?

Of course, we can't try any of that diplomacy stuff with the Iranians. It would never work with those crazy bastards! All we can do is start bombing them and hope for the best.

Okay, sure, we talked to guys like Stalin and Mao, but they were far more reasonable than Ahmadinejad.

When the relatively moderate Mohammed Khatami was elected president in Iran, American conservatives pointed out that he was just a figurehead. Real power, they said (correctly), especially control of the military and police, was wielded by the unelected "Supreme Leader," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Now that Ahmadinejad is president, they claim his finger is on the button. (Oh wait, Iran doesn't have a nuclear button yet and won't for at least three to eight years, according to the CIA, by which point Ahmadinejad may not be president anymore. But these are just facts.)

In a speech last week, Rudy Giuliani said that while the Soviet Union and China could be deterred during the cold war, Iran can't be. The Soviet and Chinese regimes had a "residual rationality," he explained. Hmm. Stalin and Mao—who casually ordered the deaths of millions of their own people, fomented insurgencies and revolutions, and starved whole regions that opposed them—were rational folk. But not Ahmadinejad, who has done what that compares? One of the bizarre twists of the current Iran hysteria is that conservatives have become surprisingly charitable about two of history's greatest mass murderers.

As the author of the last, Fareed Zakaria, finished off that article, "This would all be funny if it weren't so dangerous."

I barely know anything about baseball and even I can tell this is screwed up.



And to think some people believe Fox might be biased.

A rather damning story for Tony Blair on the BBC. The fact that there wasn't any real plan for post-invasion Iraq is well established for anyone paying attention. The reason this story will makes Blair's role appear even worse is three-fold.

1. He knew just how disastrous the consequences would be without a good post-invasion plan.

2. He waited until just eight weeks before the invasion to start "tearing his hair out" over the fact that there wasn't any plan.

3. Despite knowing all of this, he still put his full support behind the invasion and mouthed platitudes about how good things were going to turn out.

Bush, at least, can fall back onto the fact that he's an incompetent moron who didn't know any better. Blair has to contend with why he went ahead with it, knowing full well it was going to be a disaster.

I came across this site where somebody has a series of pictures, using the actual size of the dollar bill, to represent just how much money is being spent on the Iraq War.







The last estimate I saw for the cost of the Iraq War was $2,400,000,000,000.00, which is about eight times the size of that last picture. I think this makes it quite clear that if they want to keep doing this, they should really start using larger denominations.

I mean, just transporting $4 billion on pallets of $100 bills wound up weighing 363 tons and took several flights.

This is probably why Bush has decided to put everything on Uncle Sam's credit card; small little piece of plastic and you don't have to see the real cost while you're spending. Sure the interest is a bitch, but its not like he's going to be paying it, so why worry?

As I predicted, the oil industry, despite complaining bitterly and warning of horrific consequences should the Alberta government have the gall to ask that they give Albertans a greater share of the profits from Alberta's oil, all but ignored the announcement of the new royalty regime.

Some energy stocks defied expectations by gaining value Friday, a day after Alberta introduced a controversial increase to the fees charged to oil and gas companies in the province.

. . .

Enbridge, which operates the world's longest crude oil pipeline system, gained just over two per cent, while Talisman Energy slipped by only 0.41 per cent.

Other big oil and gas companies, including Suncor and EnCana, slipped slightly, but the declines did not come close to the bloodbath some analysts projected. The TSX energy index finished up 0.23 per cent.

With oil up over $90/barrel, and no real prospects for a major decline, (in price if not in supply, and more on that later), there was no real prospect that these guys were suddenly going to decide it just wasn't worth it to keep pumping the oil.

Still gotta love this comment from the Canoe.ca story:

Wilf Gobert, an independent energy analyst, rejects any suggestion that the initial reaction from the energy industry was "knee-jerk."

"It's ridiculous and intellectually dishonest to be saying that a CEO doesn't know what he's talking about. They represent billions of dollars of shareholder value," he said in an interview while golfing outside of Calgary.

In related news, I'm reading, "The Dilbert Principle".

An interesting situation brewing in the southern U.S. over water use by several competing interests.

No gauges are necessary at Lake Lanier to measure the ravages of the Southeast's drought.

Wooden fishing docks tower 10 feet over dried mud that used to be squishy lake bottom. Boat ramps begin at the parking lot and end in sand. New islands emerge from shallows.

"If the water drops another foot, I don't know that anyone will be able to get a boat in," said Mike Boyle, 64, a resident who has long trolled the lake for spotted and striped bass.

The waters of Lake Lanier, funneled through federal dams along the Chattahoochee River, sustain about 2.8 million people in the Atlanta metropolitan area, a nuclear power plant that lights up much of Alabama, and the marine life in Florida's Apalachicola River and Bay.

The story goes on to detail the sniping between the competing interests and states demanding that they deserve a larger share of what remains of the water flow. I've read other versions of this story about other rivers, streams and reservoirs across the states, and it is also becoming a major issue for the oilsands in northern Alberta, where the drive to expand oil production is running into the limits of the water supply.

Hell, even the Great Lakes don't appear to be immune from the problem.

Basically, the problem appears to be becoming more common, and the reason is generally uncontrolled growth without much mind to the sustainability limits of the local resources. In such cases, I thought it might be useful to remember just how bad things can get when such activities get out of hand.

Forty years ago, Muynak was a busy fishing port where the waters of the Aral Sea lapped up against the shoreline.

Today the waters have receded so much, that there is not a drop as far as the eye can see.

. . .

The human misery is huge. One victim has tuberculosis, which is rife and on the increase in the rest of the population. Cancer, lung disease and infant mortality are 30 times higher than they used to be because the drinking water is heavily polluted with salt, cotton fertilisers and pesticides.

Rim Abdulovich Giniyatullin of the International Agency for the Aral Sea Program hopes that the rest of the world can learn lessons from the Aral Sea tragedy.

"Don't allow the misuse of water," he warns.

"Be careful about how much you use, and stop before the source starts to shrink."

Here's the Aral Sea in 1976.

and in 1997

[LINK]

I wonder if we North Americans are smart enough to learn the lesson the Soviets taught the world.

Apparently H.G. Wells has been dead long enough that this guy can't be sued for plagiarism by his estate:

The human race will one day split into two separate species, an attractive, intelligent ruling elite and an underclass of dim-witted, ugly goblin-like creatures, according to a top scientist.

100,000 years into the future, sexual selection could mean that two distinct breeds of human will have developed.

The alarming prediction comes from evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry from the London School of Economics, who says that the human race will have reached its physical peak by the year 3000.

If this guy actually has a degree in evolutionary theory, I weep for the state of science education in the world today.

Of course, we have guys like Dr. Watson telling us we can already split the human race into different subsets, so I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised. On the other hand, it is important to note that the attractive rulers didn't actually fare too well down the line, unless you're of the opinion that an existence as free-range cattle is to be aspired to.

Facing staff shortages in Iraq, the State Department announced Friday that diplomats would have no choice but to accept one-year postings in the hostile environment or face losing their jobs.

. . .

Many American diplomats say they fear being posted in Iraq because of the risks of working in a war zone. It is a so-called unaccompanied posting, meaning children and a spouse cannot go with the diplomat because of the dangers involved.

B-b-but, security is increasing! And even before that, we were shown Republican members of Congress strolling down to the local market, comparing it to their local state fairs. Hell, we've even been told that it's safer in Iraq than most major American cities! How could you be scared to go to a place like that?

I just have to shake my head at this last line from an article in the Edmonton Sun by Mindy Jacobs complaining just how less effective our profiling measures are compared to the Israelis.

We've got the charter, fellow Canadians. But will it save us from terrorism?

Yes, let's just hand off all of our rights and freedoms to the government so they can promise to keep us safe from the big, bad terrorists.

Back in the day, those opposed to an autocratic government spouted famous lines like, "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety", and, "Give me liberty, or give me death!" Now, the line seems to be, "Do whatever you want! Just don't let those nasty furriners hurt me!"

A couple of months ago, I posted a link to story that said that thanks to the terms of the ironically-named, "Clean Air Act", it was illegal to sell most commercially available low- or zero-emission vehicles in the vast majority of the United States.

After a quick bit of research, I smugly noted that Canada, at least, wasn't doing anything quite that stupid.

Damn.

The founder of a Canadian-made, 100 per cent electric car says the federal government is blocking him from selling his cars in Canada.

The ZENN (zero emissions, no noise) electric car is already being sold in the United States, Mexico, and Europe, where it has won awards.

The two-seater is built in St. Jerome, Que., by Toronto-based ZENN Motor Company. It is roughly the same size as the Mini-Cooper, and would sell for approximately $14,000.

Company founder Ian Clifford says Canadians haven't heard much about the car because Ottawa won't let him sell it here.

And why isn't it allowed to be sold here?

When asked why the cars won't be licensed in Canada, Harry Baergen, a senior regulatory enforcement engineer with Transport Canada provided the following responses to CBC News:

CBC: "[Has the ZENN car] met the regulatory requirement?"
Baergen: "They haven't met our requirements yet, no."

So they haven't met the requirements?

Baergen: "They've showed us that it meets requirements as an LSV (low-speed vehicle)."
CBC: "They have shown that to you?"
Baergen: "Yes."

So they have met the requirements, we're just not ready for him sell it yet.

So we have an award-winning, home-grown, Canadian auto-maker selling vehicles around a good chunk of the globe; vehicles that could help reduce pollution, smog, and cut carbon emissions, and that have met the requirements needed, but our government doesn't want him selling the cars here in Canada.

I'm sad to say that somehow, this just doesn't surprise me.

Somehow, I doubt this story will get a lot of play in wingnuttia:

Five years after one of India's worst episodes of Hindu-Muslim violence, a series of videotaped confessions released Thursday showed Hindu activists acknowledging their roles in the killings and detailing blatant state collusion.

In the video footage, recorded as part of an undercover expose by a New Delhi-based weekly magazine called Tehelka, Hindu activists and politicians bragged about hacking Muslims to death and burning their bodies. One assailant said he slit open a pregnant woman's stomach.

. . .

The video footage, by Ashish Khetan, a reporter for the magazine, showed Hindu activists confessing to dousing petrified Muslims in kerosene and burning them alive. The footage also showed a Hindu nationalist politician saying that the chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, had "given us three days time to do whatever we could. After three days, he asked to stop and everything came to a halt."

No matter. The Muslims provoked it and are therefore to blame. After all, its only Islam that has violent extremists, isn't it? I mean, if other religions are capable of religiously inspired violence, how are we supposed to justify nuking Mecca?

Arsonists burst into a Jerusalem church and set the building on fire, church officials said Wednesday, raising suspicions that Jewish extremists were behind the attack.

The church in west Jerusalem's Rehavia neighborhood was rebuilt after it was burned down 25 years ago by ultra-Orthodox Jewish extremists.

. . .

Ultra-Orthodox Jews have begun moving into Rehavia and trying to impose their strict way of life in parts of the leafy, upscale neighborhood, which has a mixed population of secular and Orthodox Jews.

Oh, shut up!

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates:

"Without good intelligence, sending large numbers of troops across the border or dropping bombs doesn't seem to make much sense to me," he told reporters after talks with NATO defence ministers in the Netherlands.

This applied "for anybody" considering such action, he added.

Too bad he's talking about Turkey.

This is becoming common enough that I might have to consider a new category along the lines of, "Bush administration official inadvertently criticizes own policy without realizing it".

One of those frightening if true posts from Libby at The Newshoggers.

The reason I say if is due to just how crazy the first article she links to sounds:

The Transportation Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security are quietly pushing for a set of crazy new rules. All travellers in the U.S. will be required to get government-issued credentials and official clearance before every flight, both within the United States as well as internationally.

This Soviet-style stupidity is just so far off what the U.S. stands for that I have a really hard time believing such a thing would actually be implemented. Of course, not near as hard a time as I would have had several years ago, which is why I can't dismiss it outright.

And unfortunately, I have absolutely no problem believing the second part:

The government's terrorist watch list has swelled to more than 755,000 names, according to a new government report that has raised worries about the list's effectiveness.

The size of the list, typically used to check people entering the country through land border crossings, airports and sea ports, has been growing by 200,000 names a year since 2004. Some lawmakers, security experts and civil rights advocates warn that it will become useless if it includes too many people.

Even at the rate this administration is creating new enemies, there's no way in hell that there are over 200,000 new terrorists every year or there would be car-bombings damn near every day in most American cities. To some extant the massiveness of the list actually argues for the first stories truth. With that many people to watch out for, whatever the reason they're being watched, you either have to greatly restrict travel or see the list be ignored because of its sheer ridiculousness.

I suppose time will tell which way things fall, but I'm becoming less and less enamoured with the idea of traveling across the border.

So says McClatchy. The biggest spending President since, (and including), LBJ.

I think I can summarize blogtopia's response with a big:

WELL, DUH!

It's probably not a good sign when everybody's posts start with some variation of, "It should come as no surprise to anyone that . . ."

The only part of the story that really sticks, is that after increasing federal spending at the greatest rate of any President of the last five decades during the six years that the Republicans were in charge of Congress, Bush has now decided to pretend he's a fiscal conservative and all that stands in the way of the "tax and spend" Democrats from leading the country to financial ruin.

I'm not sure if even what's left of his base is that stupid, though there's always the chance. After all, it is a tried and true method to deflect criticism of The W. Just keep repeating the line, "The Democrats are worse!"

I came across this little video yesterday at Woman at Mile 0’s site:



To be frank, I don’t find the guy too terribly convincing, but his little exercise is a good place to start.

For one, he posits that the worst-case scenario for doing nothing about climate change is major catastrophe, but still leaves the earth habitable and humanity intact. Last I checked, the worst-case scenario is Venus; runaway temperature rise until the oceans boil away and all life is exterminated by heat and pressure intense enough most metals become liquids.

Even scenarios that allow the earth to survive as habitable don’t guarantee humanity’s making it through. One thing I’ve learned about the major extinction events of the past is that the megafauna is always on the top of the list of who bites it. And like it or not, we humans fall into the megafauna category.

The other problem I have is with his choice of rows. Even most of the opponents of climate change have now acknowledged that the climate is changing. There’s only so much science you an ignore before you start looking like the creationist kooks, flat-earthers, and those who haven’t accepted the earth goes around the sun and not the other way around. The arguments have already shifted to whether or not humans are responsible, and/or if we should do something about it.

That leads me to an article posted at The Issue.com called, “How to argue with a global warming enthusiast”.

It’s probably significant that he informs his readers that the most difficult person to argue with is the “informed believer”. He doesn’t really explain why, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say its because these oxymoronic constructs will have the facts to refute your contentions. (Okay, he does kind of explain it, contending that the people who are well-informed about climate change are more willing to act on faith. I said it was an oxymoron.)

Anyway, the post is a good run-down of the skeptics case, and you’ll note that there isn’t anything there denying climate change outright. It is all about cyclical climate variations, the suns effect, warming on Mars, and so forth.

A couple of his points, like the ones on sea ice and water vapour, seem to be designed more to discredit the hopefully ignorant “believer” rather than refute any point about actual climate change at all.

Anyway, the major point is that the argument over the rows in our video buddy’s chart has pretty much ended for most observers, skeptics or otherwise. Climate change is happening.

What’s important to note at this point, is that even if the skeptics are correct, and mankind isn’t responsible for climate change, and therefore shouldn’t bother trying to stop or mitigate it, there isn’t any smiley face in our future. The top row of the chart is gone. If we can’t stop climate change, either because we don’t bother trying or because is isn’t our fault to begin with, we still wind up in box #4.

And we just got handed some more science to prove that isn’t an exaggeration:

Whenever the world's tropical seas warm several degrees, Earth has experienced mass extinctions over millions of years, said a first-of-its-kind statistical study of fossil records.

And scientists fear it may be about to happen again — but in a matter of several decades, not tens of millions of years.

Four of the five major extinctions over 520 million years of Earth history have been linked to warmer tropical seas, something that indicates a warmer world overall, said the study published Wednesday

. . .

The author of the second study, which focuses on carbon dioxide, said he does see a cause-and-effect between warmer seas and extinctions.

Peter Ward, a University of Washington biology and paleontology professor, said natural increases in carbon dioxide warmed the air and ocean. The warmer water had less oxygen and spawned more microbes, which in turn spewed toxic hydrogen sulphide into the air and water, killing species.

Ward examined 13 major and minor extinctions in the past and found a common link: rising carbon dioxide levels in the air and falling oxygen levels. Ward's study will be presented Sunday at the Geological Society of America's annual convention in Denver.

For some reason, I suspect the only thing the skeptics will pick out of this post is that the second study didn’t see a link between warmer oceans and extinctions. Of course, what the second study links the extinctions to is higher levels of carbon dioxide.

Given that both temperatures and carbon dioxide levels are increasing these days, I’m not particularly comforted by the fact that the two studies can’t determine which of the two is more likely to kill us all.

In any case, there’s one final point to make about the whole should we/shouldn’t we debate over climate change. And while I said the first row of the chart was already decided, the skeptics still point to the enormous costs and terrifying economic consequences of that first box to keep people from making action on climate change a priority.

I find it is ever useful to remember just what it is they are arguing against, and for that, I’ll re-quote David Brin:

Still, ponder this -- it has already been proved repeatedly, that humanity is capable of affecting ecosystems, atmospheric systems (I grew up in LA) and even (in the case of the ozone hole) planetary systems. Thus, it is simply mind-boggling that a concerned majority of world scientists should have to prove their worries valid, beyond all doubt...

...before humanity decides to take simple precautions THAT MAKE SENSE ANYWAY.

10) And that is the final kibosh. The devastator. The ultimate eviscerator of this horrific mass-cult.

Because they never make clear exactly what it is that they are afraid of!

What? Efficiency?

Let me reiterate.
That is what it boils down to. Fear and loathing of... efficiency.

It is what Al Gore, the world’s scientific “consensus” community, the community of nations and all the sensibly worried folks out here are talking about.

Simply putting efficiency at or near the top of our civilization’s urgent agenda.

Investing in research, tweaking some incentives, adjusting some market parameters (that were already meddle-skewed anyway, in wrong directions)...

... all with the goal that we should ...
...get... more... from... less!

And that last part is the real mind-boggler, when you stop to think about it. That all of these polemical maneuvers and illogical arguments and contradictions and hypocrisies should be aimed at diverting us from becoming more productive while depending on fewer resources.

If anyone ever writes a post about how to talk to a climate change skeptic, the first question should be, “How does it help us economically to be wasteful?”

Who knows? Maybe when oil hits $100/barrel, people will figure out that “efficienct” and “economical” are synonyms and not antonyms. Until then, we can keep arguing whether or not doing something about climate change is a good idea.

Four months ago, Parliament passed amendments to the Canada Elections Act that requires each voter produce proof of identity and a residential address before being allowed to cast a ballot.

However, more than one million Canadians living in rural areas don't have an address that includes a street name and number.

. . .

In Nunavut, more than 80 per cent of registered voters don't have a residential address.

Probably because we elected a Liberal last time around.

All kidding aside, I'm curious if there are any other segments of society that the new Elections Act disenfranchises?

An article in a major Turkish newspaper yesterday is cause for some discussion for its take on what is becoming a more and more likely Turkish incursion into northern Iraq.

The Turks have shown a remarkable patience and reluctance to attack so far. Think for a moment what the likely response would have been had the recent attack against their troops instead been carried out by Hezbollah against Israeli forces? This is no doubt because the Turks, at least, have a considerable understanding of the possible negative consequences of such actions. Even now it isn’t clear whether or not they will launch a large-scale attack.

As with most things, the question to ask isn’t whether or not action is justified, but whether it makes strategic sense and if there is a smart way to do it.

The Israeli attack on Lebanon offers a good case to use for comparison. Even though their incursion could be justified by Hezbollah’s raid, the justification quickly fell by the wayside when the Israelis went far beyond targeting Hezbollah and instead attacked the entire Lebanese state; blockading the country, bombing its airports, bridges, roads, power stations, and so forth. To some extent, that’s exactly what the Turkish author is advising the Turkish military to do to Iraqi Kurdistan.

The effect in Israel’s case was to rally the Lebanese people to support Hezbollah’s battle against Israel, (at least until the fighting was over, at which point internal rivalries resurfaced). It also brought down international condemnation. It is important to remember that for the first few days, even the Arab states were criticizing Hezbollah and not Israel. It was only after the Israeli response was clearly both outsized for the infraction and targeting far more than just the perpetrators that world opinion shifted firmly against them.

For the Turks, the same dynamics will be in play, but to some extent this part will be easier. For one, the list of recent attacks by the PKK is a fairly long one, which adds weight to their justification argument. For Israel, beyond the raid itself, the previous six years had been fairly quiet without any Hezbollah attacks against Israeli civilians. Minimal attacks justify minimal responses. It didn’t take long for the Israelis to use up their credit. To some extent, the Turks restraint in the face of repeated attacks has bought them more leeway for when they do react in a big way.

Second, while the Israeli attacks weakened the Lebanese government’s legitimacy, (and consequently strengthened Hezbollah’s), because the government proved both incapable and unwilling to resist the Israeli attacks, the Turks have far less to worry about.

Even the most far-fetched scenarios don’t see Turkey bombing Baghdad or blockading Basra. Whatever action they take will be limited to Iraqi Kurdistan. The Kurdish region has been all but independent for the last 15 years and doesn’t even allow the Iraqi flag to fly in its territory. As far as hurting the central Iraqi government’s legitimacy, it can’t lose what it doesn’t have. Not only doesn’t it control Kurdistan, it doesn’t control any other part of Iraq to any real extent and has to lean heavily on the US just to ensure its survival.

Still, the Turks will have to be careful with what targets they hit. I have no idea how popular the PKK is in the region, but when foreigners come in and bomb your houses, you tend to support those fighting against them regardless whether or not you agree with their goals.

That means I don’t encourage the Turks to follow the authors advice to bomb the Kurds back to the Saddam years. (Of course, the Kurds are probably the only group of Iraqis where going back to the conditions under Saddam would actually be worse.)

In addition, if there are significant civilian casualties, it will be very hard for the US to sit on the sidelines. Bluster aside, the Turks are no more prepared to take on the US in a conventional battle than anyone else, and the US certainly doesn’t want to go to war with a NATO ally that has troops serving in Afghanistan. (Aside: Given Turkey is a NATO country and has been attacked, what's the rest of the alliance willing to do about it?)

Three other mistakes the Israelis made that the Turks should avoid. Set realistic goals, don’t underestimate your opponents, and don’t prolong the war.

For the Israelis, all three were interrelated. They set out to destroy Hezbollah as a threat and get their soldiers back, and believed they could do so by a swift application of airpower within a couple of days. They were, to say the least, sorely mistaken. Rather than being destroyed, Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel, and the Israelis upped the ante by saying they would also destroy Hezbollah’s rocket force. Instead the rockets continued at a rate, and at ranges, that would continually increase as the war continued.

Frustrated by their inability to decisively defeat Hezbollah, the Israelis continually escalated their efforts and expanded their target lists. They sent in ground forces, which they hadn’t prepared for, only to discover the enemy well dug-in and prepared to receive the worst the Israelis could throw at them.

Finally, international pressure and the realization that they weren’t going to fulfill the mission forced them to accept a face-saving peacekeeper force on the border. Hezbollah remains intact and unbowed, and the soldiers remain in their custody

Lesson for Turkey: Pick your targets well, hit them hard and fast, and get the hell out.

Don’t pretend you’re going to destroy the PKK. Don’t get drawn in to fighting further because they hit back at you while you’re making your incursion. Don’t get caught up in punishing the Iraqi Kurds because they haven’t done enough to stop the PKK from raiding.

A short, sharp shock. Anything more, and you’ll lose more, possibly far more, than you gain.

5th Estate at The Newshoggers, (who has been kind enough to include me in his Instahoglets round-up a few times now), has a good catch regarding the Czech government having the highly impudent nerve to ask for "proof" that there is actually a threat from Iranian missiles to Europe.

Imagine the nerve of these Euro-weenies! Don't they know the Islamofascist hordes are just looking for such signs of weakness to launch their assault on our freedoms?

Fortunately for the Free World's defence contractors, President Bush was quick to inform everyone on the need.

US President George W Bush has said there is a "real and urgent" need for a missile defence system in Europe.

You see? A real and URGENT need! This isn't something we can put off. We need to get it built RIGHT NOW! (The fact that it doesn't actually work at the moment notwithstanding.)

He warned that Iran could have a ballistic missile capable of reaching Europe or the US by 2015.

Wait a minute. You're telling us that we need to spend billions of dollars to build a system that can't even bat .500 on rigged tests because eight years from now, Iran might possibly have a missile that could reach Europe? And you said this with a straight face?

And here I thought Reagan was the actor-President.

Not that I read the site much, but Uncle Jimbo at BLACKFIVE does a good job summing up my feelings of not only Horowitz, but most of the "leading lights" of the pro-Islamofascism debate:

What a let down. My buddy Ebo and I attended Horowitz' opening night of Islamo-Fascism Awareness week and if this is our answer to sharia, then I guess Dirka Dirka Mohammed Jihad it will be.

I kid you not, if the evidence actually supported their grandiose vision of a "Clash of Civilizations", and that they, and their good buddy W, were the only people who could possibly lead us against the threat, I would have converted to Islam years ago to beat the rush.

Fortunately there are more intelligent and rational people out there. Hopefully they'll be in charge again soon and we can relegate the haters back into the fringe where they belong.

Another fine example of the Conservatives putting the love of party over the needs of Canadians.

The federal Conservative party has suspended the riding executive that backed ousted Nova Scotia MP Bill Casey.

. . .

Casey, the longtime MP for the region, was kicked out of the Conservative caucus in June for voting against his party's budget, which he said broke the promises laid out under a 2005 offshore oil and gas accord.

Foolish Mr. Casey for thinking the needs of constituents should trump his loyalty to The Party, or that The Party would honour its promise not to fire anyone who voted with their conscience rather than with The Party. That sort of foolishness is for people who believe in representative democracy. Granted that none of federal parties are very good with this concept, but the Conservatives always seem determined to go several steps beyond everyone else on these issues.

What comes out of their mouths sometimes is just creepy:

"It is unworkable when you have a board that is not committed to one thing and one thing only, and that is to electing a member of Parliament in the Conservative Party of Canada," he said.

I mean, could you at least pretend to give a shit about what the constituents might like?

It appears as though the federal Conservative Party has a very unique view of privacy rights and just who is deserving of it.

The federal Conservative party's central database is set up to track the confidential concerns of individual constituents without their knowledge or consent, says a former Tory MP.

The issue spilled onto the floor of the House of Commons on Thursday when Garth Turner, the expelled Tory-turned-Liberal MP, accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper of an "unethical invasion of Canadians' privacy.''

Privacy experts agree the practice is a clear breach of standard privacy ethics -- but probably not the law, because federal political parties fall into a legislative grey area.

I think one can assume bringing their political party under the law so that their unethical behaviour can be punished won’t be one of the Conservatives’ priorities, ever.

The linked story gives a good summary of what it is the Conservatives are doing.

the Conservatives use a single clearing house for all data collection, storage, datamining, mailing lists, voter tracking and any other partisan use such information may serve.

. . .

Logging constituent files in a central party database that may also be used as part of election planning, fundraising, advertising strategy and policy deliberation appears to be clearly offside, two nationally respected privacy experts told The Canadian Press.

"If somebody contacts their MP because they're having a problem with their CPP benefit or their military pension, they don't expect to end up on a mailing list for a political party,'' said David Fraser, a Halifax lawyer who specializes in privacy issues with the firm McInnes Cooper.

The Conservative Party is basically sucking up every piece of data they can get about you and putting it into a huge database to be used for whatever purpose they want to.  This is a huge violation of Canadians’ personal privacy.

While people pass around their personal information all the time these days without thinking much about it, abuses of that information must be guarded against, particularly when those abusing it are purporting to be our representatives and leaders.

Privacy laws, and the practices any ethical and professional people should follow with people’s personal information, are pretty straight forward in their rules, none of which the Conservatives seem to care much about.

The important point to remember, is that your personal information belongs to you; regardless who has it, who you give it to, or what purpose it is used for, information about you is, for lack of a better term, your property.

Generally, when any outside party collects information about you, it must be done with your consent.  Not only should you consent to the information they collect, but you must also consent to their use of the data and any possible furtherance of that data to other parties.

Anyone who’s bought something on-line or subscribed to a newsletter or some such will be familiar with the little check-boxes asking if you read and understand the privacy policy or if you want to be included on mailing lists and so forth.  The real bastards force you to agree to be on the lists as a requirement for subscription, but in all cases, they have to inform you of it and get your approval, even if most people don’t pay as close attention to that step as they probably should.

The Conservative Party of Canada has thrown all of that right out the window.  While you may give them some information to help you with a specific problem, they’re also ransacking other databases to compile as much information about you as they can, and they’re transmitting that information and using it for whatever the hell they want, heedless of the concerns or the consent of the people whose information they have.

Any private company or individual who did this would be in breach of the law and subject to severe penalties, but our governing party apparently feels this is acceptable behaviour for themselves.

Just to add to the fun, remember that this is the same Conservative party who has sent people to see their own party’s unelected representatives in ridings opposition parties won until they got caught at it.  Anyone want to bet that anyone who followed that advice will find that their personal information is part of the Conservative data mining programs?

And this just goes beyond the pale:

The Conservatives, who openly boasted about their state-of-the-art CIMS database after purchasing it in 2004, now refuse to discuss it.

"I will not talk about internal party databases,'' said party spokesman Ryan Sparrow. "I'm not disclosing what is in our database, who is in our database.''

When asked if Canadians can request to see their file on the CIMS database, Sparrow responded: "What would be their specific need to see?''

Asked a second time, Sparrow shut down the inquiry.

"I'm not going to help you with your story. It's internal party matters.''

“What would be their specific need to see?”  How about it’s our personal information that you bastards are compiling and using without our consent?  How about we are the owners of the data you seem to think is The Party’s just because you’ve compiled it by what would be illegal means for anyone else?

Apparently for the Conservatives, anything to do with The Party is private and should be protected; the personal information of Canadians is fair game to be exploited any which way they please.

Ever remember these guys saying stuff about transparency and accountability?

This casual disregard for the personal information of an unknown numbers of their own constituents; the complete dismissal of any privacy rights outside their own, says far more about the Conservatives suitability to govern than just about any other story I’ve seen so far.

Cross-posted to BlogsCanada: E-Group

Zogby has a poll out where 50% of likely voters said they would never vote for Hillary. This isn't too much of a surprise, but looking closer at the poll shows that the Republicans shouldn't be doing too much celebrating. None of their front-runners do better than the low to mid forties when asked the same question, and Hillary's profile is a lot higher than any of them so far.

The real issue of course, is that having half the likely voters saying they won't vote for you isn't the same as them saying they'll show up to vote against you. That is the particular calculation the election will come down to, and with the "Values Voters" crowd coming to the sad realization that none of the Republican candidates have any, the odds of them showing up just to ensure Hillary doesn't win seems somewhat less likely. Another year of Bush in the White House isn't going to help Republican efforts to get out the vote much either, while likely having the opposite effect for Democrats.

So, while I still don't think Hillary is the best choice for the Democrats to make, she'll probably still be able to win a general election. After all, she can't be as bad a campaigner as Kerry was.

Now, if the media would turn its attention to her actual positions and policies rather than worrying about her cat, we might actually get some real debates going. (I suppose its at least a step up from her cleavage, but the Onion still has the media nailed.)

Via American Footprints, a massive batch of interviews at Mother Jones asking how the US can withdraw from Iraq. A lot of familiar names from across the political spectrum. It should make for very interesting reading.

Daniel Benjamin, apparently concerned that the new movie, "Rendition", will spread some disturbing misinformation about the whole rendition process, pens an article for the Washington Post to reassure everyone and debunk some of the "myths" surrounding the process.

Myth #1 goes pretty well; W didn't cook up renditions. Such practices far precede him. But in myth #2, Benjamin runs into a little trouble:

2. People who are "rendered" inevitably end up in a foreign slammer -- or worse.

Does Gitmo count as a foreign slammer -- or worse?

Actually, that's not a foregone conclusion.

WTF?

Now, most definitions of "myth" indicate something false or misleading. I suppose you could argue that saying people "inevitably" wind up in a foreign slammer is an exaggeration, but generally when you go about dispelling myths, you don't do so by saying, "Well sure it happens, just not all the time."

#3 isn't much better, particularly given he fails to elucidate the difference between being detained and handed over to an intelligence agency without due process, and outright capture by that same intelligence agency, and he doesn't improve his record much on #4.

4. Rendition is just a euphemism for outsourcing torture.

Well, not historically.

Oh. Good.

"You see," Benjamin explains, "back when other Presidents were doing this, they had strict guidelines and oversight, all of which the current administration has tossed out the window. But rest assured, seven or eight years ago, this would have been a myth, regardless of the current reality."

I know I feel better.

Let's see what he's got for #5.

5. Pretty much anyone -- including U.S. citizens and green card holders -- can be rendered these days.

Well, I can't imagine how anyone could come up with that idea, but outside of bashing the movie for the third time, what have you got for us?

A "U.S. person" (citizen or legal resident) has constitutional protections against being removed from the country through rendition

Oh! Well I'm sure you could ask Jose Padilla what good constitutional protections do for US citizens these days. After all, I'm pretty sure there's something in that constitution about throwing somebody into a cell for several years without charges or legal counsel as well.

But the real joy, the real kicker of this column, has to be what he says next:

In fairness, though, the ghastly case of Maher Arar -- a Syrian-born Canadian citizen who convincingly says he was detained at New York's JFK Airport, handed off to Syria and tortured -- is way too close for comfort.

Yes, that's right. Maher Arar just received a public apology from US Congessmen and a formal apology from the Canadian government along with better than $10 million in damages, because he's a really good storyteller.

Rendition myths, indeed.

Bouncing around the blogosphere today, I ran into a truly fascinating site, Nodrog's Greatest Hits, by a recently banned commenter from littlegreenfootballs.com. The "Poster Formally Known as Gordon" has decided to provide a history of the site through his comment threads and flame wars as a commenter from April of 2003 until his banishment last month.

As someone who has occasionally dipped into the proto-fascist breeding pool that is the lgf commenting community, I am fascinated both by his posts, and the fact that someone with his apparently nuanced views regarding Islam and radical Islamists was able to survive for four years before being banned.

I look forward to reading more.

Fabius Maximus has given away the secret of how to accurately predict the trends of the Iraq War and gives it out in a simple three-step process:

1. Carefully read Martin van Creveld’s book The Transformation of War (1991).

2. Each week read the Sunday newspaper, or one of the major weekly magazines.

3. Determine what page of the book we are on.

Damn! There goes my ability to impress people with my brilliant predictive success.

In truth, what's really scary about that three-step process is just how accurate it is. The book really is that good, and I've already recommended it a few times before for much the same reason.

As Fabius mentions, it isn't that big a book and its pretty much entry level so far as military history is concerned, but if you read and understand it, you can run circles around so-called military historians like Victor David Hanson, which may be why he didn't think to include it on his list of recommended reading for the study of war.

Consider this another in the continuing line of recommendations.

I had intended to merely post a response to Andrew Quinn's post at The Van Der Galien Gazette, but the typing got a little long, and I thought it was worth a post in its own right.

The post is about how much the US should involve itself in the affairs of others, and while Quinn doesn't state the question as such, the examples he uses makes it clear he is talking about military involvement. The part that caught my attention was this little analogy:

I think most Americans, in a purely idealistic and theoretical sense, would support an interventionist policy. Most of us believe the man walking down the street has a moral obligation to try and stop a mugging he happens upon, even if the crime won’t affect him directly. Especially if the passerby happens to be the world’s biggest bodybuilder, a role filled internationally by none other than the U.S.

The problem with the analogy he uses is that it is both too simplistic, (not too big an issue given the inherent limitations of analogies), and that it contains within it many of the same assumptions that make America's foreign military interventions the messes they have been.

One of the assumptions is that this passerby is actually witnessing a mugging, with the associated assumptions that the “mugger” is evil and the “victim” is therefore good. What the muscle-bound hero swaggering down the street has actually came across, is two people engaged in a struggle where one clearly has the upper hand and appears to be taking valuables from the other.

Now, maybe it is a mugging. But maybe what our muscle-bound friend didn’t see is that the prostrate “victim” was the one who was trying to mug the alleged “mugger”, and this so-called mugger fought back, turned the tables, and is retrieving his property.

Or more likely, given the kinds of wars the US finds itself mired in, both guys are evil pricks and the hero just happened upon them when one has a temporary advantage. (This is where the simplicity problem kicks in. Most of the world's conflicts consist of two groups of evil bastards “defending” their people by going out to slaughter the people their opponents lord over. The analogy only deals with the top pricks, not all the innocent bystanders getting slaughtered by both sides.)

The hero goes in, and instead of just stopping the beating and waiting for what we’ll call diplomacy to sort things out, holds down the alleged offender and helps the alleged victim put the boots to him. Not so bad if his assumptions turn out to be correct. Really bad if he got any part of it wrong.

The desire to split every conflict into a good and evil side is a large part of the problem with US foreign policy. Saddam was evil, so those opposing him must be good, except that they happen to be Sunni Islamic extremists like al Qaeda and Shiite militias supported by Iran. Rwanda? Darfur? Tribes and clans battling each other where one side has gotten the upper hand. Even in Darfur now, the alliances are shifting every which way. The killings continue, and it isn’t even just two sides, so who are the good guys supposed to be?

Take Somalia as another example, (there is certainly no shortage of them). To stop the Islamists from taking over, the US first allied itself with some of the very same warlords it was battling in the streets of Mogadishu a decade earlier. And when that didn’t work, they turned to the Ethiopians, whose government is carrying out its own, very much less published, genocide against the Somali-speaking population in its Ogaden region. Who is the mugger they’re stopping there? And even more importantly, who are the victims they’re supposed to be protecting?

And again, the trouble is not so much that the US feels it should stop these crimes. That part is laudable, and what I believe Quinn was getting to when he said that most Americans would support an interventionist policy. I would go even further and say that I think most of the world would sorely miss the US playing that role. The problem is the determination to go beyond just stopping the crimes from taking place. It is the desire to punish the evildoers and "reconstruct" the societies without regard for any laws, customs, or circumstances that gets people’s ire up.

This is where the analogy used is too simple and needs to be extended. What happens if our hero has to chase the mugger home? Just to shake things up, we'll use the situation at Turkish-Iraqi border for our example this time.

The PKK, which I think most agree are terrorists and bad guys, are killing Turks by launching attacks from their bases in northern Iraq. The Turks want to hit the PKK, which means launching an attack into northern Iraq. The Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq, not too surprisingly, don't much like the idea of the Turkish military romping around their countryside blowing things up, and have said they’ll fight the Turks should they invade and start killing Kurds.

Go back to the analogy. The hero sees a mugging, runs to stop it, but doesn't get there in time. Being a hero, he gives chase to the mugger, who pelts down the street, around the corner out of sight, and our hero hears a door slam, but there's no mugger to be seen when he comes around the corner.

So now our hero is going looking for a mugger in the local neighbourhood, and he goes about this by kicking down doors and searching the houses. Now, he didn’t get too good a look at the mugger, so he starts roughing up anyone who fits the basic appearance, which happens to be a fair number of the local people, who already aren’t too happy because their doors just got kicked in.

The neighbourhood starts resisting the hero, and because our hero isn’t entirely sure just who the mugger is, he assumes that anyone resisting him must be either the mugger or one of his associates, and basically starts treating the entire neighbourhood as though it is a giant den of muggers.

Now, even if the increasingly less heroic-looking hero does eventually happen to get the mugger he’s looking for, he’s now decided that most of the neighborhood is just as bad as the guy he was originally looking for, and the neighbourhood is so pissed off at him, that they reinforce his impression by continuing to fight against him.

Now, are we beginning to see why people may not be too happy to see our hero in their neighbourhood?

One of the other analogies Quinn brings up is America as the world's policeman. Police implies courts, laws, judges and all the rest. They stop crimes; they don’t administer judgment or punishment. What our hero is doing is vigilantism, not police work.

So, given that there isn't any "world's policeman", and that even if there was, the US as the "world's vigilante" is too big for any police to constrain anyway, my quandary is this:

Is a more benevolent and intelligent vigilante the best we can hope for?

To get in a lighter mood for the weekend, you can take The New York Times' Employee Entrance Exam.

And the crack investigative talents of LiberalsMustDie.com have discovered what SCHIP really stands for.

The amount of carbon dioxide being absorbed by the world's oceans has reduced, scientists have said.

. . .

Results of their 10-year study in the North Atlantic show CO2 uptake halved between the mid-90s and 2000 to 2005.

One of the major reasons the rise in CO2 emissions hasn't corresponded exactly to temperature rise is in large part due to the effect of the world's oceans as a carbon sink. Scrubbing, according to the BBC story, at least a quarter of the CO2 we produce out of the atmosphere every year.

Like the feedback loops regarding the polar ice caps melting, or the out-gassing of methane from permafrost melting, one of the major signs that we are in big trouble climate wise was predicted to be when the oceans became saturated with CO2 and could no longer absorb the greenhouse gases we're spewing into the atmosphere at ever increasing levels.

Even worse, once that saturation point was hit, the bleaching of coral and other industrial-caused die-offs in ocean wildlife could actually make the oceans a net emitter of greenhouse gases rather than a sink for them.

And that saturation point is what the scientists now fear we may be hitting. Thus the title for the post, because those are the words that went through my head as I read this first thing in the morning as I'm waiting for my coffee to brew.

The Raw Story has a good post up about the Israeli strike against Syria and how the story has been manipulated to seem as though the strike hit a nuclear site being constructed by the North Koreans. And its little surprise who they see as behind it:

Allegations that a Syrian envoy admitted during a United Nations meeting Oct. 17 that an Israeli air strike hit a nuclear facility in September are inaccurate and have raised the ire of some in the US intelligence community, who see the Vice President’s hand as allegedly being behind the disinformation.

. . .

Recent news articles, however, continue to make allegations and suggest that a nuclear weapons facility was hit -- something that the Syrian government has denied, the Israeli government has not officially confirmed and US intelligence does not show.

According to current and former intelligence sources, the US intelligence community has seen no evidence of a nuclear facility being hit.

US intelligence “found no radiation signatures after the bombing, so there was no uranium or plutonium present,” said one official, wishing to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the subject.

The reports of a Syrian official overhead making comments that the strike was against a nuclear facility were a mistranslation, but much like the mistranslation that purports that Ahmadinejad said Israel should be, "wiped off the map", I'm certain this mistranslation will continue to be used as proof of the non-existant nuclear facility being hit.

One US intelligence source familiar with the events expressed concern about recent news reports describing Syria as having a functioning nuclear weapons program and cautioned against attributing those reports to the US intelligence community.

“The allegations that North Korea was helping to build a nuclear reactor have not been substantiated by US intelligence,” said this intelligence official, adding, “ but that hasn't stopped Dick Cheney and his minions at the NSC, Elliot Abrams and Steve Hadley, from leaking the information [to the press], which appears to be misleading in the extreme.”

Being extremely misleading is what these guys do. Anyone paying the slightest attention over the last six years could tell you that. This apparently doesn't include the editors of any major news organizations who continue to swallow the false leads, the mistranslations, and the unsupported speculation of the White House flacks as though they were facts.

And so, the "fact" that the Israelis hit a nuclear facility in Syria will be accepted wisdom, repeated across news outlets and blogs, and all without even a shred of evidence to support it.

This is why I think a war against Iran is still a good possibility. Accepted wisdom can so easily be shaped so that people believe its both justified and a good idea, the facts and evidence be damned.

I'm beginning to think I vastly misjudged the timing of it hitting $100.00.

Yesterday, the US Congress reached an agreement with the White House on the domestic spying which will give the telecoms industry retroactive immunity for handing over Americans phone records. (Cernig has an excellent round-up of the celebrations. /snark)

Wired comes up with some interesting graphs regarding political contributions and the telecom industry:

Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) is reportedly steering the secretive Senate Intelligence Committee to give retroactive immunity to telecoms that helped the government secretly spy on Americans.

. . .

Both companies are being sued for allegedly turning over billions of calling records to the government, while AT&T is also accused of letting the National Security Agency wiretap phone calls and its internet backbone. A federal judge in California allowed the suits regarding the eavesdropping to continue despite the government's attempt to have the suits thrown out on the grounds they will endanger national security. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reviewed that decision in August. The judges seemed reluctant to toss the cases, but have yet to issue a ruling.

On Thursday evening, the Rockefeller-led Senate Intelligence Committee is marking up a bill to re-amend the nation's spy laws. While the text of the bill has not yet been released, the bill reportedly includes a way for the telecoms to escape the litigation against them.

Rockefeller's commitment to getting the telecoms out of court surprises some who remember that Rockefeller was originally disturbed enough about the secret spying programs that he hand-wrote a letter to Dick Cheney in 2003, expressing his concerns about the program's legality.

So here are the graphs:





Gives some very interesting context to the move, don't you think?

Via the Onion:


Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters

Somehow, I don't think this is going to do the trick.

Iraq has called on Kurdish rebels to leave the north of the country as soon as possible, to avoid the area being targeted by the Turkish military.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said the separatist PKK group was operating without permission from regional authorities.

I'm just trying to think of the American response if say, Pakistan asked the Taliban to leave the Waziristan region to avoid it being targeted by the US military, or Lebanon's government asked Hezbollah to leave to avoid a strike by Israel, or the Palestinian Authority asked Hamas or Islamic Jihad to just go away so they could live in peace with their neighbours.

Something tells me that asking the PKK to leave isn't really going to make much difference, given you've allowed them free reign for the last four plus years and have made it clear that you don't intend to follow up this request for them to leave with anything else.

He said his government wanted to push the PKK out of the country but lacked the military power.

"Iraqi security forces are battling the terrorists in the streets of Baghdad and many other key cities, and are overstretched," Mr Zebari said.

"To release these forces really would create a vacuum."

And here I thought the surge was working.

So basically, the Iraqi security forces are too busy fighting the terrorists that are fighting the Americans to deal with the terrorists that are pissing off their neighbours to the extent the country is risking an(other) invasion.

Several blasts have occurred near the motorcade carrying Pakistani ex-PM Benazir Bhutto, during her triumphant homecoming after eight years in exile.

Mrs Bhutto was on her way from Karachi airport to a welcome rally when the explosions took place.

Initial reports said at least 15 people were injured in the blasts, but Mrs Bhutto was not thought to be among them. At least one vehicle was damaged.

Unconfirmed reports said several people were killed.

A lot of unknowns at this point, but what is clear is that despite being very popular overall, those who oppose her, really, really oppose her.

Hopefully she's all right.

Update: She's okay, but a lot of other people aren't.

While I think Stephane Dion was right when he said that Canadians aren't looking for an election right now, it seems pretty clear that Harper and the Conservatives are:

The Conservatives introduced their new tough-on-crime legislation in the House of Commons on Thursday, a move that is expected to put the Liberal party in a tight spot once again.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Wednesday he will not allow opposition parties to make any amendments to the bill, which he will declare a matter of confidence.

If the bill doesn't pass, Harper's minority government will fall and an election will be called.

. . .

Dion heads into the crime debate after making a difficult decision on Wednesday to allow the Conservative's throne speech, outlining government's mandate for the next session of Parliament, to pass.

Dion said he will introduce amendments to the throne speech and if those are rejected, he will ask his party to abstain from voting on the speech, leaving the Conservatives with enough votes to pass the motion in support of the speech on their own.

For the Conservatives, this is a good move. The Liberals are in disarray and Harper has managed not only to keep his MP's on fairly short leashes, but by shortening up the last parliamentary session, has avoided having to face questions about stories like this:

“The Conservatives laundered over $1.2-million in national advertising expenses through local campaigns, which is against the law. Even worse, they tried to pad bank accounts of 66 Conservative riding associations with over $780,000 with taxpayer-funded rebates, again against the law,” charged Liberal Whip Karen Redman during one particularly heated exchange in the House.

Conservative House Leader Peter Van Loan defended the party's actions by saying other parties have engaged in similar practices – though Elections Canada says it has not seen this type of transaction before.

Liberals emerging from Question Period said their performance showed why it is in their interests not to bring down the government.

“I think we saw in Question Period today the kind of grilling that the Prime Minister and the government doesn't want,” Nova Scotia MP Scott Brison said.

If they can force an election before having to answer questions about Conservative corruption, they have a better chance of winning another mandate, possibly even a majority.

And, if the Liberals don't force an election while the Conservatives do their level best to pass legislation diametrically opposed to what the Liberals supposedly stand for, they get to paint the Liberals as a bunch of spineless cowards unfit to lead or govern.

Like it or not, Harper is a damned good political strategist.

Update: Just one thing, do you guys think you can raise the level of debate at least a little past a third-grade level? Dare you to pass, Dare you not to pass. This sort of language is getting very tiresome.

In the process of attacking Hillary Clinton, Giuliani also decided to get a dig in against the French, portraying them as a bunch of socialist lefties.

Now I thought that since the French elected right-winger Sarkozy that they were more acceptable to Republicans, particularly given they also seem willing to support the , "we should bomb Iran" idea.

Also, on a personal level, Sarkozy is divorcing his second wife, which gives him even more in common with Giuliani.

Stephen Colbert for President!

I normally try to avoid endorsements in other countries political processes since I don't appreciate people telling me who to vote for, but how can you not support a Colbert candidacy? The US could do far worse, (and probably will).

Anyway, the interesting thing I read in the linked story is that to get on the Democratic ballot in South Carolina, you need $2,500.00 or 3,000 signatures. To get on the Republican ballot, the fee is $35,000.00.

I can't imagine how the Republicans keep getting stereotyped as being a "rich guys" party.

Well, easy to predict this will cause all sorts of outrage.

James Watson, a Nobel Prize winner for his part in the unravelling of DNA who now runs one of America's leading scientific research institutions, drew widespread condemnation for comments he made ahead of his arrival in Britain today for a speaking tour at venues including the Science Museum in London.

The 79-year-old geneticist reopened the explosive debate about race and science in a newspaper interview in which he said Western policies towards African countries were wrongly based on an assumption that black people were as clever as their white counterparts when "testing" suggested the contrary. He claimed genes responsible for creating differences in human intelligence could be found within a decade.

The problem, of course, is that what most “intelligence” tests actually measure is knowledge, not intelligence.  Science has yet to come up with a quantifiable way to measure intelligence, at least last I checked.  That automatically introduces biases into the tests by the selection of the knowledge being tested for. Saying that "testing" has shown anything about racial "intelligence" is just flat out wrong.

There are also any number of environmental factors that probably have far greater effects on people’s reasoning ability than any purported genetic differences could; such as the chemical soup we live with in the industrialized world and malnutrition as a child.

It’s also pretty clear from some other comments Dr. Watson has made that he’s not exactly the most fair and open-minded individual out there:

In 1997, he told a British newspaper that a woman should have the right to abort her unborn child if tests could determine it would be homosexual. He later insisted he was talking about a "hypothetical" choice which could never be applied. He has also suggested a link between skin colour and sex drive, positing the theory that black people have higher libidos, and argued in favour of genetic screening and engineering on the basis that " stupidity" could one day be cured. He has claimed that beauty could be genetically manufactured, saying: "People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would great."

Admittedly, I kind of like that last one, at least in theory.  In practice, if the modeling world is any indication, it could lead to a depressing sameness in what “pretty” means. But I digress.

The whole idea of genetic selection for intelligence, or some other trait, has always fascinated me.

His views are also reflected in a book published next week, in which he writes: "There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."

The reason its fascinating is because it is to some extent true.  Anyone familiar with animal breeding can tell you that’s its more than possible to selectively breed for certain traits, and geographical isolation can bring with it changes in different populations.

Where it breaks down, (well, one of the many ways), is in the assumption that somehow living in Africa compared to living in Europe wouldn’t continue selecting for intelligent people over stupid ones.

In fact, an unbiased assessment of such an idea would have to recognize that Darwinian pressures for weeding out the less intelligent specimens of humanity would be the greatest in the areas of the planet were survival is the most difficult.  People in the Western world are a bunch of fat, lazy slobs compared to most people in Africa or other parts of the developing world.  If this theory is accurate, people in the developing world should be leaving us in the dust intelligence-wise.

One other thing animal breeding can teach us, is that being highly selective in your breeding regimen has the unfortunate side effect of a very limited gene pool, with all the ugliness that implies.  It’s no accident that the push for “perfect” cattle or other types of livestock have left them hugely susceptible to being wiped out by a single disease or infection because of their too-close genetic similarity.  Or that the healthiest type of dog or cat you can have is a mongrel.

There also isn’t any human populations so isolated that their genetic material isn’t well mixed in with the rest of humanity.  To pretend otherwise is beyond foolish, and frankly, given what I said above about evolutionary pressure, I'm thinking we white folks should be grateful for that.

Another of the seemingly endless line of peace conferences to solve the Palestinian riddle is being set up by Condoleeza Rice and the US.  As the BBC says:

It has been easy to express scepticism - even cynicism - about the Bush administration's efforts to try to bring about peace in the Middle East.

After all, this is an administration that throughout its entire first term - and much of its second - has shown little sense of urgency.

There is suspicion too as to why the Bush administration has chosen to focus on the issue now.

Is America's recent engagement little more than PR - trying to appease growing Arab anger, trying to win support for its actions in Iraq?

You can, and probably should, add a very one-sided approach to any issues in the region, supporting the Israelis in virtually every action and offering only the mildest of protests when Israel went against US policy for things like expanding their West Bank settlements.  The result of all this is that the US isn’t seen as a fair and unbiased arbiter.  That is going to make any progress far more difficult than it may have been in the past.

And this line is just too damn funny

"We have better things to do than invite people to Annapolis for a photo op,"

Yes, (/snort) we know that your administration would never spend massive sums of taxpayer dollars for something as petty as a photo op



All right, snarkiness aside, there are apparently signs that administration is actually serious this time around, though the record of “Russian expert” Condi with regards to that country isn’t exactly heartening for her prospects elsewhere.  And the continued siege of the Gaza Strip and failure to reach out to Syria or Hamas gives them incentive to play spoiler as mentioned in the article, not to mention the recent Israeli air strike into Syria targeting, well, something.

And it is important to remember that a real agreement means getting the Israeli and Palestinian people to support it.  Israel is a functioning state, and so what their government accepts will probably be accepted by the majority of its people, even if reluctantly.  The Palestinians are a different matter.

Propoganda aside, Abbas and the Palestinian Authority are not seen as a legitimate government, the more so since they, with Israeli and US help, overturned the democratic election of Hamas.  As a result, what Abbas may agree to doesn’t translate into a real agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians.

But, even giving the Bush administration the benefit of all doubts, the question still has to be asked, “Why now?”  Much like Clinton’s Camp David accords, this is being done too late in the mandate.  Doing flight of the bumblebee diplomacy is unlikely to override the years of mistrust Bush has built up for the US.  So why wait until its too late to effect any real change to make the effort?

Are apparently eighth cousins. If this were a second or third cousin situation, it may be at least mildly shocking, but eighth? From the sounds of things, their common ancestor was too old to have taken part in the Revolutionary War. Go that far back and they're probably related to a significant fraction of the US population.

I still love the Obama campaign's response, though:

“Every family has a black sheep.”

Admittedly, there aren't a great number of facts out about this case, but I'm betting that cell-phone footage will be quite illuminating.

An eyewitness with cellphone footage spoke out Monday night about what she allegedly saw at the Vancouver International Airport when a man was subdued with Tasers by RCMP and later died.

. . .

Sima Ashrafinia, who recorded the incident at the airport on her cellphone, told CBC News that RCMP officers stunned Dziekanski four times and handcuffed him after he fell on the floor.

"The third and fourth ones were at the same time," she alleges. "The officer at his right and the officer at his left, they Tasered him at the same time and he fell down on his right.

What really struck me about the story is that the police are alleging that the death was caused by, "excited delirium", also known as in-custody death syndrome, apparently because the only people who suffer death from it happen to do so while in police custody. Rather gets the old BS detector quivering.

One of its symptoms is described as an irregular or accelerated heartbeat, which, if true, makes one wonder why the police would think that subjecting someone whose heart is doing wild and crazy things to repeated electric shocks is a good practice.

At the very least, that makes it sound like a case of police negligence.

There are 12 Army Captains who need to have their credibility, their judgement, their knowledge, and their experience brought into question.

Today marks five years since the authorization of military force in Iraq, setting Operation Iraqi Freedom in motion. Five years on, the Iraq war is as undermanned and under-resourced as it was from the start. And, five years on, Iraq is in shambles.

. . .

Against this backdrop, the U.S. military has been trying in vain to hold the country together. Even with "the surge," we simply do not have enough soldiers and marines to meet the professed goals of clearing areas from insurgent control, holding them securely and building sustainable institutions. Though temporary reinforcing operations in places like Fallujah, An Najaf, Tal Afar, and now Baghdad may brief well on PowerPoint presentations, in practice they just push insurgents to another spot on the map and often strengthen the insurgents' cause by harassing locals to a point of swayed allegiances. Millions of Iraqis correctly recognize these actions for what they are and vote with their feet -- moving within Iraq or leaving the country entirely. Still, our colonels and generals keep holding on to flawed concepts.

Let's start with "Captain" Ed Morrissey

'Knew' Being The Operative Word

Of the twelve captains that wrote this article, not one of them has served in Iraq since General David Petraeus took over command of the mission. Not one of them served with the higher force levels that have been deployed to Iraq. None of them served during the Anbar Awakening. Most of them last served in 2005, two years ago.

Confederate Yankee

I value the writers' service and their opinions as soldiers who have served in Iraq, but wouldn't this editorial have meant more if the Washington Post had managed to find soldiers to write it who had actually been in in Iraq in the last year?

. . .

While their opinions are valuable from a historical perspective based upon what they've seen while they served, they hardly seem to be best qualified to be able to comment upon the current situation on the ground in Iraq, as it has changed so radically since the last of them departed.

Their experience shouldn't bother us too much because we've moved a few Freidman's beyond when they were serving so their knowledge of the current situation can't be as good as ours, who've never been to Iraq at all.

Experience and knowledge questioned - Check

Now let's get to the real meat, Jules Crittenden,

12 Captains

With an alarmingly poor grasp of political and military realities in Iraq and the United States weigh in with the following at the Washington Post:

Yeah, how dare a bunch of military officers who've served in iraq pretend to have any grasp of the political or military realities there?

Judgement questioned - Check

The willingness of the right to attack anyone, anyone at all, who disagrees with their agenda never ceases to amaze me.

Updated below

Beijing has strongly urged US President George W Bush to cancel a planned meeting with the Dalai Lama, saying it would "seriously damage" relations.

. . .

On Wednesday, Mr Bush is due to attend a ceremony at the US Capitol where the Dalai Lama will receive a Congressional Gold Medal, a top US civilian award.

It will be the first time a sitting president will have appeared in public with the 72-year-old Buddhist leader.

I'm actually a little stunned by that last bit. You would have thought a sitting US President would have publicly met with the Dalai Lama back when China was part of the "Red Scare", during the Vietnam War, sometime long before now when China has "most favoured nation" status for trade.

You also can't help but compare the willingness of the White House to go along with Congress to offend the Chinese with the reluctance and even hostility in regards to Turkey. Of course, the circumstances are different, and I find myself siding with Bush in both cases, but it is a little jarring to have both events so close together.

China might be pissed, but unlike Turkey, the US is unlikely to suffer any immediate military pain as a result. Economic pain, maybe. But it would well serve US interests to get some of their manufacturing base back.

And even more to the point, something can actually be done to help the Tibetans today, rather than waiting around another eight or nine decades and then lamenting their loss.

Update: I do find it fun to note there are those willing to blame the Democratic Congress for everything, regardless of the details.