Burning authority
Archive June 2010
Think tanks & Petraeus' 'surge of ideas'
For those interested in think tank culture and the 21st century Imperial Brain Trust, a solid two-part article by Michael Flynn, 'Surge of Think Tanks Blurs U.S. Policy Lines' (Part 1, Part 2), a different version of which first appeared over at RightWeb.
- One of the (unfortunately unmentioned) hidden hands behind most of the US foreign policy-related think tanks are the philanthropic foundations. While Flynn overlooks them, in his recent article, Michael Barker revisits Edward Berman's classic study The Ideology of Philanthropy: the Influence of the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations on American Foreign Policy.
- On the Canadian think tank front, there's some controversy brewing over at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, the quasi-scholarly offshoot of the Balsillie/Canadian state-funded Centre for International Governance Institution (aka Council on Foreign Relations-North). It seems like little more than infighting amongst foreign policy elites, but is a story worth following. It should also be interesting to see how Balsillie's sister organization down Hwy 401, U of T's School of Global Affairs (jointly funded by corporate elite Peter Munk and the Ontario government) fares. For a country which, according to the Ottawa Citizen, lacks a 'think tank culture,' these 'new imperialism'-oriented outfits sure are on the ascension.
Kenneth Cook found guilty of disinformation: score one for the pueblos
(Cook, above, isn't smiling now)
Back in April I gave props to filmmaker* Steven Schnoor for filing a defamation lawsuit against former Canadian ambassador to Guatemala (and Haiti), Kenneth Cook. I am happy to pass along that on June 16th:
"an Ontario judge ruled that former Canadian Ambassador to Guatemala, Kenneth Cook, slandered Ph.D. student and videographer Steven Schnoor by making false statements about a documentary video that Schnoor made that was critical of the practices of a Canadian mining company...Justice Thomson held that the Ambassador’s statements were defamatory and were not true. She further held that “the Ambassador was reckless”, and that “he should have known better”. Justice Thomson also drew attention to the behaviour of the Canadian government in the months after the defamatory comments were spoken. She held that the “dead silence” that Schnoor received in response to his request for an explanation, retraction and apology, was “spiteful and oppressive."
Speaking of [near-] 'dead silence,' with the exception of the Toronto Star, who reported that Cook was found "guilty of slander," not a single other mainstream news agency has picked up the story, maintaining the corporate media's shameful record of shielding Canadian corporations' dirty practices abroad. Congratulations are in order for Mr. Schnoor, although much work remains to be done in exposing and bringing to account…
'Empire's Apprentice: Canada in Latin America'
I haven't been this excited about an issue of NACLA since the January/February 2007 edition, 'In the Name of Democracy*: US Intervention in the Americas Today.' Then, as now, if you want the full text**, you'll just have to go out and purchase a copy (or, read a copy at your local library), which I strongly encourage.
*'In the Name of Democracy': a since-defunct research collective that was committed to monitoring global political intervention (of which I was a proud member), organized a conference at Yale University in 2006, panelists from which provided material for the subsequent NACLA Special Issue). INADEM's website is archived at web.archive.org.
**So far, the following articles are available in the current issue:
- 'Empire’s Apprentice: Canada in Latin America'
- 'Against the Odds: Fighting Canada’s Free Trade Deal With Colombia,' including 'A Time Line of the Canadian Anti–Colombia FTA Campaign' (unfortunately, the Liberal-Conservative foreign policy coalition passed in the House of Commons on Monday)
- Also included in the issue is Kim Ives' piece, 'Haiti Reconstruction: Factories, not Fields'
"This is a war zone, not an amusement park": McChrystal's Apocalypse Now Directive
"This was the moment Pizza Hut died on Kandahar Airfield. No bugle nor a trumpet sounded. Just a few forlorn spectators watched with dismay as two cranes hauled the infamous fast food container from the Nato base’s boardwalk....The commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, ordered all fast food restaurants to close - ostensibly to free up space and logistics capacity for mission essential supplies."
As fictional counterinsurgent Col. Walter E. Kurtz, wrote in his 'Commitment and Counter-Insurgency,' "As long as cold beer, hot food, rock and roll and all the other amenities remain the expected norm, our conduct of the war will gain only impotence."
Afghan insurgency/counterinsurgency's 'coming' stalemate
"In London today, the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, warned that progress needed to be made. "In all coalition countries the public expects to see us move in the right direction [but] will not tolerate the perception of a stalemate, where we are losing our young men."
Somebody forgot to tell Gates; perhaps it's all in the eyes of the perceiver...:
- November 7, 2008: "[Senator John McCain] said NATO forces are at a stalemate with insurgents... "It's a stalemate that exists and we're going to need additional troops."
- December 28, 2006: "Militarily, 2006 has been a stalemate. This is a victory for the Taliban, who have all the time in the world; for us, time and money and an exasperated home front are a ticking clock." [Toronto Star, "Our surreal Afghan mission."]
- September 2, 2007: "A year after Canadian and American forces drove hundreds of Taliban fighters from the area, the Panjwai and Zhare districts southwest of Kandahar, the rebels are back and have adopted new tactics. Carrying out guerrilla attacks after NATO troops partly withdrew in July, they overran isolated police posts and are now operating in areas where they can mount attacks on Kandahar, the south's largest city. The setback is part of a bloody stalemate that has occurred between NATO troops and Taliban fighters across southern Afghanistan this summer." [New York Times, "Afghan Police Suffer Setbacks as Taliban Adapt."
- January 2008: "On the ground, the situation has gradually settled into a …
Apologies
Entries have been very light lately. Via Flashpoints, Al Jazeera, and Democracy Now!, I've been following the aftermath of the Israeli flotilla massacre. Many thanks to the generous folks who have 'chipped in' so far. As a couple of people have circumvented PayPal and helped out directly, I've raised $425 as of today. Please consider a donation before the June 30th deadline. So much of Canadian/US foreign policy is carried out in the shadows, making Access to Information/FOIA requests an important and necessary (if not sufficient) means of gathering and gleaning useful insight into the inner workings of their complex, often-intertwined apparatuses.
I'll be back to regular entries next week...