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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s progress.

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

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

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

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

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

Updated

I’ll not lie, there is nothing in this entry about hockey. But that doesn’t alter the fact that the majority of Canadians care more about what goes on in the NHL than the human rights abuses that their own government has had a hand in. Buried in CBC’s pack pages, and most likely dwarfed by hockey news in your local paper, Maher Arar finally responded to the resignation of RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli with the following…

“It is only my hope that Justice O’Connor next week in his report will recommend an agency that can oversee the activities of all those departments that have to do with national security. The public deserves to have the full truth. Accountability is about more than one person, or one agency, or one government department.”

Dangerous waters. The oversight of an intelligence community is a tricky business. Look only to the United States to see how the people’s representatives have been all but stripped of their ability to properly address the actions of their own intelligence community, one for which they pay, and yet one that has, since its inception, actually operated outside of the financial disclosure language found in the first section of the Constitution – language which, as Chalmers Johnson has aptly pointed out in the past, creates the United States a democracy.

It should also be noted that besides being rendered to Syria by the CIA, where he was held captive for a year and tortured (as if that’s not grounds enough to demand justice on both sides of the border), this affair has affected his entire family…

“Arar’s lawyer Julian Falconer said the parties responsible for the fiasco must be identified and held accountable.

Falconer said Arar’s entire family has been affected. His brother lost a trucking business because of an inability to travel to the U.S., his parents have aged “horribly” and Arar himself cannot travel to 70 countries, Falconer said.

The family is also unable to make the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Falconer said.�

Tonight, when you’re sitting on the couch, Molson Canadian in hand, watching Hockey Night In Canada, maybe take a few seconds between periods to remind yourself that if we’re to treat such incidents with minor consideration, then when it comes our turn we have forfeited the right to complain.

Perplexed?

Oil trumps politics, remember that as long as fossil fuels reign supreme on our planet. One need only look at the American relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for reassurance. Sure, US and Saudi intelligence worked together in the 80’s to help fund and train the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, among them Osama Bin Laden (himself a Saudi, and perhaps even more than merely a radical with money). During the Gulf War, the US military populated Saudi Arabia, where they remained until 2003, after which ‘limited training personnel remained’ – the US military presence in Saudi Arabia being a key issue with many radical Islamic groups.

Over the last five years, the Bush administration has made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that it will deal harshly with those nations that either harbour or support terrorists, which is a round about way of saying radical Islamic militants. Ironically, when it comes to this assertion, it seems that the Saudis have a free pass. When Vice President Cheney visits Saudi Arabia, as he recently did, it’s all smiles and handshakes, not hard words and stern looks, as is often the case when dealing with Pervez Musharraf’s government most of the time. Because of their oil wealth, and to a lesser degree because Saudi Arabia is home to Islam’s most holy sites, the United States conveniently overlooks a variety of things that they have, in other parts of the world, pointed to as unacceptable. The most important being that the majority of foreign fighters entering Iraq are Saudi nationals.

There’s Also…

Saudi Arabia is a Monarchy, not a democracy. And while it has made token gestures to usher in the electoral process on very basic civic levels, the House of Saud is far from allowing the country to be transformed into a pro-Western democracy. In truth, there’s little point to it. They’re a pro-Western Monarchy, and that’ll do in a pinch, especially when you’re one of the world’s foremost oil producers.

Women cannot drive cars or ride bicycles (among other things).

Public executions take place.

In short - The Mutaween.

The government of Saudi Arabia has rigged its major oil fields with explosives so that, in the event of a coup or military invasion, it can destroy its own oil infrastructure.

Between Period Reading

For a complete run down of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, check out Amnesty International’s 2006 Report.

Spinning

Reuters…

“The U.S. military said ground forces with air support killed 20 suspected al Qaeda militants, including two women, in an area where the Sunni Arab insurgency is strong.

Police and officials in Ishaqi, 90 km (50 miles) north of Baghdad, said the bodies of 17 civilians, including six women and five children, were found in the rubble of two homes.

“The Americans have done this before but they always deny it,” Ishaqi Mayor Amer Alwan told Reuters by telephone. “I want the world to know what’s happening here.”

Complaints that unjustified killings by U.S. troops are common have soured Iraqis’ sentiment toward the U.S. presence in Iraq and prompted Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki earlier this year to say he was losing patience over such reports.”

Required

Analysts: US at Root of Effort to Topple Lebanese Government…

“It’s no coincidence that all those who supported Israel in the war are today supporting what remains of this falling government,” Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Thursday night via video feed to a cheering crowd of thousands.

“Does any Lebanese accept … supporting a government that George Bush and (Israeli Prime Minister) Ehud Olmert support?” he asked.

The sea of men, women and children booed and screamed for the government’s downfall.

Asked for comment, a representative at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut referred a McClatchy reporter to remarks by Rice last summer in which she said any peace deal had to ensure that Lebanon didn’t return to its “status quo,” again meaning that Hezbollah must be brought under control.

But Hezbollah now appears more in control than ever.”

9/11, what to say. It’s actually cheaper to fly on 9/11, if you can believe it. The regime of Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with it, which some still refuse to believe. The majority of those who did were Saudi nationals, and yet television commercials praising Saudi Arabia were aired on national television shortly after 9/11, reminding us that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has always been our trusted friend and ally (unfortunately, the Taliban didn’t have any K Street spin doctors on their payroll at the time).

9/11 has helped further the uncontested militarization of Western democracies, led to a global war on terror which has, in turn, led to a global decline in human rights standards, and a reduction in civil liberties within societies whose founding principles are entirely based on the incorruptibility of their promise.

It has ushered in a new age of preemptive, unilateralist foreign policy dogma, all but destroyed what little authority the UN had left, helped fuel cultural and religious tensions, and sparked a new age of arms proliferation.

From today’s Independent…

“The “war on terror” - and by terrorists - has directly killed a minimum of 62,006 people, created 4.5 million refugees and cost the US more than the sum needed to pay off the debts of every poor nation on earth.

If estimates of other, unquantified, deaths - of insurgents, the Iraq military during the 2003 invasion, those not recorded individually by Western media, and those dying from wounds - are included, then the toll could reach as high as 180,000.�

The Senate Intelligence Committee recently released a 2005 CIA report that claimed there to be no link between the regime of Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. I would dearly love to read any of the Aardwolf’s that helped comprise the background for that package.

President Bush, for whom there are too many names to count, remarked recently to a television journalist in the US…

“One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror.�

I wonder what the others are.

During and shortly after the Presidential referendum in Venezuela I made a series of entries about the National Endowment For Democracy and USAID, specifically the Office of Transition Initiatives, funneling money to anti-Chavez groups. It has long been asserted that USAID has been used as a front for CIA social penetration operations, and such charges were directed towards USAID with regards to the referendum and other anti-Chavez activities. Interestingly, yesterday’s edition of the Guardian included a story entitled US Accused of Bid to Oust Chávez with Secret Funds, which delves into USAID’s involvement in bankrolling anti-Chavez elements. If you’re at all interested in wading into the seedy world of how apparatuses such as this are used to supplement covert initiatives, not to mention monetarily influence Non Government Organizations, it’s a good example to start with.

Also of interest is a story in today’s Washington Post about a new $20 million dollar contract being offered by the US military to help project more positive coverage about events in Iraq. When the truth just won’t cut it, it’s always best to buy a little just in case. And how many Katrina victims are still living in portables a year later? Well, at least they’ll be receiving a more positive spin on the war.

Speaking of spin, President Bush walked out onto the Iraq – 9/11 bridge today in Utah for another look around. From the BBC…

“He said those who brought down the World Trade Center in New York five years ago were united with car bombers in Baghdad, Hezbollah militants who shot rockets into Israel, and terrorists who had recently attempted to bring down flights between Britain and the US.�

If you’re at all wondering just how stupid most people are, look no further than the fact that there are quite a few that still don’t know that Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. In fact, not one of the 9/11 hijackers was an Iraqi national. The fact that Osama Bin Laden and the majority of the hijackers that day were Saudis should not alarm you. Saudi Arabia is a grand place, and you’d best remember that.

Lastly, an acquaintance of mine was recently forced to remove his t-shirt at a US airport because it was deemed offensive. The shirt simply read, in both English and Arabic, ‘we will not be silent’.

Land of the free indeed.