Congress initially vetoed the idea. The Senate reformed the package and then the House of Representatives reversed course and okayed it. $700 billion dollars of emergency funding to help bolster the American economic landscape.

Make no mistake, there are a lot of Americans that were angered that the bailout package was passed, which makes one wonder why those same people aren’t up in arms over the fact that this month the Defense Budget for the next fiscal year will most assuredly be rubber stamped to the tune of an estimated $711 billion dollars. And remember, that’s not a one time occurrence, it happens every year, and over the last seven years the total has increased.

Here, for example, is a graph by The Center For Arms Control And Non-Proliferation which puts this year’s spending into perspective…

Here is a chart based on statistics provided by The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute that outlines global defense spending in 2006…

The Defense Budget is paid for by taxpayers. In it, of course, is the Black Budget, which is money allocated to those sectors of the US military and intelligence communities that is not publicly disclosed. This process, which has been routine since the inception of the Department of Defense, is, in truth, in contravention of the 9th Section of the 1st Article of the Constitution. So forget a one time economic bailout of $700 billion dollars – the allocation of a portion of every Defense Budget isn’t even disclosed to the People’s Representatives, and therefore the very people that pay for it. And while some might argue that, for the sake of national security, that’s something that must be allowed to occur, the truth of the matter is that it has placed the Department of Defense, and by way of it numerous intelligence agencies, beyond the very Constitutional language that actually makes the United States a democracy – the disclosure of spending to the People’s Representatives.

Now, if you want to get angry about something…

I’ve been busy with rehearsals and exhausted afterwards, so haven’t been able to update the site at all. In fact, I haven’t even checked my email since Friday. Anyway, a few things…

Welcome to the new Canada. Today, in Halifax, the Prime Minister announced the Canada First Defense Policy, which is a major shift in Canadian military spending and commitment to global military affairs. It is, without question, extremely alarming.

Listening to the Prime Minister talk this morning I was deeply troubled at his alignment of economic growth with the bolstering of the defense industry – that it will benefit all Canadians, providing jobs. Of course, we wouldn’t dare nationalize the oil sector, but the government can promote the growth of the defense industry by spreading military contracts throughout the country. The Prime Minister also stated that export possibilities would also be providing economic opportunities – meaning that we’re going to start cashing in on arming others to help bolster our economy through the development of the defense sector.

When I have time to sit down with a draft of the policy I will comment further and in more detail.

Also of note this morning is the devastating earthquake that has struck China’s Sichuan province. An estimated 8,500 people are dead, though that number will most likely increase.

I’ll do my best to return to updating the site on a more routine basis in the days ahead.

A reader, Kevin Mejlholm, recommended the following lecture (*See update below) by David Ray Griffin regarding 9/11. I am posting this not to promote the ideas presented by Griffin, but rather to simply present information that I think should be presented. Therefore, if you want to spend the time watching this lecture, which is one hour and thirty-eight minutes in length, I would be interested to hear your views in the comments as an exercise in open public debate.

The video is too large to post directly on this page, meaning that its frame width is large, so please visit the YouTube page directly.

In the past I have not truly delved into my own personal beliefs regarding the events of September 11th as they relate to the need for such a catastrophic event to occur to support the birth of an American hegemonic era. The roots of the Bush Doctrine, when objectively examined, provide insight into a much deeper American global agenda. That, in itself, could be taken as a ridiculous notion, but the reality remains that a post Cold War preemptive and unilateralist foreign policy platform was first outlined in 1992 by then members of the United States government, individuals that would, during the Clinton era, cultivate and refine their beliefs. After 9/11, some of the same individuals involved in the initial creation and subsequent refinement of that policy were, and are, members of government, among them Paul Wolfowitz, who, at the time, held the position of Deputy Secretary Of Defense. It was Wolfowitz’s Defense Planning Guidance, written at the instruction of then Secretary Of Defense Dick Cheney that initially outlined the initiatives required to exploit US global military and economic dominance in the post Cold War world.

By saying this I am not going to take the position that 9/11 was orchestrated, but I do firmly believe that it was used as a catalyst with which to indoctrinate the Western public and therefore allow for the implementation of a hegemonic reality that, since 9/11, has been proven by US operations and initiatives abroad.

I was going to mention this yesterday, as Paul Craig Roberts made mention of it in an article, but didn’t get around to it. Abid Aslam’s IPS piece deals specifically with the issue, so I’ll reference it instead…

“Members of Congress invested nearly 196 million dollars of their own money in companies that receive hundreds of millions of dollars a day from Pentagon contracts to provide goods and services to U.S. armed forces, say nonpartisan watchdog groups.

David Petraeus, the top U.S. general in Iraq, is to brief the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees on Tuesday and Wednesday. The latest findings are unlikely to have a significant impact on this week’s proceedings but could stoke anti-incumbent sentiment in this year of presidential and legislative elections.

Lawmakers charged with overseeing Pentagon contractors hold stock in those very firms, as do vocal critics of the war in Iraq, says the Centre for Responsive Politics (CRP).

Senator John Kerry, the Democrat from Massachusetts who staked his 2004 presidential bid in part on his opposition to the war, tops the list of investors. His holdings in firms with Pentagon contracts of at least five million dollars stood at between 28.9 million dollars and 38.2 million dollars as of Dec. 31, 2006. Kerry sits on the Senate foreign relations panel.

Members of Congress are required to report their personal finances every year but only need to state their assets in broad ranges.

Other top investors include Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen, a New Jersey Republican with holdings of 12.1 million - 49.1 million dollars; Rep. Robin Hayes, a North Carolina Republican (9.2 million - 37.1 million dollars); Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin (5.2 million - 7.6 million dollars); and Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat (2.7 million - 6.3 million dollars).

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the Democrat and former governor of West Virginia who chairs the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, invested some 2.0 million dollars in Pentagon contractors, CRP says.

Other panel chiefs who invested in defence firms include Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the Connecticut Independent who presides over the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Rep. Howard Berman, the California Democrat who heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

In all, 151 current members of Congress — more than one-fourth of the total — have invested between 78.7 million dollars and 195.5 million dollars in companies that received defence contracts of at least 5.0 million dollars, according to CRP.

These companies received more than 275.6 billion dollars from the government in 2006, or 755 million dollars per day, says budget watchdog group OMB Watch.

The investments yielded lawmakers 15.8 million - 62 million dollars in dividend income, capital gains, royalties, and interest from 2004 through 2006, says CRP.”

Removed from a situation, so much so that it has become an informational inconvenience, not to mention social taboo with regards to conversation, how do societies at war deal with the realities of war given the distance from which they are viewed?

With regards to fighting abroad, this reality provides those promoting conflicts abroad with the ability to use disingenuous justifications and rhetoric to not merely defend their purpose, but to casually address the failures produced by them. Besides those fighting in Iraq, what experience does the average American have with regards to what has, and is, transpiring there? How many Americans realize that the same problems that have plagued many parts of the country, such as intermittent power and other major deficiencies in Iraq’s civic infrastructure, have not been seriously address five years after the invasion of the country? How many Americans realize that their soldiers, and those private contractors in the employ of The State Department, are immune from prosecution for war crimes by the very government that the current administration has promoted as a democratic body steeped in the rule of law? Not even the International Criminal Court has any power over the prosecution of war crimes committed by US personnel.

Given that, and the remove at which we view the war, how entirely out of touch are we with regards to the temperament of Iraqis when it comes to such realities? That in their own country, members of an occupying force cannot be tried for crimes by Iraqi courts, nor tried by an internationally recognized body? Iraqi courts were sufficient enough to try Saddam Hussein and other members of his regime, but they are deemed insufficient to try US Marines guilty of raping and killing a teenaged girl, as well as members of her family. Likewise, Iraqi courts have no jurisdiction over private contractors, and cannot prosecute them for crimes committed against civilians either.

One fact that must never be overlooked, no matter how unpopular or tired this subject might be, is that Iraq is an occupied nation. It is home to well in excess of 100,000 foreign troops and countless private contractors. This reality does not reinforce the deliverance of stability whatsoever, but merely the presence of a military force that remains to ensure the survival of a government hastily put into place to ensure that American domestic perceptions of the operation as a whole were justified.

During the last five years, the occupation has led to the emergence of Jihadi groups in Iraq that were not present prior to the invasion, not to mention using methods of literal separation in an attempt to quell sectarian violence through the use of concrete walls surrounding neighbourhoods in locations such as Baghdad. Such methods helped curb violence for a time, something that, again, was used domestically to promote the success of ‘the Surge’, despite the fact that it did nothing to actually address the root of the problem itself. To claim that with the creation of a more stable security situation that such root problems can be address is a fallacy being that were those walls not to exist, the very same level of violence would no doubt resume.

The words of Donald Rumsfeld should, in truth, haunt Americans for decades to come. That pre-war planning was more than adequate and that all measures were taken during it to prepare for a variety of outcomes. Rumsfeld represented a community belief within the administration that the invasion would be both cost effective and that the occupation to follow would be short lived. This perception was sold to the American public, with continual excuses being provided in the aftermath of the invasion to justify why the Pentagon’s initial preparations were not adequate. This leads back to the remove at which we experience the war and the flexibility that that provides those that initiated it to continually excuse their complicity in what has since become a disastrous venture.

The removal of Saddam Hussein can no longer be provided as a justification for the invasion. While his regime was brutal, it was no more so than many others that, to this day, remain in power and continue to be the cause of various regional instabilities. Claims regarding his desire to amass weapons of mass destruction were blatantly false, with only the remnants of chemical weapon caches from the Iran-Iraq having ever been found. Given that, it should not be overlooked who supported him during that period, providing detailed satellite coverage of Iranian troop movements so that the use of chemical weapons would be devastatingly accurate – the CIA. Likewise, the use of the example of Halabja is not relevant with regards to US military justifications, as after the gassing of the Kurds in Halabja, the Reagan White House issued the weakest of statements, vetoed a Congressional bill that would have immediately stopped military support to Hussein’s regime, and then continued to fund it.

Following the Gulf War, the sanctions implemented against Iraq would take a devastating toll on the Iraqi population, killing in excess of 1 million people. At the time, the United Nations was deemed a viable vehicle with which to impede Hussein. But when it refused to support the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush Administration declared it to be as ineffectual as The League Of Nations, and unilaterally proceeded with military operations. Mere weeks later, President Bush declared combat operations at an end. Five years, and 4,000 US deaths later, his declaration has not only been proven false, but exposed the reality that an altogether arrogant and undereducated cabal within the administration planned a major military action that completely failed to take into account any of Iraq’s social realities.

No matter your view of the war, that is one aspect of it that cannot be argued away. That pre-war planning was, in effect, almost non-existent, that it completely failed to take into account a myriad of cultural and historical factors, not to mention the military requirements that were necessary to realistically implement the operation itself. It was, in essence, no different than the belief that a bridge made of steel and concrete could be held together with scotch tape.

By now it has become more than evident that the trauma caused by 9/11 was used by a group of individuals to enact one of the most devastating foreign policy doctrines in US history and that Iraq provided the perfect context with which to enact it with regards to the Middle East. Given that claims that Hussein’s regime had ties to al-Qaeda, or was involved in the attacks of September 11th have, since day one, been entirely false, the hegemonic realities of the invasion and occupation are abundantly clear. And yet, given our otherworldly distance from the realities of the conflict, we remain apathetically comfortable with not seriously confronting that fact.

Over the last five years, 4,000 American families have paid the price for the abuse of their trust. Driving around New York City it is not uncommon to see stickers on the backs of vehicles that read never forget with an image of the twin towers in the background. The irony, of course, is that 4,000 Americans, and countless innocent Iraqis, have died since 2003 because of a handful of politicians and pundits that, without hesitation, took advantage of the corruption of patriotism. Thus, if there is anything that the people of this nation should never forget, it is that.

A suicide bombing has killed a women and wounded nine others in the Israeli town of Dimona. Nothing can justify such an action, not even what has befallen Palestinians in Gaza because of the recent blockade, though I am sure that was the impetus. While some might think it justifiable, I’ll not condone such actions; just I do not condone the Israeli blockade and the miserable sufferings that it has caused, which is something considering conditions in Gaza prior to its institution. It should also be pointed out that the attack was not the work of Hamas, but rather that of Fatah’s military wing.

President Bush has unveiled the largest budget proposal in US history - $3.1 trillion dollars. As one might expect, the national security budget is being increased while other areas are being deceased, such as healthcare programs like Medicare and Medicaid. Today the Pentagon is also revealing its 2009 budget which, if approved in its entirety, and when adjusted for inflation, will be the largest of its kind since the Second World War.

The situation in Chad continues to deteriorate.

The legal team representing Canadian Guantanamo detainee, Omar Khadr, have asked that the charges against him be dropped. Khadr was only 15 years of age when he was taken into US custody, which, given precedents, made him a child soldier at the time. France has also recently claimed that the case against Khadr is suspect because of that very reason. US military prosecutors disagree, of course, claiming that Khadr ‘conducted surveillance in civilian clothing’ and that he was not a member of any recognized force, but rather a terrorist organization.

A US Surge in Afghanistan may be in the works.

The US Military has killed nine civilians during operations south of Baghdad. An internal investigation is, of course, underway, which will, as is usually the case, lead to nothing more than an apology and monetary compensation. Local witnesses claim that the death toll was, in fact, higher, and that a significant number of them were members of a single family.

There is new emerging evidence that Philip Zelikow, the head of the 9/11 Commission, had to ‘go through Karl Rove’ despite the fact that the inquiry was passed off as being independent of White House scrutiny.

Lastly, tomorrow is Super Tuesday. Should be interesting.

I would write something critiquing the President’s State Of The Union address last night, but it was filled with the same sort of nonsense that the last seven have been, so.

One exception was, of course, his focus on the economy, which is in the toilet for numerous reasons, amongst them the enormity of six consecutively increased defense budgets, only parts of which are actually represented by the figures made public.

I’ll be honest, I never thought to live to see the day when our dollar would once again be stronger than the greenback, but here we are. Interestingly, the last time that it was the United States was also engaged in a foreign conflict.

It’s taken the United States military longer to secure the road from the airport to Baghdad than the length of the entire American military involvement in the Second World War – and that’s not to say that the road is still entirely secure. And with the new Congressional budget approval for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they have now exceeded the cost of the entire Vietnam War – adjusted for inflation…

“Congress’ approval Wednesday of $70 billion more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan mean the twin conflicts are now more costly to American taxpayers than the war in Vietnam.

According to a study by the Washington-based Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, Congress has now approved nearly $700 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Using inflation-adjusted dollars, the total cost of those wars has now surpassed the total cost of the Vietnam war (which ran to $670 billion),” the group’s Travis Sharp told OneWorld. “It’s also more than seven times larger than the Persian Gulf War ($94 billion) and more than twice the cost of the Korean war ($295 billion).”

As a result of Wednesday’s vote, Sharp said, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will become the second costliest conflict in American history, trailing only World War II.

“But that was a time when 12 million Americans served, as compared with 1.42 million active duty soldiers and just over one million National Guard and reservists today,” Sharp added.”

Put into perspective, the conflict in Iraq constitutes the larger of the two commitments, meaning that between 2003 and 2007, the United States has spent more money fighting the war in Iraq than the Gulf War and the Korean War combined.

It’s no secret that the United States has the largest defense budget on earth. In fact, it is so unbelievably immense that the US defense budget is greater than the expenditures of the next fourteen largest spenders, constituting a full two thirds of the world’s military spending. Domestically, military discretionary spending accounts for more than one-half of the country’s federal discretionary spending.

There are numerous things to touch on this morning. Here are some of the stories that I have been following…

Chavez Says He Will Step Down At End Of Term

After last week’s defeat of proposed constitutional reforms, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has said that he will step down when is term is up in 2013. Chavez has vowed to keep fighting to have the reforms passed, requiring a petition of 15% of voters to secure the possibility of a new referendum.

Vancouver Airport Reforms Announced

The Vancouver International Airport will spend $1.4 million dollars a year to “improve service for international travelers”. The measures include the following…

Had such measures already been in place, Robert Dziekanski would still be alive today.

Canada Fourth Worst In Climate Change Performance

Based on emissions produced over the last year, climate change policies, and emission level reduction efforts, Canada has ranked fourth to last in the world behind Australia, the United States, and Saudi Arabia.

Canada is currently rated 53rd out of 56 countries, a drop from 51st place a year ago. Well done, Mr. Harper.

$1 Billion Worth Of Military Equipment Missing In Iraq

According to CBS News…

“Tractor trailers, tank recovery vehicles, crates of machine guns and rocket propelled grenades are just a sampling of more than $1 billion in unaccounted for military equipment and services provided to the Iraqi security forces, according to a new report issued today by the Pentagon Inspector General and obtained exclusively by the CBS News investigative unit. Auditors for the Inspector General reviewed equipment contracts totaling $643 million but could only find an audit trail for $83 million.

The report details a massive failure in government procurement revealing little accountability for the billions of dollars spent purchasing military hardware for the Iraqi security forces. For example, according to the report, the military could not account for 12,712 out of 13,508 weapons, including pistols, assault rifles, rocket propelled grenade launchers and machine guns.”

I’d say something witty, but it depressingly doesn’t come as a surprise.