The Rag Blog

VICTORIA — The government of British Columbia moved yesterday to the forefront of the battle against climate change by introducing what may be the greenest budget ever seen in North America.

Finance Minister Carole Taylor said the budget – which has a new, sweeping carbon tax as its centrepiece – is a historic turning point for the province, although critics pointed out it also contains incentives for oil and gas development and funding for new highways.

“It has been a dramatic turn, I think, for this province with this budget to say we’re not just going to be talking about climate action. We are acting. We are putting in place the financial foundation that will make it possible,” Ms. Taylor said in a budget briefing session as she focused on the carbon-tax initiative.

She said the strategy is to “tax something that we know is bad for us,” and use the revenue to stimulate wide social change by providing incentives for people and businesses to become more energy efficient.

Wearing an impeccable green suit, Ms. Taylor said the B.C. government aims to raise $1.8-billion over the next three years by applying a carbon tax to virtually all fossil fuels, including gasoline, diesel, natural gas, coal, propane and home-heating fuel.

She said the carbon tax will be revenue neutral because all of the money raised will be returned to businesses and individuals through an annual “climate action credit,” which will provide lower-income British Columbians with a payment of $100 per adult and $30 per child, and through a range of tax cuts.

Ministry officials said they have not been able to find a carbon-tax scheme of similar scope anywhere else in North America and they doubted few jurisdictions globally could surpass it for its broad reach.

“This is an important turning point for British Columbia and we think for Canada because we are out in front on this. We don’t want to wait until we get a consensus. We think it is important to take the first steps,” Ms. Taylor said.

She said her business-friendly government is striving for a balanced approach as it tries to make progress on the environmental front without hurting the economy.

“It is an interesting challenge to say that we are going to take dramatic action on the climate-change problems that the world is facing, but at the same time insist that we are going to work to strengthen our economy,” she said.

The carbon tax, which takes effect on July 1, will be phased in starting at a rate based on $10 per tonne for carbon emissions, rising to $30 per tonne by 2012.

The price of gasoline will increase by 2.41 cents a litre this year, rising to 7.24 cents a litre by 2012. The cost for diesel and home-heating oil will increase 2.76 cents a litre this year, increasing to 8.27 cents a litre in five years.

Ms. Taylor said that over the next three years the carbon tax should reduce carbon emissions by three million tonnes.

B.C.’s goal is to reduce carbon emissions by 33 per cent below 2007 levels by 2020 – a target that clearly won’t be met by the carbon tax alone.

Ms. Taylor said the carbon tax is “just one piece of the puzzle” and more initiatives, including a cap and trade system expected this fall, will be needed.

She said it will be up to future governments to decide whether the carbon tax should rise above the $30-per-tonne rate.

Asked why B.C. wasn’t waiting for a federal plan to emerge, Ms. Taylor said the province has set “very aggressive” carbon-emission targets, and simply couldn’t wait to act.

“It is our decision as a province that we must start now,” she said.
Ian Bruce, climate-change specialist with the David Suzuki Foundation, described the carbon tax as “a landmark decision” that puts B.C. in a leadership role in North America.

“The government is using the most powerful tool it has at its disposal to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions,” he said.

“Global warming is a big problem and it requires big solutions. So there is going to be more that we need to do into the future. But today I think the government showed some real leadership,” Mr. Bruce said.

Chloe O’Loughlin, of Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, and Gwen Barlee, of Western Canada Wilderness Committee, praised the carbon-tax initiative, but said the budget fails to recognize that climate change is already having, and will continue to have, an impact on the environment.

“I think the government has done a very good job on fighting carbon emissions, but there’s nothing on the other leg of climate change, which is adaptation. There’s nothing in the budget to protect biodiversity,” Ms. O’Loughlin said.

“This isn’t necessarily a green budget – it’s a greenhouse-gas budget,” Ms. Barlee said.

Will Horter of the Dogwood Initiative said the budget contains some serious contradictions in that it provides subsidies for oil and gas exploration, and supports highway and pipeline building, while trying to reduce carbon emissions.

Ten environmental groups issued a budget report card that gave the government three A’s – for carbon pricing, spending on transit, and incentives for citizens and businesses to become more energy efficient. But the government got an F for consistency, because it increases oil and gas subsidies, and a D for failing to protect biodiversity.

John Winter of the B.C. Chamber of Commerce said the carbon tax may be easier on those in urban environments than those in rural areas who have limited transportation options.

And he said it will be hard on some “high-intensity energy users,” such as some mines.

“But generally speaking it’s good. We were prepared to be aggressively negative … so I think we find ourselves surprisingly encouraged by the balance of the budget,” Mr. Winter said.

Maureen Bader, B.C. director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, was critical of the budget.

25/02/08 “ICH” — – “The SEC probe of the securitization of subprime mortgages into collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), announced last summer, has yielded no official enforcement cases….SEC chief, Christopher Cox, along with other top-level administration officials, has cautioned against quick-fire regulatory or enforcement responses to the worsening credit crisis, noting that the market instead should be left to work it out.” Nicholas Rummel, “SEC Drift Said to Prevent Action on Credit Crunch”, Financial Week

That’s right. The biggest economic scandal in the last half century, the subprime fiasco, and the “business friendly” stooges at the SEC are still sitting on their hands reciting passages from Milton Friedman instead of dragging crooked banksters off to the hoosegow in leg-irons. Go figure? SEC Chairman, Christopher Cox, has come under withering attack from Senator Christopher Dodd who chairs the Banking Committee and who accuses the SEC of being “asleep at the switch”.

Dodd said the SEC “needs to help restore investor confidence in the markets by more vigorous enforcement, by more comprehensive regulation of credit rating agencies, and increased accountability and transparency of publicly traded companies.” (Financial Week)

“Accountability…transparency” in Bushworld? Nice try, Dodd, but its a losing cause. The Bush administration is not just philosophically opposed to oversight; they’ve handed over the entire financial system to a cabal of banking scalawags who’ve turned it into their personal fiefdom. This same cast of fraudsters engineered the subprime swindle and ripped off trillions of dollars from investors around the world. And, don’t kid yourself; Bush is proud of the damage he’s done by taking a wrecking ball the SEC. For him, it’s like a good day at the races. He has no intention of reigning in the crooks or restoring the publics’ confidence.

New York Governor Elliot Spitzer has joined Dodd in criticizing the so-called “regulatory agencies” for failing to determine whether any securities laws were broken. In a Washington Post article, Spitzer blasted the SEC’s inaction saying that the Bush Administration would be judged by history as a “willing accomplice” to the subprime collapse.

But Spitzer and Dodd are wasting their breath. The culture of corruption from 7 years of Bush misrule has spread like Kudzu to every jag and eddy in Washington. If we were really a nation of laws rather than nincompoops, federal agents would be busy rounding up every investment banker and hedge fund sharpie on Wall Street so they could get to the bottom of the subprime boondoggle. Regulators still haven’t even decided whether it was a case of overzealous marketing of dodgy securities or downright fraud. That should be “job one” for the SEC.

The reason all this talk about “regulation” is so important now is that the same banking giants who cooked up the subprime scam have just presented the Bush administration with a $739 billion bailout package they plan to unload on the American taxpayer. According to Sunday’s New York Times:

“As losses from bad mortgages and mortgage-backed securities climb past $200 billion, talk among banking executives for an epic government rescue plan is suddenly coming into fashion. A confidential proposal that Bank of America circulated to members of Congress this month provides a stunning glimpse of how quickly the industry has reversed its laissez-faire disdain for second-guessing by the government — now that it is in trouble. The proposal warns that up to $739 billion in mortgages are at “moderate to high risk” of defaulting over the next five years and that millions of families could lose their homes. To prevent that, Bank of America suggested creating a Federal Homeowner Preservation Corporation that would buy up billions of dollars in troubled mortgages at a deep discount, forgive debt above the current market value of the homes and use federal loan guarantees to refinance the borrowers at lower rates.”

What Bank of America is proposing is that the US government guarantee the shoddy mortgages that the banks issued to “unemployed shoe-clerks with bad credit” so they could peddle them as Triple A “securities” to unsuspecting investors. Now that subprimes are blowing up at a record pace, the banks need a government bailout before their balance sheets are reduced to cinders.

But what does the poor taxpayer get out of the deal besides soaring inflation, bulging fiscal deficits, and the “warm and fuzzy” feeling that he’s helped some tasseled-shoed charlatan keep his larder in the Hamptons full of Dom Perignon and crab cakes?

The reason we’re in this mess is because financial innovation and deregulation have driven the markets off a cliff. And that started with the bankers. Financial innovation has nothing to do with the efficient deployment of capital for productive activity. No way. In fact, it is the exact opposite. The financial innovations of the last decade have primarily focused on transforming the liabilities of dubious mortgage applicants into complex debt-instruments which are enhanced with massive amounts of leverage and exotically-named derivatives. The investments banks and brokerage houses fought hard to establish the present system which they call “structured finance”. They spent over $100,000 million lobbying congress to remove the legislative firewall which kept investment and commercial banks separate. Those laws, particularly Glass Steagall, made sure that the public was protected from the Ponzi-scams which proliferated just prior to the Great Depression. But, now, 30 years later, the same scams are back with a vengeance. The cult of free market orthodoxy and Reagan-era flim-flam has put us on track for another stock market crash ala 1929. That’s why Bank of America and their buddies in the industry have turned to the administration for a way out. Their flagging balance sheets can’t take another year of rising foreclosures and dwindling assets. They need Big Brother to cover their debts and rebuild their capital-base. Otherwise its curtains.

Other versions of the so-called “Rescue Bill” have been floating around Washington for the last three weeks, but they all follow the same basic guidelines. Under one of the plans, 600,000 subprime mortgage-holders, many of whom are already delinquent on their payments or in some stage of foreclosure, would be able to refinance their loans under the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) which would federally guarantee the mortgage in the event of default.

Great idea, eh? So, now the taxpayer is going to have to pay for the people who lied on their applications (and who really can’t afford the homes they’re in) so the banks can recoup their losses. This plan doesn’t make sense.

Why on earth would the taxpayer want to buy 600,000 subprime mortgages at “current value” when housing prices are falling, inventory is soaring, sales are sagging, foreclosures are at historic highs, and millions of homeowners are expected to simply “walkaway” from their loans?

No thanks. Let the banks go under. They created this mess. Besides, all we’re doing is rewarding the people who deliberately destroyed the system. They can fend for themselves. The first order of business should be to restore public confidence; not bail out crooks. “Credibility” matters in a market-based system; especially one that relies so heavily on the hocus-pocus of fractional banking. When trust is lost; the system crashes. End of story. That means it’s time to clean house at the SEC. Give everyone a pink slip, two weeks pay and send them home. Then scour the countryside like Diogenes for a few honest men.

Second, people in positions of authority have to be held accountable for their crimes. Millions of investors have lost their life savings or retirement in the subprime/securitzation debacle. Someone’s got to go to jail. Apologies just don’t cut it. So far, not one CEO has been led off to the Paddy-wagon in handcuffs. It has all been swept under the rug by an administration that has filled every regulatory position in Washington with industry lobbyists, business-friendly tycoons and corporate “yes-men”. The results are just what any sane person would expect; disaster. The financial markets are completely unsupervised; the SEC is just a subsidiary of the multi-national corporations. It has no teeth. If it was really independent; then Cox and his goons would be storming the investment banks with tasers and truncheons. Instead, he spends most his time explaining why he won’t enforce the laws and prosecute cases.

And there should be no doubt about who is really responsible for the subprime woes. The investment banks employ some of the country’s “best and brightest”. These are sharp guys who have studied at some of our finest colleges and universities. Does anyone really believe that a Harvard MBA—who understands all the fine-points of high-finance–really thought that ignoring all of the standard criteria for prudent lending, and issuing trillions of dollars in loans to applicants who had no job, no collateral, bad credit, and were unable to come up with a few thousand dollars for a down-payment—was a great idea?

Of course not. It was a swindle from the get-go. The reason the banks looked the other way and issued these shaky mortgages was because they didn’t really think there was any risk involved. After all, it wasn’t their money. They simply repackaged the loans into bonds and sold them off to someone else. No worries. But, does that make them any less guilty?

Consider this: If the banks didn’t know that the mortgages were bogus, than why are all the various types of mortgages; including Alt-As, piggybacks, home equity loans, ARMs, prime, and “interest only”—defaulting at the same time? It is not just subprime mortgages that are failing; it runs the gamut.

The reason is obvious; it’s because the banks were making windfall profits and didn’t want to rock the boat. They knew they were peddling garbage. How could they not know? The banker’s primary task in life is to figure out who can pay him back “with interest”. And they’re pretty good at it, too. So why did they start handing out hundreds of billions of dollars to anyone who could fog a mirror? In fact, it got so out-of-hand that (according to The New York State Commission of Investigation) “a homeless woman earning $10 an hour was recently approved for a $470,000 adjustable rate mortgage”. In a similar incident, two Hispanic migrant workers in Bakersfield, California, who made roughly $45,000 in combined income, were approved for a mortgage on a home valued at $725,000.

These aren’t innocent mistakes. They’re part of a broader pattern to fudge the paperwork so unqualified “high-risk” loan applicants would look like J. Paul Getty and secure a mortgage. That way, the banks could continue to rake in lavish origination fees and maximize their profits.

But then the plan hit a rough patch and the Gravy-train tipped over into the ditch. When the credit storm hit the markets in August, the mortgage securitization went into deep freeze and the easy money from Wall Street dried up. The banks got stuck holding billions of their own bad paper. Now every foreclosure eats into their capital so, they’ve turned to the government for a handout. Of course, they don’t want the public to know what’s really going on so they’ve asked the Bush administration to help them pull the wool over everyone’s eyes. According to the New York Times one banking official summed it up like this:

“We believe that any intervention by the federal government will be acceptable only if it is not perceived as a bailout of the bond market.”

Really? So, on top of everything else, the banks want the Bush administration to organize a public relations campaign that will make the multi-billion bailout look like it was designed to help struggling homeowners instead of crafty bankers. Unbelievable. No doubt Team Bush will do whatever they can to help out.

Bank of America’s proposed $739 billion bailout is just the first of many hyper-inflationary, economy-busting trial-balloons we can expect to see in the near future. The banking system is in terminal distress; collapsing from hundreds of billions in worthless assets, bad bets, and poor decision-making. Their capital impairment problems were all brought on by themselves. And they should be forced to pay the consequences, whatever that may be. They managed to take a simple, revenue-generating activity like mortgage lending, and turn it into a textbook case of grand larceny. It’s pathetic.

25/02/08 “HaitiAnalysis” — – The way Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported on Haiti and Venezuela in its 2008 World Report reveals an underlying assumption that the US and its allies have the right to overthrow democratic governments.[1]

It is a matter of public record that the US funded groups who were involved in the coup of 2002 and continued to do so after the coup took place, but rather than denounce or even acknowledge US destabilization efforts in Venezuela, HRW continues to complain about the non-renewal of RCTV’s public broadcasting license. [2] RCTV was one of big television networks that aided and abetted the coup. HRW objects that RCTV’s involvement in the coup “was not proven in a proceeding in which RCTV had an opportunity to present a defense.” It is impossible to imagine a non-farcical proceeding that would conclude otherwise, especially when the coup’s perpetrators thanked the private media, of which RCTV was a major part, for its help. Before the coup was reversed Vice-Admiral Ramirez Perez told a Venezuelan reporter:

“We had a deadly weapon: the media. And now that I have the opportunity, let me congratulate you.”

Judging by its reports, HRW is completely uninterested in whether the broadcaster that replaced RCTV on the public airwaves, TVes, offers viewers a wider variety of views. [3]”Freedom of the Press Barons” to perpetrate coups appears to be HRW’s concern, not freedom of expression. It is worth remembering that HRW’s response to the coup in Venezuela was appalling. Al Giordano summed their response up well in an exchange with an HRW intern:

“They recognized an illegitimate ‘authority’ as legitimate. They failed to call for the removal of that dictatorial regime. They failed to call on other nations and the OAS to refuse to recognize it. They failed to call for invoking the OAS Democratic Charter for the one event it was intended to prevent.”[4]

Giordano’s words could also be used to summarize how HRW responded to the US backed coup in Haiti in 2004.

HRW used the 2008 World Report to criticize, yet again, a judicial reform law that was passed by the Chavez administration in 2004. In contrast, HRW’s summary about Haiti said nothing about the coup that ousted Jean Bertrand Aristide’s democratic government in 2004; nothing about the subsequent murder of thousands of people who supported Aristide’s Lavalas movement (the word “Lavalas” does not even appear in the summary); nothing about the fact that Haiti’s police and judiciary remain stacked with appointees from the dictatorship of 2004-2006; nothing about Father Gerard Jean Juste, the most prominent political prisoner of that period, who continues to be hounded by Haiti’s legal system. [5]

Even if HRW’s criticism of Venezuela’s judicial reform law of 2004 were reasonable (and it isn’t) it cannot deserve more attention than the coup in Haiti that led to a human rights catastrophe. [6]

On a positive note, the 2008 World Report belatedly gave some attention to the disappearance of Lovinsky Pierre Antoine, a prominent Haitian human rights worker and opponent of the 2004 coup. HRW stated:

“In August 2007 a well known human rights advocate, Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, was abducted. At this writing his whereabouts remain unknown.”

Again, the absence of the word “Lavalas” is telling. Pierre-Antoine disappeared days after he had announced that he would run for the Haitian senate as a Fanmi Lavalas Party candidate. The goal of the 2004 coup and the bloodbath that followed was to eliminate the Lavalas movement – the same goal with basically the same perpetrators as during the 1991-1994 period about which HRW reported extensively. [7]

At first glance, the 2008 World Report seems to provide courageous and much needed criticism of powerful countries like the US. HRW is willing to contradict the Bush Administration on some important matters. For example, in a press conference about the 2008 World Report, HRW director Ken Roth refused to label Venezuela as a “closed country”. However, Roth went on to say that human rights “trends were negative in Venezuela”. That conclusion is justified only if one assumes that perpetrating coups and other acts of sabotage against a democratic government should have no legal repercussions at all. Meanwhile, in Haiti, when human rights trends really were disastrously negative thanks to a coup backed by the US and its allies, HRW displayed a chilling indifference.[8]

An important lesson to learn from the coups that took place in Haiti and Venezuela is that US imperialism cannot succeed through the efforts of Neocons alone. It needs the help of other countries, and it needs the help of NGOs like Human Rights Watch. [9]

NOTES

[1] See Human Rights Watch. World Report. 2008. hrw.org/wr2k8/pdfs/wr2k8_web.pdf

[2] See Eva Gollinger’s “The Chavez Code” for details on US funding of groups that participated in the coup.

[3] There is good reason to believe that freedom of expression on the public airwaves has been improved by replacing RCTV with TVES James Jordan notes “The new broadcasting license is being given to a public station, TVes-Venezuela Social Television, which will run shows produced mainly by independent parties. The station will be controlled not by the government, but by a foundation of community members, with one chair reserved for a government representative. ” Source For more specifics about RCTV’s involvement in the coup see this.

[4] Al Giodano’s exchange with the HRW intern can be read here.

[5] for more about the coup and Haiti and its consequences see Kolbe and Hudson. Lancet Study. 2006, Source (PDF format). See also this.

[6] The judicial reform law broke the stranglehold of Venezuelan elite on the judiciary. For extensive discussion of the reform law and HRW’s objections see note 3.

[7]For more discussion of how HRW responded to the 1991 and 2004 coups in Haiti see this.

[8] See this.

Hope mongering has been working much better than experience mongering. Now, the rest of the story….

As befits American culture, politics is all about slick selling to the masses. Hillary Clinton is selling Day-1 help to victims and sufferers. Barack Obama is selling effervescent hope to yes-we-can dreamers. This media hyped horse race is like a fight between diet Coke and diet Pepsi, artificially sweetened candidates devoid of real nourishment.

The least educated, least sophisticated and least wealthy along with Hispanics are sipping Clinton’s fizzled-out drink. The most educated, most privileged, and most financially successful along with African-Americans are gulping down Obama’s charismatic pick-me-up.

As to who is buying what, consider these data: Clinton won the non-college-educated voters by 22 points in California, 32 points in Massachusetts, 54 points in Arkansas, and 11 points in New Jersey. In a Pew Research national survey, Obama led among people with college degrees by 22 points. In Connecticut, Obama beat Clinton among college graduates by 17 points and in New Jersey by 11 points. And note this: 39 percent of Virginia and 41 percent of Maryland Democratic primary voters reported incomes of $100,000 or more – clearly well educated people that would favor Obama.

A simplistic conclusion is that the dumber you are the more likely you prefer the first woman president because you believe this experience-selling status quo, corporate candidate. And the smarter you are the more likely you prefer the first black president because you embrace the change-promises and platitudes from the more authentic, inspirational candidate with the short resume. Clinton supporters appreciate the 10-point-plan-for-every-problem political pragmatist. Obamatons swoon over the big-picture, unity-promising political messiah.

Working-class Clinton supporters are like weary shoppers seeking decent food at low prices at Safeway and good coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts. Obama yes-we-can-happy-facers gladly pay exorbitant prices for the Whole Foods experience and Starbucks shtick.

Here are some realities that neither group wants to face:

Both candidates are establishment insiders.

Both are corporate-state politicians. Note that Robert Wolf, the CEO of UBS Americas, a major banking company, has raised more than $1 million for the Obama campaign. Large sources of Obama money are law firms, investment houses, and real estate companies, and 80 percent of his donors are affiliated with business, compared to 85 percent for Clinton.

Neither are true progressives or populists, like Kucinich and Edwards.

Both Clinton the fighter and Obama the talker will sell out once they confront presidential realities. Why? Because plutocracies know how to retain power AFTER elections. After two years it will be clear that the new president will have failed to extract the US from Iraq, will have failed to deliver universal health care, will have failed to address illegal immigration, will have done nothing to get a new and serious 9/11 investigation, will have done nothing to stop middle-class-killing globalization, and will have utterly disappointed the vast majority of Americans. The president’s most pressing priorities will be lowering expectations and getting reelected, despite raising taxes. The only people truly surprised at all this will be those lacking what the Greeks thought is a virtue: cynicism.

Finally, for those seeking serious political system reforms, it is troubling that neither Clinton nor, especially, Obama have the courage to advocate needed constitutional amendments, such as replacing the Electoral College with the popular vote for president, getting all private money out of politics, making universal health care a right, and preventing presidential signing statements that undermine laws.

22/02/08 “Canwest News” — — Canada and the U.S. have signed an agreement that paves the way for the militaries from either nation to send troops across each other’s borders during an emergency, but some are questioning why the Harper government has kept silent on the deal.

Neither the Canadian government nor the Canadian Forces announced the new agreement, which was signed Feb. 14 in Texas.

The U.S. military’s Northern Command, however, publicized the agreement with a statement outlining how its top officer, Gen. Gene Renuart, and Canadian Lt.-Gen. Marc Dumais, head of Canada Command, signed the plan, which allows the military from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a civil emergency.

The new agreement has been greeted with suspicion by the left wing in Canada and the right wing in the U.S.

The left-leaning Council of Canadians, which is campaigning against what it calls the increasing integration of the U.S. and Canadian militaries, is raising concerns about the deal.

“It’s kind of a trend when it comes to issues of Canada-U.S. relations and contentious issues like military integration. We see that this government is reluctant to disclose information to Canadians that is readily available on American and Mexican websites,” said Stuart Trew, a researcher with the Council of Canadians.

Trew said there is potential for the agreement to militarize civilian responses to emergency incidents. He noted that work is also underway for the two nations to put in place a joint plan to protect common infrastructure such as roadways and oil pipelines.

“Are we going to see (U.S.) troops on our soil for minor potential threats to a pipeline or a road?” he asked.

Trew also noted the U.S. military does not allow its soldiers to operate under foreign command so there are questions about who controls American forces if they are requested for service in Canada. “We don’t know the answers because the government doesn’t want to even announce the plan,” he said.

But Canada Command spokesman Commander David Scanlon said it will be up to civilian authorities in both countries on whether military assistance is requested or even used.

He said the agreement is “benign” and simply sets the stage for military-to-military co-operation if the governments approve.

“But there’s no agreement to allow troops to come in,” he said. “It facilitates planning and co-ordination between the two militaries. The ‘allow’ piece is entirely up to the two governments.”

If U.S. forces were to come into Canada they would be under tactical control of the Canadian Forces but still under the command of the U.S. military, Scanlon added.

News of the deal, and the allegation it was kept secret in Canada, is already making the rounds on left-wing blogs and Internet sites as an example of the dangers of the growing integration between the two militaries.

On right-wing blogs in the U.S. it is being used as evidence of a plan for a “North American union” where foreign troops, not bound by U.S. laws, could be used by the American federal government to override local authorities.

“Co-operative militaries on Home Soil!” notes one website. “The next time your town has a ‘national emergency,’ don’t be surprised if Canadian soldiers respond. And remember – Canadian military aren’t bound by posse comitatus.”

Posse comitatus is a U.S. law that prohibits the use of federal troops from conducting law enforcement duties on domestic soil unless approved by Congress.

Scanlon said there was no intent to keep the agreement secret on the Canadian side of the border. He noted it will be reported on in the Canadian Forces newspaper next week and that publication will be put on the Internet.

Scanlon said the actual agreement hasn’t been released to the public as that requires approval from both nations. That decision has not yet been taken, he added.

23/02/08 – — – BAGHDAD, Feb 22 (IPS) – What the U.S. has been calling the success of a “surge”, many Iraqis see as evidence of catastrophe. Where U.S. forces point to peace and calm, local Iraqis find an eerie silence.

And when U.S. forces speak of a reduction in violence, many Iraqis simply do not know what they are talking about.

Hundreds died in a series of explosions in Baghdad last month. This was despite the strongest ever security measures taken by the U.S. military, riding the “surge” in security forces and their activities.

The death toll is high, according to the website icasualties.org, which provides reliable numbers of Iraqi civilian and security deaths.

In January this year 485 civilians were killed, according to the website. It says the number is based on news reports, and that “actual totals for Iraqi deaths are higher than the numbers recorded on this site.”

The average month in 2005, before the “surge” was launched, saw 568 civilian deaths. In January 2006, the month before the “surge” began, 590 civilians died.

Many of the killings have taken place in the most well guarded areas of Baghdad. And they have continued this month.

“Two car bombs exploded in Jadriya, killing so many people, the day the American Secretary of Defence (Robert Gates) was visiting Baghdad last week,” a captain from the Karrada district police in Baghdad, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS.

“Another car bomb killed eight people and injured 20 Thursday (last week) in the Muraidy market of Sadr City, east of Baghdad, although the Mehdi army (the militia of Muqtada al-Sadr) provides strict protection to the city,” the officer said. “There is no security in this country any more.”

Unidentified bodies of Iraqis killed by militias continue to appear in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. The Iraqi government has issued instructions to all security and health offices not to give out the body count to the media. Dozens of bodies are found every day across Baghdad, residents say. Morgue officials confirm this.

“We are not authorised to issue any numbers, but I can tell you that we are still receiving human bodies every day; the men have no identity on them,” a doctor at the Baghdad morgue told IPS. “The bodies that have signs of torture are the Sunnis killed by Shia militias; those with a bullet in the head are usually policemen, translators or contractors who worked for the Americans.”

The “surge” of 30,000 additional troops came to Iraq, mostly Baghdad, in February of last year. The total current number of U.S. troops in Iraq is approximately 157,000. They were sent to end violence, and with a declared aim of helping political reconciliation.

But where peace of sorts has descended in Baghdad, Iraq’s capital city of six million (in a population of 25 million), it comes from a partitioning of people along sectarian lines. The Iraqi Red Crescent reports that one in four residents has been driven out of their homes by death squads, or by the “surge”.

According to an Iraqi Red Crescent report titled ‘The Internally Displaced People in Iraq’ released Jan. 27, 1,364,978 residents of Baghdad have been displaced.

The Environment News Service reported Jan. 7 that “many of the capital’s once mixed areas have become either purely Sunni or Shia after militias forced families out for belonging to the other religious branch of Islam.”

Some of the eerie calm in areas of Baghdad comes because togetherness has ended. Sunnis and Shias who lived together for generations are now partitioned. This is not the peace many Iraqis were looking for, surge or no surge.

On Jan. 8, UNHCR spokesperson Ron Redmond announced that there were at least 2.2 million Iraqis internally displaced within the country, and that at least another two million had fled the country altogether. This, no doubt, would make many areas quieter.

The U.S. military has erected three to four metre high concrete walls around several neighbourhoods, forcing residents to choose either Sunni or Shia areas in which to live. Such separation has brought large-scale displacement, and protests.

Sunni Muslims seem to have the worst of it. Many Iraqis are outraged by the number of Sunni detainees the “surge” has taken.

Residents of Amiriya district of western Baghdad demonstrated Feb. 11 against mistreatment by U.S. and Iraqi forces involved in the “surge”. The “surge” aims to eradicate al-Qaeda from Iraq, but this has meant that most military operations have been carried out in Sunni areas like Amiriya.

“We are here to protest against the unfair arrests and raids conducted against the innocent people of Amiriya,” Salih al-Mutlag, chief of the Arab Dialogue Council in the Iraqi government told IPS at the demonstration. “This has gone too far under the flag of fighting terror.”

Al-Mutlag said they were also demonstrating against arrests in the western parts of Baghdad, despite an apparently peaceful situation there as a result of residents’ cooperation with Iraqi army units. Large numbers of residents came out in the Dora region of southwest Baghdad to protest against the U.S. military for arresting 18 people, including an 80-year-old man.

“We are the ones who improved the situation in western parts of Baghdad without any interference from the Americans and their puppet Iraqi government,” former Iraqi Army Major Abu Wussam told IPS in Amiriya. “We negotiated with our brothers in the Iraqi national resistance who agreed to conduct their activities in a different way from the traditional way they used to work.

“It seems Americans did not like it, and so they are punishing us for it, instead of releasing our detainees as they promised.”

Some of the apparent peace on the street is a consequence of rising detentions. In November last year Karl Matley, head of the Iraqi branch of the International Committee of the Red Cross, declared that more than 60,000 prisoners and detainees are held in prisons and other detention centres. A large number of these were taken during the “surge”.

By August 2007, half a year into the “surge”, the number of detainees held by the U.S.-led military forces in Iraq had swelled by 50 percent, with the inmate population growing to 24,500, from 16,000 in February, according to U.S. military officers in Iraq.

The officers reported that nearly 85 percent of the detainees in custody were Sunni Arabs.

Given that the majority of the detained are Sunnis, the “surge”, rather than bridging political differences and aiding reconciliation between Sunni and Shia groups, appears to have had the opposite effect.

And yet, there could be more dangerous reasons to doubt such success of the “surge” that is claimed.

Among the recent arrests in Baghdad, the U.S. military counted six members of the Sahwa (Awakening) forces. This is a force of resistance fighters now ostensibly working with the U.S. military. The U.S. pays each member 300 dollars monthly. More than 80 percent of about 70,000 Sahwa members are Sunni.

The arrest of some Sahwa members is indication of U.S. military doubts about the loyalties of some of these Sahwa fighters. Shia political parties and militias already accuse them of being resistance fighters in disguise. Many believe that large numbers of Sahwa forces are resistance fighters simply riding the “surge”.

“How come Sunni parts of Baghdad became so quiet all of a sudden,” says Jawad Salman, a former resident of Amiriya who fled his house in 2006 after Iraqi resistance members accused him of being a government spy. “It is a game well played by terrorists to divert the fight against Shia groups. I lived there and I know that all residents fully support what the U.S. calls the terrorists.”

The Sahwa strategy has brought down the number of U.S. casualties – for now. But the U.S. strategy seems to have done less for Iraq than for its own forces.

23/02/08 “ICH” — — THE US occupying army in Iraq (euphemistically called the Multi-National Force-Iraq) carries out extensive studies of popular attitudes. Its December 2007 report of a study of focus groups was uncharacteristically upbeat.

The report concluded that the survey “provides very strong evidence” to refute the common view that “national reconciliation is neither anticipated nor possible”. On the contrary, the survey found that a sense of “optimistic possibility permeated all focus groups … and far more commonalities than differences are found among these seemingly diverse groups of Iraqis.”

This discovery of “shared beliefs” among Iraqis throughout the country is “good news, according to a military analysis of the results”, Karen deYoung reports in The Washington Post.

The “shared beliefs” were identified in the report. To quote deYoung, “Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic groups believe that the U.S. military invasion is the primary root of the violent differences among them, and see the departure of ‘occupying forces’ as the key to national reconciliation.”

So, according to Iraqis, there is hope of national reconciliation if the invaders, responsible for the internal violence, withdraw and leave Iraq to Iraqis.

The report did not mention other good news: Iraqis appear to accept the highest values of Americans, as established at the Nuremberg Tribunal — specifically, that aggression — “invasion by its armed forces” by one state “of the territory of another state” — is “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole”. The chief US prosecutor at Nuremberg, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, forcefully insisted that the Tribunal would be mere farce if we do not apply its principles to ourselves.

Unlike Iraqis, the United States, indeed the West generally, rejects the lofty values professed at Nuremberg, an interesting indication of the substance of the famous “clash of civilisations”.

More good news was reported by Gen David Petraeus and Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker during the extravaganza staged on September 11, 2007. Only a cynic might imagine that the timing was intended to insinuate the Bush-Cheney claims of links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, so that by committing the “supreme international crime” they were defending the world against terror — which increased sevenfold as a result of the invasion, according to an analysis last year by terrorism specialists Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank.

Petraeus and Crocker provided figures to show that the Iraqi government was greatly accelerating spending on reconstruction, reaching a quarter of the funding set aside for that purpose. Good news indeed, until it was investigated by the Government Accountability Office, which found that the actual figure was one-sixth of what Petraeus and Crocker reported, a 50 per cent decline from the preceding year.

More good news is the decline in sectarian violence, attributable in part to the success of the murderous ethnic cleansing that Iraqis blame on the invasion; there are fewer targets for sectarian killing. But it is also attributable to Washington’s decision to support the tribal groups that had organised to drive out Iraqi Al Qaeda, and to an increase in US troops.

It is possible that Petraeus’s strategy may approach the success of the Russians in Chechnya, where fighting is now “limited and sporadic, and Grozny is in the midst of a building boom” after having been reduced to rubble by the Russian attack, CJ Chivers reports in the New York Times last September.

Perhaps some day Baghdad and Fallujah too will enjoy “electricity restored in many neighbourhoods, new businesses opening and the city’s main streets repaved”, as in booming Grozny. Possible, but dubious, considering the likely consequence of creating warlord armies that may be the seeds of even greater sectarian violence, adding to the “accumulated evil” of the aggression. Iraqis are not alone in believing that national reconciliation is possible. A Canadian-run poll found that Afghans are hopeful about the future and favour the presence of Canadian and other foreign troops — the “good news” that made the headlines.

The small print suggests some qualifications. Only 20 per cent “think the Taleban will prevail once foreign troops leave”. Three-quarters support negotiations between the US-backed Karzai government and the Taleban, and over half favour a coalition government. The great majority therefore strongly disagree with the US-Canadian stance, and believe that peace is possible with a turn towards peaceful means. Though the question was not asked in the poll, it seems a reasonable surmise that the foreign presence is favoured for aid and reconstruction.

There are, of course, numerous questions about polls in countries under foreign military occupation, particularly in places like southern Afghanistan. But the results of the Iraq and Afghan studies conform to earlier ones, and should not be dismissed.

Recent polls in Pakistan also provide “good news” for Washington. Fully 5 per cent favour allowing US or other foreign troops to enter Pakistan “to pursue or capture Al Qaeda fighters”. Nine per cent favour allowing US forces “to pursue and capture Taleban insurgents who have crossed over from Afghanistan”.

Almost half favour allowing Pakistani troops to do so. And only a little more than 80 per cent regard the US military presence in Asia and Afghanistan as a threat to Pakistan, while an overwhelming majority believe that the United States is trying to harm the Islamic world. The good news is that these results are a considerable improvement over October 2001, when a Newsweek poll found that “eighty-three per cent of Pakistanis surveyed say they side with the Taleban, with a mere three per cent expressing support for the United States,” and over 80 per cent described Osama bin Laden as a guerrilla and six per cent a terrorist.

Amid the outpouring of good news from across the region, there is now much earnest debate among political candidates, government officials and commentators concerning the options available to the US in Iraq. One voice is consistently missing: that of Iraqis. Their “shared beliefs” are well known, as in the past. But they cannot be permitted to choose their own path any more than young children can. Only the conquerors have that right.

Perhaps here too there are some lessons about the “clash of civilisations”.