Panglossian Notes

Just clarifying a couple of items.

I've been struggling over the last 4 days with a hard-disk failure but now, I hope, I'm back to normal, sort of. This is not one of the items I want to clarify.

I heard President Pervez Musharraf's comments, in the CBC interview, in which he characterized us as complainers over the deaths of our people in Afghanistan. Nice try, fellow. But, since he seemed particularly uninformed about the actual number of Canadians that had been killed there, I'm not to sure his estimate of the number of deaths of Pakistan military should be taken at face value.

Lets see, he got the estimate of Canadian deaths wrong by about a factor of 7 or 8. If I assume, this is also the same error factor associated with his estimate of Pakistan's soldiers killed, than his "500 coffin" estimate could really be just 50 to 70 deaths.

Hmm.

Sort of changes the perspective a bit, I think. But maybe he knows more about his own country than ours so say he was only off by a factor of about 2.5. That would mean that there were 190 deaths of Pakistan soldiers. As shown below in the table, that would mean Pakistan is on the same footing as Canada, in this macabre little tit-for-tat. As the table also shows - looking at deaths per 1 million of a country's population - we seem to be ahead of other so-called NATO partners active in the Southern provinces. (I've taken the Afghanistan deaths from Wikipedia and the WWII deaths from here and checked against this site.)

I've added the table on WWII for information only. I wanted to compare what had gone on then to now for my own sense of context.

The other point was Harpers response, if you could call it that, to Musharraf's comments. Yes, I know he didn't respond - nor did MacKay. I guess neither of them ever wants to call a US "fair weather" ally dumb, or at least uninformed. But likely, and maybe more realistically, he didn't know what to say. No one had given him any briefing notes with suggested speaking points on "maybe friends of the US" saying that Canadians were complainers.

So he didn't, or won't, say anything about an insult from the president of another country about Canada's new military dead. No he'd change the subject, and follow in George W. Bush's well worn tracks, by confusing critical comments, about the Conservative government's (NATO?) plan for our involvement in Afghanistan, with his own sense of inferiority regarding "his" policies.

"We are doing the defence," Martin told the newspaper. "But are we doing the amount of reconstruction, the amount of aid that I believe was part of the original mission? The answer unequivocally is that we're not. And I believe that we should."

Paul Martin

Now what I needed to clarify for myself was that Harper is following a clear pattern of confusion. In this case, he has taken what former Prime Minister Martin said, in regard to maybe too much emphasis on shooting up the place in Southern Afghanistan, and not enough effort on those other 2 D's of the Conservative plan - remember development and diplomacy - and tried to imply that the former Prime Minister was shirking his part in the decision to get us into this mess.

Harper said it was irresponsible for Martin to offer the criticism because it was his government that decided to send Canadian troops to Kandahar, the most dangerous part of Afghanistan.
"When you make those kinds of decisions as a prime minister you have to be able to take responsibility for them and stick with them," Harper said. "The fact that Mr. Martin is unable to do that . . . illustrates why he is no longer prime minister."

Harper as quoted in the
The Star Phoenix

I don't think so Harper. The world always just seems a bit too too complex for him. But I'm glad he has again clarified for me just how his mind works.

In fact Harper's statement should have been very disturbing to the MSM types he responded to, but it doesn't seem that, as usual, they were too focused, or only the dumb ones can actually ask Harper a question. To me Harper's response, in effect, said that we are not involved in any development of the South. Whether dangerous or not, it is only development and actually operating as though someone may understand, what-is-it-called?, 4th generation warfare that is going to have any effect.

But this is just me clarifying some items. I do wonder about other things, though, for example: what are our military reading when they are planning. With a hard drive crashed I was finally finishing up some books by Martin Van Creveld. Not a particularly good idea with what we seem to be involved with in Afghanistan, as transposing some of his interpretations of similar situations around the world, over a number of years, we look to be headed down the tubes.

Technorati Tags: Afganistan, Canada, Pakistan, warfare

Spending

I suppose some of the MSM headlines' say it all, or at least some of it.

Tories cut $1B despite surplus - TO Star

Ottawa's $2-billion hit list - G&M

Trimming the fat - Ottawa Citizen

The above are a sample of some of the headlines showing up on MSM e-papers this morning reporting and commenting on yesterdays theatrical performance by the Flaherty Baird component of Canada's new government.

I can tell by the comments to the G&M article, about the performance yesterday, that it is getting mixed reviews from the unwashed. Myself, I loved the big cheque thingy. Not too, too original but I'll bet it has appeal with a set of the Tim Hortons crowd.

The release of the federal governments annual report - I like to think of it as a very, very abbreviated Public Accounts - is not usually the opportunity for such a show of hoopla. The informal excitement is usually reserved for the Finance Minister's fiscal update, remember former Minister Goodales presentation last year of the economic update and not the so-called annual report.

So why was the surplus so big last fiscal year? Let's be sure we know what we are actually talking about. The annual report is for the fiscal year that closed on March 31, 2006 - i.e. fiscal year 2005-06. The year in which a different federal party was responsible for Canadian fiscal affairs for about 3/4 of the year.

The spending cuts announced are actually quite small but do provide some signals to voters on an individual program basis of what the Conservative government may prefer vs the previous Liberal government. There is nothing particularly mind-boggling here and as could be expected focus is centering on a couple that seem indicative of small "c" conservative thinking. Thus the elimination of the medical marijuana research program as a non-core program may certainly be grieved - it provides a small potatoes saving about $4.0 million a year - but is significant in terms of completely understanding the mind-set of the current federal government. The loss of this program is categorized under non-core program elimination and here the conservatives appear, to be quite honest as this term is defined as:

"Programs or activities [that] do not meet the priorities of the federal government or Canadians."

Well, maybe, the definition goes over-board just a little by presuming to know what my Canadian priorities are, eh.

Another program which is very indicative of the ideological preferences of the Conservative government is the elimination of the Court challenges program. Certain groups have had this program on their hit list for years - Real women for example. I loved Baird's justification for dumping it - to paraphrase: "why would we fund people to challenge the laws we make?" Boy, that has real "common sense" appeal don't you think?

The elimination of the GST rebate for visitors struck me as funny at first. This one actually comes close to accounting for some real dollars - about $77 million I think - I wonder how many jobs it effects down in PEI at the Sunnyside processing facility, guess we'll hear soon enough. Of course, next you need to wonder if the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) put the program on the table or was it Finance? My money is on Finance, since they actually make decisions, CRA is just a program administrator really, and this program has a potential to effect the economy or an important sector in the economy, namely tourism, so Finance would be interested.

The program was designed to give back GST - a sales tax - to individuals who visited Canada purchased goods on their visit but consumed the goods outside of Canada. When the dollar was at about 69¢ US it was likely that US visitors were purchasing goods on their cross border visits to take home. With the dollar now around 90¢ US, fairly consistently, there should be less of this activity going on in the future so the perfect opportunity to dump the program. Need to wait and see if similar provincial programs carry on for their sales taxes.

But now back to why such a large surplus this year. At the time of the conservative's first budget they were expecting a surplus of $8.0 billion which they indicated they would use to pay down the debt.

The surplus, and thus the amount available to paid the debt down, has come in at about $13.2 billion. The annual report indicates that this is as a result of stronger than expected revenue growth and good management of expenses.

Bullshit.

The Conservatives simply followed, for their first budget, in the pattern set by former Prime Minister and former Finance Minister Martin's footsteps by over-estimate expenditures and under-estimate revenues at the time of the budget presentation.

So, back when the conservatives were new at 140 O'Connor Street they estimated that for fiscal year 2005-06 revenues would be $220.9 billion and expenditures would be $212.9 billion leaving an $8 million surplus to be used to pay down the debt. What has turned up, now don't be too shocked, are revenues at $222.2 billion and expenditures of $209.0 billion. Looks to me, like a repeat of the past, or near past - under-estimated revenues and over-estimated expenditures.

Oh, well next year thing maybe more precise.

In case anyone thinks I'm complaining, I'm not. I think it's good policy to pay down the debt but I also think someone needs to start really minding the fiscal house and fix a few things in terms of Canada's tax burden. Another shocker, maybe, fixing the burden needs to start with corporations, hey an d I'm not even anyone you'd consider a conservative of the Harper confused variety or normal mainstream type, eh.

Paul Martin and the Liberal governments fixed the fiscal mess the feds faced when they took over from the last conservative government under what's-his-name Mulroney. Harper and his boys and girls have a chance to move us forward, I wonder if they will actually do it. This first funny little presentation over at the old Ottawa railway station shows, I think, they are, like, unfortunately the US Republicans, and are maybe to fixated on ideological peanuts to deal with larger and much much more important matters for the longer term prosperity of Canada.

I do have my fingers crossed, though, but it is really hard to type this way, eh.

Technorati Tags: Canada

Starting to really creak

The US Army looks to be under fairly consistent strain. It has announced that it needs to extend the time for about 4,000 troops currently in Iraq beyond the usual 12 month deployment. This is the second time this has occurred. In August it had to pull back some troops who had actually got their feet back on US soil

"... the Army's 172nd Stryker Brigade was ordered to extend its tour in Iraq by up to four months. Some members of that unit had already returned to the brigade's home base in Alaska when the decision was announced. About 300 soldiers had to go back to Iraq, drawing public complaints from some families."

www.truthout.org

Some in the US think the Army maybe coming to the end of its rope, for example, Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, a private research group. "It [the Army] simply does not have enough active-duty military personnel to sustain the current level of effort.

The de-facto draft would seem needed to continue in Iraq, for how long, is likely anyones guess. After this mess in the middle-east it should take how long to re-build the Army?

Thomas White, a retired general and a former Secretary of the Army, told James Fallow for a piece he wrote in The Atlantic in 2004 "Once you break it [the Army], it takes a long time to put it back together. It took us over twenty years after Vietnam."

For some reason, I doubt the Bush Administration understands what damage it is actually inflicting on future Commander-in-Chiefs, say, if a real military challenge appears, sometime down the road. Of course, maybe history won't repeat itself after the US finally gets out of Iraq and the military won't have any scars. But the signs don't look that good certainly on the fiscal side anyways.

It is coming up to the 23rd anniversary of the US invasion of Grenada under the Reagan administration. Conscription had ended 10 years earlier, so the US military was all volunteer, as it is now. It also hadn't really been repaired from the Vietnam adventure as was documented in Richard Gabriel's 1985 book "Military Incompetence -Why the US Military Doesn't Win". For a flavour of the book and maybe what could be in store after Iraq here's a link to an excerpt from it, that appeared in the Washington Monthly. The Granada operation was as much a botch as the Carter attempt to rescue the American Embassy hostages in Tehran. The only difference was that in Granada the enemy was helpless.

Here, in Canada, I've just finished reading the 1st of a three part series in the Tyee about our own lovely Prime Minister written by Murray Dobbin. Yet, I don't know what to think but becoming much more nervous of smiling Harper. The Friday opportunistic use of those citizens, at least in Ottawa, that felt they needed to show some support for our military actually in Afghanistan and those who've been killed was quite an example of political sarcasm.

Our Harper, reminds me of VP Cheney, but without the curled lip, so he doesn't look as sinister. However, our boy is not yet as clever or cunning as Cheney, our boy's real feelings slip out in what he and his key people say.

About deaths of forces in Afghanistan:

Harper

"I can tell you it's certainly engaged our military. It's, I think, made them a better military notwithstanding -- and maybe in some way because of -- the casualties."

CBC interview

Carolyn Stewart-Olden, a spokeswoman for Harper

"The military gets stronger when casualties occur, she said, because it means more money is put into equipment and recruiting."

Globe & Mail
via Dave at the Galloping Beaver

Interpretation:

"I don't care about the military, as an organization and definitely not the fools that actually join-up, but they certainly make a tool for me to manipulate the drones who make up this country."

Technorati Tags: Canada, Military, Politics

Just goofing around!

So who does President Karzai look like?

I think it's Flash Gordon's old enemy Ming the Merciless.

Technorati Tags: Afghanistan

To Torture or not to Torture?

Since the seat of the free world - I'm joking of course - home of the scared and incompetent administration - here I'm not joking - Washington D.C., USA, has decided to continue to torture people that frighten them, I thought I'd provide a link to the often forgotten article by Merle L. Pribbenow, a former CIA official called: "The Man in the Snow White Cell".

It recounts the tale of Nguyen Tai's 5 year detention with the South Vietnamese and US. Tai was the most senior North Vietnamese officer ever captured during the Vietnam War. This was only discovered near the end of his stay.

The article makes a laughing stock of the fools that think you could ever find out anything from a determined individual that maybe useful in short order.

It concludes with this:

"While the South Vietnamese use of torture did result (eventually) in Tai's admission of his true identity, it did not provide any other usable information. The South Vietnamese played the key role in cracking Tai's cover story, but it was their investigation and analysis that put the pieces together to make a solid and incontrovertible identification of Tai, not their use of torture, that scored this success. .......

..... the South Vietnamese torture gave Tai the incentive for the limited cooperation he gave to his American interrogators, but it was the skillful questions and psychological ploys of the Americans, and not any physical infliction of pain, that produced the only useful (albeit limited) information that Tai ever provided."

I wonder if the greats at Guantánamo tried any psychological ploys on Haji Nasrat Khan or Afghan, Faiz Muhammad just a couple of the characters our great allies to the south are "real", "real" afraid of, eh.

I'll bet Barbara Bush would have a few comments for these scary guys:

"This worked very well for them. Being chained to the floor has help Mr. Faiz immensely with overcoming difficulties with his paralysed legs. Some of our own underprivileged should give it a try. It's just so real great (she chuckles slightly)."

Technorati Tags: terrorism, torture, USA

Hmm, real or am I being too too skeptical?

Both the G&M and the TO Star carried these stories this afternoon on their e-newspaper-versions.

G&M

TO Star

Hey I live 3, 4 blocks away from the House. I didn't go, of course, maybe spontaneity can't drift a few block south-west of the center block, eh.

This has to have been arranged by the Conservatives or DND.

Skeptical, you're right. I don't care whether the troops are in Afghanistan or not. It's a volunteer force so as they say fill-your-boots. But I hope too many don't get killed because I think that would just be a waste of life.

No matter what some politician, of any party, or the G&M editorial page, tries to spin, our troops being there have nothing to do with my safety, the defense of my country or some lofty democratic principle. Yes, yes, I've already done my time so I'm also not interested in the usual silliness from fools who haven't.

When the boys & girls come back I wonder how they refer to this period on their CVs.

The only people benefiting from this little adventure will be the politicians and officials, as the PMO spokeswoman and Harper have already indicated, their stature has risen at International meetings because we have 36 plus 1 dead.

As long as participation remains voluntary have fun people.

I might change my mind, and become much, much, less skeptical about a "public" out pouring of ordinary patriotism, if a couple of MP's, they could be in the Privy Council or not, kids were over there. They wouldn't have to be actually killed, eh. Maybe they could think of it as an extreme sport experience.

Enough, I guess.

So why are the Brits raising concerns. And why aren't any of our officers.

Guess we are happy as clams?

At least all the people in Ottawa and surrounding areas are really glad we have people over there - see stories mentioned above - so the politicians and their staffs will have a real happy hour tonight, guess?

I am starting again, however, to wonder about somethings.

Do the Brit's have reserves over there? I don't think so, but would have to defer to someone like Dave over at the Galloping Beaver to know for sure.

So, if the Brit's don't have reservist over there, as I think, and everyone is a professional soldier, and the British, as our MSM and Harper's government would have to admit have been on the world stage - never left it so-to-speak - for close to never, what's the problem? Why are professional soldiers use to the world stage raising concerns?

And, why don't we, Canadians, have some similar concerns? Dumb former colonists, still? I hope not.

Maybe it shows where we are, in terms of being actually able to do anything though. The British, except when the US cowboys are shooting them up, always complain about other branches of their own arm forces - since we are unified we'd have to complain about our "buddies" - so that's not on. And our Defense Minster and Prime Minister, not here at home of course, whine about other countries not coming to help us.

I think this means the British services, maybe the British government, see themselves as independent and self-sufficient, not really dependent on any other country's military alms (just had to put that in, eh). Well, we, or maybe only our current federal government, seem to have slipped into a completely dependent frame-of-mind.

Technorati Tags: Afghanistan, Canada, Globe and Mail, puppy, Toronto Star

Disneyland boy, aka Prez Bush

I'm just now watching the press conference in Washington with Bush and General Musharraf. Bush is, of course, running through the usual litany of what he appreciates, which is everything under-the-sun.

The interesting part for me was the introduction. Bush reminiscing about his visit to Pakistan with his wife.

Just to remind myself, that was some visit, eh.

Musharraf did raise the F-16 snafu which was interesting and a Pakistan shill - reporter - raised the nuclear two-faced-Indian silliness. Bush blew the nuclear stuff off with a non-response-response. No mention by the great US MSM about the F-16 stuff.

Musharraf no-comment on bombing back to the stone-age, because of the book contract, was funny and expected but nice that Bush shilled for the general.

I do wonder if Bush knows what holistic means, though?

Technorati Tags: Pakistan, Politicians, So, eh?

Torture is on again. We are all saved. Glory be!

When you have the lucky combination of a terrified population, and an opportunistic cadre of politicians, you have what, with a little help from circumstances, seems to be the perfect recipe for making "evil".

This seems to be the situation in the great homeland to the South of here.

The Abuse Can Continue: Senators won't authorize torture, but they won't prevent it, either.

The terrified population seems to be the average US voter, most definitely the average US Republican Party supporter, and, of course, this decade they are terrified of "terrorist boogeymen" or maybe just dark-skin people that don't look like their own black citizens, remember their blacks were some of the last few decades scary people - crack and crime and teenage pregnancy and all that other bad stuff that happens in cities.

The political cadre is the current Republican Party, Bush and the Republican Senators. The Senators are worried, scared, their party will lose control and more and more of them will likely be indicted for shenanigans if the other party wins in November. And, of course, Bush who was looking like the actual lame duck he is, after some key Republican Senators refused to go along with his demand to let him torture whomever he wants.

Bush threatened the rebellious Senators, that he'd give up the questioning of anyone, in his noble attempt to thwart new US "terrorist boogeymen". This was the element needed to form the cadre. Because, the Senators know that the voters are scared to death that someone is going to yell boo at them before they can get behind the walls of their gated-communities. And George W., who is remember, a lame duck, would have worked to tell voters his hands were tied, by awful Republican Senators, who wouldn't let him "torture" people for their safety.

Technorati Tags: Hey_this_is Hell, Politicians, terrorism, torture, Washington Post, wingnuttery

Harper in the Big Apple!

So, am I losing my mind.

Who is actually writing Harper's speeches?

We aren't in Afghanistan with the UN, but he implied that through out his speech. We are there with NATO. In fact there is no mention of NATO in his speech. So why is Harper trying to make it look as though the UN is engaged in "war" in Afghanistan?

ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] is not a UN force, but it is deployed under a mandate of the UNSC (four UNSCRs - 1386, 1413, 1444 and 1510 - relate to ISAF). A detailed Military Technical Agreement between the ISAF Commander and the Afghan Transitional Government provides additional guidance for ISAF operations.

Initially, individual nations volunteered to lead the ISAF mission every six months. The first ISAF mission was run by the United Kingdom, Turkey then assumed the lead of the second ISAF mission. The third ISAF mission was led by Germany and the Netherlands with support from NATO.

NATO has led the ISAF mission since 11 August 2003 and financed by common funding and the troop-contributing nations. The Alliance is responsible for the command, coordination and planning of the force. This includes providing the force commander and headquarters on the ground in Afghanistan.

NATO's role in assuming the leadership of ISAF in August 2003 overcame the problem of a continual search to find new nations to lead the mission and the difficulties of setting up a new headquarters every six months in a complex environment. A continuing headquarters also enables small countries, which find it difficult to act as lead nations, to play a strong role within a multinational headquarters.

NATO Fact Sheet

Those Quebec votes? Does he think Québécois are dyslectic, maybe. Both abbreviations do have the letter "N" in them, I know, but I thought one "N" stood for Nations and the other "N" stood for North.

After last night's speech and now this one, I guess we know what Canada will be doing under the Conservatives: mining tar sands and fighting in Afghanistan.

These guys/girls certainly like their limited agendas and definitely seem to lack any vision for the country other than, as I said, of continuing to mine tar and trying to do god-knows-what in Afghanistan.

Harper acts more like the mayor of a small town then a Prime Minister.

Every time he has the opportunity to demonstrate some personal significance, as the first minister of this country, he is so limited and cautious that he chokes and just affirms his littleness.

Technorati Tags: Afghanistan, Canada, Politicians

"Canada's new government" or what's in a few words?

Dana, at the Galloping Beaver has a short note up on the matter of Andrew Okulitch, a 64-year-old former federal public servant of Natural Resources Canada (NRCAN). Dr. Okulitch had been continuing his association with NRCAN as a "scientist emeritus" (i.e. you -NRCAN - get to use my brain and experience but I - Andrew Okulitch - don't charge you for it).

I guess Dr. Okulitch had a dust-up with the Assistant Deputy Minister of the Earth Sciences Sector, Dr Irwin Itzkovitch, about the proper way to refer to the current federal minority government.

Dr. Okulitch was dumped or maybe resigned from the "you provide your services free to us program" because he didn't use the term "Canada's new government" when referring to the current federal government. And maybe he had some strong words regarding his actual views about someone trying to force bumf into his writing. This would seem to be indicated by the Vancouver Sun snippet of e-mail from Itzkovitch to Okulitch:

"Given your strong, though misdirected views, of the role and responsibilities, as well as authority of the government, as elected by the people, and your duty to reflect their decisions, I accept that you are immediately removing yourself from the emeritus program," Itzkovitch wrote.

The Vancouver Sun
September 19, 2006

I think the incident is actually funny but may point to something else that could be occurring within the federal public service.

First, and this is just a throw-away, we or "Canada's new government" hasn't yet figured out how to completely airbrush distasteful individuals out of the picture so-to-speak. Compare:

Google cached information retrieved on September 13, 2006.

with (someone seems to be missing)

NRCAN current GSC Pacific staff directory page September 20, 2006.

Just for posterity here are the pdf's of the current Google cache and the NRCAN pages to prove I've not maybe been seeing things?

Governments, new or old, establish "style" guidelines for correspondence. It has been in the recent past, at least, usually done at the departmental level. Thus a new minister, within either a newly elected government or an existing government after a cabinet shuffle, will set guidelines for the tone of any correspondence leaving his/her office.

Also, and I know this could be a shock for some, ministers in my experience only rarely actually sign their correspondence. The signing of letters, after going through an approval process, is done mechanically - a pen and profile of the signature in effect.

So having rules about how they - the executive arm of a government - want to be referred to in correspondence leaving a minister's office is not unusual, in fact it is the normal course of events.

But what seems to be being indicated in the details between Okulitch and Itzkovitch could be something else which, if it is, is a bit unusual and disturbing.

Reading behind the lines, of the snippet in the Vancouver Sun article, could imply that technical subject matter public servants (as opposed to the policy types), even in internal memorandums, may have been ordered to refer to the Conservative federal government as "Canada's new government".

If this is the case, then Dr. Okulitch's objections maybe more than simply an independently minded scientist disagreeing to silly bureaucratic political bumf. It could be the first sign of actual interference, by the current government, into strict subject matter areas along the lines of what has become standard practice in the USA under the current Bush administration.

I hope we are only seeing petty silly servant nonsense on the part of Dr Irwin Itzkovitch.

Technorati Tags: Politicians, Stupidity