A Mouse, Alone No More

Living next to you [the USA] is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly or temperate the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.
- Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, March 25, 1969, Addressing the Press Club in Washington, D.C.

LONDON (AP) — Britain's close alliance with the United States has put it at particular risk of terrorist attack, two leading think tanks said Monday, but a government minister said the nation would not have been safer by staying out of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The continuing debate about the wisdom of Britain's military commitments has intensified after the bombings of three London underground trains and a bus on July 7 killed 55 people, including the four suicide bombers, and injured some 700 others.

I know a lot of people are going to have knee-jerk reaction to this news (including the British government) but the logic isn't really that questionable: Because of the war in Iraq, Britain has gone from being a "safe zone" (because of it's relative leniency towards muslim immigrants) to being a target. Anyway, the far more interesting conclusion of the think-tank report is the one the AP is ignoring - that the UK gets little to no influence or power within the US-UK alliance. It looks like the UK, once the Empire on which the sun never set, can now be called an Honorary Mouse, just like Canada. To Queen Elizabeth: Welcome. Don't worry, you're still on all our money.

This is important, because some of you will remember that some Canadian quislings thinkers have said that, in order to influence American foreign policy we need to show our willingness to work with Washington. Call it the Ignatieff Hypothesis. This report shatters that myth, showing that despite doing yeoman's work in Iraq, the UK has had little effect on US policies. So those who would have Canada say "ready, aye ready" to our neighbours to the south should wake the hell up. All we would do by helping the US is ruin our good name. Canada's never been afraid of fighting the good fight - whether it was the Fascists in 1937, Germany and Japan in 1939, or Afghanistan in 2001. Next time there's a cause worth fighting for, I have absolutely no doubt the Canadian people will sign up.

It would be nice if the Americans could show up on time, for once.

Whither Advertising?

So after yesterday's false alarm (Japan banning commercial skipping?) it's interesting to see Tivo actually (gasp!) innovating a new service in television:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Digital video recorder maker TiVo Inc. on Monday upgraded its television recording service to let about 1 million of its subscribers instantly respond to specially coded advertising, the company said....

The new system creates an option for viewers who want to know more about a product to tell TiVo to release their contact information to an advertiser. For example, after watching an ad for an automobile or family vacation, users can ask to have a brochure sent to their home.

"We have seen the need to provide greater entry point to this advertising space ... to support enough advertisers concurrently," said Kimber Sterling, director of advertising and research sales. "And consumers who are interested in those products will invest several minutes of their time."

Fascinating - bringing the web paradigm of "click-through" ads to television. Of course, the next logical step is to go the Salon.com route - forcing viewers to watch ads before they can access their content. Of course, if Tivo lets me choose which ads I'd prefer to watch, that might even work.

We Continue To Suck

Canada should be ashamed of it's continuing role in legitimizing the US's coup in Haiti. Naomi Klein has more.

No Christian Terrorists?

Ah, let us now turn to the fount of truth, Pat Robertson. On Bastille Day, Robertson totally harshed my terrorist-loving buzz:

ROBERTSON: Don't you feel it rather interesting that every time you have a story about terrorism, it is linked to Muslim extremists? You don't hear somebody, "Christian extremist killing film producers, Christian extremists blowing up trains." It just doesn't happen. But it's Muslim extremists and, ladies and gentlemen, Islam, at least at its core, teaches violence. It's there in the Quran in clear, bold statements. Well over 100 verses dealing with violence against infidels, and that is what they're taught.

See, it's funny because it's true. Except it isn't:

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (Reuters) - Convicted Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Monday for the 1998 bombing of an Alabama abortion clinic that killed a police officer and maimed a nurse.

And in case you're unclear as to Rudolph's position as a Christian extremist, this is an excerpt from his statement in April:

The Republican party is the modern day equivalent to the Pharisaical sect in ancient Judea. "You are like whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and all uncleanness. Even so you also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and inequity." Matthew 23:28. The coward Bush talks about the "culture of life," but intends to effect no change with respect to Roe v. Wade. He made this perfectly clear when he stated during the stem cell debate that "America is not ready to abolish Roe v. Wade." Three of the key justices who are instrumental in maintaining Roe v. Wade O'Connor, Kennedy and Souter were appointed by Republican presidents. No politician in Washington will ever seriously threaten abortion on demand And the fools who listen to them, in their hearts, know this but do not care.

Nope. No sir. No Christian terrorists. But somehow I don't think Robertson is going to be publishing a retraction anytime soon. I would be willing to bet that Rudolph and Robertson have different voting records, though.

Oh, and the idea that it's only the Qu'ran that deals with violence towards infidels is hysterically funny. Has Robertson even read the Bible? I should be killed for eating bacon, according to that thing!

Some Bizarre Headlines

Good thing I've had my pot of tea - otherwise I might be confused:

• Harry Potter spells money for Rowling. Seriously, that's the headline. All this time, I thought it was a charity...
• China to send pig sperm to space. Yep. You read that right.
• Jewish settler seeks to become Palestinian. I'm not sure if he can convert... okay, this is actually a neat story. "Jewish settler Avi Farhan, determined not to give up his home overlooking the sea when Israel quits the occupied Gaza Strip, is looking into becoming a Palestinian.
  
  "I have met with Palestinians. I am willing to be a test case for peace and take up Palestinian citizenship," Farhan told Reuters. "It will hurt me to give up my Israeli citizenship, but I want to remain here." There was this episode of Star Trek where a bunch of Native Americans agreed to live with Cardassians...

You Win Again, History

I forget - was Peter Pan trying to escape his shadow? I find myself reading stories like this and devoutly wishing we could all wake up tomorrow not care about the past:

Row over offer to Sudeten Germans
Czech President Vaclav Klaus has condemned the country's prime minister for offering to compensate Germans expelled after World War II.

Jiri Paroubek said the Sudetenland Germans of the former Czechoslovakia would receive compensation if they could prove they opposed the Nazis.

Mr Klaus said he thought Mr Paroubek had gone "completely mad".

Mr Paroubek made the offer during a one-day visit to Austria on Thursday.

Both Austria and Germany want the Czech Republic and Slovakia to repeal the 194 decrees ordering the expulsion of some three million Sudetenland Germans from border regions of Moravia and Bohemia.

Admittedly, the idea of the Czechs compensating the Germans strikes me as a bit addled, but hey - it's not my country. We now move on to the news that a Japanese town has actually adopted the "nationalist" textbook which almost totally ignores Japan's wartime atrocities:

TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japanese city on Wednesday adopted for use in its schools a history textbook that critics say whitewashes Tokyo's militaristic past, a decision likely to further chill ties with China and South Korea.

The education board of the city of Otawara in Tochigi Prefecture, 150 kilometers (90 miles) north of Tokyo, became the first municipal government to adopt "The New History Textbook," written by nationalistic scholars for junior high schools....

Critics say the textbook, sponsored by the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform (Tsukurukai), plays down the 1937 Nanjing Massacre in China, ignores the sexual enslavement of women for Japanese soldiers and depicts Japanese wartime actions as aimed at liberating other Asian countries.

The Japanese have been trying to sell that "liberation" line since before the war. It's kind of funny - I guess the most blatant lies never die, they just keep coming back. Of course, Japan's relations with China are being further tested by Japan's recent decision to allow Japanese oil drilling to begin in contested waters. Of course, Japan has border disputes with every single one of it's neighbours, so any oil exploration was likely to anger somebody, but this is still bad news, and the combination of textbook-drilling is hurting Sino-Japanese relations, again.

The only good news is that China is very quickly backing down from comments made by one Major-General that China would use its nuclear weapons in the event of a conflict over Taiwan. China remains comitted to "peaceful reunification" with Taiwan, which might be why the Communists are backing down from their historical claim that it was they alone who liberated China - the new party line is that "the entire nation" (presumably including the Nationalists) liberated China. This is a pretty major change - and it looks to me like an olive branch being offered to Taipei.

The US government, for it's part, is doing it's best to look like the arrogant bully in Asia. Whether it's refusing to back India's seat on the Security Council, or screaming about the Chinese attempt to buy Unocal, the US seems intent on annoying almost 3 billion people. On the other hand, it's nice to see Congressmen at least being more honest about their concerns over UNOCAL:

As an example of where China could deny the United States access to oil sources, Hunter cited investments by Unocal in pipelines running from Caspian Sea oil fields through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey.

"China's purchase of Unocal would dramatically increase its leverage over these countries, and therefore its leverage over U.S. interests in those regions," the California Republican said. The House Energy and Commerce Committee has scheduled a hearing on CNOOC's bid for July 19.

I see. So this isn't about "national energy security" or any BS like that. It's about America's neocolonial foothold in Central Asia. Thanks for clearing that up, Rep. Hunter. It's funny when they stop trying to put naked avarice in the burlesque of "spreading democracy" or crap like that.

Oof. Too many links for one post. Got to stop taking weekends off.

Calming down...

Japanese broadcast regulators are now saying that ad-skipping devices like Tivo are illegal. Up next: The cops are coming to smash the fast-forward button on your remote control.

Or... maybe not. All the non-blog stories I can find are from the National Association of Commercial Broadcasters, which is a commercial advocacy group, not a bunch of regulators. This isn't anything that Jack Valenti in the US hasn't said before.

Ahh, Bunnies

Last Christmas, I was fortunate enough to stumble across "It's a Wonderful Life" as told in 30 seconds, by bunnies.

Now I learn that there are many "30 second bunnies" movies. Including, less heart-warmingly but far more amusingly, Pulp Fiction.

Bunny AWAY!

All Praise Scrubs

I have only recently discovered this wondrous show. I've been watching the episodes of the first season, and I have to say I'm blown away. It's taken the one part of Ally McBeal that I found appealing - lots of quirky visual gags - and actually built an intelligent plot and characters in to it. Holy crap.

I would reccomend renting the DVDs.

That is all.

Link Cleaning

In which I clear out old stories I've been meaning to blog about:

So wrong. But so funny.

US Military to spend on Star Trek-like energy weapons. Up next: Tranquility Base becomes the next century's Abu Ghraib. Seriously - one of the selling points is "Such a strike would be so precise that, as some designers put it at a recent conference here, the military could plausibly deny responsibility." If that doesn't chill your blood, I don't know what would.

China's nuclear arsenal is smaller than you think. So Angelica (see! I can get names right!) I think you have less to worry about over this crazy guy. Not that "smaller" nuclear forces necessarily makes one feel better. You only need a few, after all.

That's better.

These People Aren't Friends

This is the saddest part of the chumminess in Washington between journalists and the Bush Administration. When the pressure's on, Bush and co. will turn on you like that.

As Billmon ably demonstrates, now that someone in the White House is facing a possible indictment, the White House's strategy has gone from being "no comment" to anonymously - oh, lord, more of that! - claiming that Rove never leaked it - the Press did! I'm sure we're a half-step away from this all being blamed on Liberals. Can the scene of Bush holding a list of 57 known CIA agents be far behind?

A memo to the press: These people are not your friends. You may have drinks with them, tell bawdy jokes, whatever. I'm sure you're all chummy. But your job as reporters is to, if necessary, destroy their careers. You almost did it with Clinton. Think you can do it again? For their part, their job isn't to tell you everything - their job is actually to keep it from you. Your job is to find it out.

I would have thought most of this would be covered in Journalism 101, somewhere shortly after "Stand up and tell us your name." Apparently, most of the Washington Press Corps could use a refresher course. Having seen how reporters act around Ottawa and Toronto, I'm relatively certain we could use some up north, too.

Billmon also brings up another theory that I've been chewing on - that maybe Rove is actually telling the truth, and Judith Miller told him who Wilson's wife was. I was just saying yesterday (in a disagreement with my father) that if Miller wasn't claiming protections of the First Ammendment, she'd be claiming the protections of the Fifth. Of course, when you're protecting yourself with the same part of the Constitution recently used by Ken Lay of Enron, you don't get glowing articles in Salon about how noble a martyr you are.

Where's Mine?

Holy hell:

WASHINGTON -- The federal government's chief investigator yesterday blasted the Pentagon for its ''atrocious financial management," saying the Defense Department was not able to give federal oversight officials a full accounting of the $1 billion being spent each week on the war in Iraq.

''If the Department of Defense were a business, they'd be out of business," David Walker, comptroller general of the Government Accountability Office, said at a breakfast with reporters yesterday. ''They have absolutely atrocious financial management."

The GAO has been examining the Pentagon's Iraq expenses, and ''we're having extreme difficulty in getting the Department of Defense to provide a full accounting of what they're spending" there, Walker said. ''I can't understand how we're spending $1 billion a week."

Let's restate that - the Department of Defense is spending the real equivalent of an Apollo Program every three months. The article says that money is for the war, not for general defense. The article could be wrong, but as it is it implies the DoD is spending something close to $400 billion on the war.

But getting more than a paltry commitment to dealing with America's oil dependency? That's the Road to Serfdom, you commie.

"Break Our Society"?

Now, I've had some nice things to say about Canada's Chief of Defense Staff, Rick Hillier. And even most of what he said yesterday I was okay with. But I have two problems with his statements yesterday - one small, one large.

The small one is that I have a huge reservation about military figures advocating foreign policy. I don't think Hillier was doing that, quite. But his rather... emphatic defense of the Canadian mission in Afghanistan seems to be more at home in Washington than Ottawa, frankly.

Canada's top soldier doesn't believe the country's presence in Afghanistan makes it a target for attacks, but he warns Canadians should prepare for military casualties.

Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier says Canada would be a target whether its troops were in Afghanistan or not.

"These are detestable murderers and scumbags. I'll tell you that right up front," said Hillier....

"It doesn't matter whether we are in Afghanistan or anywhere else in the world. They want to break our society. I actually believe that," he said.

If Canada is attacked, he says, it will be only because it is a free country.

"They detest our freedoms. They detest our society. They detest our liberties," he said.

Like I said, I don't think Hillier was advocating foreign policy, quite, but it's hard for me to read that and think that Hillier doesn't want, for example, a closer security relationship with the US. I'm obviously reading in to the text, so I'll freely admit I could be way of base. But based on what I've seen and heard previously, that's in character.

(Full disclosure: I've gone to school with Hillier's son, though I've never met the Chief himself.)

My larger objection to Hillier's comments yesterday is the last part - the whole "they hate our liberties" part. When, Lord, will we finally be able to give up that God-forsaken BS? Osama has never recruited a new AQ member - not a single one - by attacking Canada for it's lax broadcast standards. How has he done it? By pointing to Chechnya, and Palestine, and even disparate places like Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and said "Muslims aren't free." Osama doesn't give a damn about our freedoms - he cares about Mohammed bin whoever who used to live in Falluja, but now has to bury his wife and child. He cared about Mohammed before the American invasion, because he was living under a secular dictatorship, and he cares about the poor shmucks who live under the rule of the Sauds because of their corruption, but I promise you the only reason he cares about Angelina's tits is as a point of contrast between the "pure" and the "rest."

And as for Hillier's earlier point - "they want to break our society" - I have one simple question: Do they have the means to do so? Because, if they do, then Gen. Hillier should stop spreading plattitudes about "freedom" and do his job.

I probably shouldn't end on a sour note, because a) I actually agreed with Hillier's important points: i) Canadian forces are going to take casualties, and we forget that at our peril, and ii) this is still a job worth doing - and b) I still think Hillier is doing a good job, despite this recent outburst of chest-thumping.

Queerer Than We Can Imagine

Wow. Astrophysicists are going to have to go back to the drawing board.

SPACE.com Wed Jul 13, 2:07 PM ET

A newly discovered planet has bountiful sunshine, with not one, not two, but three suns glowing in its sky.

It is the first extrasolar planet found in a system with three stars. How a planet was born amidst these competing gravitational forces will be a challenge for planet formation theories....

The triple-star system, HD 188753, is located 149 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. The primary star is like our Sun, weighing 1.06 solar masses. The other two stars form a tightly bound pair, which is separated from the primary by approximately the Sun-Saturn distance.

Wow. Not ten years ago, this probably would have been called impossible, or nearly so. Simply put, multiple-star solar systems are such a jumble of gravitational forces that it was long deemed impossible for planets to form in them.

Though this latest planet is another in the "Hot Jupiter" type - a gas giant orbiting very near to it's parent star - the fact that it exists at all is astonishing, and arguably provides more evidence for the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Our experience on Earth shows that life began at almost the exact moment it could realistically start - roughly the moment the planet cooled in to a solid mass. With astronomers continually finding planets in places where they shouldn't be, it seems that planet formation is kind of like life on earth - anywhere it can be, it is.

Note - I am not an astronomer, just a slightly-informed layman. Discount my opinions appropriately, as always.

Wow

Kevin Drum is usually the archetypal good American liberal - feet firmly planted on both sides of the fence. So imagine my surprise when I read this off his blog today:

Welcome to the modern Republican party. Who would have thought that one day the White House would be run by someone who made Richard Nixon look responsible and forbearing?

Damn, Kevin. Keep those claws sharp!

It's Funny Because It's True

Super Mario World Physics Tutorial.

Lo-fi goodness.

Stop Me Before I Plame Again

Just to be clear - I don't support sending journalists to prison to coerce them in to testifying. As I said, my father is a journalist, and I certainly don't want to see him sent to prison.

That said, while journalists have been yelling about how we non-journalists "don't get it" that a principle is at stake here, journalists don't seem to get that a very serious crime was comitted in the Plame case. Moreover, it was comitted using the legal protections which journalists are afforded.

Some have compared the Plame/Miller affair to the Skokie case, where Illinois Nazis had their right to assemble defended by the ACLU and the Supreme Court.

[Blues Brothers]I Hate Illinois Nazis.[/Blues Brothers]

That said, I think the Skokie analogy is wrong. Rather, a better example would be the Amadou Diallo shooting in New York. Police, like journalists, are afforded certain legal protections to do their jobs, because society recognizes that their jobs serve a greater purpose - cops are allowed to use lethal force in certain situations, reporters are allowed to keep sources anonymous. But what do we do when those legal protections have obviously been misused?

If you think the proper response to the Diallo shooting (or any example of police misconduct) is to let the police responsible go without any investigation, or to allow the police to interfere and refuse to cooperate with an investigation, then I can see why you might think Miller deserves to go free. She almost certainly has information pertaining to this crime, and is refusing to cooperate. Like journalists are doing today, police have regularly warned that any prosecution of their crimes will lead to their jobs being poorly done - i.e. less law enforcement. Those threats have been hollow. Honest journalism will continue.

It's also worth noting that, like the Diallo case, people have almost certainly died because of Robert Novak's actions. This was a gross misuse of a reporter's privilege, as bad as any police shooting. I can honestly see why some journalists are worried - this affair will change the way reporting is done in the US, and I hope for the better. If it leads to journalists being less giddy about getting anonymous leaks used to smear political opponents, I won't shed a single tear.

Liberals and War

Battlepanda is back again, and the peasants rejoice at her return. In one of her latest posts, she deals with the question of liberals and wars of mercy. Put another way, a commenter asks if the same liberals who defended the sovereignty of Iraq would be willing to go in the wayback machine and violate Nazi Germany's sovereignty to stop the Holocaust. Amanda take up the banner and raises it high:

All I can tell you is that of all the liberals I've ever come across, none is likely to fail your test and sit by while the holocaust occured because they respect too much the sovereignty of Germany.

Well, I'd like to think that she's right. Indeed, I think if you were to take the 100 million most "liberal" Americans (whoever that would entail) and replaced 1936 America's population with them, it's quite possible that Roosevelt would have been able to declare war against Germany in 1939, instead of waiting two and a half years.

But this isn't the issue, because World War II was never fought over the Holocaust - we simply didn't know the extent of Germany's industrial death machine. Rather, the war was fought against Nazi aggression, and the reason the west waited so long was a very simple one - most of the decision-makers had lived through World War One, and were loath to start a new war. So, Amanda, you should ask yourself another question, and this one is more diffcult: Of all the liberals you know, how many would have started World War II early, after having lived through World War I? I'd like to think that I wouldn't be afraid to stand up to Nazi agression, but if I'd grown up all my life knowing my father (for example) wasn't able to exert himself because of breathing too much mustard gas in the trenches, then maybe I'd be scared of what the new war would bring, too.

The question of liberal interventionism is a bit different, of course. Intervening in Rwanda wasn't likely to start World War III - and we still failed the test. And our intervention in the Balkans was so late as to be a failure. Afghanistan wasn't about liberation, but it's been a failure in that regard too. Iraq, well, with the bodies stacked like pallets, I think we can say the humanitarian angle is a failure as well. But it's worth saying that it wasn't because of liberals - certainly, it wasn't President Al Gore who botched the war in Afghanistan.

Don't Worry, Be Happy

Via Susie Madrak, we get this joyful piece of news:

An Iraqi humanitarian organization is reporting that 128,000 Iraqis have been killed since the U.S. invasion began in March 2003.

Mafkarat al-Islam reported that chairman of the 'Iraqiyun humanitarian organization in Baghdad, Dr. Hatim al-'Alwani, said that the toll includes everyone who has been killed since that time, adding that 55 percent of those killed have been women and children aged 12 and under.

'Iraqiyun obtained data from relatives and families of the deceased, as well as from Iraqi hospitals in all the country's provinces. The 128,000 figure only includes those whose relatives have been informed of their deaths and does not include those were abducted, assassinated or simply disappeared.

Okay, so that Lancet piece that said 100,000 dead in Iraq seems to now have corroborating evidence. I'm sure the hawkosphere will immediately retract their previous slime job against one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed journals in history.

Yet More About Reporters

Even if you're willing to click through the ads, I wouldn't reccomend reading this article at Salon about Judy Miller in jail. Unless you're actually undecided on this issue - which, if you know much about it, is unlikely - you're not going to find anything new there. However, the righteous tone of the article did piss me off about as much as it did Atrios (from whom I purloin the link.) The key line is on the second page:

On one hand, many members of the public -- especially liberals who ought to be staunch defenders of the Bill of Rights -- seem unable or unwilling to grasp the idea that a matter of fundamental principle might be at stake, even in the murky and seemingly bottomless waters of the Miller-Plame-Rove affair. Compelling a reporter to reveal his or her sources to the police turns that reporter into a police agent, and that's not acceptable, even in unsavory circumstances like these. No reporter can be expected to check out the legality or ethics or motivations of all sources in advance. All sorts of surprising people talk to reporters when they probably shouldn't, for all sorts of personal and political and psychological reasons. If journalists can only receive confidential information from the saintly and the pure of heart, the entire enterprise might as well become "The View."

In a sense, O'Heihr is right: A principle is at stake here, and an important one. I'm the son of a journalist, and remember being told late one night not to worry if the police came by to take my father away, because the babysitter would be by. Seriously - I wasn't to worry that my father was going to jail, because he'd called the sitter. Okay, my father wasn't always the most perceptive parent.

However, my father was willing to go to jail over one of his stories, and he had used an anonymous source who had given him information that was restricted. (Without going in to the details, let me just say that the story is one most Canadian families would know, and one that was absolutely worth my father going to jail if that was necesary for the story being told.) But this is exactly the point - this was a story that a) needed to be told, and b) could only be told by using an anonymous source, or not at all.

The case of Plamegate and Judy Miller is almost the exact opposite - leaking a CIA agent's name was totally unnecessary and unethical (not to mention illegal) and should not have been published, certainly not while giving the traitor anonymity. It's hard to imagine in this day when hardly a single story is written without an anonymous source, but this is a special privilege, not a blanket right. And it's never absolute.

If journalists want the protection of "principles" than they have to live up to them. It's doesn't get any simpler than that.

Postscript

Late War of the Worlds thought: the screenwriter was faithful to the original novel in that the aliens are done in by germs - though we get a gratuitous scene of US soldiers bazooka-ing a sick and dying alien to death.

It seems that, historically and even in film, the US can't win a war unless a far more numerous ally has softened the enemy up beforehand. World War II? The Russians and Chinese respectively kept German and Japanese forces tied up while the Americans (and Canadians, and British) did the easy work. When the aliens invade, we'll have to rely on bacteria which not only outnumber us, but outweigh us by orders of magnitude. Good to know.

Thank God for Afghanistan

One of the reassuring plattitudes we were led to believe in the run-up to the war in Iraq was that Afghanistan showed how the "New War" worked - light on the ground troops, but heavy on air power. This, of course, is the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) that so many thinkers have heralded as a new era of war fighting. There's some things that suggest this could be a far more effective use of force - using smart bombs and drones rather than B-52s and kilotons of explosives. However, there's a huge difference between thinking that new technologies can help soldiers fight in new ways, and thinking that new technologies make soldiers obsolete. Afghanistan, proponents of RMA claim, shows that all you need is "a guy on a camel with a cellphone" to call in air strikes, and you can destroy the enemy without the massed armies of old.

In a way, this is a technical fallacy similar to the dogma of strategic bombing before and during WWII - except it's the mirror image. Rather than believe (as we did back then) that massive bombing campaigns against the enemy's homeland can cripple the enemy's will to fight, we now seem to believe that smart bombs alone can win a war.

Of course, the reality of Iraq and Afghanistan has showed that if the enemy is going to mass in numbers, you'd better have the numbers to push back. In Iraq, you have significantly less than 100,000 combat soldiers to patrol an area the size of California and a population slightly smaller than Canada's. The situation in Afghanistan is probably worse.

If this were the only lie used to sell Iraq, we might not have fallen for it. But we were also told that the US Army was such a superior fighting machine, that it was unthinkable that any significant resistance would last long against it. I thought of that when I read this review by Phil Carter, of a book called Not a Good Day To Die:

But as the crew waited for the landing ramp to drop, an al Qaeda fighter fired his rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) into the Chinook, blowing out the electrical system and rendering the bird's navigational displays and radios useless. Shrapnel from a second RPG sliced through the aircraft, spraying hydraulic fluid all over the chopper floor. The Chinook had been on the ground for all of 45 seconds. Enemy soldiers were now visible to the naked eye, as was a donkey lashed to a tree and a goat or lamb carcass hanging from the branches.

Clearly, the intelligence had been wrong....

Operation Anaconda began as an attempt to destroy what the U.S. military thought was a scattered group of about 250 Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in and around the Shahikot Valley, 81 miles south of Kabul. A number of those fighters were thought to be high-value targets—many suspected Osama bin Laden might be among them. Having just failed to block the escape of al Qaeda forces (and possibly bin Laden) from Tora Bora, the military was determined not to make the same mistake again. And yet it did. Instead of a couple hundred jihadists, the Shahikot Valley region turned out to hold a few thousand. And though the military would declare Operation Anaconda a “victory,” Army War College professor Stephen Biddle has written that it may have actually been a victory for al Qaeda and the Taliban, in that it showed they could stand up to a conventional U.S. force on the battlefield, much as they did to the Soviets two decades before.

Naylor (the author) goes on to describe in great detail what went wrong at Shahikot, including an incredibly bad planning aparatus - essentially, the battle plan was being drawn up in Florida, with Pentagon officials apparently more concerned with how to brief the press than what the mission objectives were. Bad management, to say the least. As for that line about how bad the intelligence was, well, feast your eyes on this:

Satellite photography caught one RPG, which, warned one officer, probably meant there were more, but no one knew just how many. A thousand enemy fighters were estimated to be in the valley. As it turned out, there may have been 10 times as many, and they weren't just in the valley but on the tactically crucial high ground above.

But U.S. commanders refused to change their plan. It was, according to the 10th Mountain Division's chief of operations Lt. Col. David Gray, “unreasonable to expect wholesale changes based on a single source.” But, writes Naylor, “[chief planner Maj. Paul Wilie] acknowledged that writing the plan had been such a painful process of compromise and negotiation that nobody could face the prospect of tearing it up… simply because the enemy might not be where they were supposed to be.”

Yes, it would be terrible if you had to remake all those Powerpoint presentations, just because the enemy had the high ground. Naylor is right in emphasizing the importance of the high ground, especially in a case like Afghanistan where valuable air and artillery assets were already being moved to the Persian Gulf, and were thus unavailable to destroy the Taliban in Afghanistan. This is doubly the case when bureaucratic incompetence puts 1,500 US infantrymen on the ground with nothing heavier than the machine guns on their backs.

Read the rest of the review here - it sounds like an excellent book, and I hope I'll be able to get it soon. Oh, and spare a happy thought for Phil Carter - he's been called in to active duty in Iraq.

You might guess that I'm unsympathetic to the chuch of RMA, and you'd be right. Not that I don't think that these new technologies are militarily valuable - quite the opposite. But there are limits to their usefulness, and eventually the ability to control a situation is highly (though not completely) dependent on numbers. It's worth noting that the strongest proponents of the RMA are by and large not in the Army, but in the Air Force and Navy. Some have said (I believe with good reason) that much of the bombast behind the RMA dogma is simply designed to keep the air force, and to a lesser extent the navy, at the front of the line when it comes to spending. For the record, Donald Rumsfeld is an old Air Force man, as is Gen. Myers, the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Off With His Head!

Seriously. This is the worst crime in all of human history:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Some Hollywood actresses are cautious about revealing too much skin but 20-year-old
Scarlett Johansson had to be persuaded to keep her underwear on, according to her director in "The Island,"
Michael Bay....

"She's standing there and she says, 'I'm not wearing this cheap ... bra. I'm going naked,"' Bay said.

"I said, 'It's PG-13, you have to wear the bra,"' he said.

All I'll say is that there's a reason God gave us DVDs.

War of the Worlds Review

Short version: Meh.

Long version: Like Independence Day, except without Will Smith - or any charismatic characters whatsoever. In fact, the most endearing character in the entire movie is played by... Tom Cruise. Crap.

Cruise's children - while decently acted - were so poorly written (or possibly written as brats so well) that I very much wanted to see them get eaten by the martians. The special effects were impressive, though I'm really beginning to suffer from FX fatigue, I think.

"Jersey being smashed to flaming bits by giant robots? Impossibly lifelike graphics? Yawn."

One thing I will say is that Spielberg continues a long streak of being unable to end a film properly. I think the last satisfying ending Spielberg made was in Jurassic Park 2. Since then, all of his movies have generally been good except for the last 10-30 minutes. The most egregious example of this is of course AI, where a visually brilliant movie that paid incredible tribute to Stanley Kubrick's last work was ruined by Spielberg's "the aliens bring him back to life" ending.

Despite my lack of enthusiasm, I would say WotW is definitely better than Independence Day, and about one billion times better than the abortion that was Signs.

God I hated that movie.

On a more general note, Vicki and I went to go see the movie at the Rainbow theatre in St. Lawrence Market, where you can still see movies cheap on a Tuesday night - admission for both of us plus a drink to share cost only $12. That's 2 tickets and a drink - in some theatres in Toronto, that'll only get you one admission, if that. In fact, I think most movies I've seen this summer have usually cost us (with drinks) close to $30. The screens are a bit smaller than usual, but not terribly so. And most importantly, they're not owned and run by the new national monopoly of Cineplex/Famous Players. So if you live in Toronto and want to go see a movie, I'd reccomend checking the times at Rainbow first. It's nice to leave the theatre without feeling forcibly sodomized.

The link for the Market Square theatre is here. You can also find other theatres across Canada.

Cheap Solar Power?

Interesting article in Wired about Idealab's newest baby - a solar collector which uses cheap mirrors to concentrate sunlight on a smaller silicon panel. No indication on what exactly the cost per Kwh will be, but the article does cite a cost 1/3 that of previous solar power systems.

I don't know if this particular system will be a tipping point or anything, but cheap solar power is always worth sharing.

Corruption of Language

Not to be a Leninist, but this is the problem with ideological compromise: Eventually, the bad guys use it against you. To see Ralph Klein using the language of the New Labour's "Third Way" to begin his long-sought privatization of health care is disgusting. But honestly, I can't be angry with Ralphie too much - he's just doing what he does between shots out of his Listerine bottle. Rather, the sad thing is that what passes for the "Left" in this country has been so corrupted by Liberal cost-cutting. In Ontario, we have a Liberal government that still has yet to rule out effective privatization - even if they won't call it that.

Gee, if only there were a party in Canada unequivocally comitted to public, non-profit health care.

Some Interesting China Pieces

First off, an interesting article about China's economy from the Washington Post. Like many Asian countries, China has essentially nothing that could be called a "safety net" for the poor - ironically, given it's nominal Communism. This lack of any safety net for the elderly, combined with the one-child policy, has led to massive savings by the Chinese people. The Chinese savings rate is something like 20-30%, compared with the US's average of something close to zero. The article discusses some of the effects of this - China has been unable to tap it's own consumption, so all of it's production goes to exports (cough cough Walmart.) However, this is one of those things that can't go on forever.

Secondly, and staying with the economy, Reuters is reporting that China's GDP is likely to slow relative to last year's 9.5%. The article attributes this to the Party's efforts to build a more sustainable economy. The reason this is interesting is that the party has always had to deal with more domestic unrest in economic down-times. Tiananmen itself took place after a bad year of low growth and high unemployment. If China's GDP growth is slowing, it's hard to see how this won't result in more domestic problems, unless part of the "sustainability" efforts find ways to help the underclass.

Thirdly, an interesting editorial from my hometown paper about the increasing integration of south and east asian countries under an American banner. The article discusses the US's increasing drive to build a strategic relationship with India, most certainly as a counterweight to China in Asia. This is a process that started under Clinton, showing once more that when it comes to serious foreign policy, call a Democrat. I'll have to remember to do more research on what aid India is getting from the US. India recently announced the construction of it's first aircraft carrier. I wonder if they're getting US help.

Finally, Russia is announcing that it will prioritize China over Japan when it comes to oil purchases through the far east pipeline. Unless this statement is quickly retracted, this could get messy. The Japanese have offered billions of dollars - real money, as they say - to build the far east pipeline, and I doubt they've done it to take second place in the line for Russian oil. China, to my knowledge, hasn't offered anything like that much money - China might not be capable of offering that much money. On the other hand, Russia and China don't have territorial disputes the way Russia and Japan do, so it's possible that Putin has written off the Japanese. It would be a stupid thing to do over the Kuril islands, but that's Russia for you.

Hee.

This is just fun.

On Journalistic Privilege

Woodward and Bernstein are on CNN at the moment, and mounting a decent defense of the right to keep anonymous sources. One thing they are clear on is that, regardless of legal consequences, anonymity is something to be protected by the press from the government - reporters, if they're serious about this privilege, should be willing to go to jail over it.

But Woodward said something hillarious just before the commercial break - that if Time (CNN's parent company) is willing to burn one anonymous source, they'll be reduced to having nothing but government spokespeople on their shows.

Ahem.

At last count, the regular contributors to CNN included, but were not limited to:

Paul Begala, former Clinton staff.
James Carville, former Clinton staff.
Gen. Wesley Clark, US Army (ret.)
Gen. David Grange, US Army (ret.)
Bay Buchanan, Treasurer to Ronald Reagan.
Donna Brazile, campaign manager for President Clinton and Vice President Gore.

These are just off the top of my head, but I'd say that if Woodward is worried about CNN having "nothing but government spokespeople" on their shows, he's about a decade too late.

Contrast

Definitions:

1) To show differences when compared: siblings who contrast sharply in interests and abilities; a color that contrasted clearly with the dark background.
2) To evince a difference that can distinguish meaning: Voiced and voiceless stops contrast in English but not in Cree.
3) The reactions of Americans and British to terrorism.

I mean, really. Just Ellis' title is perfect: London will fucking twat you in a minute, son.

To my American readers - you know all those cliches about the British being unmoved by bombings? They're actually true, and they make you look like a bunch of wailing ninnies. Obviously, the scale of the London bombings pales compared to September 2001, but 9/11 itself pales in comparison to what London has endured before.

Maybe Americans might actually learn some British courage - and learn to deal with terrorism the only way you can: by staying free, and going on with your life while pursuing the criminals with law enforcement, not needless war. But I doubt it - as close as they are, the Tommies are still too foreign for the Yanks. Hell, we Canucks are too foreign for most Americans.

One other note about London, though - it would be the coolest thing ever if "Red" Ken Livingstone replaced Rudy "Prostate" Giuliani as "Most Revered Mayor."

Creationism and History

Fred Clark, one of my favourite bloggers on religious subjects, has a great post on the psychological effects of archaeology on the fundamentalist mind:

There we were, in Jericho. As in Joshua fit the battle of. At 260 meters below sea level, it is the lowest city on earth. It is probably also the oldest. Humans have been living in Jericho more or less continuously for more than 10,000 years. In touring the excavations at Jericho, we saw one unearthed stone structure that the archaeology student guiding us around the dig said was probably about 8,000 years old....

But for one fellow student it was horrifying. He had been raised in a fundamentalist church to believe in a six-day creation and a young earth. How young? They embraced the skewed arithmetic of the infamous Bishop Usher, the Irish churchman who, in the 17th century, added up all the genealogies of the Old Testament and concluded that God created the earth in 4004 B.C.E. So there my friend stood, in 1990, in Jericho, believing that the universe was 5,994 years old and staring at a man-made wall that was 8,000 years old.

An Attempt At Meta-Debunking

Via Fark.com, I find a truly mind-numbing article called "Debunking 8 Anti-War Myths About the Conflict in Iraq". Cover me, I'm going in. I will abbreviate the charges simply to save time, but you can check out the whole thing here.

1) Charge: Bush lied about WMDs in Iraq. Rebuttal: Democrats thought there were WMDs, too. Evidence: A speech delivered by Hillary Clinton to the senate in October, 2002.

Re-Rebuttal: In October 2002, a lot of people thought there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And as we all remember, the war began shortly thereafter. Except it didn't - there were months between October and the beginning of war in March, 2003. What happened during those months? Well, some of you may remember a Swedish diplomat named Hans Blix (before he was eaten by Kim Jong-Il's fish) who reported in January 2003 that Iraq has complied with inspectors, albeit grudgingly. Note that this is still 2 months before the war, inspectors are reporting cooperation by the Iraqi government, and this would continue up to the point where fighting began. More importantly, up to the beginning of fighting, there was no evidence presented by the UN inspectors that Iraq continued to have WMDs. This is probably why, in March of 2003, most of the Democrats had changed their tone, including John Kerry, who said though he voted for the initial authorization of force for the war, Bush was unnecessarily rushing to war in March.

This is really a non-issue these days, as the rationale for war has changed from imaginary WMDs to imaginary democracy, but if you think that war was necessary in March, 2003 to remove WMDs from the Iraqi government, there is simply no evidence - none whatsoever - for that position.

2) Charge: The Lancet estimates that 100,000 civilians have been killed by the war. Rebuttal: Brief discourse on statistics. Evidence: An op-ed piece, if you can believe it.

The British journal The Lancet published a peer-reviewed paper saying that 100,000 civilians have been killed by the Iraq war. Immediately, the US press expended an incredible amount of effort doing the Pentagon's work, discrediting the paper. There's some truth to the charges - there's a rather large margin of error in the Lancet's estimates. But it's also a mistake to assume that any point within the margin is equally accurate. It's almost certainly not true that 200,000 civilians were killed as of the Lancet's printing, just as it's almost certainly false that "only" 10,000 civilians were killed.

Of course, it would be possible to find a much more accurate reading of civilian casualties in Iraq, if the Pentagon would release any figures. But the Pentagon has said it doesn't count civilians who are killed. This would be callous enough, though in reality the Pentagon probably is counting civilians - but because they're dead, they must have been insurgents, right?

3) Charge: The Bush administration claimed that Iraq was responsible for 9/11. Rebuttal: Nuh-uh! Evidence: A Bush quote, from 6 months after the war began.

I'm beginning to think this guy has a problem with linear time. Never mind that Cheney - who, I believe is a member of the Bush Administration - has repeatedly and forcefully insisted that one of the 9/11 hijackers met with Iraqi agents in Prague, beginning in late 2001. Never mind that Cheney has continued to insist this, in the absence of any evidence and in the face of a number of rebuttals from such subversives as the FBI and the Czech government. The author is entirely silent on this very public lie by the Bush administration.

Further, it's really funny to claim that Bush hasn't tied 9/11 to Iraq - Bush ties everything to 9/11, including the budget deficit, missile defense, heavy artillery, abortion, marijuana, drilling in ANWR, and new nuclear weapons. If he hadn't tied 9/11 to Iraq, it would be notable.

4) Charge: The war was planned by PNAC in 1998. Rebuttal: Regime change has always been US policy. Evidence: Yet another op-ed, this time by David Frum (shudder.)

Yes, regime change has been the policy of the United States - formally since 1998, and informally long before that. Interestingly, it wasn't US policy in 1991 - during the actual, you know, war. Of course, the difference between CIA coup attempts and a 250,000-man strong invasion could easily be grasped by a 10-year old. This makes me reconsider my estimates of the author's age, at the very least. What is true is that members of PNAC were in positions of command during the war - namely Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense. At PNAC, they certainly advocated regime change using military force. This may not be a "plan", but it's certainly evidence that this war was in some sense independent of 9/11.

Interestingly, the author is silent on the charge that Bush was intent on war with Iraq in early 2001 - shortly after his election. This has been documented by Paul O'Neill and Bob Woodward in separate accounts of the Bush administration, and is strong evidence that this was a war years in the making. The author doesn't deal with this charge at all.

5) Charge: The war in Iraq has nothing to do with the war on terror. Rebuttal: Bush says it does, therefore it must. Evidence: Assorted quotes.

The critical question is: Did Iraq support international terrorism. The two most-cited pieces of evidence are Saddam's support for Palestinian families of suicide bombers, and the existence of an Ansar al-Islam camp in Northern Iraq, an area over which Saddam hadn't had control for more than 10 years, since the establishment of the no-fly zones after Gulf War I. As for the Palestinians, Saddam's aid is positively mild compared to other states, like Iran or Saudi Arabia. Other terrorists seem to have had residence in Iraq, or been given medical treatment there, but this is only evidence that not everyone is going to play by the US's rules - none of the resident terrorists in Iraq is accused of doing anything from Iraq, while they were there.

6) Charge: Saddam had no ties to terrorism. Rebuttal: See #5. Evidence: A quote from Christopher "thirsty" Hitchens.

The author lists a number of terrorists, all of whom seem to have gone to Iraq to retire, oddly enough. All of the terrorists have charges against them, and all are certainly deserving of justice, but the most recent attack attributed to them is the 1993 WTC bombing. That Saddam provided them with safe haven isn't a good thing or anything like that, but none of them seem to be "active" terrorists. Except, of course, for Abu Musab Zarqawi, who was in that Ansar al-Islam camp (in Kurdistan) and became active - after the war began. Way to go.

7) Charge: Saddam had no ties to Al-Qaeda. Rebuttal: It depends on what the meaning of "ties" is. Evidence: Various.

Here the rebuttal is almost ridiculous. Nobody can prove anything more than an occasional meeting between AQ and Hussein's government, but this is apparently enough to justify pre-emptive war. There's some vague references to a "relationship" or "training", but no evidence of that has been found. As for providing "chemical weapons precursors", well sorry but almost anything can be called a "precursor", one of the things which made the sanctions regime so cruel and unusual.

8) Charge: The Downing Street Memos prove Bush lied. Rebuttal: This isn't news. Evidence: More op-eds.

Seriously, the rebuttal to the charge of premeditation is... everone already knew that war was inevitable. Um. So the whole UN inspections thing was a charade, and Bush was going to go to war anyway? Dude, I think you just basically admitted to charges 1 and 4. Also, the words "The facts and the intelligence were being fixed round the policy by the Bush administration" don't mean they were lying, they just mean that they were "building the strongest case possible." Fine, I can accept that - except that we know - know - that the Bush administration ignored contrary evidence, including most infamously the report by Joe Wilson that Iraq was not attempting to procure uranium from Niger. So the fact that "building the strongest case possible" included ignoring any contrary evidence is very worrying.

All in all, it's a very unimpressive list of rebuttals. Minus 40 points for using David Frum, too.

But there's a wider point I'd like to dwell on a moment. First, most of the charges made against Iraq before the war were vague, and often would have required Iraq to meet an incredible burden of proog - i.e., that there were absolutely no WMDs in their posession. Considering the bureaucratic nightmare that is the Pentagon (the US routinely loses billions - with a b - of dollars in to the ether of Pentagon contracts) it's ironic that only absolute proof would have sufficed for the US military. Secondly, there's a wider question of whether any of the charges against Saddam deserved a pre-emptive war. We saw that, in fact, the UN inspection process worked perfectly - or at least as well as any succeeding attempts to find WMDs. According to all the evidence avilable to us, there were no WMDs in Iraq before the war began, and there was no substantial evidence of support of terrorism. But the hawks among us would have you believe that, since 9/11, issues of evidence are outdated. If we even suspect they might someday want to have WMDs, then the US now has the right to attack with the full fury of the military. The hawks have made the world far more dangerous, and they will have to answer for that.

Iraqi Withdrawal?

LONDON (Reuters) - A leaked document from Britain's Defense Ministry says the British and U.S. governments are planning to reduce their troop levels in Iraq by more than half by mid-2006, the Mail on Sunday newspaper reported.

The memo, reportedly written by Defense Minister John Reid, said Britain would reduce its troop numbers to 3,000 from 8,500 by the middle of next year....

The memo said Washington planned to cut its forces to 66,000 from about 140,000 by early 2006.

I'm not sure I buy it. Of course, maybe Bush wants to "declare victory and get out" before the Congressional elections in late 2006. But unless there's a major turnaround, I don't think Bush is going to get the good coverage he wants - 60,000 troops in Iraq may turn out to be a disaster.

BONUS CONSPIRACY THEORY: What if this is a backhand from Blair? After being crapped on at the G8 conference, Blair might be trying to get the British troops out fast. Leaking that there already a plan might be a way to get Bush to commit to one. The plan was leaked from a British source, after all.

Tom Friedman, Call Reality

Friedman recently repeated the lie that, "to date no major muslim leader has condemned bin Laden." It is a lie, or at least a grievously insulting mistake, and Juan Cole explains why.

Cadman Dead

Too bad. I can't say that I would have agreed with most of his views, but it's sad when an honest politician dies. Knowing our luck, he'll be replaced by some Conservative android.

And to die of skin cancer - I think I'm going to start taking sunblock more seriously.

Bush Wins Again

GLENEAGLES, Scotland (Reuters) - The Group of Eight powers meeting in Scotland declared on Friday that global warming required urgent action, but set no measurable targets for reducing the greenhouse gases that trigger it.

The leaders recognized that "climate change is a serious and long-term challenge that has the potential to affect every part of the planet."

Their final declaration, seen by Reuters, acknowledged that human activity contributed in large part to global warming, and said there was a need to reduce greenhouse gases -- mostly the product of the fossil fuels that power much modern industry.

They pledged to "act with resolve and urgency" to tackle the problem.

But they set no yardsticks or clear goals.

It's that simple - Bush won. Frankly, I didn't expect much else, especially after the bombs yesterday. This draft may have been finalized before then, but after yesterday nobody was going to risk the appearance of disunity.

One Actual Lesson from London

People who think we can stop terrorism by increasing surveillance are mistaken - London has been under that watchful eyes of several hundred videocameras for years now. The terrorists still got through, because guess what? Nobody watches all the tape in real time. Now, those cameras might be useful in apprehending the terrorists, but that's going to be cold comfort to 37 families.

There Is A God

...and he works for Public Broadcasting. Guns, Germs, and Steel: the PBS miniseries.

PBS stations are scheduled locally, but you can find your listing here.

Non-Bullshit

Kind of. Funniest China story I've read in a while:

BEIJING, July 7 (Xinhuanet) -- More Chinese are ignorant to sex than to other knowledge, even including those having received high education and experts of other fields, according to Xu Tianming, the president of China Sexology Society.

"In the survey we conducted, not only youngsters, but many grow-ups are sex idiots, which is really dangerous and woeful," Xu was quoted by Wednesday's Nanjing Morning Post, a local newspaper in east China's Jiangsu Province, as saying, at a seminar on sex culture held there.

"Many Chinese are too shy to talk about sex and take it as an 'evil' matter, which greatly distorted the society's objective recognition to sex and shed bad influence to those immaturities," Xu was quoted as saying.

Both Chinese culture and western's have a tradition to treat sex as a "forbidden" thing, and many sex related words are largely adopted as the most vicious attacking words, Xu said, all these will prevent younger generations from having a healthy sex knowledge and sex life in future.

Boys and girls become sexually capable at an average age of 15, however, they could only enjoy normal sex life till about 25, so the right way to guide puberty in sex is very critical during the 10 years in between.

"Parents and society should allow them to have normal contacts with the opposite sex, such as dancing, and to read some books with certain sex descriptions, thus to reasonably release their sex tension in puberty," Xu said.

Holy crap! I'm not 25 yet! My sex life isn't normal yet??? Or am I misreading that?

My girlfriend keeps saying "5,000 years of Chinese history can't be wrong." To which I always respond "Yes, yes it can be."

Bullshit, pt. III

Ah yes, there's one non-journalist who can always be counted on to use an Al Qaeda attack for his own aims: Vladimir Putin.

GLENEAGLES, Scotland - Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that the London attacks showed the world was insufficiently united in the fight against terrorism.

Putin said Russia had suffered terror attacks in the past, which killed hundreds of innocent citizens, and expressed his country's condolences.

"But what happened today demonstrates yet again that we are doing too little to unite our efforts in the most effective way in the battle against terrorism," he said.

He also called for an end to double standards — an appeal he has made before to his fellow world leaders, some of whom he has criticized for underestimating the terrorist ties of Chechen separatist rebels.

Good for you, Vlad. Let's up the ante, though. Who wants to be the first to compare the BQ to Bin Laden?

Actually, I'm not entirely unsympathetic to Russia's policy in Chechnya - not the least because the Chechen conflict a) has been incredibly barbaric, and b) does seem to be becoming "Al-Qaeda-ized", though it wasn't a bin Laden op when it started.

That said, Putin has been needlessly bloody in dealing with Chechnya, and he's an ass for trying to make London in to a blank check for his policy in Chechnya.

Continued Bullshit

Because I refuse on principle to read anything attached to her name, I missed that Rosie Dimanno also slandered the Spanish today. Pogge has more.

God, these people are awful. Simply awful excuses for human beings. To them, corpses are just evidence of their own righteousness. Oddly, for people who think we "don't get" the war on terror, they actually share bin Laden's mindset perfectly. If understanding the war on terror means I have to take a tragedy and use it for my own political purposes, then no thanks.

On Bullshit

God I hate Marcus Gee. I'm sure he's not alone in this, but he uses the attacks in London to repeat a blatant falsehood: that the bombings in Madrid caused the downfall of the Aznar government. Simply put, this is not what happened, and only the most partisan of analysts could call it that. Aznar was already heading down in the polls before the election before the bombings of March 2004. Indeed, before the bombs Aznar and Zapatero were almost neck-and-neck.

And then the bombs came.

What happened next? Well, if you're a republican hack like Gee, you see the aftermath of Madrid in a particular light - "The Spanish, wetting themselves in fear, elected a government that promised to take them out of Iraq, in the hopes that they wouldn't be hurt again. The Spanish thus proved themselves to be spineless cowards." Gee doesn't say that, but it's pretty obvious that's where he's going.

Of course, there's reality - not that Gee would choose to see it. In reality, when the bombs went off in Madrid, the Aznar government chose to lie about it to the public - blaming the Basque separatists rather than an Al Qaeda affiliate. Fortunately, the deception was unmasked before the election, and Aznar was rightly punished by the electorate. Gee might be pissed off that Spain then pulled out of Iraq, but he should answer a very simple question - would he prefer that politicians who lie about matter of life and death go unpunished?

Connect the Dots

July 5th:

Climate scientists fear that this week’s G8 talks in Gleneagles, Scotland, will not hear the truth about the “clear and present danger” of climate change.

In 2004, UK prime minister Tony Blair said that action to halt climate change would be a top priority, along with poverty in Africa, for the UK's chairmanship of the G8 in 2005. To update politicians, he called a conference of scientists in February 2005 to discuss the risks of “dangerous” climate change and how to prevent it happening.

July 6th:

ST. JOHN'S, Nfld. (CP) - Ocean temperatures in the North Atlantic hit an all-time high last year, raising concerns about the effects of global warming on one of the most sensitive and productive ecosystems in the world....

The ocean surface about seven kilometres off St. John's, which ranged from slightly less than 0 C in February to 15 C in August, averaged 1.1 C above normal, the highest in the 59 years the department has been compiling records.

But we all remember this goody:

"The Kyoto treaty would have wrecked our economy, if I can be blunt," [Bush] said, promising to keep rejecting any similar deals in the future.

"If this looks like Kyoto, the answer is no," he said.

Good old dependable George. Faced with a clear and present threat to his country, his first instinct is to protect business.

London

Nothing much to say. Six explosions in London today - blessedly few fatalities thus far. Multiple explosions are pretty much Al-Qaeda's calling card, though we should all keep an open mind, even if some AQ franchisee is taking credit.

One of the only "up" sides to all this is that the British have a long history of fighting terrorism - thank you, Ireland! - and I don't think the people who did this will get away with it.

The late M. Venizelos observed that in all her wars England - he should have said Britain, of course - always wins one battle - the last.
- Winston Churchill

Strange Allies

I didn't exactly think that the latest advocate of the Peak Oil hypothesis would be... ChevronTexaco. (Interesting fact: A Chevron oil tanker is named after Condoleeza Rice.) They don't come right out and say it, but the ad campaign they're starting is all about how quickly we're using up the remaining oil.

We've now got a number of the smaller oil companies openly talking about the coming scarcity of oil - even if Shell is being a dick about renewable mascots. Exxon is still pretending that there's no problem, however, and they really are the 800-pound gorilla. I wonder if Bush would rather listen to one large company, or several dozen smaller ones. Of course, the Saudis continue to insist that there's no problem, so I guess that's that.

Assorted Space Nerdery

• I'm sure there's excellent science being done, but isn't NASA worried about angering the Martians by blowing shit up?
• I've gotten this email from a few people, and No, Mars will not be so close to the Earth that it appears as big as the full moon. Mars is occasionally a few thousand kilometers closer than usual, but it's still about 250 times further away from us than the Moon. So chill out everyone.

Please Monkey Jesus Make It Stop

Okay, we have officially paid too much attention to this crazy bitch:

MONTREAL (CP) - She might not always have time for Tim Hortons but Karla Homolka certainly has a lot more of it than before to sip iced cappuccinos from the giant Ontario-based coffee retailer.

The freezing caffeine drink was at the top of Homolka's wish list when a TV interviewer asked her after her prison release Monday what she most wanted to do. "This is stupid," Homolka, now Canada's most notorious female ex-inmate, told Radio-Canada. "I'd like to have an iced cappuccino. An iced cappuccino from Tim Hortons, that's what I'd like to do."...

"We know our customers differentiate our company and the relationship from her comments," Skinner said in an interview Tuesday.

"And we have faith they can make that distinction."

To: The Media
Re:Please, please, please stop.

Seriously, people, do you have to interview Tim Horton's employees? And is the most important part of this story that it might affect Tim Horton's sales?

Sincerely,
The Canadian People.

I'd mail the letter, but I suspect the media are now in a cold, dark place - the light from "good taste" must take centuries to get there.

War, Krieg, Guerre, etc.

Two interesting posts from Brad Delong and Matthew Yglesias illustrate the... naivete of liberals in the field of international relations. First, Brad:

Since 1850 things have changed. The death-and-destruction costs of war--even non-nuclear war--have multiplied beyond previous imagining. Those who choose leaders are now a broad set of voters rather than a narrow coterie of aristocrats. We--at least we who live in democracies--ought to have outgrown war outside of the limited cases of (i) Osama bin Laden and his ilk, and (ii) missions of mercy to overthrow tyrants.

Have we? Well, quite possibly.

Brad then goes on to list a number of positive examples of democratic states that have been at more-or-less peace in the last century. Matthew Yglesias picks up this line of thought:

That we proceeded from the conflict-strewn world of the early 19th century to the contemporary one, where Americans recognize that even though we could concur Canada there would be no point in doing so is quite the remarkable achievement. That even earlier the rulers of the British Empire saw that establishing friendly relations with the rising power of the American Republic would better serve Britain's interests than a futile attempt to contain it is, in many ways, much more so.

Well, in the argument of British-American relations in the 1800s, I would simply say that the British House of Commons was never terribly interested in fighting for North America - Britain actually proposed giving Quebec back to the French after their victory in 1753, because no one in London could figure out what to do with it. So long as American interests in North America didn't directly threaten the UK's, there wasn't going to be a problem.

Brad and Matt are both advocating the so-called "Democratic Peace" thesis. It goes back to Kant, and essentially argues that once the world is full of Democracies, then poof! No more war. And there's some facts to this argument - the Democracies of the world do seem to have had far more peaceful pasts than their autocratic cousins. There is some argument against it, but we can tentatively say that there is a "fact" of Democratic peace - whether it conforms to the theories of democratic peace is another matter entirely.

(One of the big wild cards in this deck is how we count a "democracy", of course. Japan had regular multi-party elections throughout WWII. Does that mean anything?)

Despite my generally progressive and liberal outlook on politics, when it comes to international affairs I'm a "realist" (scare quotes only because I dislike the term) - the idea of containing the power of sovereign states seems to me to be a far more difficult idea than most liberals want to admit. The realist explanation for the democratic peace usually revolves more around national interest then liberal ideals - for example the peace in western Europe is due more to the existence of the Soviet Union, 1917-1991 than anything else. Notably, the period of time in which Communism was a threat to liberal democracies also includes the largest chunk of time in which liberal democracies existed.

Absent an external threat, do I believe that democracies will make war with each other? Well, until this latest war in Iraq I might have said no. But the transparent lies that were used to sell this war, combined with the complicity of the press and the apathy of the American people (not to mention the complicity of Good Liberals like Brad and Matt who refused to see an bad war for what it was, until it was too late) have more-or-less convinced me that if the US propaganda machine geared up for Operation Liberate Canada, I'd quickly find myself living in the newly-renamed Greater Buffalo.

Go back to Brad's "exceptions" for outgrowing war - "(i) Osama bin Laden and his ilk, and (ii) missions of mercy to overthrow tyrants." Does he seriously not believe that any war, indeed every way can be sold as one of these two variants? Does he actually think that Hitler sold Barbarossa as an act of conquest and expansion? Even tyrants are smart enough to use the fig-leaf of "self-defense" and "missions of mercy" to justify their conquest. And they can usually rely on the complicity of the press - as can the US government, at least at first. Hell - two and a half years in to this disastrous war in Iraq, and the US mainstream press still insists that "staying the course" is the only option.

Brad throws down the gauntlet in his last paragraph:

Before I read any more "realists" writing about a Chinese-American cold (or hot) war in Asia, I want them to come up with an explanation of why the War of 1812 was the last Anglo-American war. Why not 54'40" or fight? The claim that "wars are almost never worth the costs, and yet states keep on fighting them" doesn't seem to apply to relationships between some states since 1850 or so.

The "realist" school has absolutely no clue as to why there has been no Franco-British or Anglo-American war in 190 years, no Mexican-American war in 85, and no Franco-German war in 60. The language of administration in Strasbourg is simply not something that people are willing to kill or die for these days. Which kinds of states study war (against each other at least) no more? And why not? Those are, I think, the most interesting questions in the academic study of international affairs.

Brad's right - the question of "why war?" is the fundamental question of international relations. But he's wrong when he says the realist school has no clue: The Franco-German case is the easiest to chalk up to national interest - the USSR had tanks inside Germany, so the threat was very real for both Germany and France. I don't have research in front of me right this minute, but realist explanations for the other examples Brad cites can't be too hard to find.

Moreover, I think the opposite argument is at least as strong - "liberals" have absolutely no clue as to why there has been none of those wars, either. That they didn't happen isn't evidence for either theory, on it's own. The liberal and realist camps are arguing over the mechanics of why they didn't happen, not the facts. Realists point to national interest, liberals point to a variety of internal and external checks on state power in democratic systems. I side with the national interest argument because the war in Iraq has absolutely demolished the idea of check on state power, at least in the Republic to the south.

The sad thing is that, like Fox Mulder, I want to believe. I'd love to think that, if the Weimar Republic had survived WWII would have been averted. Who knows - that may be true: World War II as we saw it might never have happened. But the evidence is a lot sketchier than liberals like to admit.

Reality Intrudes, Pt MCXXVII

Via DefenseTech, the New York Times reports that the Pentagon is realizing that it's "Two-War Strategy" is now, and always was full of shit.

WASHINGTON, July 4 - The Pentagon's most senior planners are challenging the longstanding strategy that requires the armed forces to be prepared to fight two major wars at a time. Instead, they are weighing whether to shape the military to mount one conventional campaign while devoting more resources to defending American territory and antiterrorism efforts....

The intense debate reflects a growing recognition that the current burden of maintaining forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with the other demands of the global campaign against terrorism, may force a change in the assumptions that have been the foundation of all military planning.

The concern that the concentration of troops and weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan was limiting the Pentagon's ability to deal with other potential armed conflicts was underscored by Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a classified risk assessment to Congress this spring. But the current review is the first by the Pentagon in decades to seriously question the wisdom of the two-war strategy.

The two-war model provides enough people and weapons to mount a major campaign, like the Persian Gulf war of 1991 or the invasion of Iraq in 2003, while maintaining enough reserves to respond in a similar manner elsewhere....

After years of saying American forces were sufficient for a two-war strategy, "we've come to the realization that we're not," said another Defense Department official involved in the deliberations, who was granted anonymity because he could not otherwise discuss the talks, which are classified. "It's coming to grips with reality."

One of the lessons that wasn't learned in the first Gulf war was how fortunate the American Army actually was. There was essentially no fighting deep in the country itself - the Iraqi Army was destroyed while it sat on the border of Saudi Arabia, after having endured the most punishing air campaign in recent history. Add to this the poor level of training of Iraqi conscripts, and the fact that the US Army never really encountered the Republican Guard, and suddenly the US Army looks like it got off pretty easy in Gulf I.

This isn't to say that the US Army isn't a terribly impressive engine of destruction - it is. But a lot of strategic thought was built around the illusion that every enemy would be as easily destroyed as the invaders of Kuwait were. The two-war theory itself predates Gulf I by quite a while, but the success of American forces in 1991 certainly bolstered the theory.

Now, fast-forward fifteen years, and suddenly the US Army realizes that as impressive as it's power is against other conventional forces, the moment the US Army stops moving - i.e., in a non-conventional war - it becomes terribly vulnerable.

This, of course, is possible the largest cost of the war in Iraq for American strategic thinking - the US has lost the aura of invincibility it had after Gulf I and the interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo. If North Korea decided to act now, there's not much the US could do about it except turn Pyongyang in to rubble - meanwhile, most of the South would be similarly destroyed.

It's good to see the Pentagon beginning to wake up from this delusion. Maybe it will keep the brass from encouraging fool's errands in the future.

Unsustainable Ethanol, and other stuff

A recent study has looked at ethanol as a means to replace gasoline, and found that it wouldn't help matters much. Specifically, in order to fuel the US auto fleet on ethanol, essentially all arable US land would have to be turned over to corn production. However, the study is the first I've read to claim that current ethanol actually has a positive energy balance, which should be controversial. In any case, the study does limit itself to conventional (corn and sugar) ethanol production, and doesn't seem to deal with the better option of cellulosic ethanol. However, this paragraph is right on:

Considering that, eventually, petroleum may no longer be available in the amounts currently consumed, one must conclude that substitution of alternatives to fossil fuel cannot be done using one option alone. It will prove more prudent to have numerous options (e.g., ethanol, fuel cells, solar energy), each participating with fractional contributions to the overall national and global need for fuel energy. Finally, it is important to notice that no option comes free from significant environmental problems.

"Numerous options" seems to be a pretty solid reccomendation of plug-in hybrids to me. Actually, it's almost the perfect argument for flex-fuel, plug in hybrids in a single paragraph.

Ah, but the eternal question: Where do we get the electricity? In Ontario we're busy importing gigawatts every day as our largest coal-fired reactor is down due to labor problems. Well, it won't surprise you to learn that the Ontario government is taking a fresh look at nuclear power. Just in time, Amory Lovins comes in with a bitch-slap:

The U.S. Congress may soon accomplish an extraordinary feat: a national energy policy that undermines national security, substitutes hogs-at-the-trough market distortions for free markets, and is anti-life, anti-human-rights, and anti-federalist—all at the same time. Let's focus here just on the first part: how the energy bill that may soon become law would lastingly undermine the Pentagon's security mission.

This erosion takes three main forms: doubling and prolonging for decades U.S. dependence on the most vulnerable, concentrated, and hard-to-fix element of its oil infrastructure, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS)1; putting major terrorist targets along our coasts and near our cities; and greatly facilitating the proliferation of nuclear bombs. For brevity, we'll examine here only this last piece—nuclear energy.

Nuclear power, once claimed to be too cheap to meter, is now too costly to matter.

Ouch. Read the whole thing - it's really good.

Why Journalists Are Hated

Step 1: Demand laws to protect journalists and their anonymous sources.

Step 2: Reveal the identity of an anonymous plaintiff.

(via Atrios.)

On the matter of Valerie Plame, it's disgusting to see the actions of Matthew Cooper, Judith Miller, and specifically Time Magazine. After months of carping about how journalists should have the right to break the law (by withholding evidence of a felony) Time finally caves entirely and hands over Cooper's notes. Personally, I think that if you're going to break the law - something good journalists would actually have to do on occasion - you have to be willing to face the consequences. Hell, Quakers have gone to prison rather than fight in wars. In the case of Cooper and Miller, who are simply protecting treason, it's disgusting to see them wrap themselves in the banner of a free press.

Canada's Worst Son

David Frum has written something less than a fawning blowjob for Bush. I was shocked to see it, but there it was - via Kevin Drum:

Americans want to hear a plan for victory. It's good that U.S. forces are training Iraqis. And yes, as Iraqi forces become more capable, it's logical that U.S. forces would stand down. But as Winston Churchill said after Dunkirk, "wars are not won by evacuations." And they aren't won by resolve alone either. We have a full-scale terrorism war on our hands in Iraq, a bigger war than the administration expected, backed by at least one regional government, Syria's, and abetted by another, Iran's.

On Sept. 20, 2001, the president said: "From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime."

Have those words been abandoned? If not, what consequences will these hostile regimes face?

Umm. Is Frum arguing to widen the war in Iraq? If he's not, fine, but it's difficult to actually express how bad an idea that is.

Let's list America's problems in Iraq:

There aren't enough troops in Iraq.

There aren't any more troops back home, either.

Recruitment is heading south like a dead pigeon.

Even with high recruitment, the necessary numbers can't be raised sooner than 5 years.

Okay, with all this, David Frum (one of the "good" Canadians, in that he's never, ever said anything bad about Bush) wants a wider war?

You know, anti-Americanism can take many forms - it's not just reading Maude Barlow. This idea is anti-American in the most basic sense. A wider war in the middle east would be a catastrophic defeat for the US. Oh, the US would rack up a hell of a butcher's bill, but they'd lose, period. Hell, they're already losing, and what Frum wants is to add more enemies? If the US can't pacify a country against 30,000 guys armed with semtex and AK-47s, what exactly does he think the US would do against 100,000 Iranians - never mind if Tehran had the help of Iraqi Shiites?

Sadly, this isn't the stupidest thing I've seen Frum write. If anybody's listening to him, however, it would certainly be the most costly.

No Excuses

I was sadly remiss in blogging on Canada Day. I suppose I should have written some stirring paean to my homeland. But honestly, it was a really nice day and staying inside to blog wasn't at the top of my list of things to do. Today, on the other hand, Toronto is suffering from another in a long string of smog warnings. So blogging it is.

But I still find myself lacking anything notable to write about Canada Day. After all, it's not like it's a memorable historical occasion - all the tough work of Confederation had been done literally years before. July 1, 1867 was simply the day the British North America Act came in to effect. Don't get me wrong - woo hoo for Canada, and all that - but it's a bit hard to get emotional about it.

What more can I say about the joy that is living in Canada? We're not angels, and never have been. But by living in Canada, I automatically make the cut - I'm one of the luckiest people in the history of the world. In terms of security, income, education, and opportunities, my countrymen and I are ridiculously fortunate.

Of course, there are still jerks who don't realize exactly how lucky they are. Jonathan at Pogge has more.

Now, of course, the fourth of July is a memorable occasion - dude, it's got a Declaration and everything! I've long been a fan of Jefferson's writings, even when he was wrong. Like when he thought the invasion of Canada would be a "mere matter of marching." Tee hee. I was looking through wikiquote's page on Jefferson, and I found this little gem:

"War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses."

Gee, given certain parties' blind desire to see Iraq as a "Jeffersonian" war (cough Ignatieff cough) you'd think that quote might have some wider currency.

I do have to disagree with Greg on one point of his "I love Americans" post, however:

America is going through a rough patch right now and they were scared into making some bad leadership choices, but for all that, I wouldn't want anyone else as a neighbour.

Okay, this is not really relevant to Greg's overall post (which I largely agree with) but the Americans weren't scared in to electing Bush. They elected him in 2000 - or close enough, anyway. Certainly, he has always been seens as a legitimate choice for president - even before 9/11.

People weren't scared in to choosing stupidity - they chose stupidity because it was most comfotable. Now, they have since re-elected Bush (largely out of fear), but the original mistake of choosing an idiot to run the world wasn't because of fear at all, and giving the American people an excuse like "we were scared" only diminishes their responsibility.

Oh, and by the way - any American women who voted for Bush because of "security" are about to feel mighty stupid, now that the Supreme Court is in play. Like any half-sentient person knew it would be.

Well, it's the fourth and I don't want to end this on an anti-American note, so let me say that despite the massive problems therein, I agree with Greg's final note - I wouldn't rather any other country as neighbours. If for no other reason than much of my family either is there or hails from the US. On top of that, I'm reasonable enough to know that Canada has probably gotten a net benefit from being next to our more excitable cousins.

So Happy Fourth, Americans.

That Didn't Take Long

Well, only 48 hours after I warned that, after Peak Oil, we could see a return of strong state powers as a way of preventing economic crisis, I run across this (via The Oil Drum.)

Energy ration cards for everyone planned
By Charles Clover, Environment Editor

Every individual in Britain could be issued with a "personal carbon allowance" - a form of energy rationing - within a decade, under proposals being considered seriously by the Government.

Ministers say that increasingly clear evidence that climate change is happening more quickly than expected has made it necessary to "think the unthinkable".

They believe they need to start a public debate on energy rationing now if Tony Blair's aspiration of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by two thirds by 2050 is to be achieved.

Now, the first thing I thought when I saw this was: Well, Jesus! Energy rationing! Time was, we mocked the Communists for the need to ration goods.

My second thought was this - and this might sound a bit tinfoil-hattish, but bear with me: I linked earlier to Sprott Asset Management's rather dismal review of North Sea oil, in which they noted that North Sea crude is declining 10% per year. Is it possible that Blair's government is using the cover of Global Warming to cover up for a "simple" supply crunch? Certainly, the broad support for greenhouse mitigation in the UK makes a nice cover for simple economic rationing.

And my third, and final thought, is this: Don't think it won't happen here.