Getting involved in the internal politics of another country in an attempt to elicit ‘favourable outcomes’ has led to more problems than solutions. Iranian history provides one of the most damning examples of foreign collusion to secure what was, at the time, considered a ‘favourable outcome’ – the removal of Mohammad Mossadegh, the last truly democratically elected leader of Iran, in a joint British-American operation known as Operation Ajax.

When Mossadegh came to power the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company controlled most of the country’s oil and was, at the time, the UK’s largest foreign asset. In a move to regain control of Iranian resources and improve the lives of the Iranian people, Mossadegh did the unthinkable – he nationalized Iranian oil, triggering the Abadan Crisis. The British fought back, promoting a global boycott of Iranian oil that plunged Iran into financial crisis while attempting to convince the Truman Administration that orchestrating a coup was in the best interest of both nations. While Truman refused, his decision did not stop the British from reintroducing the idea to the Eisenhower Administration, which was the first to allow the Central Intelligence Agency to undertake a covert operation against a foreign government. In the end, Operation Ajax succeeded in destroying Iranian democracy, placing Mohammed Reza Pahlevi on the thrown for almost three decades. Had Britain and the United States not interfered, the Middle East as we know it today would most assuredly be a very different place.

Cause and effect. The revolution may have deposed the Shah in 1979, but Iran has still languished in an undemocratic state for 56 years. Imagine how that must make young Iranians feel knowing that there was a time, decades before they were born, that foreign countries robbed them of that possibility, a robbery that led to the rise of what is, for all intents and purposes, a hard line theocracy, one in which public dissent is now being labeled treason.

The rhetoric being employed by Iranian clerics in the aftermath of the mass protests that followed what was most likely electoral fraud on a grand scale is proof positive that the government of Iran has little interest in entertaining the possibility of change, however slight. When any government sets up an informant hotline you can rest assured that the subversion of liberty is well in hand.

While condemning the Iranian regime is easy, and entirely justified given present circumstances, it is vital that we never forget how Iran arrived at this juncture. That there was a time, decades ago, that it was the best hope for a modern democratic force to take root in the region, and that those that now claim the safeguarding of democracy the most crucial of undertakings were the ones responsible for its undoing.

Yesterday was Canada Day. My entry yesterday included an upside down Canadian flag, which in universal military terms denotes distress. Given the content of the entry I was very much right to post that image, but that hasn’t stopped a slew of people from complaining about it.

What is a flag? It’s a symbol, not a principle. In this country I have every right to burn the flag or to use it to pick up dog shit in my backyard. If the flag represents anything, it represents my right to do so. Because if it doesn’t, then it cannot be claimed that it’s a symbol of this country’s principles and the freedoms protected by the Charter.

It’s just a flag. The fact that anyone would be more upset by that image than the appalling reality of child poverty in this country is nauseating to me. Because what is the use of a flag when 1.4 million kids out of a population of 33 million people in one of the world’s richest nations live in poverty?

They can’t eat the damn thing – but please don’t let that stop you from spewing pathetic patriotic vitriol.

I’m not just some asshole sitting in a comfortable house going on about this issue because it tickles my fancy. I’ve been there. I’ve lived in an old, tiny townhouse with three boarders – sleeping in an unfinished concrete basement with complete strangers – so that financial destitution could be thinly avoided. I’ve stood in line in the rain to collect welfare when jobs were scarce. I’ve counted change to afford Mr. Noodles and enough broccoli to convince myself that I was eating something substantial, and I worked my ass off, almost to the point of losing myself in the process, to get where I am. Poverty isn’t some undiscovered country that I’m unfamiliar with, and its social ramifications are a hell of a lot more important than a fucking flag.

We’ve had our flag since 1965, which means that we had a different one for 54 years longer than we’ve had this one. If I flew that one upside down, chances are that most Canadians wouldn’t even realize what it was, even though it was the flag under which we fought during the two largest wars that this nation has ever been involved in. Of course, we fought those wars to protect some rather basic principles, one of which being that we live in the kind of country that doesn’t allow millions of kids to live in poverty.

Then again, I could just be some ‘crazy idealist’.

George Washington University’s National Security Archive recently made available documents regarding the FBI’s interviews with Saddam Hussein after his capture in 2004. One of the most crucial admissions during those interviews had to do with his regime’s calculated projection that it had WMD’s to ensure that the Iranians did not view Iraq to be as weak as it actually was. Even more, that Hussein openly admitted that because of the threat he perceived Iran to be, he was prepared to seek a “security agreement with the United States to protect it from threats in the region”.

“The threat from Iran was the major factor as to why he did not allow the return of UN inspectors,” Piro wrote. “Hussein stated he was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions of the United States for his refusal to allow UN inspectors back into Iraq.”

Forget that in those same interviews Hussein called Bin Laden a zealot and said that he had absolutely no dealings with al-Qaeda. What the interviews show is that Saddam Hussein considered Iran to be a greater threat to the security of his regime than the United States. And while that might sound bizarre to some, eight years of ghastly precedent were on Hussein’s side.

Equally intriguing is the fact that in those documents there is no discussion regarding the significant US assistance given Iraq by the Reagan Administration in the 80’s. Of course, that topic could very well have come up, but for reasons that I’m sure fall under some warped ‘national security’ caveat, such discussions were probably not documented, at least not by the FBI – if they were even allowed to broach the subject.

Some may very well point to this information and claim that the Bush Administration’s concerns regarding WMD’s were justified given that Hussein’s regime attempted to subvert the work of UN inspectors to bolster the perception that it had something to hide. That said, the CIA conducted an operation prior to the invasion in which it sent Iraqi ex-pats with connections to family that were members of the scientific establishment back to the country to determine the state of the country’s WMD programs, all of which returned and reported exactly what Hussein was afraid would be discovered – that Iraq’s capabilities were a façade. The intelligence gathered during that operation by the CIA was never presented to the President and never included in any official intelligence report.

I’ve seen a lot of this country. I’ve been across it by land, coast to coast, more times that I can remember. I’ve seen its good sides, its bad sides, and everything in between. But today is Canada Day, which means that we celebrate this nation’s birthday without pondering its faults. It’s a day of parties and events, flags and fireworks.

That said, I’m going to focus on something that all Canadians should be aware of, if only because it has to do with their fellow Canadians. And what better day to do it than on Canada Day? Now, I’m sure that some might deem the mention of the following subject inappropriate on such an occasion – but such narrow-mindedness is precisely why I’ve chosen to write about it.

In 1989, Parliament unanimously resolved to end child poverty in this country by the year 2000. Despite that resolution, Canada’s child poverty rate is almost exactly what it was twenty years ago when the pledge was made. Even though this nation is one of the richest in the world, some 1.4 million Canadian children live in poverty. Put into context, Canada’s population is 33.6 million, and we’re just talking about impoverished children, not overall poverty levels.

British Columbia leads the way with the auspicious distinction of having the highest child poverty rate in the country, an ‘honour’ that it has held for years. While the number dropped compared to the national average several years ago, it’s important to remember that that was during an economic boom in BC, and even that didn’t alter the fact that more children in British Columbia still lived in poverty compared to anywhere else in the country. Given the economic downturn, things are only bound to get worse.

I suppose it’s an easy thing to ignore when you look at Third World countries in which people live on less than $2 dollars a day. Unfortunately, that sort of thinking only excuses the problem. The fact remains, given this nation’s wealth, the number of children living in poverty is utterly inexcusable. It represents a significant national shame, and a problem that should receive far more attention than it does.

Did I miss something? Have I lived the last thirty-eight years in the dark? Were my parents on speed? Were their parents? Moreover, was my generation on speed? I recall there being speed, and that people did it from time to time, but I don’t recall it ever being consumed in epic proportions.

I mention this because I just went to the store to buy a bottle of ice tea. You know, just a lovely bottle of lemon infused ice tea to enjoy. But do you think there was a single bottle of it available? Not a chance. Making ice tea available would mean that there wouldn’t be enough room for the 3,487,942 different brands of energy drinks that, I assume, people drink in such staggering quantities that demand is so high as to render ice tea a thing of the past.

Where, exactly, did all of these energy drinks come from? Why do we need them? What exactly do they do? If I wanted to run around like a two-year-old hopped up on sugar, I’d take speed. Less refreshing I suppose, but at least it does the job for an extended period of time. I mean, why bother drinking MONSTER BRAND ENERGY ROCKSTAR PLUS or MEGA-ULTRA LIQUID LIGHTNING ENERGY DRINK when you can just take speed? Hell, take speed and then drink some water. Better results, less hassle.

I realize that some people like to mix energy drinks with alcohol, which, if you think about it, is like hitting yourself in the head with a hammer just so you can use your new first-aid kit. Why not skip it and just take speed? It’ll get you high, it lasts longer, the hangover isn’t as bad, it costs less, and it’s easy to carry. No need for a cooler or fridge for your vodka and your energy drinks – just a pill or two in your pocket.

That said, where is it that everyone’s going in such a hurry anyway?

Six years ago, the United States, along with smaller military contingents from a handful of other nations, invaded Iraq. The invasion was justified through the employment of numerous falsehoods – including the possession of weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaeda, the latter being a myth that survives to this day.

In truth, the invasion of Iraq was a foregone conclusion, an undertaking that became the central focus of a cabal within the Bush Administration in the days immediately following 9/11. It was not something born out of fears regarding real threats posed to the national security of the United States. It was an undertaking that was elaborately orchestrated at every turn to justify what those newly in power had been seeking prior to assuming positions within government in 2000. 9/11 provided context, the rest was pure propaganda.

There was no 11th hour with regards to Iraq, President Bush’s ultimatum being nothing more than a televised charade. While the United States wouldn’t officially invade the country until March of 2003, and while it was still going through the motions at the UN, paramilitary teams from the CIA’s Special Activities Division were already on the ground in Iraq in July of 2002 working with the Kurdish Peshmerga. In February of 2003, SAD operatives and members of the 10th Special Forces Group fought with the Peshmerga against members of the Ansar Al Islam, pushing them out of their positions around the village of Biyara. While defeated, surviving members of the Ansar Al Islam would later reform and become the Ansar al-Sunnah, a militant Salafi group that would go on fight US and coalition troops in northern and central Iraq.

Iraqi military resistance collapsed within three weeks of US operations. Baghdad fell, President Bush landed hypocritically on the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared the war won, and much of America pumped its collective fist in celebration of their military dominance. Of course, the reality was that while US forces sat idly in the capital without clear orders, much of Baghdad was sacked. And then, because Donald Rumsfeld and his cronies completely failed to seriously address post-invasion possibilities prior to it, a series of confused decisions were made that would have devastating consequences – the foremost of which helped inspire and motivate what would become the insurgency.

To this day, why the Iraqi army was disbanded remains an utter mystery. But one thing is for certain, many within its disenfranchised ranks, angry at losing their jobs, melted into the country side – taking their weapons with them – and began organizing or joining resistance groups. And then there was the country’s Shia majority, which, despite completely unfounded and uneducated assumptions, responded to the occupation negatively. In the north, Iraqi Kurds, long the victims of Baghdad’s scorn, flirted with the possibility of autonomy. Under the skirts of these three ethnic groups, with tensions growing between them in the post-invasion environment, came groups of foreign fighters, the majority of them from neighbouring Saudi Arabia and Syria, drawn to the conflict as their predecessors had been drawn to the Afghan conflict more than a decade before.

Within nine months of President Bush’s declaration of victory, Iraq was transformed into a highly complex asymmetric nightmare in which numerous conflicts were being fought simultaneously – a civil war within a war against occupation framed by operations by foreign jihadists looking to exploit both.

It was the perfect mess, one that would forever alter the lives of the Iraqi people, ultimately displacing more than 4 million of them both within and without the country out of a population of approximately 26.7 million. The resulting humanitarian crisis, which is little discussed, was significant, the true scope of civilian casualties remaining shrouded in mystery, with many unable to even consider the possibility that the death toll is criminally substantial.

US forces have operated with impunity in Iraq, their actions protected from the same laws that led Saddam Hussein to the gallows. Even foreign contractors enjoyed immunity, leading to a variety of criminal incidents that Iraqi authorities were unable to address under their own laws. And yet the rule of law has been touted as one of the invasion’s many gifts.

There is a reason why the majority of Iraqis want occupational forces to leave their country. It’s the same reason why thousands of them celebrated today in Zawra Park to commemorate what is being called “National Sovereignty Day”. It’s June 30th, which means that the Status of Forces Agreement has taken effect. Of course, SOFA isn’t without its problems, and the referendum that is to take place at the end of next month will be key, but for the time being, and despite a wave of violence perpetrated by those looking to exploit the situation that has rocked the country over the last two weeks, Iraqis can at least have this briefest of moments to believe that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

What is important to remember is that the United States has not provided them that light. If you believe that they have, ask an average Iraqi if the price they’ve paid has been worth it. Because, in the end, it comes down to that, not American perceptions of victory or defeat.

“Drinking three or more cups of tea a day is as good for you as drinking plenty of water and may even have extra health benefits, say researchers.

More…

See-ya Bernie.

Pete he has a new record out – Back And Fourth, which you can check out on iTunes or at his official website. I got it a while back and it’s absolutely amazing.

The Vancouver National Anthem Preview has ended.