What do you call a place that you have to smuggle livestock into using a kilometer long tunnel? A prison? Well, logic dictates that if you had a kilometer long tunnel you could escape from that prison and wouldn’t need to smuggle in livestock. Unless, of course, that prison is the Gaza strip and you can’t use that tunnel because the Egyptians simply wouldn’t tolerate some 1.5 million people popping out of it.

Instead, to meet the demands of Id Al-Adha, the Islamic feast of sacrifice in which animals are slaughtered to feed the poor to seek God’s forgiveness, livestock have to be smuggled into Gaza using one of an estimated 800 tunnels that are used to transport goods between Egypt and Gaza. Weapons, of course, are forbidden to be smuggled through the tunnels, as Hamas has their own network for that. So, in short, to get around the blockade that has crippled Gaza, goods are brought in underground.

By the way, the dictionary definition of ghettoization is…

“Put in or restrict to an isolated or segregated place, group, or situation.”

Just for your information.

The Israeli fuel blockade of Gaza is forcing the United Nations to suspend humanitarian relief efforts. That said; why should we care that 80% of those living in Gaza rely on humanitarian assistance? They are, after all, terrorists, or at the very least terrorists in training (even in their cribs, correct?). Because as we’re all aware, when you’re born and raised in the world’s foremost ghetto the enticement of striking back against those you perceive to be oppressing you isn’t a predominant factor. If only they would put down their weapons, or stop strapping bombs to themselves and killing innocents, the region would be at peace.

Easy, right?

We’re all aware that this is a one sided affair. Disregard the fact that it takes two to tango; you can’t impugn the Israelis without being labeled an anti-Semite. After all, the Nazi’s systematically murdered six million innocent Jews, which is absolutely undeniable and one of the most grotesque undertakings in modern human history. You’ll never, in a million lifetimes, get an argument out of me regarding that. Then again, how long will that tragedy be used as a promotional vehicle for Israeli justifications, especially in the West?

Of course, kids on the Strip that hurl stones as IDF tanks and troops had nothing to do with the Holocaust, and if those that hold sway in their lives claim that it didn’t occur, indoctrinating them with lies, then there is simply no defending such utter ignorance. I suppose the same thing can be said of those Americans that were brought up to believe that African Americans are inferior and non-human, that they were merely children caught up in a cycle of hatred that led to their indoctrination. In truth, it’s a phenomenon that is prevalent the world over, and it is also one that exists in Israeli as well.

The world is not a place of absolutes. There is no condemning an entire nation, an entire people, nor an entire religion based on the actions of a few, or even more than a few. Unfortunately, we live in world in which absolutes have infected popular thought, and the victim of that phenomenon is not only reason, but also compassion.

Turning to the geopolitical, today’s Washington Post has brought something to light that may be of interest…

“A letter that President Bush personally delivered to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon four years ago has emerged as a significant obstacle to the president’s efforts to forge a peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians during his last year in office.

Ehud Olmert, the current Israeli prime minister, said this week that Bush’s letter gave the Jewish state permission to expand the West Bank settlements that it hopes to retain in a final peace deal, even though Bush’s peace plan officially calls for a freeze of Israeli settlements across Palestinian territories on the West Bank. In an interview this week, Sharon’s chief of staff, Dov Weissglas, said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed this understanding in a secret agreement reached between Israel and the United States in the spring of 2005, just before Israel withdrew from Gaza.

U.S. officials say no such agreement exists, and in recent months Rice has publicly criticized even settlement expansion on the outskirts of Jerusalem, which Israel does not officially count as settlements. But as peace negotiations have stepped up in recent months, so has the pace of settlement construction, infuriating Palestinian officials, and Washington has taken no punitive action against Israel for its settlement efforts.

Israeli officials say they have clear guidance from Bush administration officials to continue building settlements, as long as it meets carefully negotiated criteria, even though those understandings appear to contradict U.S. policy.

Many experts say new settlement construction undermines the political standing of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas — who is to meet with Bush today at the White House — and adds to Palestinian cynicism about the peace process. Palestinians view the settlements as an Israeli effort to claim Palestinian lands, and in a meeting yesterday with Rice, Abbas said settlement construction was “one of the greatest obstacles” to a peace deal.”

And whom, in all of it, do the Palestinians have to point to with regards to justifying their actions? They remain a people placed into convenient categories – terrorists, extremists, and so forth. That is how we ultimately view them. They have no past abomination to embolden their struggle, to secure the world’s never ending sympathy. They remain, no matter their singular beliefs, a people largely viewed by the West as the root of a problem, as obstacles of peace. That isn’t to say that there aren’t those amongst them that fit that description. Then again, the same thing can be said of countless others elsewhere. Even right here at home.

First up this morning, two quick film reviews…

Redacted

Based on the rape and murder of a teenaged Iraqi girl in Mahmoudiya (and the execution of other members of her family) by US Marines manning a nearby checkpoint, the film is a wake up call that received little to no attention in the United States. While the crime is one of the major focuses of the film, another important aspect is the pressures faced by the individual that finally came forward and revealed that it happened.

Into The Wild

Great cinematography, great performances. Didn’t like the story.

Worth Your Time To Read

An op-ed by Seumas Milne published by The Guardian today is one that should be read if you have the time. An excerpt…

“The attempt by western politicians and media to present this week’s carnage in the Gaza Strip as a legitimate act of Israeli self-defence - or at best the latest phase of a wearisome conflict between two somehow equivalent sides - has reached Alice-in-Wonderland proportions. Since Israel’s deputy defence minister, Matan Vilnai, issued his chilling warning last week that Palestinians faced a “holocaust” if they continued to fire home-made rockets into Israel, the balance sheet of suffering has become ever clearer. More than 120 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by Israeli forces in the past week, of whom one in five were children and more than half were civilians, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. During the same period, three Israelis were killed, two of whom were soldiers taking part in the attacks.

So what was the response of the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, to this horrific killing spree? It was to blame the “numerous civilian casualties” on the week’s “significant rise” in Palestinian rocket attacks “and the Israeli response”, condemn the firing of rockets as “terrorist acts” and defend Israel’s right to self-defence “in accordance with international law”. But of course it has been nothing of the kind - any more than has been Israel’s 40-year occupation of the Palestinian territories, its continued expansion of settlements or its refusal to allow the return of expelled refugees.

Nor is the past week’s one-sided burden of casualties and misery anything new, but the gap is certainly getting wider. After the election of Hamas two years ago, Israel - backed by the US and the European Union - imposed a punitive economic blockade, which has hardened over the past months into a full-scale siege of the Gaza Strip, including fuel, electricity and essential supplies. Since January’s mass breakout across the Egyptian border signalled that collective punishment wouldn’t work, Israel has opted for military escalation. What that means on the ground can be seen from the fact that at the height of the intifada, from 2000 to 2005, four Palestinians were killed for every Israeli; in 2006 it was 30; last year the ratio was 40 to one. In the three months since the US-sponsored Middle East peace conference at Annapolis, 323 Palestinians have been killed compared with seven Israelis, two of whom were civilians.

But the US and Europe’s response is to blame the principal victims for a crisis it has underwritten at every stage. In interviews with Palestinian leaders over the past few days, BBC presenters have insisted that Palestinian rockets have been the “starting point” of the violence, as if the occupation itself did not exist. In the West Bank, from which no rockets are currently fired and where the US-backed administration of Mahmoud Abbas maintains a ceasefire, there have been 480 Israeli military attacks over the past three months and 26 Palestinians killed. By contrast, the rockets from Gaza which are supposed to be the justification for the latest Israeli onslaught have killed a total of 14 people over seven years.

Like any other people, the Palestinians have the right to resist occupation - or to self-defence - whether they choose to exercise it or not. In spite of Israel’s disengagement in 2005, Gaza remains occupied territory, both legally and in reality. It is the world’s largest open-air prison, with land, sea and air access controlled by Israel, which carries out military operations at will. Palestinians may differ about the tactics of resistance, but the dominant view (if not that of Abbas) has long been that without some armed pressure, their negotiating hand will inevitably be weaker. And while it might be objected that the rockets are indiscriminate, that is not an easy argument for Israel to make, given its appalling record of civilian casualties in both the Palestinian territories and Lebanon.

The truth is that Hamas’s control of Gaza is the direct result of the US refusal to accept the Palestinians’ democratic choice in 2006 and its covert attempt to overthrow the elected administration by force through its Fatah placeman Muhammad Dahlan. As confirmed by secret documents leaked to the US magazine Vanity Fair - and also passed to the Guardian - George Bush, Condoleezza Rice and Elliott Abrams, the US deputy national security adviser (of Iran-Contra fame), funnelled cash, weapons and instructions to Dahlan, partly through Arab intermediaries such as Jordan and Egypt, in an effort to provoke a Palestinian civil war. As evidence of the military buildup emerged, Hamas moved to forestall the US plan with its own takeover of Gaza last June. David Wurmser, who resigned as Dick Cheney’s chief Middle East adviser the following month, argues: “What happened wasn’t so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen.”

Yesterday, Rice attempted to defend the failed US attempt to reverse the results of the Palestinian elections by pointing to Iran’s support for Hamas. Meanwhile, Israel’s attacks on Gaza are expected to resume once she has left the region, even if no one believes they will stop the rockets. Some in the Israeli government hope that they can nevertheless weaken Hamas as a prelude to pushing Gaza into Egypt’s unwilling arms; others hope to bring Abbas and his entourage back to Gaza after they have crushed Hamas, perhaps with a transitional international force to save the Palestinian president’s face.”

There’s no questioning the fact that Israel’s ultimate goal in Gaza is to remove the Hamas led provisional government from power. Hamas doesn’t recognize Israel’s right to exist, which is, of course, an immense problem with regards to the ability to negotiate – that being, no one will meet with them, let alone negotiate with them.

So what is the answer? Who, in all of this madness, is willing to be courageous enough to employ the sort of timeless wisdom that takes into account the future of ordinary citizens over hatred and mistrust that will only lead to further suffering? Because the time for such wisdom has come, and it will take individuals of peerless vision and courage to pull it off – on both sides. Sending envoys from foreign countries to institute the process won’t ultimately make a difference. It is something that the Israelis and the Palestinians must do themselves, and in good faith, both willing to set aside those immovable positions to which they cling in an effort to make real progress.

Despite what the world sees, it is foolish to think that the majority of Palestinians and Israelis don’t want peace, that their majorities are so ensconced in the tenets of hatred that the possibility of reconciliation is impossible.

For the sake of their children, the embracement of flexibility must be undertaken by both sides, and the communal voice of the majority of both must work to ensure that those who refuse to embrace that flexibility are confronted and disenfranchised. Only then can a true process of reconciliation begin.

Imagine, if at all possible, an Israel in which Palestine and Gaza are Provinces that are afforded equal representative seats in the Israeli Parliament. That the nation embraced two official languages, Hebrew and Arabic, and that its wealth and opportunities were shared amongst its people equally. Imagine no walls, no security fences, equal educational opportunities, and the integration of Israeli and Palestinian youths in the educational system. Imagine if, within the structure of that system, a historical consensus could be reached and that all children would be educated regarding the perils and failures of the past, not presented sides that would pit them against one another. Imagine, if at all possible, calling this new nation Israel And Palestine. Call me an idealist, but imagine a day when a Palestinian might even become its Prime Minister.

If it’s impossible to imagine, then ask yourself why? And in doing so remember that there was a time when even the United States was divided, a reality that can scarcely be confronted by many Americans now without perplexity being that they have only ever know their nation to be united, despite those regional and racial problems that have plagued it.

To ensure peace there are those that labour under the misconception that strength and the inability to compromise are the only true measures that can insure it. Of course, that would be why we live in a world that is perpetually at its own throat.

The common reaction to such a statement is to provide the example of Prime Minister Chamberlain’s inability to see Germany for what it was. There are, of course, other examples as well. But how long will we cling to such examples and forgo the belief that, just maybe, Chamberlain’s intentions were rooted into something altogether noble – the desire to avert war, the results of which his generation possessed first hand knowledge. There are those that might claim Neville Chamberlain guilty of appeasement, though they ultimately overlook that fact that while attempting to act to preserve peace, the government of Adolf Hitler was actively seeking the opposite and would have initiated its plans no matter. Thus, who must ultimately be condemned? A man that attempted to avert war or one that actively sought it? We can condemn Mr. Chamberlain for all time if it helps placate our love affair with militarism that was subsequently adopted and promoted following the Second World War, but the fact remains that peace is not something that should have to rely on the ability to inflict pain and suffering to ensure it.

My whole life has been spent living in an era in which a placebo has come to represent peace. That peace can be ensured simply through the possession of overwhelming military might. It’s ridiculous of course.

Sir John Frederick Maurice once said - “I went into the Army believing that if you want peace you must prepare for war. I now believe that if you prepare thoroughly for war you will get it.”.

Truer words were never spoken.

Hate, division, suspicion, mistrust. These are the easiest things in the world to teach and to cling to. They do not require an individual to look beyond themselves, to question, nor compromise. They are safe and comfortable and entirely cowardly. Their principles are universally applicable, and provide comfort to religious extremists of every faith all the way to xenophobes that use patriotism as a blanket of fear and doubt.

To embrace the opposite is another matter altogether, one that is far more difficult, dangerous, exhaustive, and reliant on one of the most degraded practices of our time – the belief in the inherit goodness of others and that, in the end, it will win out.

Ultimately, it is not impossible to imagine a world in which Israeli and Palestinian children play on the same football teams after school, only that finding a way to make that a reality has become something that too many believe is.

In a surprising move after reports that Turkey’s offensive in northern Iraq would be sustained for the foreseeable future, Turkish forces began withdrawing yesterday in force. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that the withdrawal occurred just after President Bush called on the Turkish government to end the offensive and a day after US Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited the Turkish capital to deliver Washington’s message that the incursion must not be open ended. Of course, the Turkish government and military is claiming that the withdrawal was preplanned and that it had nothing to do with US pressure, but that’s obviously transparent given the fact that the withdrawal itself began before any official Turkish statements were made regarding it.

Were I to venture a guess, I would say that behind closed doors Washington rubber stamped the Turkish invasion and then used condemnation of it to remove suspicions of complicity. And, of course, the Turks played along and got what they wanted out of it.

That would be my guess anyway.

Gaza

Here’s the back story via the BBC…

I want to state, for the record, that the use of violence by both sides in this matter is, in my opinion, unforgivable given the toll that it has taken on civilians, both at present and in years past.

That said; when one looks at this in a very hard, cold light, there are a few realities that must be addressed, though many of you might disagree.

The governing issue of Israel and Palestine as entities and the decades old arguments about how that region has found itself where it is now aside, there are a few truths that we should be willing to admit as members of a society that is primarily pro-Israeli.

The first is that Hamas is a terrorist organization, one that is supported by numerous benefactors throughout the Middle East. They fire homemade rockets into Israel from the slums of one of the world’s foremost ghettos where millions rely on international humanitarian aid to simply survive. That aid, by the way, is also one of the most outstanding examples of international blackmail in modern history.

Israel, on the other hand, is supported by the world’s foremost military super power and is the recipient of immense military aid. They possess a state of the art air force, replete with US made fighters, bombers, and attack helicopters. They possess state of the art armour and boast one of the best-trained and equipped armed forces in the world. They also possess a nuclear arsenal, a navy, and one of the world’s most feared covert intelligence outfits.

Were Palestinian militants to possess the same military capabilities as the Israelis, the need to lob homemade rockets and employ suicide bombers wouldn’t be required. In short, they would possess the same ‘honourable’ weapons of war as the Israelis and be in the position to employ them in the exact same fashion that the IDF does. That is, of course, not something that Israel, nor those that support it, would ever stand for. Thus, those who believe in the ridiculous use of violence as a measure with which to lash out against Israel wouldn’t be lobbing homemade rockets into Israel from Gaza and, in the process, endangering the lives of innocents that end up paying the price when Israeli forces retaliate – not to mention killing Israeli civilians.

That is, if you actually believe that a fair brawl between conventional forces doesn’t produce civilian deaths, which is, of course, a fallacy. In truth, they produce far more.

In this neck of the woods, the math is simple. A single Israeli life is equal to that of maybe 100 Palestinians. Let’s face it, they’re terrorists and extremists, or at least that’s what they’re painted as being by our media. The Israelis, on the other hand, are simply trying to defend themselves. Never mind the massive economic disparities between the two, never mind that Gaza is little more than a massive prison camp for all intents and purposes, which provides the sort of atmosphere in which those desperate enough are willing to focus their anger in ways that are unconscionable. If you cage an animal long enough it’s going to do one of two things. Wither away to nothing or start taking swipes through the bars at those on the other side.

Gaza is not internationally recognized as being a part of any sovereign entity, nor is it claimed by any, though it’s currency remains the Israeli Sheqel. After Hamas’ victory in Parliamentary elections in 2006, Israel, The United States, Canada, and the EU froze all funds to the Palestinian government, economically crippling it. Due to the fact that Hamas is considered a terrorist organization, it is not viewed as a legitimate governing body, even within the tenuous confines of a government that never really had any international recognition beyond that required to placate those responsible for providing it economic aid. Thus, as long as Hamas remains in power, their presence will be used as an excuse to continue to punish the people as a whole, despite the fact that it was democratically elected – a process that those who refuse to recognize it claim to champion the world over (that is, as long as it conforms to their ideology).

Now, let me state for the record that I am not defending Hamas. Obviously, the recognition of Israeli’s right to exist is something that must occur. After decades of the same tired argument, the time has come to consider the welfare of the Palestinian people as a whole, which, for some, is a bitter pill to swallow. That said; there is certainly a reason why Hamas was successful in the elections in 2006.

Gaza is 41 kilometers long and 12 kilometers wide; that’s 360 square kilometers. In that space there are 1.4 million people, 1 million of which are officially recognized by the United Nations as refugees. Some 18% of children in Gaza between the ages of 6 months and 5 years old suffer from chronic malnutrition. 53% of women of reproductive age and children are anemic. Given such facts, one can begin to see why support for an organization that undertakes initiatives within the community to secure popular support, not to mention striking at those they view as their oppressors, might attract the support of the suffering and the disenfranchised. In truth, it’s not a phenomenon that is, by any stretch of the imagination, limited to that area of the world. It is a phenomenon that has been quintessential in the birth of Western democracies and, if we’re going to be completely honest, Israel itself.

Now, you can rush out and get a copy of The National Post and succumb to the bias that we’re exposed to on a daily basis regarding this issue, or you can spend some time trying to look at it from the other side of the fence (literally). I’ll not condone the use of violence as a method with which to enact change, but I will also not condemn those that feel they have no way out of a situation that is, in truth, entirely comparable to an existence in prison. There are better ways to go about it, I will admit that freely, and also not hesitate to suggest that such methods be embraced, but I do not live in Gaza, nor do I have to endure its realities, so that position remains one of a lofty Western idealist.

The Iranian Laptop Nuke Data

Gareth Porter provides some valuable insight regarding this issue…

“The George W. Bush administration has long pushed the “laptop documents” – 1,000 pages of technical documents supposedly from a stolen Iranian laptop – as hard evidence of Iranian intentions to build a nuclear weapon. Now charges based on those documents pose the only remaining obstacles to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declaring that Iran has resolved all unanswered questions about its nuclear program.

But those documents have long been regarded with great suspicion by US and foreign analysts. German officials have identified the source of the laptop documents in November 2004 as the Mujahideen e Khalq (MEK), which along with its political arm, the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), is listed by the US State Department as a terrorist organization.

There are some indications, moreover, that the MEK obtained the documents not from an Iranian source but from Israel’s Mossad.

In its latest report on Iran, circulated Feb. 22, the IAEA, under strong pressure from the Bush administration, included descriptions of plans for a facility to produce “green salt,” technical specifications for high explosives testing and the schematic layout of a missile reentry vehicle that appears capable of holding a nuclear weapon. Iran has been asked to provide full explanations for these alleged activities.

Tehran has denounced the documents on which the charges are based as fabrications provided by the MEK, and has demanded copies of the documents to analyze, but the United States had refused to do so.

The Iranian assertion is supported by statements by German officials. A few days after then-Secretary of State Colin Powell announced the laptop documents, Karsten Voight, the coordinator for German-American relations in the German Foreign Ministry, was reported by the Wall Street Journal Nov. 22, 2004 as saying that the information had been provided by “an Iranian dissident group.”

A German official familiar with the issue confirmed to this writer that the NCRI had been the source of the laptop documents. “I can assure you that the documents came from the Iranian resistance organization.,” the source said.

The Germans have been deeply involved in intelligence collection and analysis regarding the Iranian nuclear program. According to a story by Washington Post reporter Dafna Linzer soon after the laptop documents were first mentioned publicly by Powell in late 2004, US officials said they had been stolen from an Iranian whom German intelligence had been trying to recruit, and had been given to intelligence officials of an unnamed country in Turkey.

The German account of the origins of the laptop documents contradicts the insistence by unnamed US intelligence officials who insisted to journalists William J. Broad and David Sanger in November 2005 that the laptop documents did not come from any Iranian resistance groups.

Despite the fact that it was listed as a terrorist organization., the MEK was a favorite of neoconservatives in the Pentagon, who were proposing in 2003-2004 to use it as part of a policy to destabilize Iran. The United States is known to have used intelligence from the MEK on Iranian military questions for years. It was considered a credible source of intelligence on the Iranian nuclear program. after 2002, mainly because of its identification of the facility in Natanz as a nuclear site.

The German source said he did not know whether the documents were authentic or not. However, CIA analysts, and European and IAEA officials who were given access to the laptop documents in 2005 were very skeptical about their authenticity.

The Guardian’s Julian Borger last February quoted an IAEA official as saying there is “doubt over the provenance of the computer.”

A senior European diplomat who had examined the documents was quoted by the New York Times in November 2005 as saying, “I can fabricate that data. It looks beautiful, but is open to doubt.”

Scott Ritter, the former US military intelligence officer who was chief United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, noted in an interview that the CIA has the capability test the authenticity of laptop documents through forensic tests that would reveal when different versions of different documents were created.

The fact that the agency could not rule out the possibility of fabrication, according to Ritter, indicates that it had either chosen not to do such tests or that the tests had revealed fraud.”

I’m tired. Not a lot of sleep last night. I spent it in one of those semi-states of sleep, the sort where you’re aware that you have to be mindful of something that requires that you remain somewhat conscious but are still trying to sleep at the same time.

It’s clear and sunny here again today, as it has been this past week. In fact, it’s been uncommonly beautiful for this time of year, even given the chill the wind provides here on the West Coast that has the annoying ability to cut through everything that you’re wearing and go straight to your bones. We share that phenomenon with the UK, where it’s routine business as well.

I’m rambling, and I’m aware of it. I’m rambling because I’m having one of those mornings that I’m finding it difficult to concentrate. I’m having one of those mornings because, as has been the case over the last month, the list of things to touch upon grows so quickly every day that it seems almost impossible to retain it all and then translate it into something cogent.

Just off the top of my head there’s…

The recent revelation that the Canadian Armed Forces have stopped the transfer of prisoners to Afghan authorities because of a report of abuse on the 5th of November of last year despite the fact that last May, after a scandal broke regarding the Canadian transfer of prisoners to Afghan authorities that were known for their use of torture, the government claimed that it was taking steps to immediately rectify the situation.

The recently released Manley Report, which, although critical of numerous aspects of the mission in Afghanistan, has basically provided the government with what can only be viewed as a blank cheque with regards to Canadian combat operations in that country. Of course, the report is non-binding, but its ramifications on a political level are extremely convenient. Canada, of course, is only one of three nations involved in direct combat operations in Afghanistan, and of the three represents the smallest contingent. That being the case, our losses, compared to those of the United States and the UK, are wholly disproportionate. The debate, however, remains transfixed on our continued support of the mission’s objectives, to help stabilize the nation and provide it security, even though other members of ISAF, with considerably larger forces in country, continue to refuse to have their contingents involved in direct combat operations. There is also the concern that even though our efforts are aimed at ensuring democratic stability in Afghanistan, that its implementation is, in effect, the representation of Western regional aspirations, and therefore not dissimilar to Soviet regional aspirations in the 70’s when the USSR was responsible for aiding in the supplanting of a pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. Thus, the real test of Afghan democracy will come when the nation has been secured and Western exploitative practices begin in earnest.

That is certainly not to say that the Taliban should be allowed to run rampant and plunge the nation into complete chaos, only that precluding the possibility of negotiations for the purposes of resolution is counter productive. Ultimately, there are always going to be those that support some, if not all, of the Taliban’s agenda, which raises a very important question: must those that do be wholly eliminated before progress can be made? And if they are not, what assurances do we have that there will not be a resurgence in the future that could seriously threaten the stability of the country, even after it possesses a well trained and equipped military? Given that, is it not fair to say that Western military involvement, on even the smallest of levels, will be required in Afghanistan for years to come?

Of course, all of that doesn’t even touch on the realities of the Pakistani frontier and the support covertly supplied those in opposition to the current Afghan government by elements within the Pakistani military establishment itself.

The possibility that Kenya could explode at any moment despite last minute attempts at political reconciliation aimed at stemming violence. As it stands now, the country is already in the early stages of a humanitarian crisis and also on the cusp of what could quickly turn into a genocidal event.

The recent disparity of global markets.

The continuing unrest in Pakistan.

The case of Canadian Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr, who has been held at the facility since 2002. Khadr was captured at the age of 15 and, as the French Foreign Ministry recently pointed out…

“…all children associated with an armed conflict should be treated accordingly. As a minor at the time of the events, Mr. Khadr must be given special treatment — a point on which there is a universal consensus.”

The Canadian government has refused to intercede in Khadr’s case.

Gaza. While many have taken to illegally entering Egypt so that they can attempt to get food, fuel, and other sundries, Israel’s position remains steadfast, that being that the blockade is a move against the continued rocket attacks emanating from Gaza into Israel. The majority of the United Nations Security Council has labeled the blockade a violation of international humanitarian law and a collective punishment against the entire population, but the United States refuses to support that position without the inclusion of language that supports Israel’s concerns regarding the actions of Palestinian militants. Caught in the middle are, as usual, the 1.5 million residents of Gaza itself.

The firing of Linda Keen, President of The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, hours before she was to appear before a House committee in Ottawa. Keen was fired, according to Federal Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn, due to the government’s ‘lack of confidence in her leadership’. This, of course, happened after the Commission’s attempt to have the Chalk River facility closed due to safety concerns and government’s decision to ignore the Commission.

The realities of the sanctions against Iran.

The ruinous economic reality of America’s imperialist adventures.

The frightening resurgence of Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz.

Media attacks on Heath Ledger following his death.

The Jose Padilla affair.

The continued humanitarian crisis unfolding in Somalia.

The Sudanese government’s decision to make Musa Hilal, a man accused of coordinating the Janjiweed militias in Darfur, an advisor to Federal Affairs Minister Abdel Basit Sabderat.

And So Forth

In truth, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Iraq is, of course, absent – primarily recent events in Baquba - as is the ever-evolving telecommunications scandal in the US and the Sibel Edmonds affair, the unrest in Zimbabwe, and events in Chiapas.

Last, but certainly not least, there are also those voices that tend to make excellent arguments on a routine basis, such as Robert Fisk, Stephen Zunes, and (for your viewing pleasure), the always brilliant Chalmers Johnson…

Home. Finally.

Unpacked, doing laundry, walked the dogs, clean bed linens. Put Leopard on my iMac, went and got some milk, packed the fridge full of left over beer, water, and Coke from the tour.

A few things of interest. According to the FBI investigation into the Nisour Square massacre…

“Federal agents investigating the Sept. 16 episode in which Blackwater security personnel shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians have found that at least 14 of the shootings were unjustified and violated deadly-force rules in effect for security contractors in Iraq, according to civilian and military officials briefed on the case.

The F.B.I. investigation into the shootings in Baghdad is still under way, but the findings, which indicate that the company’s employees recklessly used lethal force, are already under review by the Justice Department.

Prosecutors have yet to decide whether to seek indictments, and some officials have expressed pessimism that adequate criminal laws exist to enable them to charge any Blackwater employee with criminal wrongdoing. Spokesmen for the Justice Department and the F.B.I. declined to discuss the matter.

The case could be one of the first thorny issues to be decided by Michael B. Mukasey, who was sworn in as attorney general last week. He may be faced with a decision to turn down a prosecution on legal grounds at a time when a furor has erupted in Congress about the administration’s failure to hold security contractors accountable for their misdeeds.”

I’m going to hold with my initial opinion – I don’t think anyone involved in the incident that day will be brought to justice. Then again, given the sensitive nature of the subject and the Iraqi government’s position on the legal status of foreign contractors, it can’t be entirely ruled out. But it should be noted that if legal action is taken, the State Department will also be scrutinized, something that I simply can’t see happening.

Also of interest is an article in today’s Jerusalem Post…

“The newly formed Genocide Prevention Task Force indicated Tuesday night that it will not be examining whether Israel has committed genocide in the West Bank and Gaza despite earlier statements that it would be addressing the subject.

The task force of prominent former US officials was announced at a press conference earlier Tuesday and will be working over the next year to help the American government best respond to and prevent genocide.

Though one of the co-chairs, former US Defense Secretary William Cohen, originally said that the situation in the West Bank and Gaza would be considered, the task force later clarified that such an inquiry would be beyond the scope of the panel.

“Its task is not to determine which situations, past or present, including the West Bank and Gaza, constitute genocide, but to develop policy recommendations that enable the United States to prevent future genocides from occurring,” Cohen, along with co-chair Madeleine Albright, said in a statement issued Tuesday night.”

Never you mind the present. It’s the future of genocide we’re interested in.

When everything goes wrong, the guiding lights below will bring us home. When everything went wrong during the now famous Apollo 13 mission, the astronauts were, unbelievably, able to direct their damaged craft into a trajectory that allowed them to traverse a sliver of space that would result in their safe passage through the ravages of our outer atmosphere.

Where the same thing to occur now, all the astronauts on the space shuttle need do is use a little trigonometry using the Great Wall Of China and the massive light that beams from atop the Luxor Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip as points of reference. Them, and, of course, anything else visible from space – such as US Embassy being constructed in Baghdad.

The light that shines from atop the Luxor is so powerful that, even though I am miles away, it illuminates the backyard in the middle of the night. So much so, in fact, that you can make out everything as if it were naught but overcast.

Down here, amongst the Exodus toads and the twenty something girls desk bent for gold, there are words escaping the other way, unheard, unread, broadcast out into the blackness and off toward Mars, where perhaps the Martians are having second thoughts about that inevitable invasion they’ve been planning all these years because the information reaching them seems so steeped in descriptions of stupidity that to bother would be a pointless exercise.

Uri Avnery wrote something today that the Martians will no doubt receive. Avnery is an Israeli peace activist, which makes him a precious commodity, and his words even more so when they’re this powerful…

“What happens when one and a half million human beings are imprisoned in a tiny, arid territory, cut off from their compatriots and from any contact with the outside world, starved by an economic blockade and unable to feed their families?

Some months ago, I described this situation as a sociological experiment set up by Israel, the United States, and the European Union. The population of the Gaza Strip as guinea pigs.

This week, the experiment showed results. They proved that human beings react exactly like other animals: when too many of them are crowded into a small area in miserable conditions, they become aggressive, and even murderous. The organizers of the experiment in Jerusalem, Washington, Berlin, Oslo, Ottawa, and other capitals could rub their hands in satisfaction. The subjects of the experiment reacted as foreseen. Many of them even died in the interests of science.

But the experiment is not yet over. The scientists want to know what happens if the blockade is tightened still further.”

The Martians, obviously concerned that someone has been reading their post-invasion playbook, will not doubt find Avnery’s words unsettling. You can almost see them, their large, bulbous heads in their hands, aggrieved that they have been forced to go back to the drawing board.

Fantasy and reality. The Martians live underground, and thus elude our probes and little remote control dune buggies. Safely ensconced in their great subterranean realm, might they not ponder simply waiting out the inevitable, like a bumble bee trapped in an apartment that, days after you first notice it banging against the window, you find it dead on its back on the floor? Patience, they say, is a virtue. The truth used to be as well, but it’s never been all that helpful, as Charley Reese recently pointed out to the Martians…

“If the senator, who seems to be one of those who loves war as long as he doesn’t have to fight it, really believes that we can attack Iran without Iranian retaliation, then he’s naive. If he knows better, he’s a liar, and to lie the American people into a second war before the other lied-into war in Iraq is even over is despicable. He should be shunned by all decent people.

I don’t see how any honest man can believe that Iran is a threat to the United States or its neighbors. Iran has not invaded anyone in the past 100 years. Iran has from the beginning insisted that its nuclear program is for peaceful energy purposes, and there has been no evidence – I repeat, no evidence – to the contrary. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty explicitly authorizes countries to enrich uranium. In other words, Iran has not done anything illegal.

Iran has no intercontinental missiles, and the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons is Israel. Please note that the United States flatly refuses to endorse the idea of a nuclear-free Middle East. Iran has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel has refused to sign it. Iran admits international inspectors. Israel flatly refuses to allow international inspectors. The only country in today’s Middle East with weapons of mass destruction and a history of invading and occupying other people’s countries is Israel.

As for Iran’s alleged threat to “wipe Israel off the map,” that is propaganda based on a mistranslation. Nobody in Iran has ever threatened to attack Israel militarily. The accurate quotes from Iranians have been simply that Israel as a Zionist state will eventually collapse, just as the Soviet Union as a communist state did. Iranian officials have even explicitly said they have no desire or intention of attacking Israel.

You should ask yourself, What is the real motive of people who deal in lies? What is the real agenda of people who wish to paint Iran as a threat to the world? (Remember what a threat they said Iraq was?) Why, if the United States is really concerned about preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, has it steadfastly refused to endorse the idea of a nuclear-free Middle East – something Iran and the Arab countries have proposed time and again?”

Were I a Martian, and had some say over the military decision to invade Earth, I would surely advise against it. Because there simply wouldn’t be enough Excedrin for the headaches that would ensue from having bothered.

I am reminded of a comment made by a blogger yesterday about the residents of Gaza, presumably all of which are not die-hard members of Hama’s militant wing, celebrating the Democrat’s successes last night.

According to the BBC, which may or may not be on Charles Johnson’s pro-terrorist, pro-Islamofascist, anti-Semitic list of news agencies, there were at least 18 Palestinians in Gaza that weren’t able to celebrate the Democratic capture of the House today. Unfortunately, they were killed by Israeli tank fire in Beit Hanoun.

When it comes to the Israel-Palestinian conflict let me state a few things. First, it is a conflict that has, for decades, been driven by radical ideologues on both sides, the majority of whom are completely unwilling to entertain any serious compromises that would be required to resolve the issue. Were aliens to land on this planet tomorrow and look at that part of the world they might very well wonder why it is not simply one nation populated by people of differing religious beliefs who are represented by a similarly diverse democratically elected government. If it’s Jerusalem that’s the deciding factor, turn the whole thing into a national monument and be done with it. Because no place deemed sacred is worth the lives of thousands of people, let alone one. And I firmly believe that no God in any heaven would ever choose death in the defense of rock, brick, wood, and glass over life itself. Because that is not holy, nor wise, nor compassionate, and therefore devoid of the components of divinity itself.

Fantasy? Perhaps, given the complexities of historical context. But not entirely without its merits.

Second, when you militarily engage a guerrilla force in the world’s largest ghetto there are going to be civilian casualties. The other side of that coin is that if you’re going to conduct a guerrilla resistance against an established military power from within the confines of the world’s largest ghetto, expect similar results.

Third, the victims on both sides are predominantly the innocent, and it must not be forgotten that neither side has a monopoly on innocence.

Fourth, where’s Yitzhak Rabin when you need him? That’s right, dead at the hands of an Israeli terrorist because he dared to dream of a better future for both peoples.

Olmert, of course, expressed regret over the loss of life, vowing to halt artillery attacks and extend help to the wounded. Both the Red Cross and Unicef commented that they were ‘appalled’ at the killing of women and children, while the UN’s special investigator on human rights in the Palestinian territories, John Dugard, requested the Security Council take action.

Chances of that occurring in a timely fashion, if at all?

I could care less what a single, or even a handful of militant spokesmen say about yesterday’s elections in the US. Only idiots take such nonsense to heart, unable to see it as the exact same sort of propaganda employed by the likes of the Bush administration. The production of fear is what both are ultimately after, and the fanning of such flames is precisely what those who employ such tactics have come to expect.

Updated: The Blogger in question threw up a few links in response to this entry, while not actually linking it, which basically did little but point out that the quagmire in Iraq was viewed by the media in the Middle East as the primary reason for Republican losses this week. Of course, the same is true of most North American media, so go figure. He then linked the out of context Gaza video from September 11th, as if to remind us that evil lurks just around the corner. If there is one thing Charles Johnson needs to do it’s to actually study the foreign and covert policy history of his own country. Because what a tale it tells, Republican and Democrat alike.