It’s happened twice in recent days – two US incursions into the Pakistani Province of Waziristan, both denied by the United States. The first involved two US helicopters that were, according to Pakistani sources, fired upon, and which returned to Afghan airspace without returning fire. The second incident involved a US drone that reportedly crashed in Southern Waziristan yesterday according to the Pakistani media.

Despite the recent attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, the Pakistani government’s position regarding the sanctity of its sovereignty remains unaltered – Pakistani forces will use force to repel operations by foreign militaries emanating from Afghanistan. While the attentions of many in the United States, and elsewhere, are focused on the current economic crisis, the potentially catastrophic game that is being played by the Bush Administration has been flying under the radar.

As Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer, pointed out in a recently article for Time…

“As Wall Street collapsed with a bang, almost no one noticed that we’re on the brink of war with Pakistan. And, unfortunately, that’s not too much of an exaggeration. On Tuesday, the Pakistan’s military ordered its forces along the Afghan border to repulse all future American military incursions into Pakistan. The story has been subsequently downplayed, and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mike Mullen, flew to Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, to try to ease tensions. But the fact remains that American forces have and are violating Pakistani sovereignty.

You have to wonder whether the Bush administration understands what it is getting into. In case anyone has forgotten, Pakistan has a hundred plus nuclear weapons. It’s a country on the edge of civil war. Its political leadership is bitterly divided. In other words, it’s the perfect recipe for a catastrophe.”

[…]

“U.S. forces have been entering Pakistan for the last six years. But it was always very quietly, usually no more than a hundred yards in, and usually to meet a friendly tribal chieftain. Pakistan knew about these crossings, but it turned a blind eye because it was never splashed across the front page of the country’s newspapers. This has all changed in the last month, as the Administration stepped up Predator missile attacks. And then, after the New York Times ran an article that U.S. forces were officially given the go-ahead to enter Pakistan without prior Pakistani permission, Pakistan had no choice but to react.

On another level the Bush Administration’s decision to step up attacks in Pakistan is fatally reckless, because the cross-border operations’ chances of capturing or killing al Qaeda’s leadership are slim. American intelligence isn’t good enough for precision raids like this. Pakistan’s tribal regions are a black hole that even Pakistani operatives can’t enter and come back alive. Overhead surveillance and intercepts do little good in tracking down people in a backward, rural part of the world like this.

On top of it, is al-Qaeda worth the candle? Yes, some deadender in New York or London could blow himself up in the subway and leave behind a video claiming the attack in the name of al-Qaeda. But our going into Pakistan, risking a full-fledged war with a nuclear power, isn’t going to stop him.”

What has shocked me more than anything is the fact that reports of a three-phase plan, approved at the highest level of government, have gone completely overlooked. According to an article published by NPR on the 13th of this month, President Bush himself gave the green light to the plan, which includes the use of Predator Drones and US Special Operations Forces to strike targets within Pakistan. One of the first actions taken under this new strategy was a raid by US Navy Seals in which civilians were killed. Further, it has been reported that CIA personnel from various parts of the world are being deployed along the Afghan-Pakistan frontier in an attempt to produce an ‘intelligence surge’ to aid in the selection of cross-border targets.

In the end, the reality, as Baer pointed out, is that the United States is willfully ignoring the sovereignty of Pakistan. Given that, it is empowering both the Pakistani military and local militants to support an aligned cause – the repulsion of foreign military incursions.

Given that President Bush has mere months left in office, the risk of sparking something disastrous is only bolstered by his administration’s repeatedly proven track record of outright stupidity. And while the condemnation of Iran continues to attract more international attention, the fact that the United States is goading a nuclear power is certainly something that should not be excused as Republican political necessity with regards to making an 11th hour attempt to kill or capture high level al-Qaeda figures to feebly justify the administration’s mistakes.

I’m going to do my damndest to sleep in tomorrow morning, so I thought I would post a few articles of interest for those of you in other time zones that will be up well ahead of me.

First, an article by the Boston Globe’s Joan Vennochi which includes an opening that could have been penned by Bruce Springsteen…

“When you are too big to fail, you are bailed out.

When you are too small to save, you are down and out on the street.”

The second article, entitled Why does the US think it can win in Afghanistan?, is by The Independent’s Robert Fisk. Fisk is easily one of the most educated journalists in the world when it comes to Middle Eastern affairs, having been The Independent’s foreign correspondent in that region (based in Lebanon) for more than 30 years. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend his masterpiece - The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East.

Nighty-night.

Editor And Publisher reported yesterday that charges will be dropped against journalists recently arrested at the Republican National Convention.

The mayor of St. Paul, Chris Coleman, had the following to say regarding the decision…

“This decision reflects the values we have in St. Paul to protect and promote our First Amendment rights to freedom of the press. At the scene, the police did their duty in protecting public safety. In this decision, we are serving the public’s interest to maintain the integrity of our democracy, system of justice and freedom of the press.”

Flat out - either I’m on Crystal Meth or Chris Coleman is. What sort of moron claims that arresting and charging journalists was done to ‘protect public safety’? Unless, that is, they happen to be representatives of foreign interests that are using their position to cause unrest.

There’s no doubt that the arrests have become an embarrassment, but I personally don’t think that it should be overlooked that directives most likely came down from ‘on high’ with regards to procedure. And now, in the wake of it all, Coleman has the audacity to claim that the charges are being dropped to protect the sanctity of the First Amendment.

What happened in St. Paul was unabashedly autocratic. The only place that the First Amendment was allowed to be exercised was inside the Xcel Center, where the country’s major media giants were, for the most part, helping to contribute to the further diminishment of the Fourth Estate’s integrity.

Prior to learning that two of her colleagues were in dire straits outside of the Xcel Center, Amy Goodman was constitutionally as safe as houses. Until, that is, she decided to leave the convention floor, go outside, and attempt to find out what was going on. After that her First Amendment rights were as useful as used toilet paper.

The integrity of democracy? Given what occurred, that’s rich coming from anyone in a nation that’s spent the last seven years supposedly delivering democracy’s ‘advantages’ by way of Hellfire missiles.

Forty people have been killed, and some one hundred wounded, after a truck exploded in front of the Marriott Hotel in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. The power of the blast was significant, producing a 20ft crater and destroying the front of the hotel, the remaining section of which authorities fear could collapse. The significance of the Marriott as a target should not be overlooked. It is the most prestigious hotel in the capital and regularly frequently by foreigners.

Given what is occurring along the Waziristan frontier with regards to cross-border US military operations, the bombing of the Marriott could very well constitute blowback. Of course, many don’t like events of this nature being framed as such. It’s much easier to view them simply as the acts of madmen – and of course there is truth to that. But the timing, given the mounting tensions between the Pakistani military and the United States, should not be discounted.

Though we will probably never know, one has to wonder who was in the hotel at the time that may have represented a target.

As the folks over at Crooks And Liars have been pointing out, Chris Matthews, like him or dislike him, has been rightly admonishing Republicans supporting Mr. McCain for distancing themselves from the responsibilities of the current administration, and the Republican party itself, regarding the current economic crisis. In a recent interview with Congressman Eric Cantor, Matthews said…

“The way we keep score in American politics is the party that’s in power for eight years and runs the White House — and 3/4 of the time runs the Congress and the White House — takes the heat when things go bad. Congressman Cantor, you’re trying to change the rules now and saying, ‘oh, if we take off our uniforms and don’t say we’re Republicans this week, the people will be fooled.’ I’ve never heard of that happening in politics.”

Matthews did the same thing in another recent interview with McCain Senior Policy Advisor Nancy Pfotenhauer…

“Matthews: But I don’t understand - John McCain is the nominee of the Republican Party.

Pfotenhauer: Yes.

Matthews: He’s going to stand in that debate next Friday night on the 26th, because he is the nominee of the Republican Party. That’s why he has a 50/50 chance of winning this election. Because he is the nominee of the Republican Party and the other guy is the nominee-Barack Obama-of the Democratic Party. How can you run away from the party whose platform you’re running on? I don’t understand how you can deny that you’re the in party, you’re the incumbent party.”

This is a fantastic piece that I highly recommend watching…

Here are a few things of interest today…

The Azizabad Air Strike

Initially the US military denied that they had made a mistake. In fact, they continued to deny that they had made a mistake for days following the devastating air strike on the village of Azizabad in the Afghan province of Herat that left some 90 people dead, including women and children – which was independently confirmed by the United Nations.

That said; authorities in Afghanistan have arrested three men suspected of providing false intelligence regarding the strike, claiming that there was a Taliban presence in the village. The US continues to assert that a top Taliban commander and other insurgents were killed during the attack.

More from Tom Dispatch.

Harper Promises To Withdraw Canadian Forces In 2011

Campaign promises are one thing, following through on them is another matter altogether.

Two days ago, while campaigning in Toronto, the Prime Minister pledged to withdraw the majority of Canadian Forces from Afghanistan in 2011, which is when the current mandate ends…

“He said that by 2011, Canadians will have been in Kandahar for six years. He acknowledged that neither the public nor the troops themselves had any appetite to stay longer and that only a small group of advisers might remain.

Mr Harper made his pledge as recent opinion polls showed that there was lukewarm public support for the mission.

Canada has lost 97 soldiers and a diplomat in Afghanistan.

Mr Harper faces the very real possibility of the number of Canadian soldiers killed there rising to the symbolic figure of 100 during the election campaign.”

Take note of one very important assertion in that quote – “He acknowledged that neither the public nor the troops themselves had any appetite to stay longer”.

That, right there, is something that should not be forgotten in the future if Harper remains Prime Minister and uses the deaths of more Canadians as justification for ‘seeing the mission through in their name’.

FBI On The Verge Of Being Granted Unprecedented Powers

From the New York Times…

“The Justice Department made public on Friday a plan to expand the tools the Federal Bureau of Investigation can use to investigate suspicions of terrorism inside the United States, even without any direct evidence of wrongdoing.

Justice Department officials said the plan, which is likely to be completed by the end of the month despite criticism from civil rights advocates, is intended to allow F.B.I. agents to be more aggressive and pre-emptive in assessing possible threats to national security.

It would allow an agent, for instance, to pursue an anonymous tip about terrorism by conducting an undercover interview or watching someone in a public place. Such steps are now prohibited unless there is more specific evidence of wrongdoing.”

I can just see it now. Some xenophobic asshole that’s having a dispute with his ‘ethnic’ neighbour over a tree’s branches extending over his back fence is going to be on the phone with the local Bureau Office claiming that suspicious activity has been taking place next door.

Polar Bears

It’s God’s world, we just happen to live in it. Which means that global warming is a myth, despite the fact that chunks of Greenland are falling into the North Atlantic and a whole host of other fun stuff. To those that believe it a ‘leftist hoax’, the earth has undergone changes in the past and therefore there’s really no need to panic. It doesn’t matter than the world’s scientific community overwhelmingly believes it to be a real threat, nor that they represent the world’s preeminent experts on the subject. Any fool with a computer can discount global warming by doing a Google search and finding ‘evidence’ to the contrary.

For every scientist out there that believes it an ‘overblown’ issue, there are a thousand that don’t. That right there should say something.

Moving on to the affects of global warming on the natural world, some of you might recall that not too long ago the government of Alaska moved to counter the Polar Bear being listed as a threatened species. As The Nation’s Mark Hertsgaard points out, we shouldn’t overlook who played a key role in Alaska’s opposition to it…

“It wasn’t much noticed at the time, but three weeks before she was chosen as John McCain’s vice presidential running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin played a key supporting role in the latest episode of the Bush Administration’s eight-year war on the Endangered Species Act, one of the cornerstones of American environmental law. On August 4 Alaska sued the government for listing the polar bear as a “threatened” species, an action, the lawsuit asserted, that would harm “oil and gas…development” in the state. In an accompanying statement, Palin complained that the listing “was not based on the best scientific and commercial data available” and should be rescinded.

The Bush Administration had not wanted to designate the polar bear as threatened in the first place; now Palin’s lawsuit provided cover to backtrack on the decision. The Interior Department had issued the listing only after environmental groups filed two lawsuits, and the courts ordered compliance. While the polar bear population was currently stable, the plaintiffs argued, greenhouse gas emissions were melting the Arctic ice that polar bears rely on to hunt seals, their main food source. A study by the US Geological Survey supported this argument, concluding that two-thirds of all polar bears could be gone by 2050 if Arctic ice continues to melt as scientists project. The listing was the first time global warming had been cited as the sole premise in an Endangered Species Act case, and Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne clearly wanted it to be the last. When Kempthorne announced the polar bear listing on May 14, he emphasized that it would not affect federal policy on global warming or block development of “our natural resources in the Arctic.”

A week after Palin’s lawsuit, Kempthorne delivered on that pledge. On August 11 he proposed new rules that could allow federal agencies to decide for themselves whether their actions will imperil a threatened or endangered species. The rule reverses precedent: since passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, scientists from the Fish and Wildlife Service have made such determinations independent of the agency involved. Under the new rule, if the Army Corps of Engineers is building a dam, the corps can decide whether it is putting species at risk. To make sure no one missed the point, Kempthorne told reporters that the new rule, which he termed “a narrow regulatory change,” would keep the Endangered Species Act from becoming “a back door” to making climate change policy.

Hated by the right wing as an infringement on property rights, the Endangered Species Act has been on Bush’s hit list since the beginning of his presidency, when he chose Gale Norton as his first Interior Secretary. A Republican woman of the West like Palin, Norton assailed the act and did all she could to undermine it. “The Bush Administration has listed only sixty species as threatened or endangered, compared with 522 under Clinton and 231 under the first President Bush,” says Noah Greenwald, science director of the Center for Biological Diversity, the lead plaintiff in the polar bear case. “And it took a court order to make each of those sixty listings happen.”

Good morning from mentally ill headquarters located in Vancouver’s sunny Downtown Lower Eastside. Here at MI HQ we do our best to cover the day’s events from the perspective of the mentally ill prior to our mid afternoon tee-off times (and to think there was a time when I was younger that I had a 15 handicap – just ask Salros).

Painting 2 Billion People With A Single Brush

Sheldon Richman of The Future Of Freedom Foundation penned a piece yesterday entitled Why the Peaceful Majority of Muslims Are Not Irrelevant, something that every hack out there that loves to employ the term ‘Islamofascism’ should read (not that it would make a ton of difference)…

“A few years ago, FrontPageMag.com columnist Paul Marek wrote an article titled “Why the Peaceful Majority Is Irrelevant.” His thesis was that even if the majority of Muslims abhor violence, it doesn’t matter because “the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history…. The hard quantifiable fact is, that the ‘peaceful majority’ is the ‘silent majority’ and it is cowed and extraneous.”

For Marek, the upshot is this: “We must pay attention to the only group that counts: the fanatics who threaten our way of life.”

He’s wrong. No, he’s worse than wrong, because his position could be used to justify mass murder.

Marek and those who have applauded his column point out that most Germans and Japanese during World War II were not warmongers, but warmongers controlled policymaking. The implication is that the United States was right to regard the peaceful majority as nonexistent. That’s exactly what the Allies did. Under Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Winston Churchill hundreds of thousands of German and Japanese civilians were targeted and killed in bombings that had no direct relationship to military objectives. Most people consider this morally defensible. It’s regarded as a normal part of war, although it violates traditional just-war doctrine. But why isn’t it understood to be mass murder? Marek’s answer would be that, since the peaceful majority did nothing to stop the warmongering minority, the majority — men, women, and children — were fair game.

This dubious principle has been applied to the Middle East: If the majority are peaceful, why don’t its members speak out — and act — against the radical minority? Since they don’t, “we” have the right to ignore them when “we” devise strategy and tactics to defend “ourselves.” If they die or otherwise suffer in the attacks, they have only themselves or the radical minority to blame. This principle goes beyond chalking up the deaths of innocents to “collateral damage,” because it suggests that no one is truly innocent.”

I invite you to read Paul Marek’s original piece written in 2006 published by FrontPage Magazine. When doing so, for the sake of ‘objectivity’, keep in mind that FrontPage Magazine is the anti-Islamic propaganda brainchild of David Horowitz. Beyond that, read the piece and then read Richmond’s article in full and decide for yourself which is the more intelligent and well rounded argument.

Photoshop, Not Just For Graphic Designers

Wired Magazine points out that some of the images used to bolster anti-Russian sentiment during its recent conflict with Georgia were tampered with by an Associated Press photographer. The AP has denied the accusations.

Again, read the article and come to your own conclusions.

Poland And Black Sites

When news first broke that the United States had been using secret locations in Europe to hold and interrogate detainees illegally rendered to them, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice scoffed at the assertion. Of course, as time passed, it became clear that her rejection of the idea was little more than hot air.

Yesterday’s Telegraph contains an explosive article pertaining to the uncovering of evidence that numerous key Polish Cabinet Ministers knew of the existence of a CIA Black Site in the country…

“A Polish radio station has claimed that prosecutors possess a 2006 report confirming the jail’s existence, written by Roman Giertych, a cabinet minister in Poland’s previous government, who was then head of a committee monitoring the secret services.

The station, Radio Zet, says that at least two ministers, including then justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, saw the report.

The revelations have been supported by similar claims by one of Poland’s most respected newspapers. Gazeta Wyborcza says that it has seen a document, possessed by prosecutors, proving the existence of a key CIA centre in Poland, which was set up under a secret Polish-US agreement in 2002.

The paper adds that the secret service presented the report to Poland’s then chief prosecutor, Janusz Kaczmarek and two ministers in 2006. Mr Kaczmarek confirmed he met the ministers but has refused to disclose what was discussed.

Prosecutors began their probe under orders from Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, in order to investigate persistent accusations that Szymany, an air force base in north-east Poland, was the location of a key centre in US’s campaign against terrorist networks.

They are also investigating claims that US interrogators used practices such as water-boarding, regarded by many as torture, in Poland.”

I would imagine that, somewhere out there, there are articles that contradict this. If you can find them, feel free to post them in the comments.

Anthropologist, Dr. Michael Wesch, makes plain the power of not your computer, but the social media device that you’re currently sitting in front and using…

Though very early on in his presentation, pause the video and seriously take a moment and think about the statistics that he provides regarding ABC as compared to YouTube.

In 2003 the United States invaded Iraq. The Bush Administration employed blatant falsehoods regarding Iraq’s WMD program and links between the regime of Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, the latter of which is still believed by a great many Americans (there is ample television footage of almost every senior member of the administration employing outright falsehoods during the run up to the war). In truth, the decision to invade Iraq was made shortly following 9/11, with only the when and why left to be engineered. In the end, and despite popular belief to the contrary, the US led invasion of the country was not sanctioned by the United Nations, and was, in truth, in direct contravention of international law. The administration’s proverbial sleeve ace was that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator and that the American public had a far better and clearer recollection of US military action taken against his regime than US assistance to it. This would be why it was effortless for pro-war pundits to evoke the gassing of Halabja as justification for Hussein’s removal while completely ignoring the fact that President Reagan vetoed a Congressional resolution passed soon after the incident calling for all US aid to Iraq to be immediately suspended. Of course, time passed, the incident died down in the press, and US aid continued unabated.

The Bush Administration, having adopted the Wolfowitz Doctrine as its official foreign policy platform in the aftermath of 9/11, initiated with the invasion Iraq what no other US administration had ever attempted – the establishment of a permanent US military footprint in the region. Of course, Iraq doesn’t geographically border the United States, but being that the United States has been the world’s lone super power since the end of the Cold War the truth is that every nation on earth does border America’s sphere of influence. US national security interests span the globe, not merely the Western hemisphere, making the Middle East as relevant as Mexico. The Wolfowitz Doctrine was written as a guidance to unabashedly capitalize on a singular world power reality, and that is precisely what the Bush Administration has endeavored to do in the wake of 9/11.

For reasons of national security, the United States invaded a foreign country, affected regime change, and has militarily occupied it for five years. In that time there have been war crimes committed, over 2 million people have been displaced, and most likely well over 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed. That said, the US is still able to condemn the Russians for their recent actions without batting an eye. Even more, they’ve largely won the PR battle on Georgia’s behalf.

Russian history in the 20th Century is, in many ways, replete with absolutes. The horror of the purges, the seizure of Eastern Europe following the Second World War, and so forth. These things are absolutes because a dictatorially corrupted political ideology was in place that could be easily seen for what it was. The same cannot be said of Western plutocracies, who, while adorned with chevrons marking their unquestionable right, conducted business in private with the same cold, ruthless, and unforgiving resolve. That reality has produced publics that have ultimately only lived half of the modern story of their nations, and ones that have, for the most part, unquestionably adhered to the designs of their plutocratic infrastructures.

Abraham Lincoln wrote something rather telling in August of 1855 in a letter to Joshua Speed, something rather prophetic with regards to the slow diminishment of the democratic principle that would continue unabated after his death…

“As a nation, we began by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.” When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty - to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy”

The perfect machine. Life lived during days of never ending summer with winter cloaked, knife in hand, doing business out of sight. This is who we are. Never mind our defense. We are never wrong. We are only sometimes mistaken.