Peace, order and good government, eh?

Friday night blues blogging: RIP James Brown

The hardest working man in show business passed away on Christmas Day. Here's a clip from Soul Train to remember him by.

Nuremberg mocked

We have all been betrayed.

The international justice system that we began to build at the end of the Second World War, with the awe-inspiring dignity of the Nuremberg trials and the high purpose of international conventions and the creation of the United Nations, has been parodied in the trial of Saddam Hussein, who faces imminent execution. The story of Saddam's trial and the hasty decision to carry out this week's hastily affirmed sentence is easily accessible everywhere right now. I was moved by this eloquent protest from Richard Dicker, international justice director of Human Rights Watch, who speaks to the blow that international justice and the human rights of people world-wide have taken from the farce that was Saddam's trial:

For the first time since the postwar Nuremberg trials, almost the entire leadership of a repressive government faced trial for gross human rights violations. It offered the chance to create a historical record of some of the regime's unspeakable rights violations and to begin the process of accounting for the policies and decisions that gave rise to them. Trials conforming to international standards of fairness would have been more likely to ventilate and verify the historical facts, contribute to the public recognition of the experiences of victims, and set a more stable foundation for democratic accountability. Instead, unlike the Nuremberg trials, the proceedings have fallen far short of creating the reference point that could clarify for Iraqis what happened and why.

To hold such a trial in the midst of a war, to suppress most of the history of the undoubtedly evil regime on trial in order to protect and advance the interests of the major power urging on the prosecution, is a pathetic, sordid mockery of the purpose of a trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. We all have an interest in ensuring that such procedures enhance the understanding and commitment to justice of all the world's peoples. Instead, this trial and conviction will deepen for many the bitter conviction that the West believes in victor's justice and will cheat to get it.

There's worse (of course). There may be some strategic reckoning in the sudden rush to usher Saddam out of this world and to publicize his death as graphically and melodramatically as possible, thereby provoking the outrage of millions.

Writing today as Juan Cole's guest op-ed commentator, Larisa Alexandrovna speculates on Saddam's execution as a gambit in a chess game that the Bush administration are playing -- as usual -- incompetently:

This is what I think may be playing out, my opinion of course. And yes, the strategy is so brazenly obvious, arrogant, and antithetical to everything America is supposed to be and stand for that it will be difficult to digest.

What the Bush administration appears to be waiting for, stalling for, while they allegedly mull over the Iraq question, is for the naval carriers and other key assets to fall into position. This will happen in the first week of January. Saddam Hussein is being executed (and I would not be surprised if every major network aired it) to enrage tempers and fuel more violence in Iraq. This violence will justify an immediate need for a troop surge, although I think it will be described as temporary. Remember too that the British press has for the past week done nothing but report that Britain will be attacked by the New Year. Clearly they are preparing themselves for a contingency, and that contingency is the massive violence that will erupt across the Muslim world as they watch (and I really believe it will be televised) Saddam’s hanging just before the New Year.

Why is the rush to execute Saddam Hussein not account for Hajj? Or does it?

The carriers will be in position. I imaging there will be an event of some sort in Iraq, or the violence will spill into friendly (our friends) territory. It will be dramatic, even more so than the immediate violence.

The attacks will be blamed on Iran, with the help of the Saudis and Pakistan. Iran will be blamed for something that happens in Iran. The naval carriers, again, will be in position. The sanctions, as watered down as they are, have given the administration the blank check they needed from the world (and they still have their blank check from Congress) to order aerial strikes. The surge troops will be in position, and I estimate that ground support will begin around late February, early March.

Saddam’s execution and the violence will also be a convenient cover while the administration moves pieces into position.

There's more. I don't know what to think about it all. But it's possible.

I want my money back

This is a day for choirs, and I promise to bring you my favourite choir of the season just a bit later.

But first, the Complaints Choirs. These performances have been around on the web since the spring, I know, but they come back to me every once in a while as endlessly charming and encouraging. The singers are just folks, speaking their minds or, rather, singing them. Some of their lines are political, but some are just cranky-funny. Work makes them crazy; they have personal problems; their local governments are limp, and the wider world is going off in directions they don't like ... It's not fair!

It's amazing to me to see the joy on all those faces as they toss big and little problems we can all identify with together into their choral protests. Of course life isn't fair. We're all supposed to know that. Who ever told you, yadda yadda yadda ... But doesn't it feel good sometimes to shake your little fist against the sky? Or any target of your choosing?

The Complaints Choir of Birmingham

The Helsinki Complaints Choir

Do join in with the Complaints Choirs in comments here if you feel so moved -- within reason, of course. The main rule is that your complaint must always end with the universal protest: "It's not fair!"

And now, to the classics.

For many years, whatever else Christmas was tugging us away to, my Thorfinn and I would make space in the day to find the broadcast of the boys' choir of King's College, Cambridge. The service never changes, although the faces of the wee boys do, year by year, as their voices change as well.

The service always begins with the boys gathered at the back of the congregation. One young man (still a soprano, but better trained than the wee-est of the wee'uns) begins to sing "Once in Royal David's City" a capella. After one stanza, the rest of the choir join in, and the boys proceed up the aisle to the choir stalls. By the end, the great organ and the congregation have joined in.

It stirs me every year. Here is the processional from 2004.

To all our friends greeting this morning in the many different ways that we do, peace and love if you have found those, or the joy of having a good nark at the universe if that works better for you.

Me, I'm off to clean a few cat boxes. Again! It's not fair!

Somalia update

Once again in Somalia, a struggle for control that is to some degree a proxy war has begun to build up this week.

Ethiopia, with some presumed quiet backing from the Bush administration, has stepped up its military intervention in support of the shaky Somali transitional government, headquartered in Baidoa, against the Somali Council of Islamic Courts (SCIC), which controls the national capital of Mogadishu and much of the south of the country. Ethiopia denies that it is invading Somalia, but the Guardian, the BBC, and Reuters all report otherwise.

From the Guardian:

The International Committee of the Red Cross said dozens of people had been killed, and more than 200 wounded, since Wednesday. It could not say how many of these were civilians. Agency reports, quoting aid workers, said civilians were fleeing for the relative safety of Mogadishu. Ethiopia continues to deny that it has military forces in Somalia, but makes no secret of the fact that its sympathies lie with President Abdullahi Yusuf's secular transitional government.

Meles Zenawi, the Ethiopian prime minister, has branded the SCIC a terrorist organisation that threatens his country and the western world. The United States, which regards Ethiopia as an ally in its "war on terror", has made similar claims.

By continuing to expand its territorial control and talk of war, the SCIC has done little to advance its cause with the international community. Seen from afar, its military face-off with Ethiopia is a brave or foolish strategy. The SCIC has no air force or tanks, and is greatly outnumbered in trained soldiers.

But it has two powerful weapons: the popular dislike within Somalia for Ethiopia, and religion. Senior clerics in the movement are pitching it as a holy war against infidel invaders.

Some analysts say it is a war neither can win. Ethiopia may inflict severe damage on the battlefield, but can never destroy the support for the courts. The SCIC, for its part, is unlikely to be able to defeat Ethiopia militarily. And even if it did manage to topple the government in Baidoa, it would be seen as an international pariah, surrounded by hostile neighbours.

"Sooner or later the courts and the government will have to get back to the negotiating table," said Matt Bryden, a consultant to the International Crisis Group, based in Nairobi.

"The only question is how long this type of fighting can go on for."

Both the BBC and Reuters report that SCIC leaders have sent out calls for international help, some of them appeals to the world, some open appeals to foreign Muslim fighers to engage in "holy war." From Reuters:

The Islamists accuse Christian-led Ethiopia, a key U.S. ally in its war on terrorism, of invading Somalia and deny claims by the United States that the group is led by an al Qaeda cell.

"We told the world to stop this problem," Inda'ade, a hardliner known for belligerent rhetoric, told reporters in the Islamist stronghold of Mogadishu. "We told them to do something before it becomes a blazing fire that would engulf the region."

Escalating tension prompted medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres to withdraw its international personnel, although local staff were still running MSF's programmes.

"The operations are ongoing and we're ready to take war wounded from either side," MSF head of mission for Somalia, Dave Michalski, told Reuters.

For deeper background on the long-standing crisis in Somalia, I would urge people to read the reports of the International Crisis Group, who have been very tough-minded in their assessments of the outside players in this potentially devastating conflict. And for recent updates, the Guardian links us to the allAfrica aggregator, which includes reports from scores of African news organizations as well as the UN's integrated regional information network (IRIN).

I'm trying to think of a concluding line for this post. And I'm failing.

Friday night blues blogging

Apparently this is Willie Dixon's band before Willie actually comes on stage. Flip, Flop & Fly. I've always liked this tune. (Note: there is no Downchild Blues Band on YouTube. Pity.)

The Winter Solstice

Best wishes to our Pagan readers on the occasion of the Winter Solstice which, technically, began just after midnight GMT. And I'll use this opportunity to send special greetings to my old friend Becka and the rest of the Wiccans in Vancouver.

Celebration of the Winter Solstice goes back to the earliest history of mankind and is probably the oldest and most widely celebrated rite in human history. In ancient times in northern latitudes, winter was a brutal event. Food growing was finished and even hunting and gathering were difficult. Added to this was the fear of primitive peoples that the life giving sun, whose daily appearances were visibly shortening, was about to be extinguished leaving them to freeze in the dark. When the days began to visibly lengthen slightly in a few days, it was time to celebrate a new beginning.

Along with the solstice celebration itself, many of the pagan rituals and symbols such as holly, ivy, mistletoe, yule log, the giving of gifts, decorated evergreen tree, magical reindeer, etc. from the early days were appropriated by various religions. The extent of such appropriation caused problems for some of those religions.

Polydor Virgil, an early British Christian, said "Dancing, masques, mummeries, stageplays, and other such Christmas disorders now in use with Christians, were derived from these Roman Saturnalian and Bacchanalian festivals; which should cause all pious Christians eternally to abominate them." In Massachusetts, Puritans unsuccessfully tried to ban Christmas entirely during the 17th century, because of its heathenism. The English Parliament abolished Christmas in 1647.

Lisa Hutchins wrote a nice essay about the Solstice traditions and their adoption by various religions:

Solstice Traditions

Winter solstice observances were held by virtually every culture in the world. Solstice rites were practiced among such diverse groups as Native South Americans, Celts, Persians, Orientals, and Africans. Solstice was known as Sacaea to the Mesopotamians, as the Festival of Kronos to the ancient Greeks, and as Saturnalia to the Romans. According to Norse traditions, the Valkyrie looked for souls to bring to Valhalla during Yule. Norwegians abstained from hunting or fishing for the twelve days during Yule as a way of letting the weary world rest and to hasten the revived sun's appearance. In old Russia it was traditional to toss grain upon the doorways where carolers visited as a way of keeping the house from want throughout the rest of the winter. Ashes from the Yule log were mixed with cows' feed in France and Germany to promote the animals' health and help them calve. In Baltic regions today, corn is scattered near the door of the house for sustenance and ashes of the Yule log are given to fruit trees to increase their yield. Romanians bless the trees of the orchard on Yule with sweetened dough to bring good harvests. Serbs toss wheat on the burning Yule log to increase livestock bounty.

The most significant Yule tradition to persist over the centuries is the Christmas tree. Although the origin of the Christmas tree is generally ascribed to Martin Luther, its beginnings actually go back to pre-Christian times. Christmas trees are thought to have evolved from the rite of symbolically selecting and harvesting a "sacred tree," a practice found in many ancient cultures. Evergreens and firs were sacred to early peoples, including the ancient Greeks, Celts, and Germans. The first Yule trees were born when pagans went into the forests during the winter solstice to give offerings to evergreens. Pines and firs remained green while other vegetation lost their leaves and appeared lifeless during the bitter winter cold. Their mysterious survival and vigor seemed to signify a life force within which carried with it the hope of renewed life....

Decorating the tree with objects resembling fruits, nuts, berries, and even flowers is thought to be a symbolic act designed to bring about the return of summer's bounty. In this way early cultures hoped to hurry the return of spring, and ensure survival through the rest of the harsh winter months.

Christmas wreaths are also ancient, and were traditionally made of evergreens, holly, and ivy. The wreath's circle symbolizes the wheel of the year and the completion of another cycle. Holly represents the female element; ivy represents the male. Like evergreens, holly was believed to contain a mysterious life force because it bore berries in the middle of winter. Both holly and ivy were thought to have magical properties, and were used as protection against negative elements.

Kissing under the mistletoe is an old Druid tradition. Mistletoe was considered highly sacred by this culture because, as a parasitic kind of vegetation, it never touched the earth (growing instead on oaks and other trees), and also because it bore berries in winter when everything else appeared dead. Druids gathered the leaves and berries from special oaks with sickles made of gold. They called mistletoe "all-heal" because they felt it had the power of protection against illness and bad events, and also because they believed mistletoe spread goodwill. Legend has it that enemies meeting under the mistletoe cast their weapons aside, greeted each other amicably, and honored a temporary truce. White linen clothes were spread beneath the mistletoe as it was being gathered so none of it would touch the ground, lest its power be accidentally released back to the earth. Mistletoe berries were considered to be a powerful fertility substance. A kiss under the mistletoe meant love and the promise of marriage.

So, again, to our pagan friends - Be well. And may the beginning of a new cycle bring the best to you, your family and friends. And best wishes as well to all the rest whose religions have appropriated our seasonal festival and its symbols.

And I strongly urge all who visit here to heed Lisa's last paragraph:

Whether celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or Yule, we can all delight in the season as a time to renew family ties, take joy in our natural environment, reflect on the events of the old year, and look forward in anticipation to the new. As the winter solstice demonstrates to us, every ending is a new beginning.

This was a very very very easy post to write

Moonstruck MacKay is in Washington today, meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Ostensibly, Peter MacKay is meeting with Secretary Rice for at least two genuinely serious reasons: to discuss the ongoing, outrageous, and unconscionable intransigence of U.S. Homeland Security, whose spokespersons continue to insinuate that they have "information" about Maher Arar that justifies keeping him on their no-fly list, and to discuss with Rice the "new directions" that American policy on Iraq and Cuba may be taking. Well: discuss. More like she will be giving MacKay the word, or, as CTV puts it, a "heads-up."

One heartening detail in that CTV report:

Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, the incoming chair of a Senate judiciary committee, told The Toronto Star newspaper Wednesday that he plans on summoning U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales before American legislators to demand answers in the Arar case.

Canadian authorities have taken responsibility for their part in Arar's 2002 rendition to Syria, Leahy said, adding that it's now the Bush administration's turn to redress the wrong.

"The Canadian government has now documented that the wrong thing was done to the wrong man," said Leahy.

"It is time for the (Bush) administration to do what it can to redress this wrong, instead of perpetuating it."

Leahy said Gonzales should explain the entire U.S. policy of rendition and he's sick of the lack of answers shrouded in security concerns or promises to get back to him.

Vermont Democrat ... incoming chair ... Senate judiciary committee ... Gosh. The heart leaps up. I call that poetry.

But back to Peter and Condi.

I leave a more serious and extended deconstruction of the ongoing betrayal of Maher Arar to the boss, who follows Arar's story more faithfully than anyone I know.

I just follow Peter MacKay, as I know so many others now do as well. So there I was this morning, trying to imagine how Peter would today be putting into words for Condi the outrage that Canadians feel at the ongoing, unconscionable intransigence of U.S. Homeland Security in their continued smearing of an honest man who has been grievously wronged. And then Debra at breadnroses.ca did it for me:

I can see this conversation ...

Peter: We both know that neither we nor our parties care about this issue but there may be an election coming up and we have to pretend we give a shit.

Condi: Glad to help out Peter. Here is the list of "political supporters" we discussed last time.

Peter: Do you like dogs?

I would have thrown in some very very verys, and maybe a bit of eye-batting, but I expect that that is indeed about as far as Peter will be interested in going ... on behalf of Canada, anyway.

I also expect that Condi's closing line will be the same as it always is, after she has patiently endured all the effusions and the soulful eye-batting. She will promise to keep Minister MacKay and Canadians "fully informed."

Cryptics

I went to a Christmas Party recently, and one of the games played involved cryptics, or word puzzles where you have to fill in the missing words from common phrases in which you supplied the first letter of each missing word. Sounds easy, right? It's actually rather tricky. According to MENSA, which developed this test, if you get 23 of 33 of these, you are a genius. I got 18 when I tried the test at the party, which I thought was pretty good. Four people did better, but no one got to 23.

The rules are simple: each of these are common phrases. Each capital letter represents a word you must fill in. The first is done for you.

24 H in a D (24 hours in a day)
26 L of the A
7 D of the W
7 W of the W
12 S of the Z
66 B of the B
52 C in a P (WJs)
13 S in the USF
18 H on a G C
39 B of the O T
5 T on a F
90 D in a R A
3 B M (S H T R)
32 is the T in D F at which W F
15 P in a R T
3 W on a T
100 C in a R
11 P in a F (S) T
12 M in a Y
13 = UFS
8 T on an O
29 D in F in a L Y
27 B in the N T
365 D in a Y
13 L in a B D
52 W in a Y
9 L of a C
60 M in a H
23 P of C in the H B
64 S on a C B
9 P in S A
6 B to an O in C
1000 Y in a M
15 M on a D M C

Copy the list and post your answers in the comments. Good luck!

Tyranny works in petty ways

One curiosity about tyrants and dictators: the attention they pay to the smallest slights and inconveniences. I suppose that makes sense to megalomaniacs, who tend to be micro-control-freaks, offended at the least sign of lèse-majesté, however oppressive such pettiness may seem to the rest of us.

This weekend in Washington, one honest man decided to call the Bush-Cheney White House on its latest cheap insult to democracy. Flynt Leverett, former CIA, State Department, and National Security Council staff member, charged that the White House had forced the CIA to censor an op-ed piece he had written for the New York Times -- a first in his long and productive career -- not because his article revealed a scintilla of information that was not already in the public domain but because he had dared to dissent openly over the administration's plans for Iran. Steve Clemons of the Washington Note published Leverett's first official statement Saturday night. It is impassioned, and it names names. Here is an excerpt:

The White House is demanding, before it will consider clearing the op-ed for publication, that I excise entire paragraphs dealing with matters that I have written about (and received clearance from the CIA to do so) in several other pieces, that have been publicly acknowledged by Secretary Rice, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, and that have been extensively covered in the media.

These matters include Iran's dialogue and cooperation with the United States concerning Afghanistan in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and Iran's offer to negotiate a comprehensive "grand bargain" with the United States in the spring of 2003.

There is no basis for claiming that these issues are classified and not already in the public domain.

For the White House to make this claim, with regard to my op-ed and at this particular moment, is nothing more than a crass effort to politicize a prepublication review process -- a process that is supposed to be about the protection of classified information, and nothing else -- to limit the dissemination of views critical of administration policy.

Within the last two week, the CIA found the wherewithal to approve an op-ed -- published in the New York Times on December 8, 2006 -- by Kenneth Pollack, another former CIA employee. This op-ed includes the statement that "Iran provided us with extensive assistance on intelligence, logistics, diplomacy, and Afghan internal politics."

Similar statements by me have been deleted from my draft op-ed by the White House. But Kenneth Pollack is someone who presented unfounded assessments of the Iraqi WMD threat -- the same assessments expounded by the Bush White House -- to make a high-profile public case for going to war in Iraq.

Mr. Pollack also supports the administration's reluctance to engage with Iran, in contrast to my consistent and sharp criticism of that position. It would seem that, if one is expounding views congenial to the White House, it does not intervene in prepublication censorship, but, if one is a critic, White House officials will use fraudulent charges of revealing classified information to keep critical views from being heard.

My understanding is that the White House staffers who have injected themselves into this process are working for Elliott Abrams and Megan O'Sullivan, both politically appointed deputies to President Bush's National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley.

Their conduct in this matter is despicable and un-American in the profoundest sense of that term. I am also deeply disappointed that former colleagues at the Central Intelligence Agency have proven so supine in the face of tawdry political pressure. Intelligence officers are supposed to act better than that.

Clemons also links to Leverett's much longer study, already published, on which the op-ed column is based. On Sunday, Larisa Alexandrovna published a link to the full text of the op-ed and an extract.

Yesterday, Juan Cole reacted to news of Leverett's defiant public stand by zeroing in on one of the obvious culprits Leverett has named:

Back to Washington. The remaining Neoconservatives in the Bush administration, like David Wurmser in Cheney's office and Abrams at the NSC have been agitating behind the scenes for war on Syria and Iran. These people hate peace the way the devil hates holy water. They confess themselves actively disappointed when a war doesn't happen. They helped send US troops into Iraq where 24,000 have been wounded or killed, and they'd just love to expend some more lives on other pet projects.

That does it. Elliot Abrams must go. Elliot Abrams is a felon. He was involved in stealing Pentagon weapons from US stockpiles, selling them to the Ayatollah Khomeini, and then stealing the Iranian funds so garnered to give to far-right Central American death squads, and then lying about all this to Congress. The Congress in the Constitution controls the budget. The Congress had cut off money to the rightwing death squads supported by Reagan and henchmen like Abrams. This elaborate criminal conspiracy inside the White House was the Right's response. They shredded the Constitution (and ever since have been calling their critics "unpatriotic.")

In 1991, Abrams pled guilty to two misdemeanor counts of lying to Congress under oath. Without the plea deal, he was facing felony charges, since what he did was in fact a felony.

Congress pledged that Abrams would never work at a high level in government again. But by the time the Neoconservative cabal in the Bush administration got Bush to appoint him to the National Security Council, there had been so much turn-over in Congress that, one member told me, "no one remembered who Abrams was."

I'm serious about this, everyone. The bloggers are touted as influential, but their influence is hard to measure or prove. Let's make this a test case.

And the campaign seems to be underway at Kos.

To most of us, the puzzle, the absurdity, and the outrage of suppressing information that is already public seem obvious. On what grounds could Leverett's article still be considered a security threat, and by whom?

By anyone who believes that mere dissent from the president's point of view is a security threat -- that's who. A number of officials in the Bush administration have flattered their leader by making such arguments in the past, backed up powerfully by Dick Cheney, resisted by very few in a flaccid Congress.

On their own, those arguments are rationalizations of and for tyranny. That they should rise again now is a warning that Bush and Cheney still want Iran, in spite of their historic failures in Afghanistan and Iraq, in spite of all the best intelligence and informed advice they have been given, and in spite of the will of the American people and the people of the world.

As pogge asks above: Who promised you democracy would be easy? May many Americans heed Juan Cole's call.

Aren't we lucky that we don't have anyone obsessed with controlling and suppressing dissent in government in this country?

And thanks to Debra for a private tip.

Credit where no credit is due

I don't really have a problem with Time Canada naming Stephen Harper Canada's Newsmaker of the Year. The guy has made an impact on the national scene being the PM and all. But why bolster their choice with Conservative talking points and gross factual errors? Here's why he was chosen accroding to the magazine:

Contributing editor Stephen Handelman writes that the prime minister who was "once dismissed as a doctrinaire backroom tactician with no experience in government has emerged as a warrior in power."

The magazine says Mr. Harper defied conventional wisdom about how to lead a minority government.

It says he slashed more than $1-billion worth of federal programs, reshuffled the federal bureaucracy, and reopened the wounds of the national unity debate by supporting Quebec's right to declare itself a “nation.”

At the same time, Time says, he has introduced a new standard of accountability for federal politicians, stewarded Canada's first major deployment of troops to a combat theatre in five decades and, for good measure, negotiated an end to a long-simmering trade wrangle with the U.S. over softwood exports.

"A warrior in power"? Are they joking? The guy has emerged has a petty wanker who is willing to deny Christmas party invitations to reporters he doesn't like in his ongoing project to de-legitimize the media.

He has cemented his extremist right wing ideological street cred by slashing public spending on programs that worked well, and served the most vulnerable elements of our society.

The Accountability Act is an absolute joke that makes things worse than they were before.

As for Afghanistan, for better or worse, it was the Liberals who sent our troops over there, not Harper.

And the softwood lumber deal? Let's just say calling it a sell out would be generous.

So sure, Harper is the newsmaker of the year. But for exactly the opposite reasons touted by Time Canada.

Holiday cookery bloggery

Chanukah, the festival of lights, has already begun and lasts till next Saturday. Christmas Eve is just a week away. And on Friday, the sun will start to come back to us northerners one more time.

There are hard things that can be said about this season, hard things that need saying, but that's not what we'll do in this thread. Here we're just going to be proper pagans and celebrate the one symbol of the season that has always mattered most, especially to those who don't have enough of it: food. Yummy food. Food that we prepare together and sit down to share together.

So, ok, sometimes that last part is a bit of a strain for some of us, but it's the thought that counts, right? Here we shall honour the ancient thought of communities gathering together for warmth at the time of the solstice -- literally, the time when the sun stands still.

That was all just an inflated warm-up for my gingerbread recipe, which is my favourite easy solution for drive-by holiday visits. But I'm hoping for some good trades.

Does anyone here do cookies? Especially, does anyone have secret tips about how I can make my shortbread smoother? More exciting I already know about: chop up some candied ginger and hide it in the shortbread as a nice little explosive surprise.

And does anyone still spice a brisket? Lovely thing for a Christmas Eve supper.

Anyway, all casseroles left at the door are welcome. I admit that my gingerbread recipe I shamelessly stole from the first Silver Palate Cookbook, although I've changed it a bit and they should be grateful for the advertising (great cookbook!). Me mum's gingerbread was good but not as fluffy as this, and besides, me mum's recipes are still missing in one of those mystery boxes I haven't unpacked yet ... But I digress. On to the gingerbread.

Silver Palate Gingerbread

1 2/3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 1/4 tsps baking soda
1 1/2 tsps ground ginger
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
3/4 tsp salt
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup molasses
1/2 cup boiling water
1/2 cup vegetable oil

whipping cream (35%), or perhaps Devon double cream

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease and flour a 9-inch square baking pan.

Sift dry ingredients together into a mixing bowl. Add egg, sugar, and molasses. Mix well.

Pour boiling water and the oil over mixture. Stir thoroughly until smooth.

Pour batter into the prepared pan. Set on the middle rack of oven and bake 35 to 40 minutes, or until top springs back when touched and the edges have pulled away slightly from the sides of the pan.

The Silver Palate people glaze the cake at this point (while still hot) with a lemon glaze (2/3 cup confectioner's sugar plus 3 tbsps lemon juice, mixed together, not cooked). I tried that once, the first time I made the cake, but I did not like it. It seemed to me that the lemon was fighting the ginger, and I wanted the ginger all on its own. I much prefer to serve squares of this cake split open, and with nice big dollops of whipped cream.

Friday night funk blogging

Just for a change of pace. The Neville Brothers. Mojo.

Lawrence Martin is tone-deaf

Update, 18 December: An arrest has been made in this case. See comments.

On 2 December, police officers in Suffolk, England, discovered the nude body of Gemma Adams, 25, face-down in a brook some distance southwest of the town of Ipswich. Six days later, the nude body of a second young woman was found dumped in a stream not far away, and two days after that, a third in woodland to the southeast. Then last weekend the bodies of two more young women were found just a bit further to the southeast. All are now said to have died by asphyxiation, strangulation, or "compression to the neck."

To their credit, the people of Ipswich have grasped that the victims of their serial killer were women first of all, and that a serial killer of women is a threat to all women. All five of the young women whose bodies have been found were sex-trade workers, most of them believed also to have been dependent on expensive drugs. But in this excerpt from the Globe and Mail summary of the case so far, notice the interesting shift of focus away from that aspect of their story when a woman of Ipswich has her say:

Beneath the fear that another woman-hunting serial killer is roaming the laneways and city streets of England is a deeper sense of embarrassment and shame: In Ipswich, as in other cities here, girls who have fallen into drugs and prostitution have been driven out of the brightly lit centre of town into the dim outskirts — and, many now fear, to their deaths.

The five corpses were found over the past 10 days along the A14, a secondary highway leading out of Ipswich. Police say the young prostitutes had been working the streets of Ipswich and its outskirts, after their purses and other belongings were found in an intensive police operation.

Some businesses also offered female workers special hand-held alarms.

“How is that going to stop someone trying to kill you?” asked Sally Townsend, 55, who works at Marks & Spencer and walks to her job each morning in the darkness that envelops this eastern English city in winter. Once inside the store, she told The Associated Press, she calls her husband to tell him she's safe.

Right on, Sally Townsend, and Mr Sally Townsend too.

Actually, attitudes in Britain towards these murders have become generally enlightened very quickly, as you can see by sifting through the growing collection of articles in the Guardian's special report. The Home Office is ensuring a massive professional investigation; the prime minister and the opposition leader have both spoken to the horror of the hunting of any human being. There have been some familiar gross missteps, but even the mainstream media seem to have caught up to the idea that sex workers and the drug-dependent are human beings first, and that when they are being murdered, it is the murderer who is the problem.

So recently in Canada we have seen police and the media criminally slow to react to clear and finally overwhelming evidence of serial killers at work -- in Vancouver's downtown eastside (the Pickton murders), in Edmonton, on the Highway of Tears in BC -- and it is hard not to conclude that the dismissive attitudes of the authorities, the media, and much of the public arise from a conviction, spoken or unspoken, that sex-trade workers and other marginalized people -- often, in Canada, aboriginal women and children -- have somehow brought their fate down upon themselves.

With its careful headline and introduction yesterday to the story of the murder of women in Ipswich, the Globe and Mail seemed to many of us to have joined the growing band of the enlightened. The story emphasizes the humanity of the victims and the human horror of living in a community where someone stalks women as prey.

And then we turned to the op-ed page, where Lawrence Martin was tumbling all over himself to rhapsodize Stéphane Dion as a figure from epic-heroic mythology :

... The Leader of the Opposition must find a way to resist the temptation to respond in kind to the cheap attacks and slanders. To succeed, to avoid being dragged down into the brothel, the rules of engagement are many: He must be a champion of principle. He must remain stoic, keeping the level of discourse high and noble, holding to his true character. He must, while letting other caucus members tackle the seamy questions, be seen as frequently as possible with the other tower of integrity in the Liberal thicket, Ken Dryden. Mr. Dion must avoid overexposure and he must avoid the big type of position change -- remember John Turner's accepting Pierre Trudeau's list of patronage appointments in 1984 -- that can be so damaging to the stature of a leader.

But one's prose can never be purple enough, eh, Mr Martin? So he closed his column with this little zinger:

Few have had the opportunity Stéphane Dion now possesses. He can do something greater than score a win for his party. He can bring respect to what Liberal Stan Keyes once fittingly labelled "a whore's game."

Listen up, Lawrence Martin: whores work for a living. A lot of them also die for it.

And maybe it's time you stopped sullying their deeply affecting human vulnerability and essential human dignity by drawing parallels between them and politicians -- or even purveyors of hackery like yourself.

Hat tip to brebis noire and many others at breadnroses.ca

Harper's Arrow

Updated. Please see below.

As I noted in my post below, some very important government programs for homeless poeple are going by the wayside because Stephen Harper's government can't be bothered to make a decision before March. But it is not only on the streets of our cities that the Conservative's do-nothing philosophy will be felt. Their incompetence spans interplanetary distances.

The federal government has turned down a request by Canada's space industry to support a contract that would have allowed the companies to build the European Space Agency's Mars surface rover, CBC News has learned.

The decision stunned the companies and has left the ESA scrambling to find a new partner, as no European firm is adequately prepared to match the technical abilities of Canadian firms to build its ExoMars rover.

A computer rendition of the ExoMars rover, which the European Space Agency wanted the Canadian space industry to build for a planned mission to Mars by 2015.

The European Space Agency (ESA) wanted Canadian space companies — considered world leaders in robotics — to build the rover for its planned exploration of Mars by 2015. The rover would have a far more sophisticated robotics package than the current U.S. platforms in use.

In July, the companies made an impassioned presentation to federal Industry Ministry officials for a clearer mandate for the Canadian Space Agency, which included making the Mars rover project its top priority, the CBC's Henry Champ told the CBC's Don Newman Thursday on Politics.

The project required no additional funding from Ottawa, but was contingent upon $100 million over 10 years from the existing CSA budget being redirected to the program by restructuring priorities and cancelling or postponing other projects, according to documents obtained by the CBC.

But just a few short weeks after the presentation, Industry Minister Maxime Bernier told the companies the government hadn't made up its mind about the future of Canada's space role and didn't want to go forward with the project.

The project was strongly supported by the Americans, who cite Canada's solid track record of success in space technology as one of the main reasons they support an expanded role for the Canadian Space Agency. The CSA is still producing good work, despite the fact that the Cons haven't bothered to appoint a new president for the agency for the last year.

Thanks to their inaction and lack of vision, Canada's future as a space-going nation is in serious doubt. This is going to haunt Harper much in the same way the Avro Arrow haunted John Diefenbaker. Following Dief's decision to cancel the Arrow project, many of Canada's best and brightest in the aerospace industry went to the United States, the majority of them to work for NASA's burgeoning space program. The shortsightedness of this government could once again trigger a brain drain that this country will be years in recovering from.

Update: Scotian does a very good post on this topic over at his blog, and he also provides a round up of reaction to this story from other bloggers. Go read.

Success is not a factor

When you govern by ideology, success no longer becomes a factor in whether or not a publicly-funded program should continue. A classic example of this thinking is the Conservatives' attempt to undermine the Canadian Wheat Board. Despite that fact that the CWB works well and is supported by the majority of Canadian wheat farmers, big agribusiness wants it gone, and the Cons are nothing if not faithful to their corporate pals.

On October 25 [2006], Inside US Trade, an American business magazine, published a report that could have serious implications for Canadian grain farmers. The Report of Technical Task Force on Implementing Marketing Choice for Wheat and Barley was first released not to farmers or the Canadian public, but to this US journal. According to Stewart Wells, President of the National Farmers Union (NFU), that reveals something about the report’s underlying aims. “That should provide some indication of whose interests are being served with this report,” he said. Essentially, the report argues for eliminating the present Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) and replacing it with the so-called CWB II, a move that many argue will threaten the viability of small wheat farmers in Canada and further increase the profitability of Big Agribusiness.

Profits rule all, and any public spending that does not increase corporate profits seems to be on the chopping block. The latest victim of this type of thinking is a highly successful program to combat youth homelessness that has been praised by the United Nations as one of the best programs of its type in the world.

Counsellors with a Toronto project that helps homeless youth are to receive layoff notices today, making them the latest casualties of federal foot-dragging over renewal of an award-winning program that supports scores of similar projects across the country.

Youthlink, a community-based group that offers training and other support for young people on the street, will advise about a half-dozen staff members that their jobs will end shortly.

"I am fearful that the city will look very different," said program supervisor Carolann Barr, who confirmed the cuts at the one-of-a-kind project, which offers intensive counselling and training to help 16- to 24-year-olds off the street. "Without these kinds of supports, they will fall through the cracks."

The layoffs at Youthlink and similar agencies are tied to the uncertain fate of the seven-year-old Supporting Communities Partnership Initiative (SCPI), a federal program recognized by the United Nations in 2002 as an example of "best practice" for improving urban life.

Staff cuts have been announced or are pending at other agencies.

Several counsellors with a project that helps the homeless retrieve identity documents (giving them access to housing and health services) already know they will lose their jobs by February.

Julia Chao, executive director of the Partners for Access and Identification, said her project receives about $500,000 a year from the federal program, but is no longer accepting new clients given the funding uncertainty.

At the Fred Victor Centre, executive director Mark Aston said layoffs are coming "soon" for three programs that receive about $375,000 from the federal homelessness program. Mr. Aston said the successes of the programs are highly visible, with about 25 per cent of formerly homeless individuals going on to jobs or returning to school.

Mayors, advocates for homeless people and others across the country have been pressing the federal government to confirm its commitment to SCPI before it expires in March. Without a continuation of federal funding, homeless advocates predict a rise in visible homelessness in Canada's cities.

"People will see more homeless on the street," predicted Michael Shapcott, a senior public-policy analyst with the Wellesley Institute think tank in Toronto. "The situation will be that much more visible and the conditions that much more desperate."

Toronto appears to be the first city where formal layoffs have been issued, but officials in London, Calgary and Vancouver are warning that programs that took years to develop are on the edge of a precipice.

"It is at risk of happening in Vancouver," said Jill Davidson, senior housing planner for the city. "A number of really good projects will be cancelled and services [to the homeless] will stop."

Yesterday, an aide to federal Human Resources Minister Diane Finley said the government "will be making investments in homelessness after March."

"We are simply looking at our options before deciding how to proceed," press secretary Colleen Cameron added, without saying when the government will announce its decision.

Decisions made in March will be meaningless of course. The programs will be shut down by then, infrastructure will be lost, experienced staff members will move on to other jobs, and homeless people will be deprived of a vital service that actually made a positive difference.

Small town museums, court services for the non-wealthy, women, literacy programs, farmers and now the homeless have all been the targets of Conservative cuts. All of the targetted programs have a track record of success, but success does not seem to be enough to save any program from the slash-happy gang in the Conservative caucus. We become a lesser nation with every day we live under Stephen Harper's government.

Obama Redux

I see my dismissal of Barack Obama is hitting a nerve.

To be honest, I don't find any of the defenses of Obama to be very convincing. The reality is that there are very few experiences that prepare a candidate for the gruelling nightmare that is a U.S. presidential campaign, and Obama has been through absolutely none of them. That's why I'm dismissive of his chances.

It's nice that Obama was the editor of the Harvard Law Review and that he's been both a state Senator and has been in the U.S. Senate. Sure, he's articulate, intelligent, has a great biography, and all that. But none of those things matter compared to the sad reality that George W. Bush, despite his record of personal failue and limited intelligence, was far better positioned to win the White House in 2000 than Obama is today.

I'm bring up Bush, a man who is certainly the worst U.S. president in living memory, because if you don't understand why the man is sitting in the White House you don't know how American politics works. Even if you want to argue that the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen, Bush still managed to get enough votes to make them stealable.

What did Bush have going for him? Well, here's a big one: he was a Governor.

That actually is important. In the U.S., Presidential elections are won by a) Governors and b) former Vice Presidents. Senators rarely win (Kennedy was the last and the record before his time is similarly dismal for ex-senators). You know why? Because senators don't have any real campaigning experience.

I'm not joking. The turnover rate in the U.S. Senate is lower than that of the British House of Lords. A senator will probably run in no more than one genuinely competitive race over the course of his or her career--the first one. Obama hasn't even done that--in most of his campaigns, he's either unopposed or his opposition has messily self-destructed. He's never faced an opposing campaign, or reporters, who will mine his speeches and record looking to trip him up. He's never had to respond to issues on the fly. He's never had to fight off serious attacks or recover from a mistake--and he has never had to keep doing that, while keeping up a punishing travel schedule, day after day for a period of two years. Governorships are a lot more competitive as a rule, so they have been through it, and sitting VPs have actual experience on a presidential campaign. That's a big reason why they win, and Senators don't.

Bush's team had the experience of having toppled a once-popular state Governor, with Bush as the candidate, and the backing of much of the establishment Republicans. They knew how to fight dirty. Obama's appeal is based all around being "Mr. Clean" and he's never had to fight off a serious swift-boating attack.

A senatorial campaign--especially Obama's, where the first Republican candidate went down over a sex scandal and they had to fly in an out-of-state crazy to replace him--just doesn't prepare you for that.

That's not the only reason I don't see Obama sitting in the White House anytime soon. But it's a big one. A really big one. Who knows, maybe he'll be one of the very rare "star candidates" who proves able to be effective at it--but I can't remember many of those.

Not feeling any safer

I have quite a bit to catch up on regarding developments on the Maher Arar case but I couldn't let this particular article go by without comment. Stockwell Day wants to assure us that a case like Arar's couldn't happen today because we've come so far since then. Look how far Stock himself has come:

Among the changes to national security protocol are improvements in intelligence sharing.

"There have to be caveats attached to that information that would say, 'All right, here's some evidence about a particular individual, however, there's a caveat to this,' " Day explained. "A caveat is, for instance: 'We have no firm information that this person is involved with terrorist activity.' "

In a security context that's not a caveat, it's a reliability assessment. Attaching a written caveat to the information you're sharing puts limits on the purposes for which the recipient can use the information, e.g. for intelligence purposes only. A caveat can also constrain the recipient from sharing the information with anyone else without at least getting permission from the originating agency.

Anyone who's spent any quality time with O'Connor's report knows the difference between a caveat and a reliability assessment. Methinks Day is trying to fake it. That doesn't give me a warm, fuzzy feeling.

Reaping the Whirlwind

Updated. Please see below.

There are some ominous signs that the Iraq War - already a disaster by any reasonable reckoning - is about to explode into a wider regional conflict involving two of the largest players in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Events were set in motion yesterday with the sudden departure of the Saudi Ambassador to the United States.

WASHINGTON: Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, Prince Turki al-Faisal, has abruptly resigned after 15 months on the job, an embassy official said Tuesday.

"The embassy can confirm that he is leaving," said the official, who asked not to be named as the announcement had not been made by the Saudi government. "He wants to spend more time with his family."

Saudi Arabia is a key ally of the United States and is the world's top oil exporter. Turki's predecessor, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, held the job for 22 years and the short tenure of the current envoy came as a surprise.

*snip*

The departure came days after Turki dismissed a consultant who wrote an opinion piece published in The Washington Post that suggested the Saudi kingdom would back Iraq's Muslim Sunnis in the event of a wider sectarian conflict. The article by a Saudi government security adviser, Nawaf Obaid, said that the kingdom would intervene with financing and weaponry to prevent Shiite militias from attacking Iraq's Sunnis and suggested that Saudi Arabia could bring down world oil prices to squeeze Shiite power Iran.

This move would put the Saudis in direct conflict with their long-time allies the United States, which, under the influence of neoconservative lunatics, began the great misadventure in Iraq with the dream of creating a friendly client state in the Middle East.

The folks who brought you the Iraq War have always been weak in the knees for a really whacked-out vision of a Shi'a-US alliance in the Middle East. I used to talk to a lot of these folks before I became persona non grata. So here's basically how the theory went and, I don't doubt, still goes ... We hate the Saudis and the Egyptians and all the rest of the standing Arab governments. But the Iraqi Shi'a were oppressed by Saddam. So they'll like us. So we'll set them up in control of Iraq. You might think that would empower the Iranians. But not really. The mullahs aren't very powerful. And once the Iraqi Shi'a have a good thing going with us. The Iranians are going to want to get in on that too. So you'll see a new government in Tehran. Plus, big parts of northern Saudi Arabia are Shi'a too. And that's where a lot of the oil is. So they'll probably want to break off and set up their own pro-US Shi'a state with tons of oil. So before you know it, we'll have Iraq, Iran, and a big chunk of Saudi Arabia that is friendly to the US and has a ton of oil. And once that happens we can tell the Saudis to f$#% themselves once and for all.

Now, you might think this involves a fair amount of wishful and delusional thinking. But this was the thinking of a lot of neocons going into the war. And I don't doubt it's still the thinking of quite a few of them. They still want to run the table. And even more now that it's double-down. I don't know what these guys are planning now. But there's plenty of reason to be worried.

And of course, we can't forget about Iran in this picture. If the Saudis support their fellow Sunnis in Iraq, you can bet the Iranians will want to prop up their fellow Shiites. So what was once a failed U.S. attempt to "liberate" Iraqis has now devolved into a civil war which threatens to become a wider regional war between two fairly substantial military powers. Each side will use Iraq as their surrogate batteground, further dooming that blighted land to more years of war and death. Any facade of control over the conflict that the Americans currently have (and that is very little) will be shredded once the regional players take over the reins and begin steering the chaos in Iraq toward their own ends. As hard as it is to believe, the situation in Iraq is actually going to get worse.

So, any of you Iraq war supporters starting to get a twinge of conscience yet?

Update: From the Globe and Mail:

NEW YORK — Saudi Arabia has warned it could decide to provide financial support to Iraqi Sunnis if the U.S. pulls its troops out of Iraq, where sectarian violence between the minority Sunnis and majority Iraqi Shiites has threatened to tear apart the country, The New York Times reported.

Saudi Arabia is a majority Sunni country and up to now has promised U.S. officials that it would not intervene to assist Iraq's Sunni insurgency, according to the report, appearing in Wednesday's edition of The Times and citing anonymous American and Arab diplomatic sources.

But that promise might not hold if U.S. troops leave Iraq, the newspaper said. The Bush administration has repeatedly said there are no plans for the immediate pullout of U.S. troops.

The Times reported that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia sent the warning to Vice-President Dick Cheney two weeks ago during the Vice-President's visit to Riyadh. The message also emphasized the kingdom's displeasure with proposed talks between the U.S. government and Iran.

Iran — a majority Shiite country — is believed to be providing military and financial support to Shiite elements. The recently released Iraq Study Group report suggested the Bush Administration engage Iran and neighbouring Syria in talks aimed at applying pressure on Iraqi Shiites to keep what some analysts are calling a civil war from spiralling into a regional conflict.

This is very, very bad, and with the current incompetents in charge in Washington, it is only going to get worse.

Update 2: In the comments, mahigan points us to this article by Juan Cole which examines the evolving regional power structures in the Middle East and the growing tension in the region.

Saudi Arabia is equally frantic about the possibility of a nuclear Iran, and is moreover apoplectic that the US delivered Baghdad into the hands of Iraqi Shiite fundamentalists allied with Iran. Saudi Arabia fears Hizbullah in Lebanon as an Iranian cat's paw in the Arab world. The Khomeinists of Iran and south Lebanon believe that Islam is incompatible with monarchy (Khomeini said, "there are no kings in Islam.")

Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and (de facto) the 14 March Bloc in Lebanon are ranged against Iran, Shiite Iraq, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas. Neither Israel nor Saudi Arabia can openly admit to the tacit alliance for fear of anger from their own publics because of objectionable parties to it. But this is how things are shaking out.

Now the Saudis are openly saying that this new Cold War in the region could turn hot. If you don't own a bicycle, I'd buy one, because a regional war of the sort Saudi Arabia said it feared would potentially cut off 20 percent of the world's petroleum.

It's a sobering analysis, but nonetheless a must read.

Booktag

Ce n'est pas ma faute. Mandos at Politblogo made me do it.

The instructions:
Find the nearest book.
Turn to page 123.
Go to the fifth sentence on the page.
Copy out the next three sentences and post to your blog.
Name the book and the author, and tag three more folks.

Now, first of all, I am not going to tag anyone in particular. If you are reading this post and you love wiggy bookishness, consider yourself tagged. Please feel free to add your eccentricities in comments here, or spread the mischief on your own blog.

And another thing: if you could see the room I work in, well, you'd know the existential agonies I had to go through to figure out what the book nearest to me would be. I finally decided to close my eyes and reach out to the nearest shelf to my right, to the book at exactly my level when I'm sitting and as close to the same degree of latitude as I would be if typing.

And this is what happened:

"She's a little edgy around strangers," Joe Ben explained proudly, as if listing the qualities of a prize bird dog. "But these here outfits ain't, are you?" He dug the twins in the ribs, making them jump and squirm.
-- Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion (1963, 1964, Bantam pb 1972)

In my copy, page 123 starts with the end of the last sentence from page 122, so I didn't count that. I couldn't see that the rules covered that quandary, but I forged ahead anyway.

I'm sure y'all can do the same.

My one regret is that I didn't land on Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses, in which the sentence "Ce n'est pas ma faute" plays an important dramatic role.

Ok. Who's next?

Why airlines fail and GM always has a hand out

I've recently been reading a couple of interesting (if somewhat dry and occasionally over my head) books by Michael Perelman, a radical who is also an economist. There was lots I'd heard before in different forms, lots that was news to me but only interesting if you're willing to sit through a really long development of ideas. But one bit seems direct and relevant, and really turned my ideas upside down about a big chunk of the economy. He'd dug up some old (late 1800s) economics by a group of actually quite conservative economists who had a vogue during a particular crisis but were dropped like hot potatoes as inconvenient as soon as that crisis was over. They concluded that open competition among firms with big capital requirements couldn't work--they'd all go bankrupt if some kind of cartel or monopoly or trust wasn't established. The theory why is simple enough that I could grok it and it rather blew my mind.

Being conservative, they totally didn't look at the concept of any sort of public ownership . . .

The problem at the time was railways. There'd been all this rush to cash in on booming railways. So much track had been built that there was a lot of actual competition. Was the result a lovely free market paradise? No. They were all going bankrupt, some fast, some scraping by and gradually sinking. And railways were big at the time, not just big business, but big in people's imagination, the poster children of big capital. If railways couldn't make money, that was a horrible signal for the system. So the question of why was urgent as all get out.

What these fellows came up with was this problem: Normal free market theory says that if there are a bunch of firms competing, prices will fall to just over the marginal costs of production, which gives all the firms a minimal profit and gives everyone else low prices, leaving everyone happy except the fat cats who really wish there was less competition so they could make more money. OK, so we all know that doesn't usually happen, but leave that aside for a moment. The problem these "railway economists" identified was that that worked all fine and dandy if most costs were per widget or at least were for stuff that could be readily exchanged. Take rent or even purchase of workspace--if you're losing money, theoretically you can bug out, sell the place getting your money back, and use the money to go into some more profitable business.

But say you're a railway. You spent a hundred million bucks on railroad tracks--or perhaps you borrowed a hundred million bucks to lay railroad tracks with. You've spent that money, and if the railway's losing money, who's gonna want to buy the track? You're stuck with it, pretty much. Perelman refers to this as "sunk costs".

Now, say there's some other railways with their own track. And say you're competing for passengers, and all of you are running about half full. At the beginning, you're all charging say $150 per passenger for a given run, and that keeps you all barely solvent paying off your $100 million debts. Say $100 of that actually goes to paying for the track and the trains, and $50 is what it actually costs for diesel, maintenance, staff and stuff. If you dropped the price to $140 and that attracted a bunch of passengers--you'd be making more money. But then the competition needs to drop their prices. In the end, you all find yourselves charging $60 per passenger or so. You're all losing money, but you're doing slightly better than if you were sitting on all that track and not using it at all. If you independently bump your price to $70, you'll end up with so few passengers you'll be losing money even faster. You're all stuck! The only way out is to collude or buy the competition (or sell out to a competitor, the only buyer willing to actually pay for your money-losing tracks).

This applies obviously to railroads and other network-type "natural monopolies" like natural gas utilities and such. But it also applies to anything with large "sunk costs" and real competition. That would include airlines and even car manufacturers, explaining why GM etc. are always needing government bailouts, and Asian car companies are often joined at the hip with government.

It's kind of funny--I mean, I'm always hearing about companies getting big bailouts from government, free land, tax free this and that, and I'm always hearing about airlines dying or trying desperately to establish monopolies before they run out of money. I always thought it was just because they were bossed by venal profiteering dorks, or the "shareholders uber alles" imperative. And that may all be true, but as well, apparently that's just how it works--ultimately, it's collude, eat the competition, or die (or get bailed out by the public, forever). They have no choice.

That makes something of a shambles of the whole free market ideal. So, no efficient free markets, at least not in serious things that require a lot of specialized capital goods. But everyone, left or right, agrees that monopolies and cartels are bad/can't be trusted/are inefficient. So what does that leave? Some kind of socialized production is apparently the only economically sound way, at least for a big category that includes most of the economic heavy lifting. Explains a lot for those of us who have been noticing that privatization always seems to create a shambles (as described in e.g. Shooting the Hippo by Linda McQuaig).

I'm just hoping this isn't all so totally dry that everyone will just click on by.

Obamamania

A brief thought:

Barack Obama is the Democratic Party's Michael Ignatieff.

The pet dictator

Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet finally got what he never deserved: a peaceful death outside the confines of prison. The man well known for his 17-year reign of terror in Chile, during which thousands were tortured and more than 3,000 "disappeared", managed to avoid prosecution for his crimes for 16 years, and died yesterday a frail old man wracked by illness. I don't wish death upon anyone, but this is not an individual we should mourn.

Pinochet's brutal regime was midwifed by the United States by way of the CIA. The US loathed the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, and backed the coup which was assisted by several of their intelligence assets in the Chilean military.

Pinochet took power on Sept. 11, 1973, demanding an unconditional surrender from President Salvador Allende as warplanes bombed the presidential palace. Instead, Allende committed suicide with a submachine gun he had received as a gift from Fidel Castro.

The U.S. had been working to destabilize Allende's Marxist government and keep Chile from exporting communism, but the world reacted in horror as Santiago's main soccer stadium filled with political prisoners to be tortured, killed or forced into exile after Pinochet came into power.

Although his dictatorship laid the groundwork for South America's most stable economy, Pinochet will be remembered as the archetype of the era's repressive rulers who proliferated throughout Latin America and, in many cases, were secretly supported by the United States.

Chile's government says at least 3,197 people were killed for political reasons during Pinochet's rule, but courts allowed the aging general to escape hundreds of criminal complaints as his health declined.

Typical of American foreign policy then and today, the suffering of non-Americans is entirely subordinated to the economic interests of American corporations. Whether is was Chile 33 years ago, Cuba in 1959 or Iraq today, the United States has had a long history of causing human suffering as a by-product of defending their perceived national interests. Pinochet is just one in a long line of pet monsters supported by the United States in the name of American interests. This policy has remained unchanged since it was starkly spelled out in U.S. State Department documents in 1948.

U.S. State Department Policy Planning Study #23, 1948:

" Our real task... is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity [U.S. military- economic supremacy]... To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming... We should cease to talk about vague and...unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization... we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."

George Kennan, Director of Policy Planning. U.S. State Department. 1948

Of course, this is not just an American value. It would do the western world some good to remember policies like these when we ponder the question "Why do they hate us?" It's not "because of our freedoms." It is because the power brokers who lead western nations consider so much of the world to be pawns on a great chessboard, to be used and discarded as needed in the pursuit of more power or greater wealth. One need only look at Skdadl's heartbreaking post below to see this policy in action in real time.

Despite his reign of terror, Pinochet had many avid supporters among those in the west whose philosophy was only a few degrees removed from his own.

Baroness Thatcher was tonight said to be "greatly saddened" by the death of General Augusto Pinochet, the one-time ruthless right-wing dictator of Chile.

The former British Prime Minister remained a firm and loyal supporter of Pinochet, especially in the last stormy years of his life when a series of legal attempts were made in Chile to charge him with alleged crimes relating to the disappearance of thousands of dissidents during his years of power.

Lady Thatcher always maintained that Pinochet had offered the British invaluable help during the Falklands conflict of 1982.

Once again, a western nation's interests were served, so the suffering of the Chilean people are treated as a mere inconvenience. I somehow doubt that Thatcher has ever endured a crisis of conscience in her life. Why not support a brutal dictator? Especially when he got such great economic results.

With Pinochet's death, his escape from earthly justice is complete. If there is an afterlife, I sincerely hope he will not escape judgment there. If there is no afterlife, well, his blight is gone from the world and we can try to put the scar of his existence behind us.

But he remains a powerful symbol of western arrogance, and his death will not stop western economic and military interests from using other people as tools to acheive their aims. Thus suffering, government brutality and economic disparity will go on, and people's anger and fears will continue to be exploited by religious fanatics and terrorists who seek ends as cruel and unjust as those sought by the power brokers of the West.

Instead of reflecting on our behavour as citizens of the world, we lash out and create ever more intractable problems built upon the injustices of the past. And the lessons that we should draw from the malignant life of Augusto Pinochet remain unlearned.

As Gaza implodes

First and always, pity, tears, and rage for the sake of the innocents:

In Monday's attack, gunmen in two vehicles riddled the car carrying the children with some 60 bullets, Palestinian security officials said. Three of Mr. Balousheh's children, ranging in age from six to 10, were killed, along with an adult, hospital officials said. Mr. Balousheh was not in the car.

Four more people were wounded in the attack on Palestine Street, which is lined with nine schools. The attack sent children in the area running for cover, some dropped to the ground, others fled in panic. “We saw fire coming from one car. We started screaming and children started running,” said 12-year-old Fadwa Nablus, who had been walking to school with her 9-year-old brother.

...

... Balousheh arrived surrounded by bodyguards, wiping his eyes as he tried not to cry. Two of his sons killed in the attack, still wearing their school uniforms, were carried in the arms of family members. One of the boys had 10 bullet holes in his head.

And then the fears of internal strife that can only mean greater bloodshed for those trapped in Gaza, innocent or not, innocent once but no longer, all trapped, all pawns of more powerful international game-players.

Baha Balousheh, a senior Palestinian intelligence officer and interrogator from the days of Arafat's Fatah regime, has been an opponent of Hamas and is thus considered to have been targeted by them. Hamas has denounced the murder of his children, but the situation is explosive. President Abbas has been stepping up the pressure on Hamas this month, perhaps preparing to dissolve the democratically elected parliament that is dominated by Hamas.

And so we wonder: who has been stepping up the pressure on President Abbas?

Of course we know who the usual suspects are. Since January, the people of Gaza and the West Bank -- Palestine, the Occupied Territories -- have been punished unrelentingly by Israel and many Western nations, including Canada, for voting freely for Hamas.

Gaza in particular has become a prison camp, dangerously impoverished, oppressive, claustrophobic, its residents driven to despair or to hair-trigger fury, as many witnesses have testified repeatedly through this year. Life in Gaza has become this:

Without anyone paying attention, the Gaza Strip has become the most closed-off strip of land in the world - after North Korea. But while North Korea is globally known to be a closed and isolated country, how many people know that the same description applies to a place just an hour away from hedonist Tel Aviv?

The Erez border crossing is desolate - Palestinians are not allowed to cross there, foreigners are rarely allowed to cross and Israeli journalists have also been prohibited from crossing during the past two weeks. Only wheelchairs are occasionally pushed through the long "sleeves" of the security check, leading a deadly ill person or someone seriously injured by the IDF to or from treatment in Israel. The large terminal Israel built, a concrete and glass monster that looks like a splendid shopping mall, juts up like a particularly tasteless joke, a mockery. At the Karni crossing, the only supply channel for 1.5 million people, only 12 trucks per day have passed since January. According to the "crossings accord" signed a year ago, Israel committed to allowing 400 trucks a day to pass through. The excuse: security, as usual.

But there has not been any security incident at Karni since April. The ramifications: Not only severe poverty, but also $30 million in damage to Gaza's agriculture, which is almost the only remaining source of livelihood in the Strip. According to the UN report published last week, Israel has violated all of the articles of the agreement. There is no passage to Israel, no passage to the West Bank and even none to Egypt, the last outlet.

The Rafah crossing has been almost continually closed since June. During 86 percent of these days, the "passage" was impassable. Last month, it was open for only 36 hours, spread over four days. The desperate masses of people waiting surged toward the fences. The scenes were heart-breaking. And then it was closed again. The last time this happened was when the Palestinian foreign minister crossed with $20 million in his luggage. The collective punishment: Closure for weeks. It should be noted that crossing is only permitted for residents of Gaza who bear identity cards issued by Israel. No weapons pass through, Israel admits. And Israel also admits that the closure is solely intended to exert pressure on the residents.

To the major game-players and for the time being, the logic of this historic, nightmarish international crime goes like this: we are in a war on terror. We have defined Hamas as a terrorist organization. We do not negotiate with terrorist organizations because we love peace and democracy. Therefore, we will not negotiate with the democratically elected government of the Palestinian people. We will keep fiddling with it and them until they all come 'round to our point of view.

Or until they are all dead, whichever comes first.

That, at least for now, is the official position, enforced by the Bush administration on loyal foot-soldiers like Canada's New Government™ , which last Friday acted obediently as it cast its (ie: our ... your) vote at a session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva:

Earlier on Friday, the Geneva-based council passed a seventh resolution criticising Israel, this time for failing to act on recommendations the body made in July, urging the Jewish state to end military operations in the Palestinian territories and allow a separate fact-finding mission to the region.

The rights body, which has only condemned the Israeli government in its seven-month existence, noted with regret that Israel has failed to release a group of Palestinian Cabinet ministers it arrested earlier this year.

...

Only Canada voted against Friday's resolution. Cameroon and Japan joined the 10 European members of the council in abstaining. The rest of Africa and Asia, along with all of Latin America, voted in favour.

The UN Human Rights Council is a troubled organization and open to criticism on any number of counts. In focusing on the crisis in Palestine, however, it is doing no more than recognizing what most other worried observers of the region recognize.

In every conflict now burning or threatening in the Middle East and Central Asia, the young enragés see their own grievances against the pompous and oblivious clodhoppers of the West epitomized in the strangulation of the people of Palestine. In their imaginations, all those conflicts draw together and become one.

And unless some nations in the West rediscover the skills of serious diplomacy, the worst imaginings of the enragés will be realized. They already have been, in a sense, in the worst imaginings of members of the Bush administration, who believe, as we know, in smirking and sniggering at reality as they presume to leave it behind:

"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Yeah, well. So we don't look for grown-ups in the U.S. administration for the time being. But the time for negotiation is here. The time for decent people everywhere to demand of their governments that they drop the fairy stories about terrorists and engage in adult negotiations with the representatives of the Palestinian people is now. It was yesterday. It will be tomorrow.

And a hat tip to Adm at progressive bloggers for the link to Gideon Levy.

Saturday panda blogging

Of course you love them. We all love them. We love them because they have big dark doleful soulful eyes and they are essence of roly-poly.

I've just been watching Tai Shan and his mother, Mei Xiang, who live under benevolent dictatorship at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington, DC, and they are so dear. (Scroll down a bit to the pandacam.) Tai Shan never walks more than a few steps before he does a somersault, and he can roll in just about any direction. He hardly seems to know -- or care -- which way is up.

There are other good pandacams, notably the one at the San Diego Zoo. And a pandapic update: On the flip, I've added a couple of photos from one of the panda centres in China discussed later in the post, courtesy of Alison at Creekside.

But it's a guilty pleasure, isn't it? I can tell you're bothered, even as you're letting that huggy-fuzzy stumbly perambulatin' smiley rock 'n' roll his way into your heart. He's good for us, but we haven't been all that good for him and his cousins back in the old country.

Back home in China, there is some good news about the giant panda, still considered an endangered species but stabilising in the wild and now proliferating at conservation centres on the panda's home turf in Sichuan and Gansu provinces:

Not so long ago, the panda seemed doomed to extinction. Although the real threat came from man, through hunting and logging, there was a widespread belief that the animals did themselves few favours. They were known for shyness, a low sex drive and a diet that was overly dependent on eating huge quantities of a barely nutritious and hard-to-digest bamboo that was inedible every six years or so. For those who believe in the survival of the fittest, the only surprise was that this apparently lumbering, dozy and sexually inadequate species had clung on for so long.

The good news, according to Zhang Hemin, head of Wolong Nature Reserve Administration, is that the panda is no longer in danger. The population at Wolong - the biggest of several panda centres - has almost doubled in the past two years.

...

After 20 years of trial and error, scientists at Wolong boast they can now breed pandas at will. To counter the suggestion that the captive animals may be too naive about the birds and the bears, the keepers have provided sex education in the form of wildlife videos - dubbed "panda porn" - showing the animals mating in the forests. To boost sex drive, they once tried the remedy used by countless millions of humans: Viagra. "We'll never do that again," Zhang says. "The panda was excited for 24 hours."

Another challenge was the risk of in-breeding. To widen the genetic stock, researchers had to come up with a way to find a mate for even the least popular females. How did they do that? "We tricked them," Zhang says with a smile. The "trick" is to put a fertile and attractive female into a breeding pen, where she leaves scratchmarks and droppings capable of exciting a male. But at the last moment the females are swapped. The zookeepers introduce a new, less popular, mate who has been scented with the urine of the more attractive animals. She is introduced into the mating pen rear end first, so the male cannot see the face of his partner until after they have finished copulating. "When the males find out, they get very angry and start fighting the female," Zhang says. "We have had to use firecrackers and a water hose to separate them."

As always, though, news of the success of human intervention to solve problems that humans caused in the first place leaves me feeling like a bit of a cross-eyed bear myself and still wondering which way is up. Pandas ended up in crisis because of human encroachment on their natural habitat, which has left them with a number of disconnected communities scattered through the Minshan mountain range, communities that are too small to be self-sustaining (see the dots on the wiki map). And Westerners have long played a role in misunderstanding and misusing that habitat as well as in exploiting the sentimental appeal of the panda, so easily commercialized but not likely what the pandas would have wanted for themselves.

Probably better than the successes of the scientists at Wolong is the news that the Chinese are now committed to expanding and connecting the wild reserves. Our attempts to save endangered species through artificial breeding and protected lives in zoos, however well intentioned, come with built-in dangers:

Money is not the most controversial aspect of Wolong, however. Critics say the centre is a diversion from the more important task of conserving the wild population in their natural habitat. They fear it could set a precedent for commercially-oriented breeding of other valuable species, such as the tiger. "There is a real danger that we will have captive breeding centres that are farming for non-conservation purposes - to sell the skin and bones," says Jim Harkness, a former China representative for the World Wildlife Fund and now president of the US Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy. "This is a terrible risk. It is more important to protect the existing wild population. Much more should be done for them."

According to Harkness, the best available research suggests giant pandas breed without difficulties in the wild. "The problems often attributed to them - short penises, narrow vaginas and low sex drives - are not an issue in the wild. Panda breeders tell us they are solving genetic problems, but those problems exist only among the captive population. It is a phoney issue to say that pandas face a breeding crisis that we have to solve." Others doubt the wisdom of trying artificially to produce pandas, then send them into the wild.

We are learning some of these lessons in Canada, too, all too slowly, with our own bears, our own caribou, all the magnificent beasts who have been cut off from their natural range and relationships by our clod-hoppering.

I thought of breaking into a chorus of "Born Free" at this point, but enough is enough, eh? I think I'll go back to watching Tai Shan tumble all over his mother for a while. Very high Awww factor.

Friday night blues blogging

For our main course we have Freddie King performing Sweet Home Chicago.

And for dessert? Lonnie Mack and Stevie Ray Vaughan do Oreo Cookie Blues.

I guess I'm gonna need a new gimmick

If you look just below this post you'll find that someone new has been added. Purple Library Guy has been a frequent commenter here and we decided the best way to make sure that continued was to get him on the front page.

So now we are eight and The Magnificent Seven isn't going to work for me anymore. I'd probably beaten that poor horse to death anyway.

Downward Spiral: Why the US government can no longer act for the benefit of the US as a nation

In among all the specific foreign policy blunders and partisan viciousnesses of the Bush administration, one senses a broader malaise. It strikes when one realizes nobody in the Democratic party seems to fundamentally disagree with much the Bushites are doing, including on issues like taxation, and few are even willing to talk about the serious issues. It comes when one reads just how badly the United States military is performing; sure, we don't think they can beat an insurgency against a committed, populous country with plenty of weapons—but one is surprised they aren't making a better showing than this. It comes when we hear that political elites are apparently united in support of offshoring, even though it's becoming clear that the hollowing out of US manufacturing has reached such a level that vital inputs even to the military machine are coming from abroad.
United States policy, for all its laser-like focus on looking out for number one, its insistence on maintaining US control of oil, seems in many ways as if it's been designed for medium-term failure on its own terms for quite a few years now. The term may no longer be medium, it may be short, and yet few voices are heard sounding any danger signs. What is going on?

The answer is complicated in detail (lots of individual and corporate rats, specific undermining of institutions and departments) but comes down to class war, to capture of all significant government policy by moneyed elites of various sorts. The increasing distance between these elites and everyone else, combined with the fact that the people in these elites, no matter what they may imagine, are no smarter or more forward looking than anyone else, is leading to a major crisis. These elites are at this point unable to fathom at least one of two basic truths: That what is good for them (in the short term) may in fact be bad for the nation at large, and that what is bad for the nation will eventually come back to haunt them. Some don't understand either of these things, many others know the first and don't care because they're not willing to contemplate the second. Well, and because they're unethical scum.
When some historical fiction novel talks about decadence, this kind of thing is ultimately what is meant. The point isn't the wild parties and boozing and lechery; that's not what makes decadence at all. It often accompanies decadence, but lots of vigorous barbarians get into wild parties, boozing and lechery. The point is that when a country is decadent, the powerful treat every issue, from poverty to foreign wars to equipping the army, as an excuse to get their people richer off the backs of whoever is available. In a vigorous empire, elites may use wars of conquest as an excuse to get rich from the pillage of other countries. It's horrible, but it's not decadent. Decadence is when the elites systematically use the war of conquest as an excuse to get rich both from the pillage of other countries and from scamming the army's supplies and armour budgets. Mind you, I’d say successful imperialism over time will tend to lead to decadence.
It seems to happen frequently in powerful nations. They don't even have to be empires, although it seems to help. Arguably, any government structure can end up in the same situation, down to small towns. It’s related to groupthink, because groupthink itself is a weakness of closed, exclusive groups such as narrow upper class oligarchies.
If a narrow class is sufficiently powerful and succumbing to groupthink, efforts by outsiders or even disenchanted insiders to draw attention to problems the group agenda is causing--even causing for the group--will generally fail, as will attempts to reform institutions to solve the problems. Such reforms, even if intended to strengthen the system and make it more resilient, have to do so by either reducing the short-term profits of groupmembers, an obvious no-no, or by widening the information base on which policy is made. The latter may sound innocuous, but it means opening up to outside perspectives, relinquishing some control over the information that spreads within group to outside interests. Such moves will be interpreted as threats, which in a certain sense they are. They reduce the intensity of the oligarchy’s control, and any student of Taylorite production can tell you ruling elites never have enough intensity of control.
Of course, there’s always a certain amount of that sort of thing going on. But it’s not constant. It’s like corruption, or gambling—cynics will tell you it’s always there, but while that’s true there are widely differing degrees and changes over time. In Canada, for instance, gambling has increased greatly over the last while, indeed growing alongside wealth inequality, homelessness and the assault on the welfare state. Which brings us back from all this generalization to the here and now.
I would argue that the US today is decadent in the sense I’ve described. Their level of inequality is very high, perhaps because their ruling elites are very powerful and so narrow that they seem pretty clearly to have succumbed to a great deal of groupthink (and incidentally, I’m not just talking about the Bushniks here, but the Democrats as well). They systematically ignore information from outside narrower and narrower circles of wealth and power. This forces them to consume little but their own propaganda and insulates them from any kind of critical evaluation of the outcomes, especially longer term outcomes, of their policies. This does not stop them from decisive, opportunistic and often fairly clever reaction to events as they happen. But it does mean that nothing stops them from narrowly focussing on their own short-term profits and power, even at the expense of the country as a whole. And it means that any attempt to make them adopt policies that will help the country as a whole, perhaps even if the country is deep in crisis--or even to get them to realize that any kind of crisis whose solution might require different sorts of policies exists at all--will be violently resisted. So if a housing crisis hits as a result of a bubble bursting, for instance, they may try to pull financial stunts, try to inflate some other bubble so big money will have somewhere else to go. But they will do nothing for the actual citizens, their buying power, their mass bankruptcies, and so on. And they will ignore the fact that this inaction will allow the actual US economy, which ultimately is all their beloved military machine rests on, to keep on shrinking in terms of productive capacities.
It seems odd and paradoxical, but the leaders of the United States appear to be systematically undermining their own powerbase in the name of consolidating control over that very power base. So far, every time this threatens to obviously ruin the US economy, someone’s pulled a trick out of a hat—made a bubble with interest rates, jack up deficits rather than raise taxes, or something. Generally the fallout has hurt some little guys but left the elites largely unscathed. But each of these tricks seems to have just deepened the underlying problems, each bubble bigger than the one before and happening in a more precarious environment, each deregulation leaving a more out-of-control financial sector. I don’t see that the tricks can overcome the fundamentals for very much longer; the US is headed for a major economic meltdown. All this is before any shocks from oil supply or climate change, which are likely to happen. And their elites have no capacity to so much as confront this fact, much less envision an approach to rule that would do something about it rather than line their nests and tighten their grasp while the ship goes down. I would suggest the model for US response to a major depression would be their response to hurricane Katrina.

Well, that's my first entry to Peace, order and good government, eh? One of these days if the weight of pessimism doesn’t suck me into a black hole (and if I'm not unceremoniously booted for excess pomposity) I’ll talk about my notions of what this means for Canada and the rest of the world, what it means for activist strategies, and maybe about just how badly Canada suffers from this same problem (brief version: real bad, but not as bad).

Marriage for all

There. You've had two chances, now, Mr. Harper, and you lost both times. You've sent the right signals to your neaderthalic base. You've thrown some red meat to the Christianists. You've made sure everyone knows you don't support teh gay.

Can you please leave these people alone now and find someone else to use as a political tool for a while?

The only quiz that matters

I see once again that quizzes are flying around the blogosphere, and being of a somewhat whimsical frame of mind this week, I thought it was time to create a quiz around a subject that really matters. And so, without further ado, I present the POGGe Institute Quiz: How Canadian are you?

As the quiz's creator, I naturally got a 100 percent score. Let's see how you do gang. Post your results on your own blog and we'll link to them, or drop them into the comments if you don't have a blog of your own.

Update: I see Dan Dickinson over at Skirl scored 100 percent on the Quiz. Welcome to Hoser Heaven, Dan.

Update 2: We have another 100 percenter in Rob Cottingham. Josh Gould also played along as did Scotian. The rest of the POGGe Institute crew admits to their scores in the comments. ;-)

Update 3: JKelly also got 100 percent, and Pample the Moose also did the quiz. Both object to the John A. question, arguing he was at least as famous for his drinking as for his being the first prime minister. I think if you asked any Canadian why John A. is significant, it is safe to say their first choice would be his prime ministership, with his drinking running a distant second. Still, it is very Canadian for us to argue over interpretations of our history.

Update 4: Welcome to the 100 percent club, Sean Incognito!

Update 5: As some commenters note, the quiz is buggered up somehow at the hosting site. I am, apparently, only 31 perfect as a girlfriend. Like I'm going to live my life trying to meet some guy's unreasonable standards. Men!

Drive-by Blogging 12/7/06

For those new readers - drive-by blogging is something I started to do a while back and haven't done nearly enough of lately. My feed reader scans news sources from around the world and drops me several hundred stories a day. If even 5% of those stories were deemed blog worthy, we would still be hard pressed to cover them even if we all quit our day jobs and blogged full time. (Where's George Soros when you need him?)

In the past, I have just bookmarked the stories I found interesting in hopes of eventually doing something with them. The end result has been thousands of bookmarks to stories that have never seen the bloglight of day - and should have. Drive-by Blogging is a way to keep those stories from simply disappearing into the black hole that is my bookmarks. If any other bloggers want to pick any of them up and do something with them, so much the better.

- From the Clean Air (not) department, EPA May Drop Lead Air Pollution Limits.

The Bush administration is considering doing away with health standards that cut lead from gasoline, widely regarded as one of the nation's biggest clean-air accomplishments.

Battery makers, lead smelters, refiners all have lobbied the administration to do away with the Clean Air Act limits.

- Junk science or just junk corporations? Exxon Spends Millions to Cast Doubt on Warming

The world's largest energy company is still spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund European organisations that seek to cast doubt on the scientific consensus on global warming and undermine support for legislation to curb emission of greenhouse gases.

Data collated by a Brussels-based watchdog reveals that ExxonMobil has put money into projects that criticise the Kyoto treaty and question the findings of scientific groups. Environmental campaigners say Texas-based Exxon is trying to influence opinion-makers in Brussels because Europe - rather than the US - is the driving force for action on climate change.

Requiem for one of the oldest? Lake Sturgeon Risks Extinction, Canada Researchers Say

TORONTO — A fish whose ancestors date back 400 million years could be just 150 years from extinction, a group of Canadian researchers said this week.

The lake sturgeon, one of North America's oldest and largest fish, could disappear completely unless conservation efforts are redoubled, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada said this week.

- India's Rice Harvest Stunted by Pollution

WASHINGTON — Pollution has stifled growth in India's rice harvest, cheating the staple crop of the rain and cool nighttime temperatures needed to flourish, researchers said Monday.

Since the mid-1980s, the stubborn brown cloud of pollution that shrouds much of India, coupled with increased concentrations of greenhouse gases, together have limited both the yields and extent of rice farms in the nine Indian states that account for most of the country's wet-season harvest, University of California researchers report in a new study.

- California Growers Fear Biotech Rice Threat

The U.S. rice harvest is imperiled by the discovery of small amounts of experimental strains of genetically engineered rice in storage facilities holding crops destined for the food supply. Bayer CropScience AG, the German company responsible for the mistake, is still investigating how the experimental rice got into the food supply. Federal officials say the company's signature genetically engineered rice came from storage bins in Arkansas and Missouri, but they don't know where it was grown.

- GM potatoes for UK 'in 10 years'

BASF says it hopes GM potatoes could be sold in the UK within 10 years.

It says they would be resistant to late blight disease, meaning no need for spraying fields with fungicides, and could save millions in damaged crops.

But environmentalists say consumers do not want GM potatoes even if it means cutting back on chemicals.

- And just so all the news isn't bad, Brazil Creates Largest Tropical Rainforest Preserve

BRASILIA, Brazil — Brazil created the world's largest tropical rainforest preserve Monday in a section of the Amazon scarred by illegal logging and decades of violence between loggers, ranchers, conservationists and land rights activists.

The preserve covers more than 58,000 square miles -- an area larger than England -- across seven parks in Para, an eastern Amazon state heavily exploited by illegal loggers and land speculators.

The language gulf

Here's a little mid-week yuk for you.

Movies may be part of world culture, but language still remains a barrier when it comes to translating films for the international audience. Below are some actual English subtitles that have appeared in films made in Hong Kong.

1. I am damn unsatisfied to be killed in this way.

2. Fatty, you with your thick face have hurt my instep.

3. Gun wounds again?

4. Same old rules: no eyes, no groin.

5. A normal person wouldn't steal pituitaries.

6. Damn, I'll burn you into a BBQ chicken!

7. Take my advice, or I'll spank you without pants.

8. Who gave you the nerve to get killed here?

9. Quiet or I'll blow your throat up.

10. You always use violence. I should've ordered glutinous rice chicken.

11. I'll fire aimlessly if you don't come out!

12. You daring lousy guy.

13. Beat him out of recognizable shape!

14. I have been scared shitless too much lately.

15. I got knife scars more than the number of your leg's hair!

16. Beware! Your bones are going to be disconnected.

17. The bullets inside are very hot. Why do I feel so cold?

18. How can you use my intestines as a gift?

19. This will be of fine service for you, you bag of the scum. I am sure you will not mind that I remove your manhoods and leave them out on the dessert flour for your aunts to eat. [sic, of course]

20. Yah-hah, evil spider woman! I have captured you by the short rabbits and can now deliver you violently to your gynecologist for a thorough examination.

21. Greetings, large black person. Let us not forget to form a team up together and go into the country to inflict the pain of our karate feets on some ass of the giant lizard person.

I dunno about you folks, but I'm seeking out that film about the stolen pituitaries. After all, I'm a sucker for movies about gland larceny.

What? Stop groaning!

The 2006 Weblog Awards

It's been a week full of honours for the gang here at the POGGe Institute. I should first thank everyone who supported us in the Canadian Blog Awards, allowing us to take second place in Best Progressive Blog and first place for Best Blog Post.

Now I see we are amongst the finalists for Best Canadian Blog in the Weblog Awards.

Best Canadian Blog

Small Dead Animals
Samantha Burns
CalgaryGrit
My Blahg
Matthew Good
bound by gravity
Amber Mac
Milkmoney Or Not, Here I Come
Peace, order and good government, eh?
Girl on the Right

As tempted as I am to vote for POGGe in these awards, I have decided I am going to support My Blahg for a couple of reasons.

First, Robert does excellent work on the part of the entire Canadian blogging community by running the CBAs, yet removes himself from the competition to avoid the apparent conflict of interest. It is high time he got some recognition for his efforts.

Second, last year, the "best Canadian blog" was won by someone with a certain small, dead soul who represents not the best of Canadian blogging as a whole, but rather our most vile and hateful element. I see this year she is joined on the finalist list by her fellow hatemonger Girl on the Right. Very revealing what our conservative brethren nominate as "the best" among their bloggers. Anyway, I see the need for progressives to pick a unity candidate to support so the "best Canadian blog" is not filled with racist bigotry. Therefore, I suggest My Blahg.

Not only would it give Robert McClelland some well-earned recognition, but it would also be a poke in the eye to certain grotesque elements of the Canadian right, who Robert tends to drive batshit crazy (not that it was a long drive) with his provocative style. It's a win-win situation.

You can vote in The Weblog Awards right here starting tomorrow.

Sheepish Update: As Paladeia quite rightly points out in the comments, there is a co-blogger at My Blahg now. Consider her one more good reason to support My Blahg.

December 6: National Day of Remembrance

On 6 December 1989, at the École Polytechnique de Montréal, an engineering school affiliated with the Université de Montréal, fourteen young women were shot to death in the classrooms and halls of their school and thirteen others (including four men) were wounded by a gunman on a rampage who left a suicide note blaming "feminists" for ruining his life.

The massacre began when Marc Lepine, carrying a .223-calibre (5.56mm NATO cartridge) semi-automatic rifle, entered a class of sixty students, ordered the men to leave, and then opened fire on the trapped women. For forty-five minutes Lepine roamed three floors of the school, shooting as he went and reportedly shouting "I want women." Finally, he turned the rifle on himself.

In 1991 the government of Canada established this day as the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence against Women.

The anondyne descriptions of this remembrance day for women on the SWC and Wiki sites, however, belie the contention and outright hostility that this memorial has always aroused. From the beginning, many have denied that Lepine's rampage had much to do with women at all, and every year there emerge from the woodwork individuals who seem truly enraged at the thought.

This year, Canada's New Government™ will mark this day by reopening the debate on equal marriage, a cynical exercise of the Harperites in pandering to their so-con base while thumbing their noses at all other Canadian citizens, since the government know that the motion will fail.

That unutterably tone-deaf move on this day has deeper significance, I think.

To the Harper government and their most passionate supporters, democracy is a referendum, a way of reasserting norms and triumphing over those who don't or can't or won't fit those norms. We might call those misfits "special interests" -- well, I won't, but they do.

No matter that the norms many people long so desperately to believe in are illusions or even delusions in the real lives of the vast majority of citizens. And no matter that democracy is much more than just voting, depends on the careful building and eternally vigilant defence of a set of basic, irreducible structures and principles embodied in every bill of rights and declaration and charter born of our best meditations on human history.

Today, as objects of the disrespect of Stephen Harper's government, of that government's disrespect for the equality of all human beings, uppity women stand in solidarity with gays and lesbians, who once again find that a lot of boring men in boring suits believe they have the right to pick and pontificate over the basic humanity of certain other "special" human beings.

Everyone always remembers the names of the killers. On this day, lest we forget:

* Geneviève Bergeron (b. 1968), civil engineering student.
* Hélène Colgan (b. 1966), mechanical engineering student.
* Nathalie Croteau (b. 1966), mechanical engineering student.
* Barbara Daigneault (b. 1967) mechanical engineering student.
* Anne-Marie Edward (b. 1968), chemical engineering student.
* Maud Haviernick (b. 1960), materials engineering student.
* Maryse Laganière (b. 1964), budget clerk in the École Polytechnique's finance department.
* Maryse Leclair (b. 1966), materials engineering student.
* Anne-Marie Lemay (b. 1967), mechanical engineering student.
* Sonia Pelletier (b. 1961), mechanical engineering student.
* Michèle Richard (b. 1968), materials engineering student.
* Annie St-Arneault (b. 1966), mechanical engineering student.
* Annie Turcotte (b. 1969), materials engineering student.
* Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz (b. 1958), nursing student.

Fourteen candles. Fourteen roses.

What did he know and when did he know it, take two

Back in late September there didn't appear to be a lot of ambiguity in the reporting. Like this story in the Toronto Star.

RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli admitted yesterday he knew shortly after Maher Arar was deported to Syria in October 2002 that Canadian investigators had wrongly labelled him to American authorities as a terror suspect.

Or this from the CBC.

Zaccardelli recounted his personal history with the case, saying that in 2002, he had some knowledge of the investigation into Arar and that he knew he was considered a person of interest.

But he said he didn't become involved until after Arar was already in jail in Syria. Zaccardelli said he learned that RCMP investigators had been trying to correct the false information that had been given to the Americans.

Part of that statement seemed suspect at the time because O'Connor's report provides no evidence that the RCMP tried to correct any misconceptions in the minds of American authorities. But the clear implication is that Zaccardelli knew then that there was a problem.

Now fast forward to today.

Giuliano Zaccardelli, the RCMP commissioner, yesterday offered a new account of when he discovered his force had passed erroneous information about Maher Arar to U.S. authorities.

"Senior officials, including myself, were not informed until the inquiry completed its works," Mr. Zaccardelli said in an address to the Canada Club.

Zaccardelli makes a return appearance before the parliamentary committee today and it ought to be pretty interesting since, as this story reports, government MPs are a bit perplexed at the commissioner's latest version of events. Meanwhile, on the subject of whether or not he should resign, Zaccardelli had this to say.

Yesterday, Mr. Zaccardelli argued he should remain as the country's top cop. And he vowed to implement a number of reforms, including improving the force's database.

"Ladies and gentleman, accountability can be a complex subject," he said. "As former deputy prime minister and minister of public safety Anne McLellan told a committee just last week, 'Accountability takes on many forms and we must get past the notion that heads must roll to have accountability.' "

Ah. Accountability is complicated. Apparently so is the truth. We've spent the last two months listening to various other government officials of the time testify that Zaccardelli didn't pass on his knowledge to them. And he waits until now, in a speech to the Canada Club, to suggest that he had no information to pass on?

Alec Guinness, where are you now that we really need you?

'The weapon used to kill Vladimir was a Moscow Centre assassination device,' Smiley said. 'Concealed in a camera, a briefcase, or whatever. A soft-nosed bullet is fired at point-blank range. To obliterate, to punish, and to discourage others. If I remember rightly they even had one on display at Sarratt in the black museum next to the bar.'
-- John le Carré, Smiley's People (1979)

The weapon used to kill Alexander Litvinenko was most probably Polonium-210, an isotope of the rare and highly radioactive chemical element. In theory easily concealed and transported, in this case it was also apparently sloppily transported. Harmless to unbroken skin, it would have to have been ingested in substantial quantities, whereupon it would begin to degrade every internal organ agonizingly over the course of a month or so until death -- in Litvinenko's case, over at least twenty-three days, although he may have been poisoned earlier than was first thought. How or why one of a steadily expanding list of suspects would have assassinated Litvinenko is still unknown, but the purpose seems familiar. "To obliterate, to punish, and to discourage others."

Ah, the nostalgia. I admit, that was my first reaction too. From this distance the Cold War has the great virtue of seeming to be Not the War on Terror, at least -- although, think about that. Have you ever known for sure exactly what the war on terror was, anyway? Were you all that sure that the Cold War had ended? And the longer you think about it, how firm a line are you able to draw between "state actors" and clever crooks, gangsters, and thugs? By the time a state actor turns into a triple agent, as le Carré taught us that so many do, or even a still-respectable state triangulator, where do we find that firm line any longer?

Alexander Litvinenko was clearly no General Vladimir, no formerly valuable source of intelligence, although the investigation of his death may be shaking old certainties about the shape of the wars we are living through.

Litvinenko had a dossier containing information damaging to someone. In fact he had many dossiers, as well as an unfortunate habit of making a multitude of contradictory claims to a multitude of people about a multitude of other people to whom his dossiers might be damaging. Former KGB agent Yuri Shvets, now living in the U.S. under the protection of the FBI, volunteered his version to investigators from Scotland Yard last week:

'I believe I have a lead that can explain what happened,' Shvets confirmed last week before he was interviewed as a witness in the presence of FBI agents. Shvets, who lives in Virginia and is now apparently in hiding, declined to elaborate. However, a business associate of Shvets, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Observer that Litvinenko had claimed in the weeks before his death that he possessed a dossier containing damaging revelations about the Kremlin and its relationship with the Yukos oil company. The associate claimed that Shvets compiled the dossier.

Yukos was once owned by the oligarch Mikhail Khordorkovsky, who is serving seven years in a Russian jail for tax evasion. His supporters say he was convicted as a result of a show trial orchestrated by the Kremlin.

The claims that Litvinenko had a dossier containing damaging information about the Kremlin echo separate claims he made to Svetlichnaja, who interviewed the former KGB agent earlier this year for a book she is writing about Chechnya.

But the scholar Julia Svetlichnaja's account of her dealings with Litvinenko, as recounted in the second and fifth links above, suggests a far less clear and direct trajectory. While he was undoubtedly feeding her confidential documents from FSB (one of the successors to KGB) and other sources, she was subjected as well to Litvinenko's eccentric rants and sudden leaps "from one exotic story to another":

I started to wonder whether meeting Litvinenko was a waste of time. He told me shamelessly of his blackmailing plans aimed at Russian oligarchs. 'They have got enough, why not to share? I will do it officially,' he said.

Svetlichnaja, a politics student at the University of Westminster, says Litvinenko claimed he had access to Russian intelligence documents containing information on individuals and companies that had fallen foul of the Kremlin.

'He told me he was going to blackmail or sell sensitive information about all kinds of powerful people, including oligarchs, corrupt officials and sources in the Kremlin,' she said. 'He mentioned a figure of £10,000 that they would pay each time to stop him broadcasting these FSB documents. Litvinenko was short of money and was adamant that he could obtain any files he wanted.'

Litvinenko's access to such documents could have made him an enemy of both big business interests and the Kremlin. However, his claims are almost impossible to verify and some political analysts have gone as far as to dismiss him as a fantasist.

Yes, to some degree, it seems, a fantasist ... Except he is now a dead fantasist. It is very difficult to get around that dead body, especially given that it is dead by such sophisticated means.

There are other dead bodies and now apparently contaminated bodies that figure in Litvinenko's story. He was a friend and possibly a confidant of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, shot to death in Moscow in October. A British security analyst familiar with the turf she would have been investigating casts doubt on any automatic conclusion that the Kremlin would have ordered these murders:

Security analyst Glenmore Trenear-Harvey, who met Mr Litvinenko several times, said the media focus on the Kremlin was "lazy" and bore the hallmarks of a John Le Carre novel.

"We have to put this in a historical context," he said.

"Litvinenko's last job within the FSB was heading up the anti-corruption unit and he discovered a lot of corruption there and made a lot of enemies within the KGB."

When Yeltsin broke the KGB into different agencies such as the FSB and the SVR, the majority of its members stayed on but some went into the Duma and a third group went into legitimate business, he said.

But a "murky bunch" went into what was known as the Russian mafia.

"My own belief, and this is speculation, is that it's not inconceivable that Anna Politkovskaya in her search for murderers within the Russian bank system discovered the contract killings were these former KGB people.

"She was killed and if Litvinenko indeed was privy to her investigations then it could well be that they will emerge as his killers."

Although the sophisticated nature of the poison suggested it could have come from the state, there was no motive, he said.

"There was no benefit to Putin or Russian intelligence services to have a highly publicised operation like this."

And despite the continued claims linking Putin, diplomatic relationships between the UK and Russia were unlikely to be affected, he said.

So now we have a "murky bunch," aka the Russian mafia. We also have the four gentlemen known to have met Litvinenko on 1 November, the day he became ill, three Russian businessmen who came forward to protest their innocence at once, and the Italian security consultant Mario Scaramella, an interesting character in his own right, consultant to the Mitrokhin Commission, which has investigated KGB activities in Italy:

International 'security consultant' Mario Scaramella, who joined Litvinenko for the now infamous clandestine meeting in a London sushi bar, headed an organisation which tracked dumped nuclear waste, including Soviet nuclear missiles left over from the Cold War. ...

• He has a deep knowledge of nuclear materials and their whereabouts around the globe.

• Although he describes himself as an environmentalist, he has detailed knowledge of the activities of Russian agents.

• Some of the institutions listed on his impressive CV appear to have no record of him, prompting questions about a career involving a large number of posts around the globe. ...

Scaramella has now also tested positive for polonium contamination, as have Litvinenko's wife and children, although none of them has yet shown signs of radiation sickness. British police on their way to Moscow are understood to be interested in further unnamed Russian businessmen, and have chatted with Boris Berezovsky, Litvinenko's sponsor and neighbour in Muswell Hill. (I once lived in Muswell Hill, actually, but I have not thus far been informed that I am on the list of persons of interest.) Oh, and I should mention Yegor Gaidar, appointed acting prime minister by Boris Yeltsin for a time in 1992, who became mysteriously ill during a trip to Ireland on 28 November and remains in serious but stable condition, now back in Moscow.

Even that is not the full cast of characters, nor the complete trail of polonium contamination, which now involves a number of British planes, hotel rooms, restaurants, one football stadium, and a public alert to thousands of British Airways passengers (though none of them is believed to be in serious danger). I refer dedicated researchers to the Guardian/Observer archives, now growing quite deep in details of this story.

Back to the duelling interpretations, though, especially of that "murky bunch" that emerged in Russia (and, apparently, in London) in the 1990s. In most columns or editorials written to the subject over the last couple of weeks, we can detect one of two main ideological commitments, or at least sources of nervousness. The first and continuing impulse of many commentators in Britain, anxious to reinforce Tony Blair's anxiety to maintain good relations with President Putin, was and remains to wave vaguely at the "murky bunch," to assure us that we will never know who is traipsing about leaking Polonium-210 all over London or why, but really, how can that matter when major-power relations are in the balance? Tim Hames in today's Times of London is a typical example:

What can be asserted is that it was as much about events in London as in Moscow. If the “lid has been lifted” on anything by this bizarre tale it is the extent to which our capital city has become the centre for intrigue focused on Russia. Londongrad is home to a host of billionaires and their associates who are either still in favour with Mr Putin yet seek the shelter of a alternative base if that relationship ends, or are sworn foes of those who occupy the Kremlin. In that respect, it is hardly surprising that a substantial number of FSB intelligence agents are located in this country. The crucial difference between now and the Cold War, nevertheless, is that their primary task is to spy on other Russians, not to seek out secrets from deep inside Westminster or Whitehall.

Which explains precisely nothing, of course. It is probably true, but does it really not matter that "a substantial number of FSB intelligence agents" are in London on the trail of ... something? Sniffy English pundits may think they can short-circuit discussion by pretending that these incidents are just something that those distateful foreigners do amongst themselves, but they are still not addressing the question: distateful foreigners or not, what would those "billionaires and their associates" be up to that would draw FSB agents to London to track them? (Aren't the English upper classes charming, though? Homegrown terrorists come from "Londonistan." Homegrown spooks and crooks come from "Londongrad.")

Eric Margolis sets out the competing view of the old Cold Warriors, clearly and entertainly, as usual. Margolis takes pride in being a good reporter, which has made him such a powerful voice of dissent in the North American msm on the Middle East, but for that reason people often forget that he is no friend of anything approaching a left view of the world. Margolis remembers the Smershniki, and clearly has no trouble believing Litvinenko's dying charge against Putin as the author of his assassination. Although mistaken in some details (Polonium-210 does not need to be transported in lead containers, and would not be detected by a geiger counter), Margolis's column is a helpful summary of much of the relevant history and of a particular world-view:

As the Soviet Union began crumbling, I was the first western journalist given access to KGB’s top brass, headquarters, and archives. `KGB is a powerful force behind modernization and reform,’ I reported from Moscow that year, adding that KGB’s best and brightest officers from the elite First Chief Directorate had decided to abandon the communists and seize control of business and government.

The First Directorate’s agents, including up-and-comer Vladimir Putin, were Russia’s best-educated, most sophisticated, and disciplined citizens. They knew communism had wrecked Russia. KGB chiefs told me in 1989 they wanted a `Russian Pinochet’ – a strongman who would bring in capitalism and make Russia and Russians work.

Today, two decades later, former KGB officers run the Kremlin, Russia’s government, and much of its industry. Russia got its tough General Pinochet in the form of the even tougher KGB officer, Vladimir Putin.

As the USSR collapsed, a group of sharp-minded financial opportunists called `oligarchs’ grabbed control of its industries and resources. Led by Boris Berezhovsky, they formed the core support for Boris Yeltsin’s stumbling regime - backed by huge amounts of covert US finance that was laundered through London and German banks. Another London-based Russian exile, billionaire Roman Abramovitch, has been accused by the British media of having been a conduit for this secret funding. He denies the charges.

KGB – divided in 1991 into the foreign SVR and internal FSB – viewed Berezovsky and other oligarchs as traitors and foreign agents. The fact that most of the oligarchs were Jewish intensified the animosity of the traditionally anti-Semitic Russians.

It is worth noting, I think, that both those in the West who would blame Putin and those who are working so strenuously to exonerate him share one conviction: that the Russians are somehow, inexplicably, Other, not us. Either it is just their problem (those who would exonerate Putin) or it is a problem of theirs that we have to worry about (the Cold Warriors), but it is never our problem, nothing to do with us, no, not us.

Here is a fine if unhelpful articulation of that attitude from another old Cold Warrior, Sir Max Hastings, once of the Evening Standard and the Daily Telegraph:

Why, having tasted freedom and democracy, should they wish to return to the murderous practices of Stalinism? How can they acquiesce in Putin's restoration of tyranny? Here is a nation suddenly granted wealth which might enable its people to become prosperous social democrats like us.

Instead, to our bewilderment, Russia is institutionalising a state gangster culture which promises repression and ultimate economic failure for itself, fear and alienation from the rest of the world. We hear of few Russians at home or abroad who have achieved wealth through honest toil. Instead, the tools of success in Putin's universe are corruption, violence, vice and licensed theft on a colossal scale.

"Complex feelings of insecurity, of envy and resentment towards Europe ... define the Russian national consciousness," wrote Orlando Figes, the outstanding British historian of the country. Underpinning all Putin's dealings with the outside world is a demand for respect, a rage at perceived western condescension. This is shared by his people, in a fashion which goes far to explain why so many support his policies.

Well, maybe. Maybe that explains Vladimir Putin to an ethnocentric English lord: the vulgar brutes are acting out merely because they, well, envy our freedoms, as it were. And don't get me wrong: I don't doubt that Vladimir Putin is a vulgar brute, not that I'm going to document that here, although I could.

Scroll down a little, though, through the comments replying to Sir Max's huffing and puffing. You'll see there yet another view, a much more straightforward and practical explanation of what has been driving Putin as he watches the "murky bunches" who were so well placed to hand over "the carcass" of Russia to the Western "hyenas," as Sir Max's correspondent puts it so interestingly. It's a good comment. It made more sense to me than almost anything else I have read about this story so far.

I think that means, though, that we are missing a major part of this story. The Western hyenas: which ones in particular are we talking about, and what have they been up to lately? If the purpose was "to obliterate, to punish, and to discourage others," then the act makes sense only if there are others who can make sense of that purpose, and who know that it was a message aimed directly at them.

And a wee bonus: While this report from the current issue of Maclean's is written in predictably melodramatic style, it is nevertheless an interesting reminder of how tense relations between Russia and the West remain. Read between the lines, and you should be able to locate some of President Putin's sore spots.

Thanks to the gang at breadnroses.ca, who have been chewing over this story for a couple of weeks.

And Sir Alec, wherever you are now, I hope you know: we always really needed you.

He Soft Rocks My World

Stéphane Dion's election as leader of the Liberals has brought out some particularly numb-skulled commentary, commentary annoying enough to coax me out of my comfortable blogging semi-retirement. James Traver's column in the Star today provides an excellent example:

In an uncharacteristic fit of idealism over pragmatism, Liberals have made Stéphane Dion their new leader and turned federal politics upside down. Dion's triumph over favourite Michael Ignatieff marks a generational shift within the party, pushes the environment to the top of the national agenda and hands Stephen Harper's Conservatives a priceless gift.

Frankly, I've never understood why either Ignatieff or Rae were being presented--and viewed--as "pragmatic" choices for the Liberal leadership. Both were high-risk candidates who should, if Liberals were thinking clearly, have rested near the bottom, not the top, of the pack.

Ignatieff is a near-perfect example of a "star" candatate--a person recruited from outside the politicial field for some qualities that are viewed as appealing. Like most star candidates, his campaign for the leadership was troubled and prone to serious gaffes, one of which threatened to reopen the endless and unproductive constitutional debate. The only thing unusual about Ignatieff's fumbles is that they threatened more than his own campaign.

Candidates without real campaigning experience quite frequently make these kinds of mistakes. It's why they should never be put into leadership positions until they've survived a couple of campaigns and know how not to shoot themselves and their parties in the foot. Oh, and by the way, the same goes for Justin Trudeau, who seems to be being set up to be the next Ignatieff.

Politics is hard. It's not easy to consider how your words and actions are going to affect several different audiences and to choose them to ensure the results you want, especially during a campaign when you will frequently be forced to respond off-the-cuff.

Rae has experience but was a failure as premier of Ontario. Most people I've asked about him consider Rae t be a decent enough guy but could never imagine voting for him again. The idea that the Conservatives were terrified of running against him also strikes me as bizarre. It would be pretty easy for them to run ad campaigns against him reminding Canadians of "Rae days" and portraying him as incompetent. It's possible Rae could have found a way to effectively respond to those attacks, but it can't be denied that a lot of his campaign's time and energy would have to be devoted to rehabilitating him.

Given these choices, Dion seems like a safe enough bet to me. He's been in politics for over a decade. There's no evidence linking him to scandal. And most of all, he's a strongly federalist Quebecker. For the last forty years, the Liberals have won elections when led by a federalist Quebecker and lost elections when led by anyone else.

Dion may or may not be a good leader for the Liberals. However, given a choice between Ignatieff, Rae and Dion, Dion seems like the most pragmatic choice, not an idealistic one.

Friday night blues blogging

Junior Wells. Help Me. (It's been a long week and I can identify with the sentiment.)

Testing

Don't mind me. This is just a test post so I can try commenting.

Update:

I think we're back in business. There are a few posts that have to be rebuilt in order to show the comments, but the comment database itself is back.

Comments are closed for repairs

The commenting function has been turned off for the moment while I investigate an apparent problem with the database. Hold that thought!

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Martha Hall Findlay.

I'm no Liberal (c'mon: I'm from Medicine Hat), but I will join in any standing ovation for Martha, and those other twerps had better give her one tonight, boy.

What she has done in these last few months is simply stunning. Name the portfolio, chick. And you go, gril.