The UK's lessons for Canadian Progressives

In the UK support for the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition plummets as Labour's new leader ushers in polls that would mean a slim majority for Labour if an election were held today.  The coalition the British public reject is the one between neo-liberals and conservatives, you know, like the government we have in Canada now in all but name.

Maybe its the natural result for any government in power in times of such intense economic uncertainty, or the afterglow of Labour electing a new leader and potentially heading in a more progressive direction, or maybe the UK public just figured out who's side the Lib-Dems have shown they are on the first chance they got for power.

Nick Clegg bleats about 'new progressives' being more about social mobility while 'old progressives' are about 'reducing inequality'.  This after he announced his coalition's massive increases to tuition costs drastically reducing access to higher education for anyone below a certain economic level.

The deputy prime minister claims that Labour, under Ed Miliband's leadership, is becoming the new conservative group of British politics, wedded to outdated ideas and stuck in an anti-pluralist rut.
Labour, he says, is in danger of turning high marginal tax rates, a large state, and "snapshots of income inequality" into shibboleths. For old progressives, personified by Miliband, "reducing snapshot income inequality is the ultimate goal", he maintains, and for new progressives it is "reducing the barriers to mobility".

What else is education, expensive beyond the range of the few without starting life in crippling debt, but a barrier to 'social mobility'?

No, there's nothing new about Nicholas Clegg's warmed over quasi-libertarian Thatcherism with a dose of sunny Reaganism.  Revealing that you are just another neoliberal who has abandoned Keynesian economics and progressive policy because you're still captive to the long since discredited cult of deregulation and starved government trickle down economics doesn't make you a 'new progressive' just an old fashioned sell out.

Speaking of Michael Ignatieff,

The Liberal caucus is clearly split over Mr. Ignatieff’s decision to support the Harper government. The leader’s support was given even before the details of the new training mission were announced.
The government formally laid out its plan on Tuesday. Last Friday morning, however, Mr. Rae told The Globe and Mail he supported the government, saying there was no need for a debate or vote in the House of Commons. Later that day, Mr. Ignatieff supported Mr. Rae’s view.
Liberal insiders believe Mr. Ignatieff would not win a vote and that is why it is being avoided. The Liberal leadership does not want to reveal a split in the ranks.
“If there was a vote, I think Michael would lose the vote,” the insider said. “He would lose the vote. I don’t think caucus would support him.”

That strange sound echoing across the land? It's Jason Kenney grinding his teeth.

TORONTO - Former British MP George Galloway is expecting to arrive in Canada this Saturday.

The aim is to continue a speaking tour he was forced to put on hold last year.

The rabble-rousing politician was told in March 2009 he would be denied entry into Canada on the basis he supported terrorism.

A recent court decision concluded the federal government interfered in the case for political reasons.

Supporters of the anti-war activist say they are looking forward to hearing the politician speak.

They say they hope the government will no longer attempt to ban critics of its foreign policy.

Galloway had provided financial support to Hamas — a group that Canada has listed as a terrorist organization.

The Canada Border Services Agency cited his involvement in an aid convoy that delivered clothing, medical items, relief money and vehicles to the elected Hamas government.

UPDATE: "I'm coming to get you"

In a time of Universal Deceit

Eric Margolis uses his last column at the Sun now that he's been purged for thought-crime to defend PTE Manning and Wikileaks.

George Orwell wrote: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

A true journalist’s job is to expose government wrongdoing and propaganda, skewer hypocrites, and speak for those with no voice. And wage war against mankind’s two worst scourges: Nationalism and religious bigotry. Not to lick the boots of government.

I’ve always felt kinship for free thinkers, rebels, and heretics.

That’s why I am drawn to the plight of Pte. Bradley Manning who apparently believed Ernest Hemingway’s dictum: “Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”

The 22-year-old U.S. Army intelligence analyst caused a worldwide furor by releasing to WikiLeaks secret military logs that exposed ugly truths about the brutal conflict in Afghanistan, including widespread killing of civilians.

To again quote Orwell: “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

Helicopter Stories

The Canadian military announced today the downing of a Canadian Chinook helicopter in southern Afghanistan on Thursday but insisted that it had been downed by small arms fire.

The helicopter was brought down by small arms fire from insurgents, the military said at a briefing at the Kandahar base.

The small arms fire "caused a fire in the fuel line below the helicopter, forcing it come down," said the CBC's Cameron MacIntosh, who attended the briefing.

"When it landed, it burst into flames and the helicopter basically burned to the ground," he said.

Investigators went through the wreckage and found evidence that the chopper had been hit by small arms fire.

A senior military officer described it as "an extremely lucky shot," MacIntosh said.

Yes, that's a spectacularly lucky shot, we can't really call it a one in a million shot though because lucky shots like it have been happening with troubling regularity. Compare this display of military message control to this one from 2007:

But if American and British commanders were worried about the missile threat, they downplayed it in public – to the extent of ignoring their own pilots' testimony. The CH-47 Chinook was shot down on 30 May 2007 after dropping troops at the strategic Kajaki dam in Helmand where the British were leading an anti-Taliban drive. Witnesses reported that a missile struck the left rear engine of the aircraft, causing it to burst into flames and nosedive into the ground. All on board died, including 28-year-old Corporal Mike Gilyeat of the Royal Military Police.

Later that day Nato and US officials suggested the helicopter, codenamed Flipper, had been brought down by a rocket-propelled grenade – effectively, a lucky hit. "It's not impossible for small-arms fire to bring down a helicopter," Nato spokesman Major John Thomas told Reuters in Kabul. A US official said it had "probably been brought down by a rocket-propelled grenade [RPG]".

In both cases the Taliban claimed the helicopters were shot down by shoulder mounted rockets, and in both cases NATO denied it. We know from the Wikileaks data dump that NATO has been aggressively trying to downplay any suggestion that the Afghan insurgents have any such capability - mostly due to the historical context.


Shoulder mounted smart rockets ended the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and likely sped up the end of the Soviet Union itself. Its easy to see why NATO is committed to the narrative that the Taliban don't have access to them.

The legendary ability of small, shoulder-born missile launchers to transform the fortunes of otherwise crudely armed insurgents is one of the most alarming threats to emerge from the Wikileaks archive.

Soviet troops discovered in 1986 when the CIA decided to put heat-seeking Stinger missiles into the hands of the otherwise low-tech Afghan resistance, such weapons can make life impossible for modern armies.

As depicted in the Tom Hank's film Charlie Wilson's War, bearded warriors were able to stand on hilltops and blast the dreaded Russian attack helicopters out of the sky, ultimately forcing them to fly far higher, to much less effect.

That image still haunts Nato commanders who are all too aware of how much they rely on thousands of transport planes, helicopters and drone surveillance craft to kill insurgents from the air and move troops around an increasingly hostile theatre of war.

It has long been the international coalition's claim that whilst the Taliban might try to acquire technology capable of shooting down aircraft they had failed to do so, and were unlikely to ever succeed.

Right, because what are the odds that anybody could get access to 1980's technology?

The great benefit of the Wikileaks release is that perhaps now these bland assurances of a long series of one in a million 'lucky shots' will be read with a bit more of a critical eye.

Whistleblowers: The real threat?

Peter Worthington sniffs in disdain at Wikileaks and the information they've revealed:

WikiLeaks also “reveals” (my quotations are meant to imply irony) that Taliban have infiltrated Pakistan’s Intelligence Service and have alarming support in that country.
So what else is new? That’s been written about and commented on so often you’d think it hardly worth mentioning. Sure, it’s important, and unless the Pakistan government regains full control of its country, the war against the Taliban cannot be won. And the Taliban protect al-Qaida.
So what damage has been done by WikiLeaks exposes?
The real danger lies in individuals who squeal and steal stuff in order to leak it. They are a menace who violate their oaths and/or betray trust while often posing as people motivated by a concern for truth and principles — all of which camouflages their treachery.

So Peter Worthington is a 'journalist' (my quotations are meant to imply utter contempt) who thinks the real threat isn't a decade's worth of deadly morass in a country that has never been successfully conquered or controlled by outside powers going back to the time of Alexander the Great, that beat the British Empire at the height of its powers, sunk the Soviet Union and is actually known in history books as the 'graveyard of armies'. No the real threat is whistle blowers revealing the hard evidence of a failed and corrupt intervention causing thousands of deaths per year.

This is a so-called 'journalist' condemning the release of raw data that contradicts the rosy pronouncements of governments and military figures. Sure we already knew they were shining us on - despite the obsequious stenography of 'journalists' like Worthington - now, thanks to Wikileaks we have proof.

I'm sure Worthington will fit in well with the new 'Fox North' Sun regime.

Afghanistan gets its 'Pentagon Papers'

“History doesn't repeat itself - at best it sometimes rhymes”-Mark Twain

Bradley Manning is going to prison. Probably for years, but like Daniel Ellsberg, he will do so knowing he personally contributed to the truth coming out and maybe even a war shortened.

It is important not to undersell how much of a bombshell the massive data dump that Wikileaks clearly spent the last month or so preparing for is. Several media outlets were given early access to the info on condition they waited a pre-arranged period of time and the outlets and Wikileaks were all releasing everything at once. The kind of thing a paranoid person like Julian Assange who doesn't trust anyone would arrange.

If nothing else, any question of whether Wikileaks are media players is now resolved. These media outlets accepted the information and the conditions demanded to release this devastating portrait of a war gone wrong. The administration's claim that they were afraid Wikileaks would release diplomatic cables and embarrass allies is now revealed as a sign that they were thinking too small.

The coalition has actively suppressed the information that the Taliban were using heat-seeking missiles - possibly because it's well know that this is the weapon that allowed the Mujaheddin to drive the Soviets out of the country. That secret is now blown. Optimistic Pentagon PR and a compliant press has kept just how bad the war in Afghanistan is and how its being getting worse every year. That badly kept secret is also now blown. Spectacularly

Can we expect some more historical rhyming in the coming years? Maybe a final airlift scene from the American compound in Kabul à la the fall of Saigon?

UPDATE: The shorter response from the White House:

'The leaked information is putting our troops in danger, but it is also too old to be relevant to the current situation in Afghanistan.'

This is the very definition of cognitive dissonance.

UPDATE 2: A week later and the Washington Post makes the Ellsberg comparison.

Not fitting into their creepy rescue fantasies

Will white, right wing males who get all broody and weird over anti-Islamist women show the same concern for brave Muslim women fighting for justice like Malala Joya or Hanin Zoaby?

Hanin Zoaby, an attractive, modernist, non-observant Muslim woman who wears western clothing and goes out in public with her head uncovered is a female politician fighting for the rights of her minority group in her country against fierce opposition. She has been vilified, slandered and physically attacked in the legislature. Legislators from the majority ethnic group (Many of whom have openly called for ethnic cleansing) have started proceedings to strip her of her parliamentary privileges for the crime of criticizing the state, and along with other members of her ethnic group, of her citizenship entirely.

She seems like the perfect candidate for the sweaty rescue fantasies of anti-Islam polemicists like Eric Steyn or Christopher Hitchens. You might expect lots of rapturous coverage and fierce attacks on those not offering her their full support.

Except Joya is a feminist leftist who opposes the West's involvement in propping up warlords in her native Afghanistan and Zoaby is an Israeli Arab MK advocating for the rights of Palestinians inside Israel and in the occupied territories. She was on the peace flotilla and is credited for the command of Hebrew and the Knesset ID that made the Israeli paratroopers attend to the medical needs of the brutalized passengers sooner than they might have otherwise.

I'm sure Mark Steyn will be showing the same concern for these brave Muslim women fighting oppression as he does for those who he thinks help further his anti-Islam message.

Any time now.

Drink my Kool-aid or else!

Liberal blogger Eugene Forsey appears to have taken to hunching over his keyboard at two in the morning and pouring out vitriolic, border-line demented anti-NDP rants.

If you challenge his idiosyncratic interpretation of the facts or time lines, he proudly blocks your comments unless you agree with him.

His hobby horse, like most Liberals these days, is obsessing over the past. Some Lib bloggers, five years on, are still incensed with the self inflicted fall of the Paul Martin government. As Eugene still has one of those insipid 'Thanks Jack' sidebars, I guess he's one of them.

At the moment though he's fixated on three years ago and the bizarre contention that it's the NDP's fault we're still in Afghanistan. Point out that it was the Liberals who voted against an NDP motion calling for immediate beginning of the withdrawal process and subsequently voted to extend a mission they theoretically disagree with for two more years of bloodshed, and then later voted again to extend it another four years... and he will tell you that any further comments that disagree with him will be blocked.

Feel free to respond here Eugene, see I actually have confidence in the facts and my opinions so I don't need to ban people for disagreeing with me.

"All of this has happened before..."

"...and all of it will happen again."

In October 2002, on becoming concerned that torture and extra-judicial killings were taking place in Uzbekistan, Craig Murray made a controversial speech at a human rights conference in Tashkent, in which he claimed that "Uzbekistan is not a functioning democracy" and saying of the boiling to death of two men, "all of us know that this is not an isolated incident." The speech was cleared by the Foreign Office, but not before a dispute over its content. Later, Kofi Annan confronted Uzbekistan president Islam Karimov with Murray's claims.

The result of this principled stand revealing western participation in torture and abuse?

Murray was dismissed from his position as ambassador in 2004, following his first public allegations that the British government relied on torture in Uzbekistan for intelligence.

Headline Win

TPM scored with this gem:

Don't Look Now But We're Mired In A Land War In (Central) Asia

The Vietnam comparison always worked better for Afghanistan than even Iraq. And if it wasn't for Vietnam LBJ would be remembered for the Great Society, Medicare, Civil Rights and the War on Poverty.

There is a debate within the Obama administration over whether to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan at a time when public support for the eight-year-old war is eroding.

McChrystal submitted his report to the Pentagon on Monday.

A CBS News poll released on Tuesday said four in 10 Americans surveyed said they want U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan decreased, a percentage which has been rising since the beginning of 2009.

The poll found that less than half, 48 percent, of those questioned said they approved of Obama's handling of the situation in Afghanistan, down from 56 percent in April.

McChrystal has about 103,000 troops under his command, including 63,000 Americans, half of whom arrived this year as part of an escalation strategy started by former President George W. Bush and ramped up under Obama.

The force is set to rise to 110,000, including 68,000 Americans, by year's end.

NATO to Peter MacKay: We're just not that into you

Up until just a few hours ago it looked to the adoring Canadian right wing press like he still had a shot, but now NATO has invited Peter MacKay to seek other opportunities and chosen Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen to head NATO.

April 4, 2009 at 10:21 AM EDT

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish Prime Minister, was selected the next secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in a surprise reversal of an awkward political deadlock Saturday afternoon.

“We all agree and are unanimous in this nomination,” said Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the current secretary-general.

Hopefully he's used to rejection by now...

Afghanistan's Western backed government legalizes rape

Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, has signed a law which "legalises" rape, women's groups and the United Nations warn. Critics claim the president helped rush the bill through parliament in a bid to appease Islamic fundamentalists ahead of elections in August.
In a massive blow for women's rights, the new Shia Family Law negates the need for sexual consent between married couples, tacitly approves child marriage and restricts a woman's right to leave the home, according to UN papers seen by The Independent.

...

Details of the law emerged after Mr Karzai was endorsed by Afghanistan's Supreme Court to stay in power until elections scheduled in August. Some MPs claimed President Karzai was under pressure from Iran, which maintains a close relationship with Afghanistan's Shias. The most controversial parts of the law deal explicitly with sexual relations. Article 132 requires women to obey their husband's sexual demands and stipulates that a man can expect to have sex with his wife at least "once every four nights" when travelling, unless they are ill. The law also gives men preferential inheritance rights, easier access to divorce, and priority in court.
A report by the United Nations Development Fund for Women, Unifem, warned: "Article 132 legalises the rape of a wife by her husband".

But isn't it great that we got rid of those awful Taliban? Can I get some more lectures from Stephen Harper about how if you oppose our Afghan adventure you are against womens rights? Can't get enough of that stuff.

The Quagmire trap

If it wasn't for Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson would be remembered for the Civil Rights Act, The War on Poverty, Medicare and the Great Society.

Decades from now, will we be saying of Obama, 'If it wasn't for Afghanistan...'?

The situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan has only gotten worse since then. Both countries are suddenly boggled by constitutional crises; both Presidents — Hamid Karzai and Asif Ali Zardari — lead governments teetering on the edge of chaos. And the war is going badly on both sides of the border. The Pakistani Taliban has taken over the Swat Valley, a mere 100 miles (160 km) from Islamabad, and has wreaked havoc with NATO supply lines into Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass; the Afghan Taliban staged a dramatic terrorist attack in downtown Kabul. In his first major decision as Commander in Chief, Obama promised an additional 17,000 troops for Afghanistan, but he still hasn't fully defined the U.S. goal there, even though he repeatedly insisted during the campaign that this war — the war that began as an effort to find Osama bin Laden and dismantle al-Qaeda — was in the national interest and had to be won.

Oliver North involved in a cover up

Hard to believe right?

The first story from the Pentagon was that the airstrike in the mountains of Afghanistan on the night of August 21 had been a complete success and only militants had been killed. The Afghanistan government complained it had actually massacred 80 civilians most of them children. The Military 'investigated' and claimed their initial conclusion was correct: nothing but Taliban.

And then the photos of dozens of dead children started appearing. Now the Pentagon has dispatched a General to investigate their original investigation.

But the story has taken a new turn - it appears the original investigation relied on the corroboration of an embedded journalist when it concluded that the airstrike had, after all, only hit militants. That journalist has now been revealed to have been former Iran/Contra conspirator and FOX correspondent Colonel Oliver North.

Republican criminals never die, they just commit more crimes.

Our wonderful Afghan allies...

The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has pardoned three men who had been found guilty of gang raping a woman in the northern province of Samangan.

The woman, Sara, and her family found out about the pardon only when they saw the rapists back in their village.

“Everyone was shocked,” said Sara’s husband, Dilawar, who like many Afghans uses only one name. “These were men who had been sentenced and found guilty by the Supreme Court, walking around freely.”

Sara’s case highlights concerns about the close relationship between the Afghan president and men accused of war crimes and human rights abuses.

The men were freed discreetly but the rape itself was public and brutal. It took place in September 2005, in the run up to Afghanistan’s first democratic parliamentary elections.

Standing up for Gitmo

Lawrence Martin in the Globe today, continues the ongoing scolding from the establishment press of Stephen Harper's inexplicable defense of the gulag at Guantanamo Bay. Harper is playing to the base here - and it's an unpleasant base as anyone who ever waded into the comment swamp at The Western Standard's Shotgun blog could tell him.

He's got the redneck vote already and playing to them with his robotic intonation of the same transparently ridiculous line about 'serious charges' and how 'There is a legal process in the United States. He can make his arguments in that process' over and over again simply makes him look ever more Borg like.

At this point the deficiencies of the Gulag show trials at Gitmo barely need repeating. A chief prosecutor who said flat out that the process was designed to produce nothing but convictions, the specific judge in Khadr's case pulled off the case because the Bush administration didn't like his rulings, battle reports re-written after the fact to conceal that Khadr wasn't the only fighter alive when the grenade was thrown, statements derived from the torture of a badly injured child and the fact that at this point the Bush administration is only going through the motions with an extra-judicial process unlikely to out last Bush's less than 200 days in office.

Britain and Australia got their citizens repatriated and they weren't 15 year old child soldiers at the time of their capture.

Steve, isn't about time to stop letting George W. Bush use your mouth as a cock warmer?

Taliban Steve

So the Canadian military under the leadership of Prime Minister Stephen Harper is now negotiating directly with the Taliban.

KHENJAKAK, AFGHANISTAN -- Canadian troops are reaching out to the Taliban for the first time, military and diplomatic officials say, as Canada softens its ban on speaking with the insurgents. After years of rejecting any contact with the insurgents, Canadian officials say those involved with the mission are now rethinking the policy in hopes of helping peace efforts led by the Afghan government.

Doubtless the pearl clutching vapors from the Canadian right wing blogosphere will be commencing immediately. Frothing accusations of terrorist appeasement? Denunciations of Harper's clear contempt for women's rights that this new policy demonstrates?

At least a Neville Chamberlain comparison or two?

Any time now right?

You're not supposed to let the puppets see the strings

After two and a half years in power the Conservatives still aren't ready for prime time.

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- A quiet campaign by Canadian diplomats, who have been working to ease the governor of Kandahar out of his job, was thrown into chaos yesterday as Canada's Foreign Minister, Maxime Bernier, shattered months of secrecy and spoke out against the governor in public.
...
Mr. Bernier made the statement at the end of a three-day visit to Afghanistan, during a relaxed meeting with reporters outside Canadian military headquarters in Kandahar. He told the journalists about his talks on Saturday with Mr. Karzai, saying he pushed the President for action against corruption.
"For example, what can Karzai do on corruption?" a reporter asked.
"What can he do? As you know, there is the question of the governor here," Mr. Bernier said.
"There is the question to maybe have a new governor," he added.

Peacenik Defence

If you haven't already, check out Dr Dawg's excellent post from Friday with it's point by point refutation of the standard deceptive right wing tropes about progressives and the peace movement. Antisemitism, common cause with Islamist hatemongers, naivete, feminist abandonment of principals, all the usual bullshit the right tries to tar the left with to avoid actually engaging our positions all get a thorough trouncing.

Already in the bag

When Manley made his 'tough' recommendation that the Afghanistan mission continue if, and only if, another NATO country ponied up a thousand additional soldiers, the government already knew they were getting them.

A senior Liberal MP says, however, that the Americans were prepared to send 1,000 reinforcements to assist the Canadians even before the Manley commission recommended such an arrangement. The Conservative government, with the help
of the Liberals, recently approved a motion to extend the mission in Afghanistan to 2011 on condition that another NATO country send 1,000 troops to assist the Canadians in Kandahar. That was the recommendation of a commission led by former Liberal cabinet minister John Manley which issued its report in January.

Ever get the feeling that you're being subjected to carefully orchestrated manipulation? Have another beer, it will pass.