Hillier's compelling case for the Afghan mission
Gen. Hillier is passionately convinced that Canada is doing the right thing over there. Yesterday he visited The Globe and Mail's editorial board to talk about why we are in Afghanistan and why Canadians should support the military.
Globe and Mail

Whatever Happened to Potato Pete Canada's foreign policy seems now to be articulated exclusively by Gen. Gordon O'Connor, Defense Minister, and various unelected generals, with the occasional vacuous contribution from the Grand Strategist, Stephen Harper himself, which leaves one wondering what happend to supposed External Affairs Minister, Peter MacKay. The latest from the military on Canada's foreign policy stance comes from Chief of the Defense Staff, Gen. Rick Hillier, hosted yesterday by the Globe and Mail's editorial board to talk about why we are in Afghanistan. Gen. Hillier, described by the Globe and Mail Editors as "an impressive figure in every way: plainspoken, funny, passionate about his job and smart as a whip" offered this key message: "Wake up, folks. It's a hairy world out there..." from which it was but a short step to "Al-Qaeda has Canada on its hit list..., and it's folly to think terrorists will pass us by because we're nice." Let us consider this argument from start to finish. "It is a hairy world out there." Well if that is plain speech for "there are well armed people in the world ready to kill for a profit" we can only agree. George Bush and Tony Blair are names that spring to mind. But even killers, hairy or otherwise, generally spare themselves the effort of killing where the payback could be violent and the profit small. So why would Al Qaeda have Canada "on its hit list", assuming, that Al Qaeda actually exists, a claim disputed by Britain's former Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, just before he unexpectedly dropped dead while climbing a rather small mountain in Scotland. The answer, according to Canada's Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) is because we are attacking them, or as quoted in the National Post in October 2004 "Canada will face an increased terrorist threat in the coming months as it battles al-Qaeda." So what Gen. Hillier is telling us is the exact opposite of what Canada's intelligence service is telling us. And if you believe CSIS, rather than the seemingly "hairy" albeit "smart as a whip" Gen. Hillier, the reason we're on Al Qaeda's hit list is not because we are nice to Al Qaeda, but because our politicians, in a display of poltroonish subservience to the American Empire, have sent our armed forces on a mission to kill Taliban "scumbags" to use "plain spoken" Rick Hillier's term (Anyone associated with the Taliban being a fully paid up member of Al Qaeda, presumably). So if we want to be off Al Qaeda's hit list, our best bet would be for Stephen Harper to retire the generals as External Affairs spokesmen and prepare to disengage from Afghanistan as quickly as possible. For a start, Harper might call on Peter MacKay to develop a rational Canadian foreign policy, even if that would mean Canadians being not so "nice," nice, that is, to George Bush. Permanent Link

One Canadian seriously wounded in Afghan bomb attack
Five Canadian soldiers were injured, one seriously, in a suicide bomb attack in Kandahar Friday, the Canadian military said.
CTV

Afghan mission: 10 years
Canada needs to be in Afghanistan for the long haul, according to General Rick Hillier, who says the mission is part of an international reconstruction effort that will take at least a decade -- and probably a lot longer.
Globe and Mail

Wishful Thinking? Apparently, in Canada, foreign policy is now made by the military. Or is delegating the announcement of an imbecile policy to some of the more stupid generals, including the Defense Minister, Gen. Gordon O'Connor, part of a subtle Harper strategy to so discredit the Afghanistan mission that he can declare an early troop pullout, thereby earning great public acclaim?

Pentagon makes news and email web sites off limits to military personel
[T]he US Marines have blocked access to “Wonkette” along with numerous other sites such as personal email (i.e. Yahoo, AT&T, Hotmail, etc), blogs that don't agree with the government point of view, personal websites, and some news organizatons....
Wonkette

A fearful master
We're fighting for "freedom" in Iraq – but certain Web sites are off limits to U.S. soldiers...
Justin Raimondo

The IT crowd
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning...
Postman Patel

Investment Outlook The Gang Who Couldn’t Talk Straight
A copy of the annual Economic Report of the President arrived at my desk... Although submitted by... newly christened Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, it was as if it had been written by Dick Cheney, a man who not only cannot shoot straight but has difficulty talking straight as well...
Bill Gross

The Attacks on Beyond Chutzpah
The Winter 2006 issue of Middle East Journal ran a scathing review by Professor Marc Saperstein of my book Beyond Chutzpah: On the misuse of anti-Semitism and the abuse of history. Saperstein alleged that my book was a "prolonged diatribe," replete with "outrageous ad hominem attacks" and written in the "rhetorical style of the arrogant academic pit bull."
Norman Finkelstein

How the Economic News is Spun
Offshore outsourcing has turned US production into imports. Americans are now dependent on offshore production for their clothes, manufactured goods and advanced technology products. There are simply no longer domestic suppliers of many of the products on which Americans depend.
Paul Craig Roberts

U.S. Reviewing 2nd Dubai Firm
The Bush administration, stung by the public outcry over the Dubai port deal, has launched a national security investigation of another Dubai-owned company set to take over plants in Georgia and Connecticut that make precision components used in engines for military aircraft and tanks.
WaPo

As the U.S. trade deficit heads for a trillion dollars a year, foreigners with multi-trillion dollar holdings have three options: (1) sell their dollars, setting off a dollar crash that would abruptly cut Americans' standard of living, (2) buy U.S. treasury bills, which will depreciate sharply in the event of a dollar crash, or (3) buy dollar denominated real assets such as Carnegie Hall, the Port of New York and U.S. defense contractors. Naturally, the smarter ones, many of them Arabs, are buying real assets. If this makes Americans indignant, they should reject the Bush Administration's "Voodoo" economics and stop living off capital.

New York Zionists close down "My name is Rachel Corrie"
The Play “My Name Is Rachel Corrie”, Directed In London By Actor Alan Rickman and Due To Open In New York City In March, Has Been Cancelled For Fear Of Controversy. The Theatre Workshop cited The election Of Hamas in Palestine, Ariel Sharon’s medical condition, and The furor over The Danish cartoons as reasons for refusing to stage the play.
postman Patel

Canadian soldier killed in Afghan crash
One Canadian soldier was killed and six others, as well as an Afghan, were injured on Thursday when their armoured vehicle ran off a road near Kandahar.
CBC

U.S. diplomat killed in Pakistan on eve of Bush visit
An American diplomat is among at least four people killed Thursday in a suicide car bomb blast near the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan.
CBC


Bush in India: Just Not Welcome
Ironic, isn't it, that the only safe public space for a man who has recently been so enthusiastic about India's modernity should be a crumbling medieval fort? Since the Purana Qila also houses the Delhi zoo, George Bush's audience will be a few hundred caged animals...
Arundhati Roy

Bush in India
"Me cowboy, you injuns."
Steve Bell

How a bill becomes law
Vice President orders new Program, tells President. President forgets whatever it was...
Ted Rall

Tapes expose Bush's complacency when warned of New Orleans disaster risk
Bush didn't ask a single question during the final briefing before Katrina struck on Aug. 29, but he assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: "We are fully prepared.
AccessNorthGa.com

Harper says Afghan mission critical for global security
He said his Conservative party "strongly supported" the former Liberal government in launching the 2,200-member military mission to Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. He added it is important not just for global security but for Canada's role in the world to stay the course.
CNews

And what exactly is "Canada's role in the World" that requires us to "stay the course" (and kill people) in Afganistan? Or are we supposed to be content knowing that we are there "for Canada's role in the world." Sounds important doesn't it. But what's it mean? Harper's only been Prime Minister for five minutes and he's already lost the power of informative speech. Looks like within a week or two he'll be floundering as helplessly as Paul Martian in his final days. But then his policies are the same, so why expect a more intelligible message.

Dubai: Great Theater
Yeah, I know, to be the least bit queasy about turning over our ports to guys who supported the Taliban when that bunch of religious maniacs were harboring bin Laden is, as the Bush apologists tell us, just xenophobic. Dubai was not alone; Saudi Arabia and Pakistan did the same, and they are now trusted allies....
Robert Scheer

Afghanistan: many questions, no answers
Having not gone to Iraq with the U.S., we've snapped to attention anyway — and just at the moment when military action against terrorism is proving spectacularly counterproductive.
Ralph Surette

A newspaper is a device for making ignorant people more ignorant, H.L. Mencken Ditto, Fox News and the rest of the broadcast media. Not surprisingly, empirical evidence indicates that working for Fox News makes you more ignorant too.

American Gulag
Bush administration and US army preparations to target American citizens and intern them in forced labor camps has vastly accelerated in the past month and commentators from all over the political spectrum are sounding the alarm bells that the round-ups may begin soon.
Prison Planet

Canadians get it: Everyone's for the war now
A majority of Canadians support the country's expanded military mission to Afghanistan, even though they realize there is a risk of casualties, according to a poll released on Wednesday. The Ekos poll, provided to Reuters, showed that 70 percent of those surveyed said they backed the mission while 28 percent were against it. The result contrasts with a survey last week that said 62 percent of Canadians were against sending troops to Afghanistan.
Yahoo

See. You've just got to pick the right poll. The truth is, Canadians love seeing the Government siphoning tax money to the miltary so that our troops can go to some far away country, meet exciting people and kill them. Anyway, now we've got into the spirit of the thing, Gordie O'Connor can get on with the war without having to waste his own time or ours repeating himself as to why we are at war in Afghanistan, a country that never did Canada any harm, except as an exporter of heroin, in which trade it now leads the world, thanks to the U.S.-led regime change.

One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed
"I can tell you the main reason behind all our woes — it is America." The New York Times reporter is quoting the complaint of a clothing merchant in a Sunni stronghold in Iraq. "Everything that is going on between Sunni and Shiites, the troublemaker in the middle is America."
William F. Buckley

The Commander in Chief Has Lost the Troops
A poll by Le Moyne College and Zogby shows that if you want to support the troops, you should be calling for an end to the war. An overwhelming majority, 72 percent, of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year. Among reserves, 90 percent favor withdrawal, compared to 83 percent of the National Guard, 70 percent of the Army, and 58 percent of the Marines. Moreover, about three-quarters of National Guard and Reserve units favor withdrawal within six months.
Kevin B. Zeese

Growing Threat Seen In Afghan Insurgency
The director of the Defense Intelligence Agency told Congress yesterday that the insurgency in Afghanistan is growing and will increase this spring, presenting a greater threat to the central government's expansion of authority "than at any point since late 2001."
WaPo

Military presence in Afghanistan vital: O'Connor
Although Canadian troops do engage in some combat operations, that's not the main point of the mission, said the minister. "The military is in Afghanistan to try to provide a security environment, a stable environment, so that the government can grow, so industry can grow, so schools can be opened."
NaPo

Hey Folks: We're Just There as Good Ol' Canadian Peace Keepers It was only a few days ago that Defense Minister Gordon O'Connor was bemoaning the fact that "the population" had to be told six, seven or eight times before they understood that we had troops in Afghanistan because they attacked us on 911. But now, before repeating himself more than three or four times, Minister O'Connor has changed his tune. Now... Continue Canadian Spectator

Global credit ocean dries up
The cash machine that sustained a world boom is about to close...
Telegragph

The fatal flaw in the 9/11 coverup
Why hasn't either the Bush administration or some element of law enforcement in the United States issued a single solid piece of evidence connecting the hijackers to the hijacked airplanes? Why don’t the alleged hijackers appear on the airport security videos? Why aren’t there credit card records of their ticket purchases? Why did FBI director Robert Mueller say very publicly to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco that nothing on paper connected Arab terrorists to 9/11? And why... hasn’t the U.S. government produced a single conclusive piece of evidence to back up its claim that 9/11 was the work Osama bin Laden and other Islamic terrorists?

There's a simple answer to this, you know. It's because there isn't any evidence.
John Kaminski

Poll shows U.S. troops in Iraq have been brainwashed
While 85% said the U.S. mission is mainly “to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9-11 attacks,” 77% said they also believe the main or a major reason for the war was “to stop Saddam from protecting al Qaeda in Iraq.”

But there is no evidence implicating Saddam in 911 or showing a relationship between Saddam and al Qaeda. Apparently, U.S. forces are deluded, a consequence of administration lying, amplified, presumably, by the military's internal propaganda machine.
Raw Story

Saddam and 911 When George Bush, Dick Cheney or other members of the U.S. Administration suggest that Saddam had a hand in 911 we know it is a matter of political business: providing justification for an aggressive war already promised long before 911. However, when George Bush explicity stated that there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 11 September attacks there can be no reason to doubt it. When Richard Clark, former Whitehouse anti-terrorist adviser said "I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection between Iraq and al-Qaida. But the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting there, saying, 'We've looked at this issue for years. For years we've looked and there's just no connection" we know that no one who knew what they were talking about believed that Saddam aided al Quaeda in attacking the United States.

From Superpower to Tinhorn Dictatorship?
The entire world now recognizes that America has lost its economic power and is dependent on the rest of the world to finance its budget and trade deficits. The US no longer holds the cards. American real incomes are falling, except for the rich. Jobs for university graduates are scarce, and advanced technology products must be imported from China. The US is a rapidly declining power and may soon end up as nothing but a tinhorn dictatorship.
Paul Craig Roberts

Bush: Bin Laden helped me
That video tape, I mean, just days before the election. It helped me beat John Kerry.
Drudge

This is hardly news. The Bin Ladens have been helping the Bushs for decades now. And as for the election-eve video tape, it was as phony as 911's connection to Islam.

Congressman had a fixed tarrif for bribes
The card shows an escalating scale for bribes, starting at $140,000 and a luxury yacht for a $16 million Defense Department contract. Each additional $1 million in contract value required a $50,000 bribe. The rate dropped to $25,000 per additional million once the contract went above $20 million.

It was better that way, really. It saved having to deal with time wasters: people wanting something for nothing.
ABCNews

Death: The Big Story That's Rarely Covered Well
Public acceptance of killing thrives on abstractions. And, in turn, those abstractions (like the phrase I just used, “lethal injection") are largely facilitated by news media.
Norman Soloman

Bush Ratings At All-Time Low
The latest CBS News poll finds President Bush's approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent, while pessimism about the Iraq war has risen to a new high.

Americans are also overwhelmingly opposed to the Bush-backed deal giving a Dubai-owned company operational control over six major U.S. ports. Seven in 10 Americans, including 58 percent of Republicans, say they're opposed to the agreement.
CBS

Oops: Rubbish! Yesterday, we posted what turns out to have been "incorrect facts," as the newspapers say: that is to say a total fabrication, a piece of utter rubbish. We quoted what purported to be a transcript of evidence by Transportation Secretary Norm Minetta given before the 9/11 commission. According to the source we cited, Secretary Manetta testified that VP Cheney, in command at the White House situation room on the morning of 911, repeatedly uttered words indicating he was confirming orders to staff NOT to interdict the plane approaching the Pentagon. This appears to be a total fabrication as a video of Manetta's testimony indicates. Remarkable enough, however, Manetta's evidence reaveals that the Vice President of the United States watched for 5 minutes or more as Flight 77 headed toward the Pentagon, apparently helpless to make the President's "shoot-down" order effective. That the U.S. air defenses were incapable of preventing the Pentagon attack, which occurred 87 minutes after Flight 11 went off course and 54 minutes after Flight 11 crashed into the North tower of the WTC, indicates the folly of the Bush Administration's plan to spend countless billions on a missile defense system already made obsolete by developments in Russia's offensive missile technology. Better to spend a few dollars surrounding the Pentagon and Whitehouse with barrage balloons or some old-fashioned ack-ack guns. At least they'd have given the folks at the Pentagon a sporting chance.

Israel: a laboratory for terrorism
Marvin Kurz: {"The rights of terrorists?, What rights" Feb. 25}, states: " Israel, the petridish of anti-terrorism....." This is the height of audacity. Israel has been, since its inception, a giant laboratory for terrorism in the Middle East.
Ismail Zayid

When the Canadian Government prepared to turn its guns on the people
As the Canadian government was trying to rein in its debt, it was also training its soldiers to turn their guns on Canadians, just in case that didn't work. Or in case it did work, but the Canadian people didn't like the effects.
Stefan Molyneux

Iranian advisor: We'll strike Dimona in response to U.S. attack
If the United States launches an attack on Iran, the Islamic republic will retaliate with a military strike on Israel's main nuclear facility, an advisor to Iran's Revolutionary Guard said.
Haaretz

Drawing the Line at Lynching
This coming Tuesday, February 28, marks the 122nd anniversary of the day that an American lynch mob rode north across the border at Sumas, about 80 kilometres east of Vancouver, and hanged a 14-year-old Canadian boy, whose name was Louie Sam.
Terry Glavin

Canadians Too Thick to Support Afghanistan Mission: Defence Minister
With his bum barely in the chair at the head of Canada's armed forces, rookie Cabinet Minister O'Connor is holding forth to the world's press, complaining of the dumb-asses, in the form of the majority of Canadians..., he has to deal with.
C.L. Cook

911 Loose Change
A documentary.
Phil Jayhan and Korey Rowe

This documentary covers a lot of ground. Most striking is the visual evidence: the Operation Northwoods documents, and the squibs of smoke emanating from the Twin Towers 20 or 30 floors below the collapse zone, which are strongly suggestive of a controlled demolition. Also striking are the images from the site of the Pentagon crash. Unfortunately, with so much ground to cover, the treatment is inevitably superficial. Although Phil Jayhan, creator of this video, has been an energetic advocate of the pod theory, this and most other seemingly far out notions are avoided. However, the suggestion that the destruction of the WTC provided cover for the theft of $160 billion in gold stored at the site seems quite wacky, and is presented solely on the basis of hearsay. At the then price of gold (about $300.00 per ounce) $160 billion-worth of the metal would have amounted to 16,000 tons, or about one half of all the gold ever mined. It seems unlikely, somehow, that so much gold would have been assembled at one place. And how would they have moved it without anyone noticing the thousands of trucks that would have been required? Now that the new Government of Canada has confirmed Paul Martin's Afghanistan war policy and based this decision on the U.S. Government's account of 9/11, it is to be hoped that Canadians, as well as Americans, will undertake a more detailed examination of the evidence concerning 911. Was it a terrorist attack engineered from a cave in Afghanistan, as the Government of Canada insists, or was it an inside job, to provide the "new Pearl Harbor" so much desired by the U.S. ruling clique.

Britain's Police State
From shouting out “nonsense” at the Labour Party Conference to attending film festivals or wearing a t-shirt that disses Blair, we are all subject to arrest and/or detention under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. And it’s clear that the police have been given orders to use it to intimidate and harass anyone who speaks out or behaves in a way likely to bring disrepute on our ‘glorious’ leaders.
William Bowles

Parliament failed us
Down with Robert Mugabe... OK, I’ll come quietly. For I have just broken ... the new law against glorifying terrorism.

The argument that we need these laws to prevent people carrying banners around calling for the beheading of Danish cartoonists is utterly specious. The laws against incitement to murder are already in existence and should have been used against these individuals, just as they were used against Abu Hamza and the British National Party.
Iasin MacWhirter

Statlinism in America
It is a great lie that America needs to give up its civil liberties, the separation of powers, the Geneva Conventions, and humane treatment of prisoners in order to defend itself against terrorism. If these are the Bush regime’s terms for protection, Americans need quickly to find another government.
Paul Craig Roberts

Bush Hides Behind Supply-Side to Reward His Cronies
Supply-Side economics was dubbed "Reaganomics" by the media. If you were for Reagan, that meant you were for it. If you were against Reagan, you were against it. That's as far as public understanding ever went.
Paul Craig Roberts

Suicide Voters
How Hamas dooms Palestine.
Christopher Hitchens

Another word from the General: If Canadians won't fight we'll create a foreign legion
New immigrants could find themselves on a fast track to Canadian citizenship if they agree to put on a uniform and serve in the military.

That's one suggestion from Gen. Rick Hillier, Canada's chief of defence staff, as he looks at "aggressive" ways to fulfil the Conservatives' ambitious pledge to add up to 23,000 more soldiers.

Hillier said he's "puzzled" why more young Canadians aren't lined up to join the forces.

"If you want to sail the seven seas in the most high-tech ships in the world, you come see us," Hillier said.

That's a pitch Canadians can expect to hear a lot of as the military kicks up its advertising campaign "in a big way" to woo potential soldiers, Hillier said

"Realistic ads that show what we do, that show the excitement that I feel myself," Hillier said.
TO Star

The military needs a realistic recruitment ad? How about: Join the Canadian armed forces, sail the seven seas, visit exotic lands, meet exciting new people and kill them.

And more from the military: Give us your sons and daughters
Responding to a poll showing only 27 per cent of Canadianas favored sending troops to Afghanistan with 62 per cent against, retired Colonel Michel Drapeau told Canada AM Friday:

"In a democracy I think the people have to get behind the government..." "The nation has to be convinced to the point that they will be persuading their sons and daughters to join the military."
CTV

"Have to get behind the Government. "Have to be convinced." Have to? Listen bud, in a democracy the people are supposed to decide. The government may lead public opinion but they should do so by the employment of arguments and by the presentation of facts, not by the deployment of military rabble rousers and cheerleaders. As for the military? They should shut-up and await orders. Orders issued in the name of the Queen on behalf of the people of Canada.

Listen up Canada, the Generals are speaking
A Strategic Counsel poll in Friday's Globe and Mail showed 62 percent of Canadians were against sending troops to Afghanistan while 73 percent wanted Parliament to have an opportunity to vote on deployments.

"The population out there doesn't really understand right now why we're there and what we're doing. You have to say the thing five, six, seven, eight times before it really gets through to a large number of people," [said Defense Minister, General Gordon O'Connor].

General Rick Hillier, chief of defense staff, told reporters the poll represented a significant communications challenge for the government.

"Many Canadians do not know or understand the complexities of what the Afghan mission is about, why we are there, and its importance, its critical importance to Canada," he said.
Reuters

But before Gen. O'Connor can tell the dumb public six, seven or eight times why we're at war in Afghanistan he'll first have to figure out for himself what the reason is. His argument that they attacked as on 911 is vacuous. So let's hear the real reason. And as for Gen. Rick Hillier's notion that Canadian forces are in Afghanistan to kill "murderers and scumbags", is that really a useful expenditure of the Canadian taxpayers money? Personally, I would prefer to see Canada's military preparing to defend Canadian territory, not promoting American interests in Central Asia. For one thing it would greatly reduce the risk of blowback as experienced by the Brits. on 7/7 and the Spanish, just 911 days after 911.

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