A Keystone XL Rube Goldberg Machine

Not so long ago it seemed like the world had woken up to the fact that perpetual growth powered by finite resources on a finite planet was impossible. People spoke of a transition to a green economy in which little bunnies would frolic among solar collector panels while soaring birds would circle wind turbines. Gas prices were skyrocketing, people were talking about peak oil and it was clear that we were inviting ecological, social and economic disaster by continuing our energy policy. No, I'm not talking about this summer or last year, that was 1970 and a conservative into conservation was in the White House - Richard Nixon. He brought the Environmental Protection Agency into existence and along with it a raft of legislation to protect the air, water and land. Well, here we are forty years later facing the same problems again and an American president who promised his election would bring "the moment when the rise of the oceans will begin to slow and the planet will begin to heal..." on the verge of completing our suicidal Rube Goldberg Machine and signing our death sentence by allowing a project which Jim Hansen of NASA, the world's foremost climate scientist, said is "essentially game over" for our planet.

What, you still haven't looked up Rube Goldberg? First, it's known as Heath Robinson in the UK. Still not there? Did you ever play the game Mouse Trap when you were a kid? Too old school? How about The Incredible Machines? Still too '90s? Ok, well maybe you've seen this video:



That's a Rube Goldberg Machine, a a deliberately over-engineered machine that performs a very simple task in a very complex fashion, usually including a chain reaction. With a little imagination it's not hard to see the world's dependence on oil as one giant Rube Goldberg machine whose aim optimistically is to burden us financially for the benefit of a few oil companies, pessimistically to catalyze the burning of the planet. Many had hoped that we'd either save ourselves by developing a new technology to replace oil or that it would simply run out, so called Peak Oil. Our machine is so deviously complex that it even works against both solutions. Despite the enormous wealth oil has created for a few companies (ExxonMobil, BP, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, and Shell made $35 billion in profit in the first quarter this year), our governments still give them massive tax breaks (more than $4 billion for that previous group of five from Uncle Sam) and allow them to write the legislation (see Dick Cheney's 2005 energy bill and it's Haliburton Loophole) to keep producing oil and gas thanks to the political influence they can buy in our corpocracy. Worse, instead of technology setting us free, it's further enslaved us in recent years making deep sea drilling, hydraulic fracturing and tar sand extraction feasible and profitable. The games been rigged and the trigger is about to be pulled.

When President Obama got back from vacation at Martha's Vineyard last weekend I wonder if he even saw the hundreds of people in front of the gates waiting to be arrested. A couple of thousand people signed up to be arrested for sitting, singing and holding signs protesting against TransCanada's plans to build the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Once you get past the 'huh, they can be arrested for that?' moment (you know, it would be embarrassing if the tourist saw them or worse, they could be terrorists) one naturally wonders what could drive people to such an extreme. The answer lies in northern Alberta, the source of the pipelines payload. See, Alberta's oil isn't the conventional kind, it's even got it's own name, tar sands, or if you prefer, oil sands, which is actually vast deposits of bitumen - black, tarlike goo that is mixed with sand, clay, water and oil. There are approximately 2.5 trillion barrels of the stuff, the largest hydrocarbon deposits in the world and in terms of recoverable oil, the 2nd biggest in the world outside of Saudi Arabia. The problem is and has always been turning this crud into crude.

The view over Mordor, er, near Fort McMurray

Unsurprisingly, it was Obama's predecessor(s) who made it all possible. When Dubya's handlers were scouting international locations for him to begin reaping the rewards of his presidential legacy - giving speeches for cash - they found their options to be rather limited thanks to the international crimes he had committed. Fortunately for them, there was one place in the world sure to welcome him being much like Dubya's home state it was more Texas than Texas and all- Alberta, Canada. So, instead of being arrested by the ICC as he disembarked from the plane in Calgary, he only had to deal with a few protestors on his way to a $4,000/plate speech. Yes, Alberta, home of pickup trucks with shotgun racks and oil. Lots and lots of oil. It's been said that the only winner of the invasion of Iraq was Alberta as it played a part in the machine, helping push the price of oil into the triple digits and thus turning Alberta's biggest natural resource from a perennial money loser into the next big thing.

You see, strip mining the world's largest boreal forest for oil ain't cheap, environmentally or financially. It's kinda like ripping out your lungs while filling your chest with smoke. Loading the world's largest trucks with crud, moving it, heating it with natural gas (28 cubic metres or 1000 cubic feet of natural gas to produce one barrel of oil), mixing with 2.5 to 4 barrels of water, storing the toxic waste in tailing ponds big enough to be seen from space and finally transporting it costs money. With the price of oil stuck around $20/barrel (as low as $12 in 1998/99) it didn't make economic sense for oil companies to do the dirty work, so the government did. For decades the people of Alberta made up the loss in subsidies. A habit they still haven't seemed to shake despite the turnaround, giving more in subsidies to tar sands producers than the entire Environment Canada budget.

Higher oil prices have indeed led to an R&D extravaganza along with profits, but it is squarely focused on figuring out how to get the dirtiest possible oil out of the hardest-to-reach places. Shell, for instance, is working on a "novel thermal recovery process", embedding large electric heaters in the deposits and literally cooking the earth. Thanks to war and insatiable usage, the surge in oil prices allowed the United States Energy Information Administration to "discover" oil in the tar sands. It announced that Alberta - previously thought to have only 5 billion barrels of oil - was actually sitting on at least 174 billion "economically recoverable" barrels. The next year, Canada overtook Saudi Arabia as the leading provider of foreign oil to the United States. Iraq's oil boom wasn't delayed; it was relocated. There is a certain irony there: The United States invaded Iraq at least in part to secure access to its oil. Now, thanks partly to economic blowback from that disastrous decision, it has found the "security" it was looking for right next door.

Click to enlarge

So thank dog it's not Dubya sitting in the Oval Office deciding whether or not to allow the Keystone XL pipeline to cross the border and deliver oil all the way to the Gulf of Mexico via Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Nebraska's Sand Hills, the Yellowstone River and the Ogallala Aquifer, an underground reservoir that supplies two million Americans in the Midwest with water all lie along the path. Especially when the precursor pipeline suffered a dozen leaks in the past year would mean that a larger one in which 1.3 million barrels of bitumen with dozens of poisons needed to act as lubricants is forced at high pressure over 1,711 miles (over 2,750 kms) is bound to suffer a major leak sometime. Or wait, maybe it's the knowledge that it doesn't matter who's sleeping at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that so many people are willing to face arrest to raise awareness of what is being done to us. Faced with a financial crisis caused by too big to fail banks, greed, corruption and out of control inequality, Obama chose to bail out the very same banks and extend the Bush tax cuts which incentivized the greed and blew open the gap between rich and poor. Faced with an out of control health care system which delivers worse results for way more money than any other OECD country, Obama chose to reward the insurance industry that lead to the problems of exclusion and cost. A winning Rube Goldberg Machine takes delicate planning to put everything in place. The oil industry gets preferential access to Canadian Prime Minister Harper, together they lobby against the Europeans banning tar sands to protect the dirty fuel's clean image and a former ambassador to the US gets dispatched to lobby in Washington fueled by the petrodollars at the disposal of Exxon and BP and finding familiar nameplates in the very corridors tasked with shaping the laws and regulations for the industry. No one was surprised to hear Hillary Clinton comment that she was inclined to approve the pipeline months before the State Department or the EPA had even compiled a report. Even less surprisingly, the State Department has since given the KXL project green lights, while receiving red from watchdogs, in all their flawed reports to date.

Tar Sands. Hydraulic Fracturing (Fracking). Deep Sea and Arctic Drilling. Mountaintop Removal (MTR). Nuclear Energy. It seems so counter-intuitive when we know the dangers behind each but these are the energy sources that America and the world are turning to when we have alternatives. The oil companies simply play their spin machine to keep us addicted to their crack. Fracking is poisoning watersheds and water tables across America, it's been documented, we've been warned but it'll keep being done and move to to Europe, including the UK with the same dearth of regulation and even here to Poland. The technology that goes into drilling for oil thousands of feet below the sea is impressive so nothing could ever go wrong like it did in the Gulf of Mexico until it did, disastrously with BP last summer. Or just a few weeks ago for Shell in the North Sea and, gosh, ruining their reputation! Following the Gulf of Mexico disaster, Obama gave the OK to expand drilling over 20 million acres in the Gulf and soon probably in the Arctic Ocean. Remember how hard it was to stop the Gulf spill? Now imagine the remote Arctic. But, but, the technology! Let's not even speak of the horrors of blowing the tops off mountains to get at ever more inaccessible coal. We learned the lesson of Fukishima too, right? The Germans may have but not America and certainly not China. Holy shit, thanks again Wikileaks.



If you read the wrong newspapers or watch nearly any TV (really, people still do) the oil companies myth making machines will be screaming about the jobs these projects while using numbers made up by the industry to create while presenting a false choice between the economy and the environment. Even if true the reality runs something like this - we (as in us, it's our planet) grant oil, coal and nuclear companies access to our land for a minimum fee, while providing them with subsidies and tax incentives so that they can make billions in profit today and we have to pay with our health, lives and cash thanks to the damage that they leave behind. Yeah, sounds fair, kinda like the banking industry. There are better, safer, sustainable ways to spend $7 billion. I'll bet you didn't know that America is actually a $1.9 billion net exporter of solar energy products. I'd say the big problem is that it's not the right people making or saving the money the money when alternative energy is used. BP and Exxon can charge us for the oil for as long as we need it but they can't charge us for the sun and wind.

The Real Slippery Slope

There'll also be the banshee screams of those claiming that oil from Alberta is more ethical than that from places such as Saudi Arabia, Nigeria or Venezuela, countries that are potentially unstable or hostile. Um, yeah, Canadian's farts don't smell either. And the most childish (see what I did there?) spin of all, finger pointing, the old "if we don't do it, someone else will". This one's trumpeted over and over with the tar sands, that if the US doesn't get it, then the Chinese will. The Chinese! Wrong. A devastating new report from Oil Change International shows that Keystone XL will not only allow oil companies to exploit big domestic (read US the biggest kind) tax loopholes but also send most of its oil to export. USA! USA! Not only do you get all the risk of spills but you won't even get taxes to help pay for it. Anyway, a pipeline to the Pacific will be fought in the courts by native tribes and the people of the BC will fight any plan to fill tankers with the gunk off their coast. At the very least it will staunch the flow, time will be bought, time to build alternative energy sources. Fort McMurray, Alberta is a long way from anywhere so killing this pipeline turns the tar sands into a landlocked bomb instead of a nuclear submarine. Tar sand production is set to triple by 2020, stopping this pipeline throws a wrench into those plans. As an oil company economist and vice-president said, "Unless we get increased market access, like with Keystone XL, we’re going to be stuck". Alberta’s Energy Minister, Ron Liepert added "If there was something that kept me up at night, it would be the fear that before too long we’re going to be landlocked in bitumen...We’re not going to be an energy superpower if we can’t get the oil out of Alberta." Exactly.

Back to Richard Nixon. He wasn't really more progressive than Obama when it comes to the environment. It took 20 million people out in the streets for Earth Day in 1970 to get him to finally act. Yes, people power forced him to sign the bills that established the EPA and the landmark Clean Air Act then in 1972 Nixon signed the Coastal Zone Management Act; the Ocean Dumping Act; the Marine Mammal Protection Act; the Federal Insecticide, Fungide, Rodenticide Act; and the Toxic Substances Control Act. Nixon's term also saw passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973 and the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974. Somehow we've allowed ourselves to be sent back to the 70's while becoming so apathetic that only a handful are forced to try to defuse the largest carbon bomb on the planet.

Look, I'm not here to try to convince you that climate change is happening. It is, regardless of what your chosen means of indoctrination tell you. Of course this doesn't mean we're causing it regardless of what most climate scientists are telling us. I get it, there's no way to prove it despite the overwhelming evidence. The fact is we might be and whether or not you think volcanoes contribute more CO2 to the atmosphere than human activity (they don't) or that stolen emails showed that scientists manipulated data (they didn't) or that only an benign deity can influence the planet (he/she/it doesn't), carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is steadily climbing. So, as we approach seven billion inhabitants we're allowing the powers that be dictate our continued addiction to oil which will get harder and more dangerous to retrieve. Simultaneously, tar sands not only uses vast amounts of fresh water, it poisons it as part of the production process and carries an elevated risk of contaminating more in transportation. War is a natural consequence of shortages in either oil or water and now we've also learned that it also occurs thanks to warmer weather associated with El Nino. Hmmm, not good if the planet is indeed heating up. Oh, yeah, all part of the Rube Goldberg suicide machine. Tar Sands production is set to triple by 2020 while producing more CO2 than conventional oil both in production and ultimate use, you know, when you burn it in your Godcar going down to Wal-Mart. As most emissions come from burning it, the industry tries to spout figures comparing "well to wheels" (about 15% higher) instead of the more damning "well to tank" figure (up to 300% higher).

To stop it we need a change, not just in energy production, transportation and exploitation, but in our way of thinking, behaving and advancing. Regardless, you don't have to believe in climate change, anthropogenic or not, to believe in the increasing cancer rates caused around Fort Chipewyan by tar sands extraction and the destruction wreaked by the run off of arsenic, lead and mercury into the Athabasca River flowing into and thus endangering the Peace-Athabasca Delta. More than just mutant fish I'm afraid. Alberta won't stop it, decades of pro tar sands cheerleading have ensured the population is completely misinformed by what was just recently revealed to be pure propaganda as a federal report released in December accused the authorities of not having anywhere near the proper monitoring and controls in place.

To be fair, as the Economist pointed out, the report also indicated that environmentalist's claims that the tar sands are the "most environmentally destructive project on Earth" were "not accurate". Via the Globe and Mail on the same report, it "notes that scientific data shows air pollution is minimal, water pollution a potential concern but is having no immediate impact, that there's no correlation between oil sands pollution and an elevated cancer rate in Fort Chipewyan". All this of course without saying what is more destructive or much data thanks to the lack of monitoring. You might remember the preferred method of regulation and oversight in the Alberta oil industry from the financial industry a couple years ago. Ironically, the one man who can bring a change is the same who promised he'd bring it a few years ago, Barack Obama. As it crosses an international border, Obama and no one else gets to decide if the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline to carry oil from the tar sands of northern Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico goes forward or not.

View of the Athabasca-Peace Delta

There's a lot of things that I just can't seem to wrap my head around. There are Christians who profess to follow the teachings of the world's most famous socialist, Jesus Christ, yet whose true system of belief is based on a greed that makes them believe the best way to allocate scarce resources is a corrupt, oligarchical system they call the free market or capitalism. Haven't they even read the bible? Don't they even listen to the pope? Even sillier are those who believe in a democracy in which two (or maybe even three) corporate financed and thus controlled parties conspire to determine who maybe half of the population will choose between. America is of course where economics, politics and religion meet head on. It's the only place in the world where batshit crazy wackos such as Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry could be considered for the presidency. Thanks to folks like them monopolizing the media, the tandem of natural disasters that hit Washington DC in the last couple of weeks are more likely to be seen as acts of god warning the American people to cut spending in the words of Bachmann (please, don't look into her eyes) than independent events. Perry can extol the wonders of Texas schools teaching creationism alongside evolution to children in a land where most of the population believes that a bearded man in the sky created the Earth in six days around 6,000 years ago to once again drown out the lesson that could be learned of preparation and conservation by screaming like the monkeys they really evolved from.

Ah, Rube Goldberg again, keep the people stupid, feed them garbage and keep degrading the science that tells us that our actions aren't necessarily creating the climate but almost definitely making it worse. How else could Americans not connect the dots from April, when a series of killer tornadoes tore up the South to May, when floods ravaged the entire Mississippi River basin, through July, when killer heat waves seared the Midwest and Northeast to August, when Texas officially passed its worst one-year drought on record and finally to the warmer ocean pulling Hurrican Irene northward last weekend? The same way as last year. And the previous decade. By framing the issue with their media cohorts by asking the wrong question - "What caused these events?" - instead of "What's making them worse?". Despite 595 people (and counting) - from regular folks from Nebraska to event organizer and 350.org founder Bill McKibben and Daryl Hannah - being arrested in front of his bedroom, it's clear the Faux sound machine and the petro-interests have made sure President Obama has heard the wrong question on this issue as they have on all the others. We're this close to getting him to hear the message but there's only a few more days in Washington (then September 26th in Ottawa) so stand up, sit down, sign up, help out and call out the right answer to the right question - US!

Additional links (cause you can just never have enough!):
- Stop the Pipeline!
- "Tipping Point: The Age of the Oil Sands" (only available in Canada)
- Top 10 Tar Sands Facts
- Is There a Cancer Threat from the Oil Sands Industry?
- Slow Motion Oil Spill
- Ten Years After 9/11 - Canada's True Cost of Oil (great pics)

Memory Holes and Pyramid Schemes

As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of ‘The Times’ and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.

- 1984 George Orwell

As the tubes used in Orwell's 1984 protagonist Winston Smith's Ingsoc employers' gleaming white offices at the Ministry of Truth to purge our collective memory become increasingly clogged, it seems to be happening to me more and more frequently of late. That blank look of incomprehension staring at me around the classroom or across the table at the pub after delivering what I'd thought just a moment earlier to be a thought provoking observation. Events such as those happening over the past fortnight in Egypt, home to Gizan Pyramids and a KFC for the deaf, provide enough fodder to stoke the furnace of forgetfulness. The conflicts that have been sown in and around, by and for, the likes of Tutenkahmen, Cleopatra and Nasser from the Pharaonic high point of ancient civilization to the Tahrir Square occupation keep Big Brother digging the memory hole ever deeper. How can it be a 1979 moment or even '89 or simply '09, when there's no Ayatollah Khomeini coming home, Solidarity of Lech Walesa or even a Mir Hosein Mousavi? In our reality an American president can become a torturer who gets to go to the Super Bowl but not Geneva for fear of arrest while Obama has to help Egyptian torturers become presidents to prevent the Muslim Brotherhood becoming the Revolutionary Guard.

Watching the bumbling US government response to Egypt along with the rope-a-dope technique #3 from the authoritarian leader handbook (the others being violent crackdown or exile to mountainside villa) being played by Hosni Mubarak while the media whips up fear of Islamic extremism can be depressingly predictable. Regardless of whether the spark of revolution was the social media connectivity of Facebook and Twitter, the reporting of Al Jazeera and Wikileaks or grinding poverty combined with the skyrocketing price of bread, the fact is thirty years of political repression has left a void bigger than what a former UN Atomic Energy chief or Google executive could fill and so would give Islamists a voice in any democratically elected government. It was a crafty move by Mubarak to unconstitutionally name Omar Suleiman vice-president, buying time with America as he was their main rendition connection in the region and a trusted friend of Israel. The Winston Smiths of today have cut and pasted his name to Soliman in the cables provided by Wikileaks where he calls Iranians 'devils', turns the Muslim Brotherhood into the bogeyman and promises to pressure Hamas. Omar Suleiman may be better known as Sheik al-Torture but you can't convince me Mubarak's consigliere's not Snidely Whiplash with his look and fetishes; I wonder who we could get to play Dudley Do-Right?



As Minister without Portfolio and Director of the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate (EGID) since 1993, Omar Suleiman oversaw the security apparatus and torture program that produced the likes of Mohamed Atta and Ayman Al-Zawahiri. These graduates from his CIA designed torture chambers went on to pilot American Airlines flight 11 into the north Twin Tower on 9/11 and become Osama bin Laden's chief lieutenant, the real brains behind Al Qaeda respectively. Of the19 hijackers that day, there weren't any from Iraq, a problem for Dubya's plan to finish off Saddam Husein for his dad - 15 were from Saudi Arabia, two from the United Arab Emirates, and one each from Egypt and Lebanon. As point man for the CIA's rendition program, Suleiman received many of the suspects that America snatched around the world for torture. The most notorious case was an Al Queda suspect known as Ibn Sheikh al-Libi who was bound and blindfolded at Bagram Airforce Base in Afghanistan and flown to Cairo. Suleiman convinced Libi to confirm a personal link between Saddam and Osama and that the former was providing the latter with chemical weapons by locking him in a little box for eighty hours. Though Libi later recanted, his torture induced assertions were used by Colin Powell in his testimony to the UN in building the case for war in Iraq. For nearly 20 years, Suleiman has played Saraman for Mordor, the USA.

"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."
-Inner Party member O'Brien in 1984

When America was given custodianship of the world's economic system from the British Empire after World War II they also inherited the disastrous legacy of colonial duties from all the previous world powers from Chile to Vietnam, Angola to Afghanistan. America chose to spread freedom and democracy while ignoring convenient client state dictators and installing others who played for their side. Saudi Arabia and their extreme Wahabi version of Islam became fine but Iran's theocratic regime certainly isn't. Arming and supporting the Mujahiddin in Afghanistan in their struggle against Ruskies only to fight them twenty years later as the Taliban. The fear factory slipped seamlessly from fear of the Russian commies to the Islamic fundies in Iran. After screwing up Persia the US had to give Saddam weapons to fight the Ayatollah in a war that cost a million and a half lives only to have to turn its sites on Baghdad not once but twice. CNN and the 24-hour cable news cycle was born as George the elder's, Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. led (fun triva fact: his dad, Sr., was the man sent to bring the Shah back to Iran in '53 from self-imposed exile in Italy and went on to train the Shah's security forces, SAVAK) Desert Storm kicked Saddam out of Kuwait. Americans were taught to believe in smart missiles that only killed the bad guys but weren't shown the mass executions of those America incited to rebel and then deserted to die. Faux News was legitamized in the eyes of hillbillies as the embedded journalist came courtesy Dubya's shock and awe in Gulf War II as reporters rode the army's tanks into Baghdad. With their impartiality already compromised, they had no problems beaming staged celebrations back home to be played on an endless loop. Perhaps Egypt's protests will bring about cable news' next revolution and help propel Al-Jazeera into more living rooms to provide an alternative to the background noise designed to dull or senses.

Keeping in mind the arbitrariness of choosing a point in time when the story of empires keeps building on foundations heavy with history, we should look at Iran and Egypt in the early 1950s especially since the Bill O'Reillys and Glenn Becks of the world want us to fear the rise of a Muslim Caliphate from Cairo to Tehran (and yes, onto Islamabad and Kabul) if we dare encourage democracy. Since they get to ignore the differences across the region - Sunni from Shiite, petro-wealthy from poverty-stricken, Arab from Persian - and present a false choice faced in Egypt as one between Jihadist and friendly dictators, so can we. To combat the Manichean view of perpetual Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich, who said, "there's a real possibility in a few weeks...that Egypt will join Iran, and join Lebanon, and join Gaza, and join the things that are happening that are extraordinarily dangerous to us" we could study the past to learn from our mistakes. More than 50 years ago Egypt and Iran both had back to back major revolutions, the second Shah was installed in Iran while a military coup in Egypt eventually saw Gamal Abdel Nasser take control. By constantly rewriting history, Oceania's perpetual war alternated between Eurasia or Eastasia; the doublethink in our world had the US conspire with the USSR to push the British out of Egypt while McCarthy whipped up anti-commie rage to convince America to work with the Brits in Iran.

Prime Minister Dr. Mohammad Mosaddeq nationalized Iran's oil industry and earned Time Magazine's Man of the Year in 1951 while US President Truman stood by. It seems quaint today but when first presented with a British plan to overthrow Mosaddeq, Truman said, "We don’t overthrow governments; the United States has never done this before, and we’re not going to start now". By 1953 General Eisenhower was president and the US along with Britain had successfully completed Operation Ajax, overthrowing Mosaddeq and installing the Shah (fun tria fact #2: the CIA plan was hatched by Kermit Roosevelt Jr., grandson of Teddy Roosevelt), thus earning the lasting hatred of large sectors of the Iranian public, uniting communists, nationalists and Shia clericalists behind enmity of foreign meddling. The world got BP in exchange for Anglo-Iranian Oil and America got a client state to supply cheap oil for 26 years.



The Shah's supporters point to successes such as the 1963 program known as the White Revolution, which included land reform, the extension of voting rights to women, and the elimination of illiteracy. His detractors however remind us these very achievements served to alienate the clergy and avoid real democratic reforms. He flouted the constitution which placed limits on royal power and provided for a representative government, going so far as crowning himself "Shah en Shah", King of Kings in 1967. His increasing subservience to the US played poorly as he threw an extravagant celebration of 2,500 years of Persian monarchy and in 1976 he replaced the Islamic calendar with an "imperial" calendar, which began with the foundation of the Persian empire around 500 BC. These actions were clearly aimed at sidelining the Islamic religion, and excited the opposition of Muslim groups, which rallied around the then-exiled Ayatollah Khomeini.

The second Egyptian Revolution broke out in Egypt the year before resulting in Nasser's military coup on July 23rd 1952. This time the world got pan-Arab nationalism and three more Israeli wars in '56, '67 and '73 to add to the Arab loss of 1948. It wasn't until his successor Anwar Saddat that the lure of American dollars could convince them to at least play nice with Israel. In exchange for honoring the Camp David Accords signed by Sadat in 1978 and keeping the border to Gaza sealed for the most part, Hosni Mubarak and his cohorts have been made rich; Sadat paid with his life, Mubarak has paid with his soul. Corruption in Egypt has been taken to a whole new level; in America the corporations control government policy through lobbies, election funding and regulators, in Egypt the businessmen simply are the government and vice-versa. As the public grew poorer and prospects grew ever dimmer for the university graduates who managed to avoid being beaten by the secret police, five of Mubarak's cronies became billionaires. Former interior minister Habib Ibrahim El-Adly and party insider Ahmed Ezz amassed $1.2 and $3 billion respectively. A few other billionaire former Cabinet ministers trying to flee the country as protests broke out but were stopped. Ashraf Marwan, the son-in-law of the late President Gamel Abdel Nasser spied for Mossat and was killed in England; another billionaire former Parliamentarian, Talaat Moustafa paid a hit man $2 million to kill a Lebanese pop star who jilted him.

Much was deservedly made of the fact that over the billions in military support that made Egypt the second largest recipient of US military aid after Israel so they could buy the same American built F-16s, tear gas, and Abrams tanks buzzing, blinding and encircling the crowds in and around Tahrir Square. No wonder Egyptians are now referring to Obama as the Black Bush as he, his administration and other western leaders try to maintain the status quo that is looking more and more like a Madoff Ponzi scheme ready to collapse. Frank Wisner, the US envoy sent to speak with Mubarak after protests broke out,  works for a law firm which works for the dictator's own Egyptian government. Usurprising then that he would say, "President Mubarak's continued leadership is critical: it's his opportunity to write his own legacy." Vice-president Biden stated that because Mubarak had been a responsible ally he "would not refer to him as a dictator." Tony Blair, probably hoping this will somehow make it more likely we'll attack Iran, said Mubarak is "immensely courageous and a force for good". Silvio Berlusconi, perhaps to distract attention from the myriad of scandals that tend to follow septuagenarian prime ministers who sleep with underage hookers, said of the dictator "in the West, above all in the United States, [Mubarak] is considered the wisest of men". Yep, apparently wise enough to have siphoned off enough of his people's wealth to build his family a $70 billion fortune.

When the US lost Iran to the 1979 Revolution, American interests, or more precisely, Israeli and oil flow security, were buttressed by Anwar el-Sadat's decision to make peace with Israel. Mubarak has more than held up their end of the bargain in other areas as well from his positions during the wars against Iraq, his stand against nuclear Iran and it's involvement in Lebanon but the Israeli free pass has been key. In making peace with Israel the 26th of March 1979, Egypt essentially permitted Israel to tighten their grip over the West Bank and Gaza, and concentrate their military ambitions elsewhere such as Lebanon or Gaza, and perhaps sometime in the future, Iran. In the words of a 2009 American embassy cable, part of the Wikileaks document dump, "The tangible benefits to our mil-mil relationship are clear: Egypt remains at peace with Israel, and the US military enjoys priority access to the Suez Canal and Egyptian airspace."

Yet, instead of using this breathing space as an opportunity to make peace, Israel has seemingly done all it can to alienate everyone around them. It seems to me that the last couple of years have brought an increased arrogance to the aggressive actions taken by Israel, meaning the Palestinians could be the biggest beneficiaries of an Egyptian power shift that could threaten the border with Gaza. Settlement expansion along with that in East Jerusalem, a crazy wall and the creation of a ghetto in Gaza. Just as a peace deal with Syria brokered by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan seemed to be about to become reality, Israel launched Operation Cast Lead against the people of Gaza. Further frosting the Israeli-Turkish relationship came with the attack on the Freedom Flotilla trying to break the siege and deliver supplies to Gaza. a people slowly being starved and limited to an ever changing list of 81 items allowed entry into their sliver of a territory, more concentration camp. In international waters, the IDF killed nine activists, eight Turkish nationals and a Turkish-American. As the world argued over who started it and what label should be attached to the parties we forgot about the real victims in Gaza. Israel spin is better than any pneumatic tube system.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable
- John F. Kennedy 

Yeah, it could be that the Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war that Kennedy wanted to avoid could quickly become a Pox Americana for her client states in the region. Israel along with  it's friendemies in Jordan, the UAE and of course Saudi Arabia are piling the pressure on Obama not the cut Mubarak loose. At least King Abdullah II’s recent dismissal of his cabinet in Jordan (the only other Arab country that has signed a peace treaty with Israel) shows he's aware of the change, Saudi's King Abdullah (yeah, same name) still thinks his oil means he calls the shots. Wikileaks is there to help reporters again in a timely way as just released cables reveal fears that the sea of oil in the Kingdom is about 40% smaller than previously thought, bringing Peak Oil ever closer. These nations real and legitimate fear is the 240 F-16 fighters in play along with the other advanced weaponry the Americans have sold Mubarak over the years in an attempt to create a balance with the Iranians. Denial ain't just a river in Egypt, it's a belief that keeping the oil flowing at all cost can continue forever and not seeing that America is the biggest obstacle to peace and democracy in the Middle East.

By supporting the status quo, siding against the protesters, America will force the military to eventually back Mubarak/Suleiman to keep the money flowing into their coffers with or without bullets. This money ensures rigged elections come September and once the international cameras go home Suleiman's torture chambers await any pesky dissenting voices, their thoughtcrimes earning them the Mubarak treatment that turns them into unpersons. The cycle intensifies as anti-Americanism grows for supporting torturers in the Arab world while the western media (with ever-concentrating ownership) points out the only support for the opposition parties comes from Iran and Hamas. This allows the US government to defend Suleiman when he keeps emergency powers in place (motto: in place since 1981 so why not forever?) and ratchets up repression. Such a course of events ensures that if democracy ever comes to Egypt, thousands will have to die and the resulting government will be far less open than whatever would have come from the current demonstrations, had we supported them in the first place. The false choice of stability versus democracy that has been played far too long must be refuted.

The fate of over 80 million people hangs in the balance, the 15th most populous nation just in front of Turkey and Iran, the latter used as a dog whistle of fear to cover the only sustainable path to follow blazed by the former. Our old buddy Newt framed the issue in a perfectly partisan way by offering this advice to Obama, "study Reagan and Carter and do what Reagan did and avoid what Carter did", neocon code for the old game of continuing to lecture on democracy while supporting dictators. Jimmy Carter didn't lose Iran, it was the decades long support for brutal dictatorships that accomplished that trick. If fears of Islamic extremism cause us to falter in our support of the pro-democracy movement, "What is certain is that siding with a repressive regime against the Egyptian people, especially against young Egyptians, will turn these fears of extremism into a reality." Damn memory holes, we always seem to forget that blowback is a bitch.


Update #1: You may have noticed the celebrations in the streets of Egypt being beamed around the globe. Unfortunately, not much is being said of Omar Suleiman the man who announced the resignation of Hosni Mubarak last night, February 11th. All the commentary seems to agree the best outcome possible has occurred, but all that's happened is the US supported army is in charge. The only certainty they seem to be expressing is that all existing treaties will be honored by Egypt. They're celebrating across the Arab world, whispers of Algeria or Morocco being next, and everyone seems to be appeased, but the only reassurance has been directed at Israel. 

Arrest That Man!

Could it happen? Picture this if you will: Today, George W. Bush makes his first trip across an international border as a private citizen, the plane touches down, he disembarks, but wait, what's this? There waiting for him are representatives of the International Criminal Court to arrest him for war crimes and crimes against humanity. And then we woke up. Not gonna happen, why? Cause he doesn't deserve it? No. Because he's landing in Calgary, Alberta, Canada - proof that he still has people around him doing his thinking for him as he couldn't pick a more conservative, oil loving, cowboy mentality, business friendly place on Earth. A place where instead of arrest, he'll find people lining up to pay $4,000 a table to hear him speak.

Here's the thing: it should happen. The evidence is there. The precedent is there. Now we just need someone with the balls to do it. My bet is that it won't be the Canadians. Legal experts have said that with the issue of a warrant for the arrest of present Sudanese President al-Bashir for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, the same principles of law could be extended to officials from the Bush Administration for the coercive interrogation techniques used on terror suspects. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) leaked a report claiming these techniques "constituted torture". Or perhaps they could get him for the illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. If that weren't enough, there is also the argument that Bush is inadmissible to Canada under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. Section 35(1) (a) states that a foreign national is inadmissible on grounds of violating human or international rights or for committing an act outside Canada that constitutes an offence referred to in sections 4 to 7 of the Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes Act. Also inadmissible (s.35 (1)(b)) are persons who are, or were, senior officials “in the service of a government that, in the opinion of the Minister, engages or has engaged in gross human rights violations…”. Of particular interest are articles 5, 7 and 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

"The test isn't whether the person's been convicted, but whether there's reasonable grounds to think that they have been involved," says Gail Davidson, who's with Lawyers Against the War (LAW), a group that has been pressuring the Canadian government to act. "...It's now a matter of public record that Bush was in charge of setting up a regime of torture that spanned several parts of the globe and resulted in horrendous injuries and even death. Canada has a duty."

Today being St. Patrick's Day, we'll see green beer, green rivers and green outfits. Unfortunately, it's the green of US wealth that flows into Alberta's oil rich province that will most likely prevent the Canadian authorities from acting on their moral and possibly legal obligations to arrest Dubya as he enters Canadian soil. I'm sure we'll see plenty of protesters but no arrest. At least I'll have my beer to drown my sorrow tonight.

True (well, not so true) to the End

The great mass of people will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one
-Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 1, Ch. 10

Why oh why do they keep lying and deceiving? Oh yeah, it's because a whole bunch of people eat this stuff up. Stumbled across another case in point of the smokescreen that is the Republican party and the wacky right, a little number released by the White House called the 'Highlights of Accomplishments and Results The Administration of President George W. Bush 2001-2009'. The legacy book is yet another example of the distorted way in which these people actually see the world. So, in celebration of the final moments of the Bush presidency let's try to once again for old time sakes to expose the truth by looking at this publication point by painful point.

The report has five main categories, the first of which is the claim that Dubya "Kept America Safe and Promoted Liberty Abroad". The four supporting arguments are that he waged the global war on terror, transformed the institutions and the tools of war, established the freedom agenda to spread hope through liberty and finally, established a new approach to international development. The first claim is based on the fact that US soil hasn't seen a terrorist attack against it since 9/11. True, but as I've read in many places, the previous 7 years hadn't seen one either. What's been swept under the rug and somehow forgotten is that it was on Bush's watch that 9/11 happened. Have we forgotten that Bush responded to the August 6, 2001 memo entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" by going on vacation? Or that he hardly paid any attention to the intelligence dating back to January 2001 which insisted that al-Qaeda was an "urgent" threat? The truth here is that the Bush administration has made America and the world a much less safe place, especially vis-a-vis terrorism. The neocon strategy of spreading democracy through war has proved to be an abysmal failure. Yes, they transformed war by instituting a policy of pre-emptive war in Iraq and the tools were sharpened through the unsigning of the ICC and ignoring the Geneva Convention. The use of torture condoned by his cohorts has created a much more dangerous world for troops abroad. The State Department, traditionally the main tool of foreign policy, has become an afterthought, understaffed, underfunded and suffering from low morale. Reading about this 'freedom agenda' is confusing. If it's the measure introduced to but not passed by congress it represents some of the higher ideals of the Republican party. However, the more nebulous 'freedom agenda' held by Dubya and fellow neocons has truly been a disaster. Beyond Iraq, one need look no further than South America or central Asia, where American influence has waned considerably. As for the colour-coded revolutions, well, most have been revealed as nothing more than a smoke screen, whose initial success has faded away much like the smoke. Did I mention Afghanistan? Guess I forgot about it too...

Bush on the economy, another laugher. Section numero dos is headed: Lowered Taxes and Instituted Pro-Growth Policies. Should read: Made the rich richer and sold the rest down river. More than any one single reason for the financial crisis is the culture of lies and deceit that the Bush administration helped to perpetuate. If you aren't so philosophical and need concrete reasons for the crisis, luckily I've got a few. Doubling the national debt after inheriting a budget surplus, pushing for deregulation and the ever widening income gap are good starting points. A doubling of the nation's debt to over $11 trillion while today the richest 1% of Americans share of national income is 22.1% compared to 16.1% in 2002 with the bottom 50%'s share today being 12.5% compared to 14.2% six years ago. In 2007 real median household income dropped 1% while corporate profits jumped 68%. But really, one need only look at Bush's advice to the American consumer which basically boiled down to "go shopping!". Yes, that's right, declare a 'war on terror' and instead of asking the people to make sacrifices, ask them to mortgage their financial future - and of course that's what Joe and Sally did. In previous wars citizens were encouraged to invest in war bonds and the likes, Dubya told the people "to get down to Disney World". Imagine how bad things would be today if he'd had his way and Social Security had been privatized.

Next up, George the second apparently "Reformed Government to Better Serve Americans". The first subsection is about education and the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, part of the Bush pledge in 2000 to improve education when he lamented, "Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?". The results have been mixed with reading and math scores showing improvement but many questioning the neglect of other subjects; an overhaul awaits the Obama administration. On health care the report mentions the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit. Whatever it's merits the cost represent another boldface lie told to the American people as the White House continually low-balled the price tag in order to ensure passage. Sound familiar? Refresher: Back in 2003 the Bush Administration wanted to put the price tag of a war in Iraq at around $50 billion. White House Economic Advisor Larry Lindsey was fired for suggesting it could be $100 to $200 billion, that's right, fired for stepping out of line. The real cost could come in somewhere around $5 trillion! Only missed that one by a factor of 100. Oh yeah, there are over 46 million Americans without any kind of health insurance today, an increase of more than 8 million since 2000. The next part is the creepy one for us small 'g' god people; Dubya's administration has "Improved lives by partnering with faith-based and community groups". Whether or not one supports the president's Faith-Based and Community Initiative (FBCI), what is undeniable is that it will be a part of the Bush legacy as it has changed the rules of the game. The Constitutional line between church and state has been blurred and a new way of handing out money to political allies was created, sound familiar? It should as cronyism is a central theme in the last section here, where Bush II "Provided unprecedented resources for those who defended our freedom". Yes, sending over 4000 folks to die in a war tends to put pressure on you to spend some money on the armed forces. The silver lining? Well, at least Dick Cheney and Haliburton got richer.

GWB "Set a Bright Course for America's Future" must be the most baffling section of the document. Apparently he advanced energy production, lessening America's dependence on oil. One almost has no words to argue against this, and I guess that's the point. But pointing to the success of ethanol subsidies when they have had a large hand in disrupting world commodity markets, threatening global famine? Maybe the authors missed out on the run up to near $150 a barrel oil last year. Or perhaps the report implicitly counts Iraqi oil production as being American now. Dubya has also protected the environment, damn, I almost can't write this stuff. An administration that has done all it can to perpetuate global warming deniers' claims while removing itself from the obligations of the Kyoto Protocol could one day be pointed at as the reason for the end of the world. Lastly in this section the administration "Reduced crime, lowered drug use, and protected vulnerable children". While having the authority to pardon crimes helped his family sleep at night while in office, it will be interesting to see how many within the inner-circle are brought to justice. Legalizing war crimes through the Military Commissions Act helped keep the streets crime free too, at least those in Washington, D.C.!

The final section is titled: Stood on Principle and Showed the Way Ahead. Thank you Mr. President for creating the environment we're in today, one where lying, deceit, greed and corruption have come together in a perfect storm that truly threatens to end the American way of life. Through it all though Dubya "promoted a culture of life", by which I guess it means for those who weren't killed in Iraq. In fact, the phrase is lifted from a speech given by Pope John Paul II on a tour of the US in 1993, and by the Vatican's standards, Dubya has sort of succeeded. The main points of this ideal are: opposition to abortion, check, opposition to capital punishment, oops, opposition to cloning, check, opposition to contraception, check, opposition to embryonic and stem cell research, check, opposition to euthanasia, check and opposition to unjust war, d'oh! Well, 5 outta 7 ain't bad I guess. Opposition to stem cell research "set research back five to six to seven years in this country," delaying potential treatments for a number of degenerative and life threatening diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. And guess what, those scientists that would have been working in the US are simply in other countries doing that same research. Next, George "Appointed judges committed to ruling by the letter of the law" is the shortest section of the document, quickly mentioning the appointment of Judges Samuel Alito and John Roberts. Funny how it skips over the whole Alberto Gonzales fiasco, assuming the public has already forgotten. Guess that's the point, most already have and won't even really know what is missing, much of their civil liberties. From wire tapping to political favouritism and approval of torture, (Gonzales called parts of the Geneva Convention 'quaint') Dubya and his gang chipped away at all that Americans supposedly hold sacred, their freedom, while proclaiming to be protecting and spreading it abroad.

None of this could have happened without three main factors, 9/11, Cheney and Rove. Cheney pushed for a radical rewriting of American policies on such critical issues as surveillance and detention of terrorism suspects after the Sept. 11 attacks, with virtually no oversight or input from Congress or the courts. Meanwhile Rove worked his black magic upon a sleep-walking nation, molding public opinion through his version of the truth with impunity. Before getting to the gripping "100 Things Americans Might Not Know" wrap-up, this legacy forming document proclaims that, "President Bush led with a hopeful vision, met complex and rapid-fire challenges with steady resolve, and based his decisions on principle." This seems to be the central theme of the Bush record defense, he was a victim of circumstances and he dealt with all the issues based on his principles. Herein lies the ultimate irony of the past eight years: If a man (or woman) with more sense than neocon ideology had occupied the Oval Office to face those same challenges, America and the world would be a much better and safer place today. Instead of seeing 9/11 as an opportunity to reach out to the world, it was treated as a chance to settle scores and start wars, thereby fuelling extremism and creating legions of new terrorists. Evidence of moral corrosion can be found everywhere we look, from the financial scandals of Enron to Bernie Madoff, the humiliation of Saddam Hussein to Guantanamo Bay. Thank you Mr. President, we wish we never knew you.

Because I said so!

Interesting yet disturbing trend in the media, maybe it's not new, perhaps I'm just isolated enough out here in Poland to miss these things. I left North America when Fox just showed the Simpsons and football. Seems to be that if you say something loud enough and get a couple of people to repeat it, it becomes true, no matter how preposterous the statement. Better yet, bundle a whole bunch of lies together and throw them out there knowing that the public just doesn't have the patience to untangle them and extract the truth.

The most stunningly false I have heard of late is aimed at disabling president-elect Obama's economic recovery plan even before he takes office. It is that Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal program didn't work and in fact worsened the Great Depression. Of course this is nothing but a pre-emptive attack on Obama's economic stimulus package, designed to soften up the opposition. This claim offends on two levels: first, it's a lie, and second, it follows the inept taxing a spending ways of the current Bush administration. Just say it, especially on TV, and it becomes reality for many. Oh look, here's one from "Fox" News:

Of course there is always a grain of truth to the lie. Not all of the New Deal policies were successful. Also, unemployment did rise momentarily when the economy hit another rough patch in 1937 and 1938, but the fact is that the unemployment rate dropped from 23.6% in 1932 to 14.6% in 1940, the largest percentage drop in history (before America entered the war; it would drop to 1.2% by 1944). Still, people can say things like this (jump to about 4:30 if you can't handle watching the whole thing):

"It's in the books!" I love it, and people eat it up, it must be true, he said it's in the books.

Of course it would be funny if it weren't so sad that all this talk falls on the heels of the greatest economic disaster that America (and maybe the world) has ever seen, the eight years of Bush II. Dubya inherited a budget surplus of $128 billion and a deficit of $5.7 trillion, the Congressional Budget office projected a $5.6 trillion surplus between 2002 and 2011; instead Obama will inherit at least a $10.6 trillion deficit and an impossible to exactly measure budget deficit, somewhere in the range of $750 billion. It's all really unknown though as the government's behavior in the last few months has been completely ad hoc, no one knows exactly what is owed anymore. Fanny May/Freddie Mac alone represent a debt of $5.4 trillion that the government has taken on in reality. Even before the latest craziness, the Bush administration successfully pushed through two massive, inequitable rounds of tax cuts and a 59% increase in spending. All this in a growing economy! Now, after round one of the economic 'plan' to pull the nation out of recession, the one where the banks and the rich benefit from $750 billion in expenditures, the neoliberals are preparing the ground to fight any further government spending which might help the rest of the population.

Now that I think about it, this isn't new at all, it's just a continuation of the lies from the last eight years. You can't blame the right I suppose, after all, it has worked for Dubya and his cronies. Based on the results of “uranium from Africa” you can eventually convince the public to go to war. Many people even still believe that Al-Qaeda was in Iraq prior to the occupation. You can open a torture funfair in Guantanamo as long as you keep repeating that "we don't torture". Say we've won a war by repeating "Mission Accomplished". Perfect the art of unsigning by removing yourself from the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto Protocol along with becoming the world champion signing statement signer (signing bills into law, but taking out the bits he didn't like). In a climate such as this has it been a surprise to anyone to see the whole house of cards that was the financial system come crashing down? Big government may not always be as efficient as the free market, but it's pretty pathetic to see the attempts of the right to discredit a plan that brought order to the chaos of the depression. The New Deal brought the FDIC, restoring faith in the banking system, the Glass-Steagall Act to regulate bank speculation (the repeal of which was a major contributor to the current crisis), the Federal Securities Act to require full disclosure of stocks being sold along with the creation of the SEC to regulate stocks purchased on margin - is any of this starting to sound familiar? It wasn't all spend, spend, spend either. Austerity measures such as the Economy Act actually saved money to help pay for some of the new programs. Of course there was more, most notably the creation of social security and the end of prohibition.

The parallels between today and 1929 are obvious. While the New Deal was an experiment, the biggest mistake made by FDR was that he didn't go far enough, allowing the economy to slip back into recession in 1937-38, creating the basis of the neoliberal argument that it wasn't the New Deal but WWII that brought about the end of the depression. Economic historian JK Galbraith argued that the US economy “in the twenties had opened its hospitable arms to an exceptional number of promoters, grafters, swindlers, impostors, and frauds. This, in the long history of such activities, was a kind of flood tide of corporate larceny.” It's all happening again and the right would have us stop at giving away money to the banks and the rich, when what America needs is a better New Deal not another World War.

Get Those Terrorists!

Quick. Which nation is a terror threat: Iceland or North Korea? If you answered North Korea, you’re sane, but, unfortunately, wrong. At least if you ask the US or UK governments. Yep, while the US government has removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, the UK government has used anti-terrorism laws to seize some of its UK-based banking assets and legally punish the Icelandic government for “completely unacceptable behaviour“. The world has truly gone mad as both world powers seek to maintain their respective positions of global dominance through threats and coercion.

Poor Iceland. It seems like only yesterday that the UN named it the most developed nation on Earth, sliding past Norway to claim the number one spot on the UN Human Development Index (HDI) for 2007/08. Suddenly a financial crisis in which somehow tiny Iceland is caught on the fault line, exposing giant cracks in its over-extended banking system. The Icelandic government has been forced to take control of three of the nations banks in the past week: Kaupthing, Landsbanki and Glitnir. In doing so, the government has guaranteed the deposits of its citizens, but in a move that the UK finds unacceptable, they have failed to guarantee the several billion pounds of British deposits and investments. So, because the Icelandic government won’t promise to refund investment losses of British citizens and companies, the UK government has responded by invoking the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001 to freeze the British assets of Landsbanki, estimated to be about £7 billion. Why stop there? The government is contemplating freezing all Icelandic investments. Faced with a loss in confidence in their currency, the Icelandic government is seeking a reported €4 billion loan from Russia to help avoid national bankruptcy and the Brits expect them to guarantee £8 billion of deposits for foreigners! Referring to the move by the Brits, the Prime Minister of Iceland, Geir Haarde said, “I told the chancellor that we consider this to be a completely unfriendly act.” Understatement.

Meanwhile, North Korea, a country which exploded a nuclear bomb a couple years ago, is no longer being called a terrorist, by the US government, this week anyway. The removal fulfills a promise the American administration made to Pyongyang over a year ago but is obviously highly contentious. Critics include John Bolton, members of the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, and even some members of the State Department’s verification and compliance office. But, at least Dubya and Condi can say they did something, right? So, what is today’s lesson? You got it, blow up bombs and threaten the very existence of the world, but never, ever mess with someone’s money!

The rain in Spain falls mainly on the ...?

Let's not generalize and call it an American thing. Maybe it's a Republican thing. Let's be even more specific, it must be a presidential candidate for the Republican party thing, as the lack of understanding of the world outside US borders does seem to be a recurrent theme. In a scene reminiscent of good ol' Dubya while running for president, John 'McBush' McCain didn't seem to know who the president of Spain was yesterday while being interviewed by a Florida affiliate of Spanish radio network Union Radio. When asked whether he would invite Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to the White House if he won in November, McBush replied: "All I can tell you is that I have a clear record of working with leaders in the hemisphere that are friends with us and standing up to those who are not. And that's judged on the basis of the importance of our relationship with Latin America and the entire region." You know, he's not sure if Spain is a friend or not, let alone where Spain is located.



Of course McBush's handlers jumped to his defence, with his foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann claiming McBush's refusal to confirm that he'd meet with Zapatero was deliberate, lumping Zapatero together with 'radical' South American leftist leaders such as Chavez and Morales. Listen to the whole interview though, the interviewer tries to clarify McBush's statement many times. When she finally realizes the poor man is lost after the above quote she goes as far as saying: "I'm talking about the president of Spain". Really, it's lose-lose for the McBush spin camp. Either he confused where Spain was or who Zapatero was, or he feels that the friendship between Spain and the US is on a par with such countries as Venezuela and Bolivia, who have of course just recently expelled their respective American ambassadors. Maybe we should scratch the surface a little more to reveal another possible truth: The Bush doctrine will be continued if we see 4 more years of McBush. Four more years of "with us or against us". You see one of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's campaign promises in the Spanish presidential election was to pull Spanish forces out of Iraq, something he did upon entering office in 2004. Since that time, the relationship between the two countries has cooled considerably as Bush punishes a country and its leader for doing what the majority of the people wanted. But wait a minute, the man formerly known as McCain said back in an April interview that as president he would seek to repair relations with Spain. Now, I'm really confused, who is McBush and what does he believe?

Let's wind this up then with some sad geography facts. Shortly after Hurricane Katrina, one-third of young Americans recently polled couldn’t locate Louisiana on a map and nearly half were unable to identify Mississippi. Step outside the US, and it gets worse as early in the illegal Iraq invasion, in 2002, one in seven, about 13%, of Americans between the age of 18 and 24, the prime age for military service, could find Iraq, while 17% could find Afghanistan. Four years of war later, with the accompanying TV coverage to 'educate' the masses, and 63% could not find Iraq or Saudi Arabia on a map of the Middle East, and 75% could not point out Iran or Israel. 44% couldn't find any one of those four countries. It's the attitude toward knowledge of the outside world that's most astounding as fewer than 30% thought it important to know the locations of countries in the news and just 14% believe speaking another language is a necessary skill. I guess it must be nice to live in a glass cage, you get what you deserve, go on, vote McBush for four more years of ignorance.