A RIDICULOUS BOOK ABOUT THE "BATTLE" THAT "SAVED" AFGHANISTAN

RESPONSE TO AN INTERVIEW ON THE CBC PROGRAM THE CURRENT WITH JOURNALIST CHRIS WATTIE

With no disrespect for Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, Chris Wattie's words were foolish, inaccurate, and little more than propaganda.

First, a fight involving "hundreds" of soldiers should never be called a "battle.” The use of the word "battle" simply misrepresents and exaggerates the importance of such events.

Second, calling the Taleban "not very good" shows no understanding and a hell of a lot of American-style arrogance.

Consider the facts of the match-up.

The Taleban face soldiers with Kevlar armor, late-model automatic weapons, sophisticated artillery support, jet-fighter support, armored vehicles, radios, computers, satellite guidance, and a host of other kit. They are well-fed and fit.

Oh, yes, they may have some dud grenades and a jammed piece of artillery here and there, but they are equipped with overwhelming superiority.

The Taleban themselves typically have weapons like AK-47s (a 60-year old weapon) and rifle grenades. They have no body armor, no armored vehicles, and no support. They are poor and not well-fed. They don’t even have boots.

If you consider the facts, rather than the comic-book notions of Mr. Wattie, the Taleban are, in fact, incredible soldiers. I'm afraid most Americans, and most Canadians, wouldn't even show up for battle if equipped as these fierce men are.

As for "saving" Afghanistan, well, you do have to ask, saved for whom?

The Taleban live there and represent a substantial portion of the population. We don't like their values, but the Northern Alliance warlords America has used and put into power are no different. We are serving the interests of armed occupiers, working for American interests even Americans do not understand.

Then we have to ask, what do you mean by "saved"?

The latest study done for Bush, suppressed during the election, calls the situation in Afghanistan "grim." Senior British officers have called the effort hopeless. Former head of MI5, Dame Rimmington, has called America's entire post 9/11 operations "over-reaction." No one else in NATO wants to send military support of substance to Afghanistan. If there were a meaningful purpose there, would anyone have to preach to these countries? Of course not.

The Potemkin-village schools that are opened by us can’t even be kept open. The teachers cannot be paid. There is no effective central government. Afghanistan is not even a country in the sense that we understand. The Northern Alliance running the provinces, while glad to get some money from us, have no more interest in changing the culture than the Taleban.

And we are to spend on the order of 18 billion dollars for this?

We would have done more good just dropping the money from planes on the people. Afghanistan needs decades of economic growth before the things we don’t like about it can possibly change. Just consider how long it has taken just to change the smoking habit in our country. How much longer their centuries-old habits and culture?







Last photo: Unchanging scene through most of Afghanistan.

REFLECTIONS ON THE PALIN DEBATE

RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY CLIVE CROOK IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES

What did they do to Palin?

Why, of course, they prepared her like a goose being prepared for pate de foie gras.

She was force-fed ghost-written one-liners for days.

But all they got from her was Spam (the canned meat).

Sarah Palin is simply not capable of anything more, and I am surprised you cannot see that, Clive.

Her very tone and the things she chooses to focus on – “surrender,” for example, shades of the Alamo - tell anyone who doesn't have a tin ear that the woman is close to feeble-minded.

Unlike some, I never expected her to "melt down." She's too brassy for that.

But she cannot open her mouth in a sequence of answers without revealing what she is.

And what she is is someone utterly unfit for high office.

Selecting her is a terrible reflection, too, on McCain's character: anything to cap his career with the presidency, anything to outdo his admiral father.

Well, Obama is going to win and win big.

The Times, London, reported yesterday that McCain's operation has pulled up stakes in Michigan, stopping all advertising there.

It has to mean they have terrible private polls, and Michigan is a key state to McCain's strategy.

There is also the good news that deeply concerned Republicans are secretly meeting in Florida out of worry about tumbling polls.

It's all good news to reasonable people.

God, even America cannot elect that dud pair after 8 years of disastrous incompetence.

THE SILLY NOTION THAT SARAH PALIN MAY ACTUALLY PROVE MORE FORMIDABLE IN TONIGHT'S DEBATE THAN EXPECTED

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY MICHAEL TOMASKY IN THE GUARDIAN

Palin is said to have done fairly well in debates for governor in 2006.

But that must be taken with a few grains of salt.

Alaska has a total population about equal to the town of Charlotte, North Carolina, somewhat bigger than greater Hamilton, Ontario.

Moreover, Alaska tends to be a haven for drop-out, militia, and go-it-alone types.

And don't forget, local politics anywhere tends to draw more parochial and inadequate people than talented ones.

For all these reasons, the pool of human resources involved in local politics in a place like Alaska is extremely shallow.

Just the fact that a semi-retarded person like Sarah Palin was elected truly does say it all.

Oh, she can sure yell and growl and wave her arms - she would have reached the limits of her talents as captain of a cheerleading team - but she can't even name the newspapers she says she reads.

Is that debating? Whether it can be judged worthwhile, I guess all depends on the make-up the audience.

The trailer-park and revival-meeting crowds will see Sarah as a champion.

As for Biden, he is intelligent, but so is John Edwards.

Like Edwards, Biden has always impressed me as a syrupy phony, with the personality of an egomaniac. He is also rather chameleon-like, often changing what he supports between entering and leaving a room.

So he starts with a certain lack of sympathy for himself, and if he is not very careful with his aggressive temperament, he may actually create sympathy for the mother-type, no matter how ridiculous her words.

NONSENSE ABOUT ATTACKS ON SARAH PALIN BEING ANTI-FEMINIST

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY SIMON TISDALL IN THE GUARDIAN

This is ridiculous, taken right from the official hand-out of Republican talking points.

No one has been less sympathetic to feminism than American conservatives.

Just look at a group like the Southern Baptists, the largest denomination of Protestants in America.

Their official, published view is that the man is head of the family and the wife should obey him!

The Mormons, the Pentecostals and others have similar views. So do conservative Jews and Catholics.

And nothing has happened to change that fact.

And Palin comes right out of this tradition.

Just because she does not believe in abortion and is fortunate enough to have support resources to have a large family while pursuing politics does not make her a feminist.

And those supporting her are not feminist types either. Good God, John McCain is old skirt-chaser and a man who left his crippled wife when he came back from Vietnam.

He only picked her to cement the support of the Religious Right which knows perfectly well that he is a genuinely irreligious man.

Of course, there was the outside chance she would help him pick up disaffected Hillary supporters, but it seems there will be almost none of that.

NEW BOOK BY BIKER-GIRLFRIEND OF BERNIER TO HAVE SMALL IMPACT ON ELECTION

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY LAWRENCE MARTIN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Big, jovial wooden-head types have always been popular in rural or small-town Quebec. So, Bernier's seat would be safe in any event.

But I wouldn't go so far as you in dismissing the book's impact.

There has been a steady drip-drip, like a leaky tap, a kind of slow, mounting Chinese water torture, around the Conservatives in Quebec.

This - just as Bob Rae's revelation of Harper's purloined speech reminded voters that Harper wanted to be in Iraq - reminds Quebeckers that Bernier opposes the useless effort in Afghanistan.

Also, since the author is herself a Quebecker, her tales of his laughing at constituents and frequently expressed contempt for Harper may have some impact.





Bernier and Couillard in happier days

A RETIRED CANADIAN POLITICIAN'S VIEWS ON AMERICA'S "INVESTING MORE IN THEIR POLITICIANS"

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY PRESTON MANNING IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Preston Manning sets a new record for meaningless, delusional commentary.

"Americans invest more time, energy and money than Canadians do in preparing the politicians and supporting casts for their roles and responsibilities on the political stage."

Investment in politicians in America?

Palin? Bush? Cheney? Lott? DeLay? Thurmond? Agnew? Quayle? Gingrich? Hastert? Rumsfeld? Dole?

Preston Manning just has to be kidding, or we can only conclude he's gone completely off his rocker.

The only investment these folks and scores of others have received is tons of money from right-wing lobbies to promote themselves.

They are all uninformed and parochial, but they are/were immensely well financed to promote uninformed, parochial, and even hateful views.

Mr Manning refers to America's “think tanks.” Good Lord, save Canada from that fate!

The Heritage Foundation, The American Enterprise Institute, and a number of others are nothing but well-financed propaganda mills posing as quasi-academic institutions.

Their "fellows" are mostly retired right-wing hacks having been given sinecures. They remind me of actors in white lab coats on television ads pretending to be doctors.

A while back I checked the Internet site of one of the largest of these to get an e-mail address for one of their "fellows" who had been on CBC Radio promoting hostilities towards Venezuela, in the process making an ignorant claim that Hitler was also, like Chavez, elected.

The truth is Hitler's party's high-water mark in elections was 37%. He was appointed Chancellor by the ancient President von Hindenburg in a desperate hope of restoring a civil peace that Hitler's very party helped destroy. An "historian" should know better, but not at one of these crummy joints.

My point is that in looking for an e-mail on the fancy site of this "think tank," the opening page had a big banner singing the praises of Rush Limbaugh. Yes, the poisonous frat boy who gets to spew hate year after year for millions of dollars. Some serious institution. Some investment.

WIKIPEDIA

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DANIEL FINKELSTEIN IN THE TIMES

Wikipedia is a wonderful creation, but no thoughtful person regards it as definitive, but then no thoughtful person regards any one book or reference as definitive.

In a sense, since all of us are constantly changing or revealing hitherto unknown aspects of ourselves, the changes (discounting malicious ones) made to Wikipedia only reflect this reality.

As an avid reader of biography and history, I know there are an amazing number of errors or poor interpretations that creep into books, even prestigious books.

Also, the discovery of new material - as a stash of letters or DNA testing on remains - often changes the understanding of a previously accepted historical interpretation.

Just like the physical nature of light, behaving both as particles and waves, our history is subject to different understandings from different perspectives. And just like particles under the Uncertainty Principle, we can never fix the precise nature of an event. Merely observing it, changes its properties.

Like Einstein, my temperament would be more at ease if the Creator did not play with dice, but we know now that clearly He/She does.

POLITICS AND OLIGOPOLIES

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DANIEL FINKELSTEIN IN THE TIMES

There will be no such era.

Most completive systems tend over time to reduce to oligarchies or oligopolies. Cars, breakfast cereal, pop, cosmetics, etc. The industries often start with a great many companies doing things very differently, but over not too many decades that changes.

Just look at the shelves of your supermarket where two or three companies make most of the products in any general category, despite all the names and packaging.

Advertising is one of the things that differentiates these products, advertising that plays on minor differences of scent or color or herbs.

We get choice, but not much in the way of extreme choices. New products are lucky to be boutique items given a tiny shelf space.

Politics is no different.

Indeed, advertising only becomes more important every year, raising the cost of politics and reducing the genuine information offered.

If you know a way to turn this around, you will be a hero to democratic values, but pardon my skepticism.

TAKING CANADA'S NDP PARTY SERIOUSLY IN THE CURRENT ELECTION

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JEFFERY SIMPSON IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Jeffery Simpson,

This is all well put and true, but you are missing something here.

People are upset with the Liberals for two reasons.

One, a totally predictable reason I pointed out long before the election, is that Dion, a thoroughly decent man, has been stubbornly determined to repeat John Tory's principled-but inappropriate stand on religious-school funding.

Dion's Don Quixote act is compounded by the fact that the immense pressures and quick pace of a political campaign is definitely not the time to bring forward a major, complex new policy.

Campaigns are about slogans, one-liners, quips, not complex analysis of policy proposals. I wish it were otherwise - then we would have meaningful public debates on important matters - but it is not, and going against that reality is truly the stuff of Don Quixote.

The other reason, and for me the more important one, is that the Liberals are responsible for keeping that living corpse, Harper, at center stage long enough for a number of people to get used to the reality. People do get used to almost anything if it is around long enough.

The Liberals cannot put this blame on the NDP, they are the opposition.

Perhaps it could not be otherwise after the fiasco of Paul Martin who tore the party apart over his personal ambition and who proved an inept figure when troubles hit. No matter what else anyone may say of Chretien, he was the most gifted politician of his era. He had a wonderful touch and, on most big questions, he stood on the right side.

There are many things about the NPD I do not like. Many of them as types remind me of earnest bird watchers or boy scouts. There is too much over-used boiler plate language from them also, striking my ears like dreary slogans from officialdom.

Jack Layton does largely manage to escape both of these unappealing NDP characteristics - shared even by his very able wife - except when he keeps repeating "the kitchen table rather than the board room table." Ugh.

I do admire Jack for his position on Afghanistan, admire him strongly. He is right, Harper and the weasel-like (on this matter) Liberals are wrong. We are killing our soldiers, and more importantly, occupying someone else’s country, for no good reason.

Just being there also begins to color our society with the tones of the ugly, divisive jingoism of America: support our troops, yellow ribbons, and other non-think about a deadly and unethical situation.

We are only there because the previous government felt “we owed one to the Pentagon.” But the Pentagon itself does not truly know why it is there nor does it have any genuine idea of when it should leave. A recent report is being kept secret until after the American election which paints the situation as “grim.”

It is grim because America is trying to do what cannot be done, change the thinking and habits of an ancient and backward society. They would have been much further ahead dropping dollar bills rather than bombs, but that just ain’t the American way.

If America insists on insane behavior – just as with their mortgage-lending structure – there is no reason Canada must follow.

Jack also has stood out on a couple of other issues, including the Conservatives’ frequently unethical behavior.

Jack offers a good place to park a protest vote, and that’s just what many are doing.




Anyone but Harper

SOME BASIC PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY MARGARET WENTE IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

This piece demonstrates the kind of subject matter Ms. Wente should stick to.

She has written many ridiculous - indeed downright dumb and even vicious - columns, especially where international affairs or public policy on human rights are concerned.

But here she offers legitimate considerations.

I suggest it is not just "educational romanticism" that is responsible for the mediocrity and poor performance (for many) of our schools.

It is the American wish-fulfillment dream of everyone being the same, virtually interchangeable in many or most things. It derives from Puritan notions which still drive a lot of attitudes in America.

The notion also seems to be an effort at psychological compensation for the very harsh, and growing, inequalities of every kind in America - the courts, the economy, primary education, higher education, and more.

Unfortunately, these American notions have been seeping into Canada, almost imperceptibly at any time, by osmosis as it were.

Also, the public education establishment is subject to more fads and whims than almost any institution we have. One year, homework is great; another year, homework is an unnecessary burden. One year, there is zero tolerance for violence; another year, there is zero tolerance is gone.

Great sums are wasted on “programs” for ugly matters like bullying, when the only genuine solution is the people on site – teachers and administrators – taking responsibility and actively intervening in their communities, the schools.

The math curriculum is needlessly complex, yet students, even in grade five, do not know the fundamental building block of their times tables.

It is all avoidance of responsibility, buck-passing, and butt-covering, always with plenty of politically-correct words, and it is also, to a considerable extent, a comparatively recent import from the Great Land of Victims All, America.

People certainly are not the same, but they all deserve genuine, meaningful consideration from our schools and other institutions, and for many that means things like good training in trades or even good training in social behaviors. We are not doing the job.

WHOM TO BLAME FOR AMERICA'S ECONOMIC CRISIS ?

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY CLIVE CROOK IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES

Clive Crook,

You should know the answer to this.

No one is ever responsible for anything in the United States. Americans are all victims.

America's divided government has proved perfectly suited to the attitudes and ethics that have evolved there. You cannot fix responsibility on anyone for anything.

I think the perfect illustration of this is American behavior under some of its free trade treaties.

Treaties are supposedly on a higher level so that local laws do not interfere in international affairs.

But in fact the opposite happens all the time. A set of national trade laws, highly flexible to the need and thus effectively protectionist, allow local interests and politics to override international treaties regularly.

And with whom does a treaty partner deal when this happens? It is never clear, but in the end those local political interests will be satisfied before there is a resolution.

Much of the governing of the United States works this way. It is a poorly governed country because Americans are a people who essentially do not like government.

The real source of all these economic problems is a people living beyond its means, of wanting it all and wanting it now, and a set of governments which accommodate their doing exactly that.

HOW AMERICANS REACT TO CRITICISM OF THEIR ELECTIONS

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JONATHAN FREEDLAND IN THE GUARDIAN

Yes, absolutely, Jonathan Freedland.

What is so annoying about American attitudes is the juxtaposition of two inconsistent, obnoxious attitudes at the same time.

The first obnoxious attitude is America’s easy assumption of the country's right to interfere or invade anywhere on the planet it chooses.

This “right” is always defined in the context of “defense”: after all, the world's military Frankenstein monster is called the Department of Defense.

But a long trail of sad and murderous adventures since WWII has absolutely nothing to do with what anyone else understands as defense. Quite the opposite in many cases, including the overthrow of a number of democratic governments, these are works of bullying and even tyranny.

The other attitude resting comfortably in the American mind with the above is one of: "Butt out, mind your own business about our election!"

There seems to be a complete disconnect between these two things.

The great American historian, Page Smith, wrote many times of a form of schizophrenia in American history. He was using the word in a now-outdated sense, but he was precisely right in his essential meaning.

Effectively, Americans, many of them, seem to think it is just fine for the voters of America to behave as a global aristocracy, comfortable with their own right to voting and then acting as a tyrant towards many.

Those who vote there represent something on the order of 1% of the world's population - the same percentage as the Communist party of China to its people, or as the privileged British who could vote for Parliament in the mid-eighteenth century - and they feel entitled to manage the affairs of billions of others.

Everyone in the world has the right to speak out about the anti-democratic and anti-human rights behaviors of America, a country whose government regularly pompously criticizes the state of democracy and human rights abroad, even maintaining lists of those considered most objectionable and grading them like a purse-lipped old school marm would.

Americans who resort to calling their critics anti-American are behaving exactly as the Israelis who call those who criticize Israel’s abominable record of human rights anti-Semites.

Interestingly, Israel, in all its unfair behavior, has the United States as patron.




An American Marine stepping over bodies at Fallujah