Panglossian Notes

Canada's appalling Prime Minister shows his true colours, or what it's like being inside Harper's head.

I'm now completely embarrassed that Canadians, even in a minority, elected the appalling Harper party to run our federal government. I didn't vote for the Harper party.

Harper at the Commonwealth meeting, in effect, announced that Canada has assumed the mantle of obstructionist from Australia's John Howard even before Howard is completely politically dead - I'm assuming as I write this that Rudd hasn't been over to chit-chat with the Australian GG yet. I guess Canadians should also know now why Baird, the Environment Minister, has broken long standing precedent and refused to allow members of the opposition parties to travel to the upcoming meetings in Bali as part of the Canadian government official delegation. - having Canadian opposition parties hounding him would just distract him from obstructing.

In fact it doesn't really matter what the Commonwealth countries agreed or disagreed about regarding the climate at the meeting in Kampala. But the meeting does indicate that the Harper government is still in a state of denial. They will say they aren't but the truth is now out there even before the Bali meeting gets started. The Harper government backs anything as long as the anything is a "non-binding aspirational" approach. Hmm, could "non-binding aspirational" be weasel words for "doing nothing"?

Also Harper, et al, mutter about additional qualifiers effecting their approach. They will only agree to measures that maybe adopted by the majority at Bali, if everyone is in - i.e. the US, China and India.

Well if the outcome is a "non-binding aspirational" approach who wouldn't be in. Everyone will get to pontificate "good intentions" and then piss off home to do nothing.

Given his going in constraints, the Bali meeting, from Harper's perspective, seems a foregone waste of time, doesn't it? I'm wondering why he is even bothering to dispatch Baird to attend - show, maybe?.

Too bad that under Harper's over-constrained method, I think, the world would get a big zero. No, I'm wrong on this, actually the world, as we know it today, very likely would get a sentence of extinction. So it gets a big negative. Oh well.

I'm hoping that there may actually be something a little more sophisticated in what at face-value appears to be the Harper way of dealing with a complex negotiation dealing with an extremely serious issue. But, I'm betting he is just the standard Western arrogant.

So, let me see if I can get into a Harper way of thinking of carbon emissions:

Thoughts in Harper's Head

Harper's Head: "If humans are responsible for global warming, because they carry on processes that are responsible for emitting greenhouse gases, then all humans are at fault and all must contribute equally to fixing the mess."

Harper's Head: "Having an agreed on set of binding world rules to reduce ongoing greenhouse gas emissions is inefficient, complex to administer and a hinderance to individuals and corporations."

Harper's Head: "If a government under me agreed to binding constraints, either a worldwide cap and trade system or a carbon tax, I, my government, could be in a potential constitutional crisis with my home province Alberta. This will not happen while I'm Prime Minister. Thus I've constructed a scenario for acceptance of any measure from the Bali meetings, by my government, that is over-constrained and unless the outcome of the meeting is meaningless nothing will be accepted."

Thoughts in a Non-Harper Head

Non-Harper Head: "Global warming is occurring and it is caused by humans. Since the Industrial Revolution humans in the developed world have been mainly responsible for the high flows - emissions - of greenhouse gases and the build up of the "stock" - level - of carbon in the atmosphere. The duration period for carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere is somewhere between 100 and 500 years. Thus developed countries are mainly responsible for the problem of global warming occurring at this point in human history.

Non-Harper Head: "Given the existing dangerous high level of carbon in the atmosphere, going forward, from this point, emissions of greenhouse gases are a world problem that all humans must equally contribute to reducing.

Non-Harper Head:"Since the developed world is mainly responsible for the current situation facing humans potentially sharing a portion of the wealth acquired by developed countries, during the period of human history which ignored the accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere, may need to be considered."

Non-Harper Head: "Having an agreed on world carbon tax, binding on all countries, is the most efficient and least complex method for both individuals and corporations of reducing greenhouse gases emissions.

Non-Harper Head: "Potential Canadian constitutional conflicts between the federal and a provincial government are not a concern."

Fat chance that anyone in Canada's federal government is thinking in a non-Harper way.

Technorati Tags: Accountability, Canada, Delusionists, Global Warming, Leadership?, Politicians

Question to the Harper Party Government of Canada re: mandatory sentencing!

Hey PM Steve, and what's his name, your new Justice minister, oh yeah, Rob Nicholson, what would you two do if you could ignore your rube supporters and look into the future? You only need to look for just a minute. You might try to see someone like Dennis Fentie, who you could, in the future, send off to prison for a long fixed time because of your hick, 'let's tie the hands of judges', approach to dealing with sentencing:

"Justice Minister Rob Nicholson unveiled new legislation Tuesday that would impose mandatory prison sentences for dealing illegal drugs.

“Drug producers and dealers who threaten the safety of our communities must face tougher penalties,” Mr. Nicholson said in a release. “This is why our government is moving to impose mandatory jail time for serious drug offences that involve organized crime, violence or youth.”

November 20, 2007
Globe & Mail

Remember, Dennis, the now Premier of that historic Northern Territory, the Yukon, use to be a heroin trafficker:

"Premier Dennis Fentie was involved in a heroin ring 25 years ago in Edmonton.

... Fentie was charged with two counts of trafficking heroin in 1975, and spent 17 months in a federal penitentiary serving his sentence.

...

... the Edmonton Journal say[s] Fentie, who was 24 at the time, was part of a large drug ring that police were attempting to shut down to stop the flow of drugs into the city.

His criminal records have been sealed from the public after he was pardoned for the crimes.

November 23, 2003
CBC North

Fentie is a very successful negotiator, as a few Canadian federal government officials who have sat across a table from him would admit readily. Some, in fact, have wondered if he didn't learn to be so good at his current trade by first being in the high risk drug business and then doing only a short time in prison, courtesy of an understanding judge with free hands, to straighten up.

Technorati Tags: Arctic, Canadian North, CBC, Globe and Mail, Pinheads, Politicians

A purpose for a royal family, not including the Clintons and Bushs, of course

"The king of Spain's recent undiplomatic outburst at the Venezuelan president has become a ringtone hit across Spain.

An estimated 500,000 people have downloaded the insult featuring the words "Why don't you shut up?", generating a reported 1.5m euros ($2m).

November 19, 2007
BBC

I kind of like this rap version, also.

Thank heavens, eh, finally the Spanish royals have found a purpose, other than, of course, as fodder for satirical magazines like El Jueves. Here is a copy of the crude cartoon mentioned in spaintheblog showing the crown prince at work:

"In it, the cartoon-Prince says, "You know, if you get pregnant, this will be the closest thing I'll have done to work in my life."

.
Aside from targeting the Royal Family, who are supported by taxpayer money, the cartoon is also aimed at Prime Minister Zapatero's recently inaugurated program to pay 2,500 euros to the parents of newborns and newly adopted children.
.
"You've noticed the elections are coming, ZP! 2500€ per child," is splashed above the cartoon.

July 20, 2007
Spain Blog

Technorati Tags: ¿Porque no te callas? , Ringtones, Royals at work, Silly, Spain

Canada's Stockwell Day practicing being a Red Herring

The Harper, aka "new", government of Canada's minister of public safety and other neat stuff, the dimmed witted creationist and geography challenged Stockwell Day, was allowed out by his boss, Prime Minister Steve, this weekend to say a few words to human being in British Columbia.

Day, fortunately for Steve, proved again, in his few words, why he isn't still the leader of the conservative/reform/alliance party.

Stockwell, I like to play the Rock Hudson part of Macmillan and wife, Day just can't master the conservative "talking to the idiot people" strategy, which entails finding some issue Canadians feel strongly about and blaming the Liberal party for causing it.

Day instead just always misses.

So, in his little outing this weekend, and in his now best, classic, folksy reform party style, he tried to both draw attention away from the 4, count them, 4 RCMP characters who, in effect, murdered a man in the Vancouver airport with their new fun taser tool a month ago and to diminish that mans death at the hands of the red serge crowd by raising the red herring of deaths from drunk drivers.

"Quite rightly, the whole nation is aghast.... One person was killed who didn't have to be killed," said Day, MP for Okanagan-Coquihalla.

But he says drunk-driving accidents also claim the lives of fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and other loved ones, "and where's the shock and horror?"

November 19, 2007
The Toronto Star

What an utter a-hole. Jeez, Ontario was more than glad to see the back end of this clown and gads, even Albertans cheered when he went over the mountains to B.C.. Where does the fool go next - the states, Australia? Can someone start working on the visa now, please.

Technorati Tags: Canadian Idiot, Canadian screwball, Canadian throwback, RCMP, Really stupid, Sarcasm, Shmuck, Stupid Canadian politician tricks, Stupidity

What would you prefer 144 years after the fact? The Gettysburg address then and now!

On the 144th anniversary of Lincoln's great, and simple, 271 word speech, would you prefer the original:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled, here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

or; a PowerPoint version?

I still choose the original.

The above, courtesy, of course, to both Lincoln and Peter Norvig.

Technorati Tags: Anniversary, My Interest, PowerPoint?, Speeches, US Civil War, Writing

Tasers, or the RCMP what's working?

Well the answer to the question in the title of this note is taser, of course.

Yes the tasers are charged up and ready to be used by the guys and gals that always get their man (do they ever get any women).

I'm being a fool, I know. Excuse,eh.

I'd think pretty well most, who you could stand watching, or listening, to the digitally captured pictures of Mr. Dzeikanski being killed by the RCMP at the Vancouver Airport, have done it.

I'm very glad people are outraged about the current fiasco out in locust land. Yes. And I think they should be.

Do I expect any real accountability for the 4 officers directly involved in the first public execution since the hanging, just down the street from me here in Ottawa, of the convicted assassin of D'Arcy Magee?

NO!

Why?

Because I have been trained to know that there are endless excuses for anyone in my country, Canada, who is responsible for discharging the state's ultimate authority of intimidating, oops maybe I meant coercing, those within it's national boundaries.

Also we have switched into a nation, and I think this is relatively new, that thinks our police and military are actually individuals who are selfless dedicate souls, only interested in doing what selfless souls do, which is now to be selflessly keeping us all safe and, of course, ensuring that little girls can go to school in Afghanistan.

What bullshit, eh. But this is just me.

However, I do wonder about selflessness, what a miss used word. Since, of course, who is selfless?: some mythical characters and, maybe, your and my mothers and fathers?

The awfulness of the incident in Vancouver calls into question all our absolutions of those that are charged with enforcing our thuggery while masquerading as selflessly dedicated to all we hold as good.

But it isn't the low, level, drones, the ones who actually shoot, or hit, or taser, or just upset us when caught on someone's cell-phone video who are accountable now, is it?

My first, and still now, reaction to watching the footage of the 4 RCMP officers murdering, a clearly disoriented, Mr. Dzeikanski in Vancouver was who trained these clowns. They appeared as 4 scared bullies eager to use their new tasers.

Something is really really wrong with the RCMP, maybe it should simply go the way of the paratroop regiment. Hey what would we lose, not much really and think we wouldn't have to pay for all the feed for those dumb horses we keep for the mounties out there by the end of Aviation Parkway or where ever it is in Rockcliffe.

Technorati Tags: Canadian, RCMP, Thugs

Politicians, do they give crooks a bad name?

It's an interesting question. Are politicians giving the professional crooks a bad name?

Two of the latest characters dragging down the reputations of hard working thieves and scoundrels are Canada's Brian Mulroney and Pakistan's (England's or Dubai's you can take your pick for the wanderlust money laundress or better, maybe, washer woman, who knows where she considers home) Benazir Bhutto.

Mulroney, who most Canadians wish would just please go away, is back again because of his alleged dealings and accepting cash payments, in little brown bags, from a German, now Canadian citizen, named Karlheinz Schreiber.

The Harper government had on November the 9th announced that it would name an "independent" character to investigate Schreiber's claims about Mulroney accepting $300,000 in unmarked $1000 bills at 3 "secret" meetings and maybe even doing deals when he was still actually the Prime Minister of Canada.

Mulroney in - should we say it? yes we should - a typical political defensive ploy has now demanded a full-blown inquiry into the whole so-called "Airbus Affair".

Of course "the Affair" isn't what's at issue. But, what the heck, let's muddy the waters and confuse the debate and tearfully claim the press is out to get poor old Brian Canada's answer to the sad-sack.

The issue is the $300,000 and Brian's alleged little scurrying around with the bags of $1000 bills. As a quick aside one of the oh so unimaginative defenses of Mulroney has come from a spokesperson who, in standard spin mode, appealed to a CBC 5th Estate reporter's reason, i.e. common sense, by implying that what sensible person would risk their reputation and maybe even criminal charges by accepting a lousy $300,000 when everyone knows that ex-politicians make bags and bags of marked and traceable dollar bills by going on speaking tours. Yeah sort of like Martha, money bags, Stewart, going down for what: $45,673. Nice try spokesperson.

This little fiasco has some, I think they are of the NDP ilk, worrying that politicians maybe getting a bad name, even though, in typical NDP manner, it's the system that's at question not the characters in the system:

""It's important that we get to the bottom of this very soon because otherwise it's a stain on the democratic process. ..."

Jack Layton New Democratic Party
November 12, 2007
CBC News

So we'll see what happens today. Lots of sound and furry I'd expect.

What do I think?

Well the ultimate telling fact to me is that Mulroney, only after it was proved that he actually got $300,000 from Schreiber, remember our ex-PM only admitted this little telling fact after proof surfaced that he had gotten bags of money 5 years earlier, I think, whipped down to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) offices and made a "voluntary disclosure" about the little pile of extra taxable income. Nice, eh.

The CRA program, wink, wink, wink some more, is for those lucky souls that haven't been caught yet in an audit but could be charged with income tax evasion. It's for those who might have pangs of conscious that they have stolen from the Canadian people and now want to make amends or, of course, looking at it from another perceptive it's for those who may know that an audit by the CRA maybe imminent but not yet started and then the potential of jail is real if you been bad.

32.

A disclosure will not qualify as a valid disclosure, subject to the exceptions in paragraph 34, under the “voluntary” condition if the CRA determines:

the taxpayer was aware of, or had knowledge of an audit, investigation or other enforcement action set to be conducted by the CRA or any other authority or administration, with respect to the information being disclosed to the CRA, or

enforcement action relating to the disclosure was initiated by the CRA or any other authority or administration on the taxpayer, or on a person associated with, or related to the taxpayer (this includes, but is not restricted to, corporations, shareholders, spouses and partners), or on a third party, where the purpose and impact of the enforcement action against the third party is sufficiently related to the present disclosure, and

the enforcement action is likely to have uncovered the information being disclosed.

Canada Revenue Agency
NO.: IC00-1R2
DATE: October 2007
SUBJECT: Voluntary Disclosures Program

I'll bet Brian moved very very quickly to get to a CRA office before the auditors could start to ask questions. It is fun to think of him struggling to get one of those 50 pairs of Gucci's on his big flat feet to waddle to a local CRA confessional booth where officials would wink at him and his lawyers as they passed him the income tax bill for the $300,000 of "forgotten or hidden" loot.

Though, the last exception in the CRA program sort of tells you that Brian had likely really covered his tracks with the bags of $1000 bills but then maybe he is just a nervous nelly.

Technorati Tags: Canada, Lace curtain shmuck, Pakistan, Politicians, Puzzles, Really stupid, Shnoring, Shnoring again

Update:The United States claims to have invented everything!

At times, the US reminds me a bit of the USSR and stories about the fabulous Soviet claims to having invented all things that were useful in the modern world. Russia, maybe less ambitious without it's satellites, now settles for just claiming imaginary geographical things like the North Pole.

The US is not quite the USSR in claimings but sometimes the bragging gets a little ahead of the country's actual accomplishments.

In an otherwise interesting article, in the American Conservative, by Eamonn Fingleton looking at US hegemony in technical prowess, he claims a number of inventions I think aren't theirs.

"In retrospect, we can see that America’s era of greatest relative inventiveness was in the 1930s through the 1960s. In the 1930s alone, American inventions included nylon, the helicopter [update], the electron microscope, the automated teller machine, and the plain paper copier.

The Creativity Conceit
Eamonn Fingleton
November 5, 2007 Issue
The American Conservative

My problem is with the 2 3 (with my update) inventions I've underlined: the electronic microscope and the ATM (and also now the helicopter).

I think the linage of the electronic microscope is as outlined below

Louis de Broglie - France, the ideas
Ernst Ruska and Max Knoll - Germany, the first prototype (impractical)
Eli Franklin Burton, Cecil Hall, James Hillier and Albert Prebus - Canada, University of Toronto, first practical working model.

The ATM is maybe a little more controversial, with Luther George Simjian (an Armenian American) making an early version not really used, but my money, for the modern ATM, is on the Scot John Adrian Shepherd-Barron and I'm not changing my mind.

Update, eh.

I'm getting sloppy, maybe forgetful? I should also question the claim of helicopter invention, particularly on today November the 13th. Yes this is the day, a hundred years ago, that Paul Cornu from France:

"piloted a twin-rotor helicopter of his own design, and rose about one foot (0.3 meter) off the ground. He hovered for about 20 seconds.

The Helicopter: A Hundred Years of Hovering
Robert Lemos
Wired
November 13, 2007

Technorati Tags: Canadian, Curiosity, Development, Invention, UK, USA

Condi Rice a manager, lousy leader, or what?

I'm generally puzzled by allegations that some very senior government or organization people aren't good managers. I think people always mix up management and leadership. I expect senior people, read head of a large multi-person entity, to provide leadership not management. A case in point is this article in yesterday's WaPo: Rice's Management at Issue.

Seems Condi is flubbing left, right and center on the management side, even though she indicated when she took the job at State that

"... she relished the challenge of "line responsibility" in leading a large organization. "I really enjoy that," she said in an interview. "Some of my favorite times here have been my budget and high-level management reviews."

Glenn Kessler
WaPo
November 10, 2007

I guess relishing and sitting around while some drone flashes PowerPoint presentations and high level reviews in 48 pitch font up on a screen is different than providing a tone of confidence and, I dare say leadership. What I suspect is that Condi is doing quite well on the usual management side of things, note the WaPo article mentions:

"When Rice is not traveling, she meets at 8 a.m. weekdays with a few top aides for half an hour to map out her day, before meeting with other top department officials. In the evenings, she holds a wrap-up meeting with close aides to review and plan ahead.

Glenn Kessler
WaPo
November 10, 2007

As I said, most very senior officials don't really manage, do they?

Managing is for lower level drones or less senior types. It's important but, as Jimmy Carter found out when James Fallows wrote about his being up really early at the Whitehouse to check and approve who may have booked the tennis court during the day, in his 1979 Atlantic piece titled The Passionless Presidency (subscription needed), it was the beginning of cementing Jimmy into a corner from which he could not chisel his way out. Not what really senior guys and gals do.

Senior characters do set a tone for an organization, if they are any good, and surround themselves with capable competent people that can manage and think.

What I suspect, is that Condi, is simply a lousy insecure leader. For example:

"Rice becomes angry over even minor [bad] news accounts, turning furiously to the relevant assistant secretary for an explanation. "Dressing someone down like that is not great for morale and does not encourage people to bring up bad news," he said. [sounds, to me, a bit reminiscent of the bullying, almost anti-social and definitely killjoy, Canadian Prime Minister Steve Harper.]

Glenn Kessler
WaPo
November 10, 2007

The above just indicates amateurishness. BS to subordinates works its way down an organizational chain pretty quickly and starts to decay it from within, in effect completely undermining the ultimate senior person - a sort of fragging process goes on but without the actual grenade. Individuals, considered successful by some in the MSM and some pundit types, that follow the John Bolton style of leadership - lovingly kissing up (gag, eh) while kicking down - have to move quickly from one organization to another to avoid being caught in an imploding reporting structure.

In an administration which likely will go into some books as the incompetence stars in US executive history over the last 230 odd years you'd have to be a super-duper leader to effect any organization - morale must just suck, I'd expect, in every US federal government department right now. Besides the Bush administration is in the late night of its time and the only clear sounds to be heard are that of the death watch beetles boring away in the rafters as officials wait for the expiration and last breath before shoving the stiff out the window to the undertaker.

Chalmers Johnson, in his essay, or review, of The Matador's Cape, America's Reckless Response to Terror by Stephen Holmes, notes the damage that unintended consequences have had on the inept handling of US foreign policy under this Bush administration, while providing praise for both Colin Powell and Rice in the management arena:

""By sheer chance," Holmes writes, "Rice and Powell -- no doubt orderly managers -- have pedestrian minds and perhaps deferential personalities. Neither provided a gripping and persuasive vision of the United States' role in the world that might have counteracted the megalomania of the neoconservatives, and neither was capable of outfoxing the hard-liners in an interagency power struggle" (p. 94). [my italic - PN]

I rather like the set of three noun phrases: orderly manager, pedestrian mind and deferential personality.

Faint praise, I guess, from Holmes. Though, they'd be a great combo for a couple of tombstone epitaphs for one current senior and one ex Bush official, I think?

Hey, let's keep some perspective, being awarded a title as an orderly manager is immensely great, almost overwhelming, praise to anyone associated with Bush the 43rd.

Technorati Tags: Accountability, Chaos, Foreign Affairs, foreign policy, Sarcasm, Snafu's?, The Atlantic, USA, WaPo

NATO, Afghanistan, DA PLAN, what PLAN?

So, finally, what seems to be happening with the Afghanistan fiasco is that military and so-called development types are admitting there is NO PLAN.

There is no strategy there is nothing just confusion.

"LONDON — Chaos and competing goals among NATO nations involved in Afghanistan are preventing progress there, according to the British general who commanded the Afghan mission until February.

"The nations contributing to [the NATO mission in Afghanistan], together with the Afghan government, have yet to agree, and to start efficiently implementing, a coherent strategy," Sir David Richards told a conference of leaders yesterday organized by the Canadian government in London.

Doug Saunders
November 2, 2007
Globe & Mail

Great, and after us, dim witted, Canadians have been believing all along that the "big boys" or the "serious people" knew what they were doing. Hmm!

When do we start laughing, eh. Remember we've been endlessly told that the troops believe in the mission, that gem of a bumper sticker slogan spouted after every freshly dead individual is flown home for burial. But it turns out the characters in charge don't know if there even is a mission.

[Note to bs artists at the Department of National Defense: drop the believe in mission bumper slogan from the usual maudlin bromide filled swill you include in press releases after a Canadian citizen dies in Afghanistan, also when blimpy, Hillier, the general, goes over to cheer people up with a plane load of hockey sticks and cans of that Tim Hortons coffee. Believing in something that the Hillier, the "big boys" and the "serious people" don't know exists makes the ones willing to be killed look a bit challenged. This impression won't be good for the Forces.]

"Gen. Richards was frank about the reason for this deterioration: "General Dan McNeill, the ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] commander, has too few troops to conduct the operation in a manner that meets the basic rules of a counterinsurgency campaign."

One senior official experienced with the war said that "we need at least a doubling of ISAF presence - and probably a lot more than that - if we are to achieve the minimum goals of the campaign." There are currently more than 41,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan.

Doug Saunders
November 2, 2007
Globe & Mail

I wonder how experienced the "senior official experienced with the war" is actually.

I seem to remember a Rand Corporation study from 2003 that indicated that the type of snafu national building fiasco NATO has gotten itself into requires maybe about 20 troops for every 1000 individuals you are trying to build into a nation.

Let's see: Afghanistan has a population of about 27,000,000, give or take a million, that means you need about ((27,000,000/1000) X 20) = 540,000 troops for a successful nation building game. Heavens I wonder from where they might come. The experienced person is suggesting what's needed is only 15% of what has been required in some successful little games. Maybe NATO needs to surge a few times and not settle for just a double surge.

To top everything off we, dumb Canadians, now find out that:

"Canadian officials, in off-the-record interviews, acknowledged that the nation-building and aid efforts run by the Department of Foreign Affairs and the military efforts led by General Rick Hillier are poorly co-ordinated and that top officials are increasingly at odds with one another.

Doug Saunders
November 2, 2007
Globe & Mail

Heavens!

Hey, I know what's needed! Some of the brilliant doctorate, or maybe even post-doctorate, careerist military types that devised the the very popular new "The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual" (University of Chicago Press).

Yeah, that could be just the ticket, eh.

A Surge in Plagiarism could just fix everything up in Afghanistan along with, of course, more hockey sticks and shitty Tim Hortons coffee.

Technorati Tags: Afghanistan, Britain, Canada, FUBAR Projects, Military, NATO, Classic ClusterF''ks, Snafu, The Plan, The PLAN, USA