There’s nothing like working to destabilizing a country under the cover of darkness, and by that I’m referring to the employment of covert means to do so…

“The governments of Saudi Arabia and the United States are working with other states in the Middle East to sponsor covert action against Iran, according to a report in this month’s edition of The Atlantic. The report also suggests that covert attacks may occur against Iran’s oil sector.

David Samuels, in a lengthy article on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s diplomatic initiatives in the Middle East, reports that the US is promoting a campaign against Iran that includes covert action.”

[…]

“Samuels suggests that Iran has already faced a variety of internal attacks as a consequence of this covert program.

“They pointed to an upsurge in antigovernment guerrilla activity inside Iran, including a bomb in Zahedan, the economic center of the province of Baluchistan, that killed 11 soldiers in the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on February 14; the mysterious death of the Iranian scientist Ardashir Hosseinpour, who worked on uranium enrichment at the Isfahan nuclear facility; and the defection of a high-ranking Iranian general named Ali Asgari, a former deputy minister of defense who was also the Revolutionary Guard officer responsible for training and supplying Hezbollah during its war against the Israelis in southern Lebanon in the 1980s,” Samuels notes.”

I suppose the days of buying the world a Coke and teaching it to sing in perfect harmony are, alas, spent.

Today, a United States Marine, Capt. Randy W. Stone, will appear in a military court for his role in failing to report and properly investigate the massacre in Haditha in late 2005. The charges arrayed against him and three other officers include dereliction of duty, one also being charged with violating orders, and another with giving false statements and obstructing the investigation into the massacre. Beyond them, three other Marines are being charged with unpremeditated murder.

As has been the case in other incidents involving US personnel in Iraq, none of them have had to worry about facing an International Criminal Court inquiry. In fact, the United States opted out of the ICC specifically so that its personnel could not be tried for war crimes by an international body. Thus, when it comes to investigating the criminal conduct of US soldiers in Iraq, either the Armed Forces or US civilian courts have been relied upon.

In some instances, such as in the case of the rape and murder of a 14 year old girl in Mahmudiya and the killing of three of her family members, hefty sentences were handed out by civilian courts, though parole eligibility, such as in the case of Paul E. Cortez who was sentenced to 100 years in prison, is available within a decade. All of those tried were, of course, discharged from the Armed Forces prior to legal proceedings.

That said, if the following does not constitute a war crime, especially one that should, for the sake of the victims, be referred to the world’s preeminent international criminal court, then I suppose my understanding of what constitutes a war crime is wildly inaccurate…

“Cortez admitted that the plan to rape the girl was hatched as he and his colleagues played cards. He said the girl was an easy target because there was only one male in her house.

“During the time me and Barker were raping Abeer, I heard five or six gunshots that came from the bedroom…After Barker was done, Green came out of the bedroom and said that he had killed them all, that all of them were dead.”

“Green then placed himself between Abeer’s legs to rape her. When Green was finished, he stood up and shot Abeer in the head two or three times.”

The horrible crime lasted about five minutes, and the girl knew her parents and sister had been shot while she was being raped, the hearing heard.”

Last night, as I do every night, I produced a glass from my cupboard and put it on the counter. I then went to my freezer and grabbed an ice cube tray and cracked it and let spill three or four ice cubes into the glass. I then returned to the freezer, put the ice cube tray back, and grabbed one of the bottles of Vodka that I keep stored in it.

Then I poured myself a drink.

Besides Pinot Noir’s and good beer, and by good beer I am referring to good beer, the only other thing I really drink is straight Vodka. At times I have been known to dabble in Gin, of course, and in the past collected different varieties of it from around the world. There was also a brief period when, after watching the Big Lebowski for the 357th time, I spent a week drinking White Russians, but that came to a rather abrupt end because, in truth, they’re sort of girly.

Those that know me well know that for the better part of nine years I didn’t drink. My reason for quitting was quite simple – either I stopped when I did or right now I’d be sitting at some dive in Coquitlam drinking buck and a quarter pints and making half mast come fuck me eyes at some leather-bound, toothless women in Lululemon knock-offs two sizes too small.

That’s just the truth of it. Matthew Good I can, at times, handle being. Malcolm Lowry, on the other hand, despite the down and out romanticism, not so much.

After nine years of sobriety I started having the odd drink here and there, but it wouldn’t be until after the events of this past fall that it would become routine. Now, by routine I am not suggesting that I drink all day, every day, just that I enjoy a drink at night whilst sitting around or watching a film.

But last night, for some reason - perhaps it was the company and the conversation - the bottle(s) kept coming out of the freezer and the free pouring became more liberal. I’m not rightly sure how much I consumed, but it was enough to for me to enjoy some well deserved time with my head in the toilet in the middle of the night.

My problem with Vodka, and most find this strange, is that I simply can’t abide when it’s mixed with something. There’s something about defusing it that ruins it for me, so the most that I’ll allow for is the ice to melt and cut it with the water subsequently produced, though that usually doesn’t occur in full until at least a few glasses are consumed. For the most part, Vodka doesn’t effect me all that much. It’s one of those drinks that I can keep drinking all night without finding myself in a grass skirt and some women’s bra dancing on a table – not that that’s ever happened. Last night though, it would seems I attempted to go the distance with it and let’s just say that I didn’t make it to the 15th round.

At times I forget how much medication I take on a daily basis, and it’s probably not the smartest thing to actually take your nightly medication with a vodka chaser. Being that one of those medications is Clorazipam, one might consider referring to me as a complete idiot. Thankfully, the good Lord provided mankind with Gravol, which is handy for a lot more than motion sickness (if, that is, you can keep it down. In situations in which you find yourself unable to keep anything down I recommend the suppositories, they’re like revenge on your stomach from the other direction).

The point of this entry? There isn’t one, except – kid’s, don’t drink or do drugs and make sure you’re home by eleven. Beyond that, I have nothing further to add.

When in doubt, build a wall. To keep people out, to keep them in, to keep them separated, to keep them at arms length.

The Israelis built a wall to safeguard themselves against the Palestinians, one that was condemned by the UN, though that shouldn’t particularly matter in their case. We are, after all, talking about a country that has an active nuclear program that the UN is not allowed access to even though the Israelis are adamant that the programs of others be scrutinized. Let’s also not forget that while building that wall they conveniently grabbed a few more acres of Palestinian land here and there, which is what some walls are also meant to do.

Some time ago, as some of you will recall, the Bush administration came up with a brilliant plan to stabilize Baghdad. They called it ‘a surge’, a plan entailing the deployment of more US troops to the embattled city, and one which has been largely unsuccessful in accomplishing its goal. In fact, a suicide bomber was actually able to get into the Greenzone not too long ago and kill members of the Iraqi Parliament. The Greenzone is, of course, the most heavily secured area in Baghdad, if not all Iraq.

The latest idea to help stem sectarian violence in the city is the construction of a 3.5 metre high concrete wall to “enclose Adhamiya district, where tit-for-tat sectarian violence is threatening to spiral out of control.�?

Premier Nuri al-Maliki adamantly opposes the was, showing once again who is actually in control of the country – certainly not the Iraqi government.

“The planned walls are expected to reduce the traffic of armed militants between neighbourhoods. Each wall would have two access points only.

The Adhamiya wall’s construction had already begun on April 10.

According to Britain’s The Guardian, which blew the whistle on the construction last Saturday, US paratroopers from Camp Taji, some 30 kilometres to the north of Baghdad, transported “stacks of huge (6,300-kilogram) concrete barriers” in trucks into the capital.

“Cranes, protected by tanks, winched them into place. Building has continued every night since,” the newspaper report read.

And according to Atta, similar constructions are to follow and are expected to appear in areas like Rasafa and Karakh.

Sunnis are increasingly concentrating to the west of the Tigris in Baghdad, while Shiites flee to the east.�?

One wonders, given the extreme paranoia prevalent in North America, that plans for one hundred story walls up and down the Eastern and Western seaboards aren’t being drafted. Of course, we would have to ensure that the wall stretched the entire distance of the Mexican border as well. That way we can be assured that no one will be able to access the continent without having to cross through highly guarded checkpoints where snarling dogs and camouflage clad soldiers with assault rifles can inspect those desiring admittance. We can build massive man-made islands just off the coast to house gigantic airports where flights from abroad would be forced to land, their passengers made to take ferries or high speed trains to entrance points where we could assure that we were admitting the right sort of people. In addition, we could, in a combined effort, house massive anti-aircraft missiles at points along the barrier to shoot down anything that strayed too close to it, be it a jumbo jet or a flock of Canadian geese.

It seems to me that if we’re to protect ourselves, the proper course of action would be to create such a ridiculous monstrosity to better exemplify our ever increasing disdain for those we have come to distrust. That way they’d get the message.

The only problem is that every car and truck on the continent would have to be powered by electricity, because without our militaries actively involved in the most oil rich region of the world, we’d find ourselves in a bit of a jam with regards to ensuring the survival of that most sacred of inventions – the drive-thu.

Updated

Juan Cole comments on the Baghdad wall.

Updated: Robert Fisk’s - A dictator created then destroyed by America is brilliant.

Updated: According to a variety of news sources, the execution of former US ally, Suddam Hussein, has occurred.

To say that the hanging of Saddam Hussein will be a positive for the Bush administration is only a given in so much that it will reaffirm the amnesia prevalent in American society. That another former US proxy gone awry and labeled an enemy of freedom will have succumbed to the irreproachable might of American show justice. Whether it be the engineered removal of a former CIA asset like Manuel Noriega or the use of Hussein’s genocidal crimes to, in part, justify the 2003 invasion (despite the fact that the Reagan administration continued to support him even after he committed the worst of his crimes), the death of Saddam Hussein will most likely be publically forgotten just as quickly and quietly as the hunt for Osama Bin Landen has been.

With regards to Hussein’s execution, here are the statements released by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

Today, in Iraq, 75 Iraqis were killed and 145 more were wounded. Such numbers are typical and entirely dismissible to most. They are, in truth, simply numbers, not people to the majority that sit an ocean away and watch the catastrophe in Iraq worsen.

Obviously I could post such numbers every day because every day this month has been basically the same, if not worse. But what is especially significant is that recent US losses have pushed the US death toll to 2,978 – five more than were lost in the attacks of September 11th, including the those who perished in Pennsylvania and Washington.

Too late to be of any real consideration, we already know that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, nor did it aid those that did. So today, In Iraq, 75 Iraqis and six US soldiers died in a military and sectarian disaster based on the lies of men and women that, at this very moment, are safely enjoying themselves with family and friends somewhere far removed from harms way.

Saddam Hussein, despot and long-time US ally, whom many still cling to as the primary afterthought for the invasion, will hang by the neck until dead, his appeal today having been rejected.

In truth, that’s all Mr. Bush has to show for this farce. The hanging of a man that was once a regional ally of the United States, even after he committed his worst crimes. Progress, democratic reform, for the good of the Iraqi people – all of them echoes on teleprompters.

I need a Caucasian.

An excerpt from the December 24th, 2005, edition of The Independent…

“German troops in Flanders, accessible from home by land, received, along with their wooden gift boxes decorated with a wreath and a Flammenschwert - a flaming sword - tabletop-size Christmas trees with candles conveniently clamped to the branches. The law of unintended consequences activated itself. On Christmas Eve, as darkness came early, the Germans - at some hazard - placed trees atop trench parapets and lit the candles. Then they began singing carols, and though their language was unfamiliar to their enemies, the tunes were not. After a few trees were shot at, the British became more curious than belligerent, and crawled forward to watch and to listen. And soon they began to sing.

By Christmas morning, no man’s land between the trenches was filled with fraternising soldiers, sharing rations, trading gifts, singing, and - more solemnly - burying the dead between the lines. (Earlier, the bodies had been too dangerous to retrieve.) The roughly cleared space suggested to the more imaginative among them a football pitch. Kickabouts began, mostly with balls improvised from stuffed caps and other gear, the players oblivious of their greatcoats and boots. The official war diary of the 133rd Saxon Regiment says “Tommy and Fritz” used a real ball, furnished by a provident Scot. “This developed into a regulation football match with caps casually laid out as goals. The frozen ground was no great matter. Das Spiel endete 3:2 fur Fritz.” Other accounts, mostly German, give other scores, and British letters and memories fill in more details.

The high brass on both sides quickly determined that they could not let the situation develop. In the national interest, the war had to go on. Peace has always been more difficult to make than war, but it was materialising. Under threat of court martial, troops on both sides were ordered to separate and restart hostilities. Reluctantly, they drifted apart. General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien’s order to II Corps from his cushy rear-area headquarters read: “On no account is intercourse to be allowed between opposing troops. To finish this war quickly we must keep up the fighting spirit.”

But some units were too contaminated by Christmas to be reliable, and it took a few days to bring in replacements. Both commands ordered rolling artillery barrages to disrupt the stillness and to motivate responses.”

It was in the spare bedroom. “How do you want me?�? she asked, flat, taciturn, vacant. We fumbled and then froze in an awkward rhythm, ruined statues, wasting heartbeats humming like amps plugged into bad power, the familiar smell of wet pennies, incredulity.

Sagacious; from the light we inched away, stones worn smooth padding riverbeds. Right after, and for a time, gaping air, silence like lions starved and whipped to hate.

I waited in the front room for the postman, and daily there was naught. And then, as if I had never been, even the postman stopped.

That sunrise at the end of the world was blinding, the doors swung wide, pierced through two bodies. One exhausted, one running away.

How do you do it? That’s the question. Micah Zenko recently exclaimed ‘Let’s Get Everybody’s Troops Out of Everywhere’. I couldn’t agree more. Of course the hue and cry that follows such simple logic is replete with the usual interjections – who will intervene on the side of those that are being unjustly treated? Who will stop genocides and tyrants? I suppose that depends on which ones are advantageous enough to bother with.

This being the season of giving, I have some suggestions.

The over complication of global matters is precisely what maintains the status quo. The status quo, for the most part, focuses on a tried and true mechanism to which most of the planet has set their watches and is rather straight forward. The exploitation of weaker economies, which the proponents of globalization have attempted to convince the world is, in fact, in the best interest of those being exploited, is parceled with the acquisition of privatization rights in many developing and third world countries in exchange for the inclusion of arms transactions or similar forms of support, the end product of which is rarely scrutinized if those being sold or given arms or aid in exchange for privatization considerations happen to either coincide with the foreign policy agendas of those supplying the arms or aid*, be it directly or through proxies, or are simply involved in internal struggles, the outcomes of which are of little consequence. Obviously, where pro-free market governments exist (i.e., burgeoning or established plutocratic infrastructures), it’s all the better for those looking to exploit them, so what does it matter who runs the country as long as they’ll play ball? There’s always ways of supporting those that might otherwise be deemed questionable, just so long as they’re willing to facilitate the needs of those looking to exploit their countries in return for helping them retain power.

Take away the guns - end occupations. Shut down Raytheon, shut down Indian Head, shut down every factory that produces everything from Kalashnikovs to landmines and occupations will end. Remove the tools used to maintain the status quo, and the status quo will inevitably be replaced by a new reality.

Human nature, some profess, is intrinsically linked with greed, the desire to make war, to control others, to dominate. And if that is the case then by way of mankind’s most devastating achievement perhaps we should hand things over to the cockroaches in one giant fireworks show. Because if those limitations must be adhered to with regards to our actions, then what is the point of defending any ideology or principle? What even is the point of claiming one more just or spotless than another?

If religious fanaticism can kill without regard, so too can the legions of democracy – examples of both have been given us long before now, from the Crusades to the conquests of the Rome.

A fraction of this planet preys daily on the majority of it, a fact that most of us simply refuse to believe because it infers that we might be in the wrong and that we are the ones that will ultimately have to make the hard choices regarding new perspectives.

How do you do it?

You raise your children to tell the difference between the individual and the mechanism. Because unlike the mechanism, the individual inevitable seeks redemption. Tell them that though evil exists in this world, it is found in all of us to some degree, and therefore all of us ultimately must struggle to free ourselves from its occupation. And that, in the end, is where our wars ought to be fought.

* A fantastic example of this was the debt dissolution in 2005 by the G8 of some $44 billion dollars for 18 of the world’s poorest nations. In the agreement were privatization stipulations guaranteeing that they would ultimately make more than they forgave, despite the fact that the package was championed as a massive success, leading to global music concerts and awareness campaigns that used the precedent as a sign that progress could be made without ever identifying the realities behind it.

Dale Mugford, who’s been known to creep around here from time to time (by the way, I hope your recovery is going well Dale), once wrote - “When the largest industry in the world is no longer War, I will accept Darwin’s theory of Evolution.”.

War, Cherubs, is the #1 clambake on the planet – even more so than Bill O’Reilly’s latest book. More time, money, and effort is invested in developing, selling, and implementing tools of destruction than any other enterprise on earth – including condom sales, which, by all accounts, should be through the roof. Because let’s face facts – sex is a far better enterprise than war.

Killing people is a goldmine. Finding new and fascinating ways of ripping the human body apart, slowly burning flesh away from bone, exposing it to such high heat that it basically disintegrates, corrupting and neutralizing the central nervous system – all of it is bank. Then there’s the hardware needed to make sure that it all goes off without a hitch. The vehicles, the helicopters, the aircraft carriers, stealth bombers, submarines, and the logisitical support provided by all of those patriotic contractors.

That, my friends, is progress. Not capitalizing on illnesses in the name of profit – though Big Pharma does pretty well and has some fantastic tricks of their own – but real progress, like taking something as devastating to the human body as a large bullet and adding to it the ability to burn your insides as if washed in an acid bath once it punches a hole in you the size of a golf ball.

Progress is being able to sucker kids into loving death by playing video games in which they can launch devastating ordinance from miles away and watch them decimate pixilated buildings and people. It’s those same kids that end up sitting on ships in the Persian Gulf with their finger hovering over a button doing it for real. Progress is found in the fact that having palyed the video game before hand, they can envision how ‘cool’ it’ll look when that ‘baby’ blows to shit whatever it is that it’s being launched at.

Progress is being able to say that you have a formidable and highly advanced military capability and aren’t afraid to use it, no matter what the cost to your principles, because the truth is that your principles are based on having a formidable and highly advanced military capability.

Nations such as the US and Russia, China and Great Britain, have impressive military capabilities. All of them are also nuclear powers, the first two being the world’s preeminent nuclear powers. So is it just me, or does anyone else find it somewhat telling that a group of fanatics can hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings and they’re called lunatics, while the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council are responsible for almost 90% of the world’s conventional arms exports, arms that find their way into the hands of children in Africa pressed into military service, and even the hands of the very ‘enemy’ that the ‘civilized’ world is supposedly now fighting, and they’re championed as being just?

Comedian David Cross probably put it best - “You cannot win a War on Terrorism. It’s like having a war on jealousy.”

In the name of dethroning tyranny, a country was invaded and occupied. And now the justification for not abandoning the folly that ensued is that too much damage has been done and too many people have died.

That’s progress.

Oh: You can bet your bottom dollar that this is going to be like Christmas, Halloween, my birthday, your birthday, all rolled into one.

Oh Dear: According to British Intelligence, London will, for cetrain, be attacked this holiday season. In light of this, they are rounding up those they feel might be a threat. And after they’ve detained all of those people, being that they’ve assured everyone there is going to be attack, they’ll probably have to shoot an innocent Brazillian multiple times and then claim they thought that he was trying to carry it out.

Oh My: The Saudis have chosen a new ambassador to the United States. His name is Adel al-Jubeir. You might recall his work from just after 9/11. He was the PR man “charged with disassociating the royal family from al Qaeda in the wake of the 9/11 attacks”.

Oh No: If you can believe it, someone was actually trapped for days under fallen trees in Stanley Park.

Oh Snap! Thankfully there’s an ‘e’ at the end of his last name, because this moron deserves to be trapped under fallen trees for days.