Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada "Of Interest To Me" Mar.09 -- Mar.15, 2003
Email: mike -at- mikecampbell dot net
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Saturday, March 15, 2003
Victor Davis Hanson suggests that the United States should perhaps do what everyone appears to want it to do ... leave them alone. No more bases, no more special trade arrangements, no more money or alliances.
We all evoke the unilateralism of High Noon, but such an illusion also involves, in the end, tossing away the badge, leaving such parsimonious and fickle folks to themselves, and taking the buckboard out of their town. After Iraq and North Korea, I think, the worry will be not endless American interventions, but a consensus that we have done enough to mete out justice to outlaws.
We wonder why we give billions of dollars to Egypt when 100,000 fanatics in Cairo scream hatred for the United States — or base ships in Chania, Crete when tens of thousands of Greeks demonstrate on spec against almost anything America does? When even Canadian politicians call our president a "moron" and us Americans "bastards," isn't it time politely to let all these people be and let them do as they please without us?
Point taken -- the United States should always do what is in its national interest, and it always will. If that means basing troops elsewhere, then that's what it will do; if it means bringing them home, then that's what it will do. The decision won't be made on how much the citizens of "Elsewhere" appreciate the American presence.
Come on, Vic. The "moron" comment came from the Prime Minister's aid, not a politician, and the "bastards" comment came from a fringe member of the governing Liberal party. A strong and swift rebuttal from the top was sorely lacking, I'll grant you that.
In the Canadian context, what do you mean? Not trade? Not visit? If there are Canadians who don't want to trade with Americans, I haven't seen any. If there are Canadians who don't want to visit the United States, I haven't seen any of those, either. And, fortunately for Canadians, Americans are all too happy to reciprocate.
Let's be frank, the United States will always protect Canadian sovereignty; in doing so, it protects its own national interest. If some 21st century CommiNazi power (to borrow a term from The Simpsons) invaded Canada, would you allow them to sit there on top of you, annexing Canadian energy reserves and creating the world's largest defended border? Of course not. The United States will always trade with Canada, the basis of which has been increasingly anti-protection and anti-trade concession over the past few decades. Tourism between the two countries has increased over time.
But, here's the rub. Canadian politicians, particularly 'centrists', know this all too well. They can take an anti-American or anti-Bush stand, all the while knowing that the wealth and protection that we enjoy due to our close relationship with the United States will more or less continue.
11:41pm AST
The Prime Minister in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan government that controls Iraq's eastern Kurdish area, Barhim Salih, has said that French and Russian oil and gas contracts signed with Saddam Hussein, potentially worth $20 billion, will not be honoured by the new Iraqi government.
"A new Iraqi government should not honor any of these contracts, signed against the interests of the Iraqi people. The new Iraqi government should respect those who stood by us, and not those who stood beside the dictator."
The Washington Times reports
While there is no guarantee that Salih will be elected to a high position in whatever new government emerges in Baghdad after Saddam, the Iraqi Kurds -- both in the PUK area and those in the region controlled by the Kurdistan Democratic Party and its leader Masud Barzani -- constitute the best-organized opposition in Iraq and are expected to play a decisive role.
What's that you say? The Charles de Gaulle has been spotted backing slowly into the Persian Gulf?
The Allies will have to ensure that Turkey does not move troops into Kurdish Iraq once the war begins; such an action should be, in my opinion, considered hostile to the Allied cause.
10:51pm AST
Friday, March 14, 2003
Along with 'inspections are working', the main anti-war arguments are that Saddam does not pose a threat and that he can be contained.
Does Saddam pose a threat? Yup. Check out the information Randall Parker has compiled, including key info from Iraq expert Kenneth Pollack. Here, former UNSCOM and IAEA inspector David Kay:
The capability to produce weapons of mass destruction arising from a national program on the scale of that of Iraq's cannot be eliminated by simply destroying "weapons" facilities. And while we should credit the UN inspection process with destroying a substantial nuclear weapons establishment in Iraq that was largely unidentified at the time of the Gulf War and that had survived largely unscathed the coalition bombing campaign. The nuclear weapons secrets are now Iraqi secrets well understood by Iraq's technical elite, and the production capabilities necessary to turn these "secrets" into weapons are part and parcel of the domestic infrastructure of Iraq which will survive even the most draconian of sanctions regimes. Simply put, Iraq is not Libya, but very much like post-Versailles Germany in terms of its ability to maintain a weapons capability in the teeth of international inspections. As long as a government remains in Baghdad committed to acquiring WMD, that capability can be expected to become - and without much warning - a reality.
Is 'containment' the solution? Nope. In the Washington Post, Walter Russell Mead writes on the idea of containment ~ how it doesn't work, and carries with it an enormous human cost.
Those who still oppose war in Iraq think containment is an alternative -- a middle way between all-out war and letting Saddam Hussein out of his box.
They are wrong.
Sanctions are inevitably the cornerstone of containment, and in Iraq, sanctions kill.
In this case, containment is not an alternative to war. Containment is war: a slow, grinding war in which the only certainty is that hundreds of thousands of civilians will die. [...]
Ever since U.N.-mandated sanctions took effect, Iraqi propaganda has blamed the United States for deliberately murdering Iraqi babies to further U.S. foreign policy goals.
Wrong.
The sanctions exist only because Saddam Hussein has refused for 12 years to honor the terms of a cease-fire he himself signed. In any case, the United Nations and the United States allow Iraq to sell enough oil each month to meet the basic needs of Iraqi civilians. Hussein diverts these resources. Hussein murders the babies.
But containment enables the slaughter. Containment kills.
6:58pm AST
Pete du Pont has some serious questions for the anti-war protesters.
Peace is important, but is peace without freedom acceptable?
The Soviet Union was at peace between the two world wars and from 1945 until its collapse in 1989, and in those times managed to shoot, starve or kill in the gulag more than 20 million of its own people. In Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution, China killed and starved many millions more. Pol Pot in a Cambodia at peace killed two million Cambodians. Zimbabwe is at peace, but dictator Robert Mugabe is starving his subjects. North Korea is at peace, and enslaving and starving its people. Iraq is, likewise, oppressing its people.
To quote columnist Andrew Sullivan, "War is an awful thing. But it isn't the most awful thing." Enslaved peoples and peace without freedom are worse.
Read the whole thing.
6:37pm AST
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Son Volt (1997)
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Call it off, make amends, This life burns down, From both ends
My favourite band to come out of another favourite band. Friday nite, a few beers, Jay Farrar's songs and voice. Life is good.
6:15pm AST
Andrew Sullivan sees independent, online music distribution as a possible boon to artistic freedom and diversity.
Interesting piece in the New York Times yesterday on Natalie Merchant's decision to use the web and her own reputation to promote music that would be hard to produce through the big record companies.
Good luck to her; I have a half dozen TTM cd's and one of her solo cd's.
I think Todd Rundgren was a pioneer in online music distribution -- bypassing the record companies -- at least in terms of established artists.
I guess there's a line somewhere ~ established artists can do it because they're established, financially and in terms of popularity. New artists can make their music available to everyone. But, the new artist misses out on the big promotion money that the record companies can offer; online music distribution would likely help them get 'discovered', but they'd likely have to align themselves with the record companies if they want to really have their music heard by a larger audience.
6:12pm AST
Thursday, March 13, 2003
The Right War for the Right Reasons
Arizona Senator John McCain responds to Jimmy Carter's recent op-ed piece.
The main contention is that we have not exhausted all nonviolent means to encourage Iraq's disarmament. They have a point, if to not exhaust means that America will not tolerate the failure of nonviolent means indefinitely. After 12 years of economic sanctions, two different arms-inspection forces, several Security Council resolutions and, now, with more than 200,000 American and British troops at his doorstep, Saddam Hussein still refuses to give up his weapons of mass destruction. Only an obdurate refusal to face unpleasant facts — in this case, that a tyrant who survives only by the constant use of violence is not going to be coerced into good behavior by nonviolent means — could allow one to believe that we have rushed to war. [...]
The force our military uses will be less than proportional to the threat of injury we can expect to face should Saddam Hussein continue to build an arsenal of the world's most destructive weapons. [...]
Our armed forces will fight for peace in Iraq — a peace built on more secure foundations than are found today in the Middle East. Even more important, they will fight for the two human conditions of even greater value than peace: liberty and justice. Some of them will perish in this just cause. May God bless them and may humanity honor their sacrifice.
6:39pm AST
6:32pm AST
This Just In ....
Primates May Think, Learn Like Humans
By Liana Wyler, February 05, 2003
Rhesus macaque monkeys show not only the ability to learn ordered images but also an abstract, flexible knowledge of learned material, a new study reports--suggesting that these supposedly human-specific characteristics trace back to other primates.
In a recently published collaborative study involving four rhesus macaque monkeys, researchers from Duke, Columbia University and Barnard College investigated the precursors of human cognition in non-human primates.
And, in an unrelated story, ...
Monkeys flee research center, keepers trying to lure them with bananas
Wednesday, March 12, 2003 Posted: 3:59 PM EST (2059 GMT)
COVINGTON, Louisiana (AP) -- Two dozen monkeys escaped from a research center and holed up in a forest, where animal-control workers used bananas and oranges to try to lure them out.
The monkeys are classified as disease-free and posed no health risk to humans, but workers trying to capture the animals wore protective gowns and gloves as a standard precaution, said Fran Simon, a spokeswoman for the Tulane Regional Primate Center.
By Wednesday, eight of the 24 rhesus macaques remained on the loose.
Homer: "You mean like will Apes be our masters?"
Troy McClure (in song): "I hate every ape I see, from chimpan 'A' to chimpan 'Z'. No, you'll never make a monkey out of me"
6:26pm AST
Wednesday, March 12, 2003
I'm nearing the end of the (recently) late Roy Jenkins' "Churchill: A Biography".
I'm not sure how widely this one's known: In June 1954, Churchill and others visited Eisenhower in Washington. At a White House dinner on a Sunday evening in late June, "... Eisenhower and Churchill both spoke warmly of the Germans, while Eisenhower, not necessarily endorsed by Churchill and contested by Eden, called the French by contrast 'a hopeless, helpless mass of protoplasm'." Jenkins' source was the very reliable Jock Colville, Churchill's private secretary.
Gee, that wasn't very nice of him, was it?
8:43pm AST
The 2001 census results regarding personal income are out, and the average Canadian income has increased to over $30,000 (that's 'Canadian') for the first time.
Canada's average annual earnings topped $30,000 for the first time in 2000 as the nation felt the pull of globalization, an aging work force and more highly educated workers, Statistics Canada said Tuesday.
Damned Globalization. 7:53pm AST
Tuesday, March 11, 2003
Yes, I'm talking about The Sopranos again. Reuters reports that HBO has launched a $100 million countersuit against James "Tony Soprano" Gandolfini, who recently claimed his contract to be null and void because HBO failed to notify him within 10 days of a David Chase salary increase. Gandolfini is making a move for a major salary increase ~ while his per-episode earnings are in line, there are much fewer episodes of The Sopranos each season, leaving actors like JG working as long as their contemporaries but at half the pay. Actors are to return to the set by March 24 to begin Season 5.
I really don't think Christopher is ready to run the family yet, so PLEASE settle this people!
8:31pm AST
Evan Thomas and John Barry profile the war preparations in Iraq. Saddam is moving the Republican Guard in around Baghdad and Tikrit. A trench is being dug in a ring around Baghdad that could be filled with oil and burned (disrupting laser guided weapons, but not satellite guided ones).
Hated by his own subjects, Saddam has to hope that his people loathe the American invaders even more. Iraqi citizens have been given arms to fight house to house. Most will likely hide or surrender. But not the 15,000-man Special Republican Guard, made up largely of Saddam’s fellow tribesmen, nor Saddam’s Special Security Organization, a force of some 5,000 thugs and torturers who will be strung up by mobs if captured, and thus have every incentive to fight to the last man.
Interesting to me is the American psy-ops preparations.
The United States will try to rattle Saddam’s defenders into surrender with a “shock and awe” air campaign, 3,000 precision bombs in the first 48 hours. And Saddam will try to inspire his troops to be good martyrs by threatening to kill them himself.
The battle for hearts and minds has already begun. U.S. psychological-warfare specialists, based at Central Command headquarters in Qatar, routinely bombard the Iraqi troops with propaganda. “Leave now and go home,” read one of 420,000 leaflets dropped over southern Iraq last Tuesday. “Watch your children learn, grow and prosper.” If war comes, CENTCOM psy-warriors will take over the Iraqi airwaves and broadcast that resistance is futile. The CIA is already trying to infiltrate Saddam’s officer corps, offering cash and other incentives. “The commanders who carry out Saddam’s last orders,” warns a senior U.S. intelligence official, “will be killed or tried as war criminals.”
When will Saddam use those weapons of mass destruction that he's not supposed to have? Former Clinton Iraq expert Kenneth Pollack thinks that he would hold off, at least for a while. Once he does, Saddam "crosses a very important psychological threshold" ~ he could no longer court world opinion. Saddam will likely hold Western hostages once hostilities begin; he's been observed moving explosives closer to Iraq's oilfields.
Once he realizes he's lost it all, will be unleash his weapons and take Baghdad down with him? With senior Iraqi officials knowing their lives are forfeit if they carry out these last orders, hopefully one will have the sense to forcefully disobey that order.
8:08pm AST
A "just peace"? We don't have it. In the Washington Post, Richard Cohen writes on "When Peace Is No Better Than War". With the recent discussion regarding Jimmy Carter's comments on the meaning of "just war", Cohen wonders what exactly is a "just peace"?
There ought to be an understanding that while war is bad -- very, very bad -- sometimes peace is no better, especially if all it does is postpone a worse war. That is what would happen if the United States now pulled back, leaving Saddam Hussein in power and our troops sweating in the desert, their morale and their strength dissipating.
Cohen then offers a long list of Bush administration errors and stumbles in the lead up to our present situation.
But the fact remains that were it not for those 250,000 troops sitting out in the desert, there would be no inspectors in Iraq. Hussein kicked them out once and he will kick them out again, just as soon as the world, as is its wont, loses interest and succumbs to the lust for oil, contracts and, in the case of France, the chimera of a glorious yesterday.
7:59pm AST
Monday, March 10, 2003
While the U.S. and Britain may provide an extension past March 17 and tie a resolution to a list of specific demands, France and Russia are balking.
"Our position is no matter what the circumstances, France will vote 'no.' Because we think tonight there is no cause for war to achieve the objective that we fixed - the disarmament of Iraq," Chirac said in a televised interview.
I know the word 'galling' (or 'gaulling') has been used a great deal lately in describing Mr. Chirac, but what's truly galling is the certain knowledge that, if the U.S. packed up and went home tonight, France would do Zip, Zero, Zilch "to achieve the objective that we fixed - the disarmament of Iraq." Probably just the opposite ~ they'd have to keep their oil vendor strong in order to keep that oil supply stable.
The Russian statement is truly odd:
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, who opposes the rush to war and wants Iraq peacefully disarmed, also threatened to veto the resolution.
"Russia believes that no further resolutions of the U.N. Security Council are necessary and therefore Russia openly declares that if the draft resolution that currently has been introduced for consideration and which contains ultimatum demands that cannot be met is nonetheless put to a vote, then Russia will vote against this resolution," he said at the Moscow State Linguistics University.
Saddam's disarmament involves "ultimatum demands that cannot be met"???? You said it, Igor, I didn't.
8:09pm AST
We definitely had an old movie weekend, and an unplanned one at that. But it was great. We started out watching The African Queen on Friday night. Then two Alfred Hitchcock films on Saturday (afternoon and then evening): Saboteur and Foreign Correspondent. Caught maybe half an hour of the 1923 silent film version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame which was on tv Sunday morning. Finally, we watched To Kill A Mockingbird on Sunday evening.
Maybe it's the times we've found ourselves in, and the growing clouds on the horizon over these last few weeks and months (yes, and years). There's certainly something comforting in watching Atticus Finch stand tall, and the moment of wonder on Scout's face when she realizes that Mister Arthur Radley is really Boo himself.
In Foreign Correspondent, there's the shock of learning of the deception behind the international peace movement, and Joel McCrea's Churchillian (or, rather, Murrowvian) radio address to America at the end of the film, to keep the lights burning. McCrea's and George Sanders' characters' collaboration was perhaps meant to be a symbol of the Anglo-American cooperation of yesterday and today.
In Saboteur, Robert Cummings and Priscilla Lane risking it all to fight against America's fifth column enemies, and the kindness and decency of many of the people they encounter on their way. High atop the Statue of Liberty is a fitting locale for the classic finale.
And, what can beat Bogie and Katharine Hepburn struggling down the river and sticking it to the Germans in The African Queen? "I now pronounce you Man and Wife. Proceed with the executions!"
7:49pm AST
Andrew Sullivan on the logic of containment.
What is answerable to some degree is whether we have a real alternative to war. Not even Dominique de Villepin believes the current inspections regime can go on for ever. But we know something now that we didn't know even a month ago. We know that even with the threat of imminent war, backed by 250,000 troops and a president who clearly threatens conflict with credibility, the inspections are not achieving meaningful disarmament. Saddam is that cool. Moreover, he is still upping the ante. He's angling for lifting of sanctions. He's dismissing concerns about weapons that are clearly illicit. He's not even disarming at any serious pace the token missiles he has agreed to destroy. So even with maximum pressure, he's playing for time.
As Andrew goes on to say, we'll never know if true maximum pressure would have made Saddam change his mind. The French, Germans, Russians, etc. have squandered for the world a chance to hold Saddam's feet to the fire.
This much is certain: even if we could keep 250,000 troops in the region indefinitely, no future containment regime will ever be as effective as it is now, which is to say it isn't effective at all. ... So our practical choice is either war very shortly or the long-term toleration of a free Saddam, able to buy weapons, buoyed by having stared down the U.N. once again. In other words, I think we've essentially tested the limits of international pressure on Saddam Hussein; and the results cannot guarantee security at any credible level for any reasonable length of time. What more do we need to know?
7:05pm AST
I wonder if the Academy could please hold the Oscars tonight so I don't have to watch all those frickin' tv commercials telling me about all the wonderful frickin' nominations that these wonderful frickin' films received.
And, the sooner the Oscars get here, the sooner we can get through all those frickin' commercials telling of how many frickin' Oscars they've won.
You said it, Daniel: "Amen".
7:00pm AST
Sunday, March 09, 2003
Canada's
Global News sponsored a poll this past week to get a picture of Canadian
views on our American neighbours
When asked if they liked/trusted the American government, the responses showed that 47% liked and 53% disliked the U.S. government. The 'nay' side would appear to be influenced by the Quebec results, where 78% didn't like/trust the U.S. government.
Looking further at responses by region, Atlantic Canada (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland & Labrador) had the highest 'favourable' response regarding attitudes toward the U.S. government: 62.9% favourable (compared to the 47% Canadian average).
When asked if they liked Americans in general, Canadians reported that 70% of them liked Americans, with 30% disliking Americans. Again, the Quebec vote was heavy on the anti-American side, with 49% of Quebecers liking Americans. Again, Atlantic Canada was the region of Canada with the most favourable views toward Americans at 81%. The Prairie provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba) were next with 78%, Ontario at 77%, and British Columbia at 69%.
When asked of their support of a war against Iraq and the UN, only 17% of Canadians supported a war without explicit UN approval, 23% were against war under any circumstances, and 60% would support war if there was explicit UN approval.
Canadians on the Prairies were more hawkish (in terms of war against Iraq without explicit UN approval), followed by Ontario, Atlantic Canada, British Columbia, and Quebec, which was the least hawkish and most dovish, by far.
10:31pm AST
Strong editorial on Stalin's heirs in one of my local papers today, the Halifax Sunday Herald, tying the disgusting monster, Stalin, with the two monsters that the world has to deal with today.
The worst monster of the 20th century, deemed responsible for wiping out 30 million of his own people, did die a physical death 50 years ago last week.
But Stalinism lives on - eerily so - through two of his disciples who are grabbing headlines almost every day.
10:52pm AST