'As Canada's Democracy Trembles, a New Global Architecture Emerges' IPS, June 28, 2010.
"Afghanistan is working on... democracy. And it's hard work. It's not easy. It doesn't happen overnight."
--
George W. Bush
"The insurgency in Afghanistan didn't just happen overnight. . . . This will not be quick, nor easy."
--Barack Obama [h/t, image]
This Dominion video report, which provides background information on this week's Haiti Donor Conference and Canada's interventionist role in Haiti, features yours truly.
Canada's private sector eyes Haiti reconstruction from Van Ferrier on Vimeo.
In case you somehow missed this report, obtained then circulated by Wikileaks on March 26th, I'm posting it here with some key excerpts. This is a good example of why Wikileaks is under attack by the Pentagon (on this, and for a good summary of the CIA PR report, see Glenn Greenwald's post, 'The War on Wikileaks and why it matters.'
The Red Cell Special Memorandum, according to Wikileaks, is a "recipe for the targeted manipulation of public opinion in two NATO ally countries, written by the CIA." One fascinating assumption kicks off the memo, that countries who've wanted to maintain or increase their role in the war have relied on "public apathy about Afghanistan," which "enables leaders to ignore voters":
"The Afghanistan mission’s low public salience has allowed French and German leaders to disregard popular opposition and steadily increase their troop contributions to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)."
Despite this, concerns are expressed that civilian deaths caused by NATO and the deaths of/casualties sustained by soldiers could lead to political fallout. Suggested remedies for this includes a "consistent and iterative strategic communication program across NATO troop contributors" which would tap "into the key concerns of specific Western European audiences could provide a buffer if today’s apathy becomes tomorrow’s opposition to ISAF, giving politicians greater scope to support deployments to Afghanistan."
Likewise, taking a page out of Canadian…
Today it was announced that soon-to-be Lt. General Peter Devlin (shown above in photo taken by yours truly following our interview at the Halifax International Security Forum last November) will replace Lt. Gen. Andrew Leslie as Chief of the Land Staff (aka head of the Canadian Army). When I asked Gen. Devlin if he was on a similar career trajectory as Generals Rick Hillier and Walt Natynczyk (both veterans of the Canadian Force-U.S. Army Exchange program serving as Deputy Commanders at US Army III Corps in Fort Hood, Texas (where, following the tradition, Canadian Brig. Gen Peter Atkinson is today Deputy Commander), en route to becoming Chief of Defence Staff), he replied, "I was lucky enough to have the great opportunity of being on exchange with the US, [but] what's up for me I'm not sure." Importantly, like Leslie, Devlin is keen on counterinsurgency and interoperability with the U.S., and his appointment suggests continuity in this respect.
Devlin's appointment is one in an extensive senior CF officer shuffle, the entire list of which is here. Of the mainstream media to report on the moves thus far (CanWest, Globe and Mail, and the Winnipeg Free Press), only the latter mentioned that Devlin "was deputy commanding general of the multi-national corps in Iraq from January 2007 until May 2008." Reuters' Canadian correspondent David Ljunggren also mentioned his "15-month tour in Baghdad from 2006 to 2008 with the U.S. military as part of an…
As reported, the mercenary trade association (International Peace Operations Association - IPOA) teamed up with UK-based mercenary 'summit' organizer, Global Investment Summits (GIS), to host the 'Haiti Resources for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance' conference in Miami March 9-10. Following previous meetings of this type, GIS has provided detailed summaries of the presentations by participants (see for example, the synopsis and resources accomapnying the 'Afghanistan Reconstruction [sic.] Summit' they and IPOA held last January]. As of Monday (March 22), they posted their selective 'report' of the Haiti proceedings, which you can peruse here. They provide some of the powerpoint presentations of the participants, but exclude the remarks of the conference organizers, and, importantly, provide no context concerning the 'main event' of the weekend, which was, according to co-organizer Kevin Lumb prior to the conference "what we call roundtables, [where] we put the ministers and their procurement people, and arrange appointments with contractors."
The website provides no list of the reported 140 participants, and it appears as though no one from the Haitian government attended, contrary to claims to the contrary made in advance by Lumb. Likewise, although former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush (Haiti Coup perpetrators I and II, respectively) were invited, and Lumb told me they would likely appear via satellite, both were no-shows. Perhaps the IPOA's…
- Todd Gordon and Jeffery Webber have written another fine piece, "Imperialism Rebooted in Latin America: Canada's Long Embrace of the Honduran Dictatorship," stemming from their recent trip to Honduras, and in advance of their forthcoming book on Canadian imperialism in the Americas:
"Acting as if everything is once again well and good in Honduras...makes it easier for Canada to deepen its economic ties with the country. Canada is the largest mining investor in Honduras, for example, and its interests will increase significantly should Lobo and the right get their way and pass a new mining law that increases the rights of foreign capital...Canada’s imperial role in the region has taken on a similar guise as the U.S., although shaped more specifically around Canadian mining and other capitalist interests in the area...The effort to consolidate the coupist installation of the far-right in Honduras is, in other words, merely the latest puzzle piece in a much wider and reviving North American imperial project in Latin America and the Caribbean." [Counterpunch]
- Filed in the it-was-only-a-matter-of-time category, we also have the "IMF recognizes new Honduras government - spokesman...a day after the U.S. urged reluctant Latin American countries to restore ties with the country."
- Last week, mainstream Canadian journo Linda Diebel almost reported that Canada supported the putschists, and not Zelaya, while she did point to the current issue of NACLA, whose feature speaks to a…
It's still early yet, but I expect that the Canadian media will repeat its annual tradition of commemorating the Iraq war anniversary by pretending that Canada 'said no' to joining/supporting the invasion of the country, which JustForeignPolicy.org estimates has caused 1,333,350 Iraqi deaths (an average of 190,478 per year) so far. In accordance with my own [daily] tradition, I'll check and report back on the quantity and quality of Canadian coverage this year. In the meantime, check out Dahr Jamail's new article for FAIR, 'The New ‘Forgotten’ War: Iraq occupation falls into media shadows':
"As Afghanistan has taken center stage in U.S. corporate media, with President Barack Obama announcing two major escalations of the war in recent months, the U.S. occupation of Iraq has fallen into the media shadows. But while U.S. forces have begun to slowly pull back in Iraq, approximately 130,000 American troops and 114,000 private contractors still remain in the country (Congressional Research Service, 12/14/09)-along with an embassy the size of Vatican City. Upwards of 400 Iraqi civilians still die in a typical month (Iraq Body Count, 12/31/09), and fallout from the occupation that is now responsible, by some estimates, for 1 million Iraqi deaths (Extra!, 1/2/08) continues to severely impact Iraqis in ways that go uncovered by the U.S. press." [via DahrJamailIraq.org]
- In related news, General 'King" David Petraeus says 'US…
Further on the matter of the 'shadow elite,' the Danger Room's Nathan Hodge has an illuminating piece in The Nation on how today's think tanks (primarily focusing on CNAS) comprise a 'Coalition of the Shilling' (for empire, the military-industrial complex, perpetual war, etc.) Unfortunately, the piece isn't nearly as illuminating as it could have been, as Hodge demonstrates his naivete about the historical role of think tanks with statements like this:
"It's part of a new influence game in Washington. Think tanks, once a place for intellectuals outside government to weigh in on important policy issues, are now enlisted by people within government to help sell its policies to the public, as well as to others in government..."
Although their focus was the Council on Foreign Relations, Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter exposed essentially the same dynamics to which Hodge refers as "new" in their 1977 classic Imperial Brain Trust: the Council on Foreign Relations & United States Foreign Policy:
"That the [CFR] is little known is thus not a sign of insignificance, but rather points to its mode of operation. The men at the top meet and work out together the general direction of policy - the limits of respectable debate. Through a complex network of channels, the content and tone of their discussion reach the policymakers and the leaders of opinion. Eventually they may reach those of us who take an interest in what our country is…
The latest issue of This Magazine has a must-read cover story by University of Toronto professor John Duncan, "Death From Above":
"Canada’s troops are supposed to leave Afghanistan in 2011. As the conflict drags on and the death toll rises, the Canadian government and military plan for the next decade of war—this time with Canadian jets dropping the bombs."
- There has been a good deal of discussion concerning Canadian Forces' hopes, and war lobby and NATO pressure on the Canadians to expand their contribution to the air war in Afghanistan in lieu of their scheduled pullout, slated to commence in July 2011. Meanwhile, Canadian Forces have quietly been preparing for just such a deployment by way of ongoing interoperability exercises with their U.S. counterparts so as to "enable Canadian and United States forces to better coordinate and execute joint missions overseas." All told, an important issue to keep close track of.
- Dawn Paley, writing for Z Magazine, 'Reviewing the Coup [in Honduras].' No Canadian content, but by a Canadian colleague: " If passed, the cuarta urna would have put a fourth question on the November 29 ballot, asking Hondurans if they were for or against beginning a process of constituent assembly to rewrite the Constitution of Honduras...Sadly, because of the coup, the cuarta urna never took place in Honduras—unlike the successful process of constitutional reform that has taken place in countries like Bolivia, Venezuela, and Ecuador. Constitutional assemblies have become part of deepening democracy in the hemisphere and emblematic of the region’s structural political change." [See also: 254 human rights violations documented since installation of Canada/US-backed 'president' Pepe Lobo]
- For NarcoNews, Jillian Kestler-D’Amours extensively reports "Canadian Company Seeking to Assure Exploitation in El Salvador": "Some 3,000 miles separate Canada from the Central American nation of El Salvador. But that has not prevented a high-stakes legal battle, pitting a Canadian mining company against the government of El Salvador, from playing out in the court of corporate free trade. The litigation is proceeding against a backdrop of controversy marked by the murders of several anti-mining activists in El Salvador and concerns over the environmental impact of the mining operations...“The region of Cabañas had one of the lowest crime rates in the country before Pacific Rim arrived,…
This report from USA Today ("Pentagon panel has contractor contacts") was widely ignored despite its disturbing (if unsurprising) implications:
"More than half of the panel members appointed to review the Pentagon's latest four-year strategy blueprint have financial ties to defense contractors with a stake in the planning process, a USA TODAY analysis shows. Congress created the 20-member panel in 2006 to analyze the Defense Department's four-year plan, known as the Quadrennial Defense Review. Lawmakers called for the committee to provide an independent "alternate view" of the Pentagon's plan, which shapes future military policy and spending on weapons and other needs..."The Pentagon often talks about its cooperation with industry, but this makes you wonder who's wearing the pants in this relationship," said Mandy Smithberger, national security investigator for the Project on Government Oversight."
Unfortunately, the article, while showing potential, managed to miss the mark. Among the members that it omitted from it list of "members with defense ties," are members of the defense-connected "shadow elite" such as (Ret.) Lt. Col John Nagl, counterinsurgency guru and President of the Center for a New American Security think tank (dubbed Obama's Cabinet-in-waiting, CNAS has been integral to the selling of the AfPak adventure specifically, and the counterinsurgency PR crusade generally). Unlike USA Today, retired Pentagon military analyst…
An interesting, if rare, article on Canadian Special Forces activities in Afghanistan, 'Elite force operates in Kandahar shadows':
"There are facts – few and far between – about the exploits of JTF2 in Afghanistan and then there are the long, dark shadows. The unknown is as black as the operations that Canada's premier counterterrorist force conducts in Afghanistan. The facts, relayed by Col. Bernd Horn, former deputy commander of the military wing that runs Joint Task Force Two, are shocking to the uninitiated. "Few realize Canadian (special operation forces) personnel have removed an entire generation of Taliban leadership in Kandahar, many of whom were responsible for the deaths of Canadian service personnel," he wrote in the Canadian Military Journal. "For individuals who have no understanding of special operation forces, that they exist, how they operate, what they do ... sure it is (a surprise)," Horn said in an interview Thursday from Kingston, where he is now a professor at the Canadian Defence Academy... [I]f JTF2 makes it into the news, it often means something has gone wrong...Sean Maloney, a historian at the Royal Military College, said the difficulty as an academic is sorting out whether the rank-and-file army or the secretive work of JTF2 should get credit for battlefield victories. "This is spy-versus-spy stuff," he said. "There's two wars. There's the conventional war and there's the shadow war and they intersect"...Horn says…
"Explaining the consensus of the Canadian political establishment in its blind support for Israel, Elmer suggested that, as with Canada’s war in Afghanistan, foreign policy towards Israel was based less on tangible material resources or imperial conquest and more on the abstract idea of gaining “a seat at the table” in international discussions. “You can’t really underestimate a seat at the table,” said Elmer. “When important world decisions are made, if you lay your blood and treasure on the line, particularly in service of American political objectives, you’re going to have a seat at that table and you’re going to be able to participate when contracts are given out or political influence is given out. And sometimes you don’t get direct political influence over the territory upon which you are intervening. “I think the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the most visible, longest-running, most politically-significant conflicts in the world. Whether that’s just or not is a different story, but it’s a reality, and for Canada to participate in that is seen as strategically important to Canadian interests.” [Read full article at The Kingstonist]
- Tangentially, much of what Elmer described in his talk relates (if not named in the article) to what the Department of National Defence terms 'Operation Proteus,' the small but strategically important CF mission in support of the program led by Lt. General Keith Dayton, the U.S. Security Coordinator…
The six-year anniversary of the coup in Haiti (February 29, 2004) passed with nary a mention this week. Understandably, many people are preoccupied with the post-earthquake exigencies, but we would do well to recall the destructive step backward that the four-year destabilization (2000-2004), two-year coup period (2004-2006) and de facto foreign trusteeship had had with respect to the prospects of real democracy, sovereignty, and self-determination for the people. In this spirit, if you haven't yet read Peter Hallward's book, Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment, be sure to do so. I was reminded of just how important this book is after reading this exchange between Hallward and a right-wing, pro-oligarchy Haiti scholar in the latest issue of Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism.
- 'Mercenaries Circling Haiti': "This is yet another example of what the world saw after Katrina. Private security forces, including Blackwater, also descended on the U.S. gulf coast after Katrina grabbing millions of dollars in contracts. Contractors like these soak up much needed money which could instead go for job creation or humanitarian and rebuilding assistance. Haiti certainly does not need this kind of U.S. business. In a final bit of irony, the IPOA, according to the Institute for Southern Studies, promises that all profits from the event will be donated to the Clinton-Bush Haiti relief fund." [Bill Quigley, Huffington Post]
- Note that the IPOA's…
- I'll soon (ideally, next week) be completing my article on the Rights & Democracy saga, but for now just want to flag this interesting side bar concerning recently appointed board member/troll, and uber-Israel lobbyist David Matas. For a quasi-governmental organization that purports to be 'non-partisan' and concerned with promoting 'rights' and 'democracy,' Israeli Apartheid Week has helped expose the ideological, anti-democratic underpinnings of the far-rightward shift (from its previous centre-right proximity) at R&D in recent months:
"B’nai Brith Canada is asking University of Manitoba president David Barnard to reconsider its plan to allow Israeli Apartheid Week events on campus next week. "We sent a letter to the university’s president Feb. 10 asking for a ban but it is not happening," David Matas, senior council for the Jewish community advocacy group and a prominent human rights lawyer, said at a press conference today. Flanked by members of the Jewish community and prominent politians - NDP Christine Melnick and the the Tories’ Hugh McFadyen - Matas said the events have spread misinformation and hatred at campuses in other cities and should be banned from the university." [Winnipeg Free Press]
- Al Jazeera hosted this must-watch debate on Israeli Apartheid Week the other day. See Hazem Jamjoum and Eyal Sivan demolish Gidi Grinstein.
- Highlights from the opening day of the sixth annual Israeli Apartheid Week in Toronto, filmed on 1 March 2010. Speakers include…
Naomi Klein responds to the Wall Street Journal's would-be nostalgia for Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet:
"Ever since deregulation caused a worldwide economic meltdown in September 2009 and everyone became a Keynesian again, it hasn't been easy to be a fanatical fan of the late economist Milton Friedman. So widely discredited is his brand of free-market fundamentalism that his followers have become increasingly desperate to claim ideological victories, however far-fetched. A particularly distasteful case in point. Just two days after Chile was struck by a devastating earthquake, Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens informed his readers that Milton Friedman's "spirit was surely hovering protectively over Chile" because, "thanks largely to him, the country has endured a tragedy that elsewhere would have been an apocalypse.... It's not by chance that Chileans were living in houses of brick--and Haitians in houses of straw--when the wolf arrived to try to blow them down."...According to Stephens, the radical free-market policies prescribed to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet by Milton Friedman and his infamous "Chicago Boys" are the reason Chile is a prosperous nation with "some of the world's strictest building codes." There is one rather large problem with this theory: Chile's modern seismic building code, drafted to resist earthquakes, was adopted in 1972. That year is enormously significant because it was one year before Pinochet…
Democracy Now! producer and occasional co-host Anjali Kamat has written a great piece for Samar 35, unpacking the significance of President Obama's December 1, 2009 war escalation speech at West Point:
"If there is one unmistakable difference between Bush's wars and Obama's wars it boils down to this: we now have a president who can almost perfectly pronounce the names of the cities and villages US troops will occupy and bomb. We just can't call it occupation. It's "enlightened self-interest" as Obama emphasized during that same Nobel speech...So as NATO and the Afghan army prepare to attack the Taliban-controlled town of Marja this February, perhaps the area's 80,000 residents should take heart that they are fleeing a smart and principled war and not a dumb one based on outright deception. And the families of 123 Pakistani civilians killed by 12 US drone attacks this January should be relieved that they lost their loved ones to a rational and carefully thought-out (but still secret) war and not a rash one based on neoconservative fervor. But such differences are suddenly irrelevant when you're on the receiving end of the bombs...If we go further back in history Obama begins to sound more and more like every US president before him trying to justify American imperial overreach, cloaking it in the seductive language of liberation. And not very different from those old colonial powers Americans try so hard to distinguish themselves from...Domination masquerading as liberation…
"Germany's Left Party was expelled from the Bundestag yesterday after its members held up signs bearing the names of Afghan civilians killed in a German-ordered airstrike last September. The protest came in the middle of a parliamentary debate on extending Germany’s nine-year military mission to Afghanistan by a further year...“This was no routine vote, we reject the war in Afghanistan,” said Gesine Lötzsch, the Left Party’s designate co-leader, after MPs held up about 70 signs with names of victims...The expulsion of the entire 76-member Left parliamentary party, a first for the Bundestag, underlined the controversy that still surrounds Germany’s first post-war military deployment outside Europe. The revised mandate will increase by five to 1,400 the number of Germans training Afghan soldiers." [Irish Times]
- Coming this week to a town near you...
- 'Building international solidarity during Israeli Apartheid Week' [Electronic Intifada]
- 'World marks Israeli Apartheid Week' [Islam Online]
- 'Universities across the globe mark Israeli Apartheid Week' [Haaretz]
- 'Identifying Apartheid Canadian students respond to Israel's rights abuses' [The Dominion]
- Fresh back from Palestine, friend of the WOD, Jon Elmer, will be speaking in Toronto, Hamilton, and Kingston this week.
- 'Boycott committee rejects French PM's smearing of movement': "The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) is deeply disturbed by the inaccurate and inflammatory insinuations made by French Prime Minister Francois Fillon during his speech at the annual dinner of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF), 3 February 2010. Mr. Fillon reportedly said: "We must remain clear-sighted about the incredible ease with which the most heinous conflations come about and are expressed. I'm thinking, for example of the scandalous movements to boycott Kosher or Israeli products. I am astounded by the silence, let alone the connivance, of certain political leaders in the face of these revolting actions." [Statement of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, via EI]
- Open letter to the Pixies, demanding that they not perform in Israel this June. [BoycottIsrael.info]
- Timed to coincide with this week's festivities, Yves Engler is launching his new book, …
