It was all a ruse to get Harper to let down his guard for the press conference. Then, when Stephen bent over to pick up his glass of champagne, Premier Wen took advantage of the easy target and "woof", Harper took a full wallop in the 'nads.
"Next time, Mr. Prime Minister," Wen said with a smile. "Don't be such a fuckhead. We are now a world power and you can't treat us like we're still building your railroads for five cents a day."
Stephen managed to grunt a reply: "I couldn't agree more, Mr. Premier. I hope you'll visit us."
Back home opposition politicians laughed their asses off. Bob Rae took time out from scheming how he could play Brutus to Ignatieff's rather sclerotic Caesar to take a poke at Mr. Harper: "This just shows why Canada would be better off led by my enormous brain. I have sent a letter to the Conservative Party that they need to end the humiliation of Stephen Harper as leader and put me in his place. In fact, I'll happily lead all three parties simultaneously. Yes, I'm that smart."
NDP Leader Jack Layton also said something but the media pretty much ignored him. Too bad, he actually made a pretty good point. "I told you Harper was an asshole. They even know it in China." Then he pointed out the small matter of Harper being a hypocrite for saying anything on human rights when the Tories were dancing on the broken, tortured bodies of Afghans.
Back in China, Harper later thanked the Premier for helping to distract attention from the Conservatives weak attempt to cover up for the fact that their stimulus package is for shit.
OBAMA'S SURGE WILL ALSO REORGANIZE TROOP DEPLOYMENTS around the country. As has been stated ad infinitum, NATO and the US are abandoning the countryside to focus on securing the population centres in Afghanistan. (Somebody ought to tell them that the Taliban are based in the countryside.)
But it will mean that, for Canadian soldiers, they will no longer be expected to hide out in impenetrable bunkers at Kandahar airfield. They are to be deployed as a security barrier along the south edge of Kanadahar city bringing them into direct contact with Afghans - and insurgents.
Those activities include getting the troops out of fortified compounds and into platoon houses – lightly strengthened residences in town centres that encourage the troops to mingle with the population they're intended to protect. At the same time, the new strategy will leave Canadian troops more vulnerable to attack.
While this is unlikely to result in much progress in stopping the Taliban - as articles by Thom Walkom and Robert Fisk detail, this strategy has been tried before and failed - it will increase the casualties. Forget waiting until 2011, Canada should pull its troops out now before the real shooting war starts around Kandahar and a lot of people end up dead.
In a speech to the students of West Point - America's elite officer training university - Obama said that he was ordering the escalation, effective immediately and to be completed by May. And for anyone who didn't see the deja vu resonance with a certain earlier president, Lyndon B. Johnson and the Vietnam war, Obama has thrown in an escalation of CIA activities inside of Pakistan - a country that the USA isn't at war with. This has taken us beyond the foolhardy hubris of Johnson's belief that he could sustain his Great Society welfare program and the Vietnam War. This was Obama's Nixon moment, when "Tricky Dicky" spread the war into neighbouring Laos and Cambodia with covert bombings and special ops incursions. This is nothing short of an unmitigated disaster.
The second tragedy of Obama's announcement is that this should be a moment when students occupy their campuses and protesters hit the streets. Sadly, too many of the anti-war organizations have been disoriented by their enthusiasm for Obama with some, like prominent activist Medea Benjamin, now opposing the call for troops to be withdrawn immediately. The logic of this backsliding is now clear - if troops need to be kept there to "protect women" or "protect democracy", then it only makes sense that there are "enough troops" to do the job right. And while the anti-war movement has virtually collapsed, thank goodness that gays and lesbians have loudly and proudly fought for their rights in the face of Obama's utter betrayal of their fight for equality. A heavy burden has fallen on their shoulders as the cutting edge of struggle in America. The hope is that the intransigent demand for full equal rights for gays and lesbians will provide an inspiration and springboard to revitalize the anti-war movement in the face of this obscenity.
Make no mistake what these troops will mean: more collateral damage, not less. It will mean death squads - as I reported previously. It will mean greater destabilization in Pakistan. There can't be anyone in the government of Pakistan that isn't cringing at this open announcement that the CIA will conduct assassinations, more drone attacks - much more deadly than accurate - and spying. If Pakistan accepts this, the government will be seen for what it is: a pliant tool of American policy.
What is more uncertain is whether Obama's plan will work - especially within the 18 month timeline he has proposed. Thirty-thousand is a lot of soldiers - especially at a million bucks a pop - but it is hardly enough to pacify a whole country. The resistance is now deeply rooted and widespread and the Americans have already surrendered the countryside to insurgent control. Presumably their plan is to turn the cities into fortresses that are impenetrable to insurgent attacks while they train a new pro-American Afghan Army and provide some development to win political support. In other words - exactly what the Soviets tried to do almost 30 years ago and what the Americans tried to do in Vietnam. That strategy led to the collapse of the Soviet empire. If we can hope for anything good to come out of this knife in the back from Obama it is that this adventure will facilitate the end of the American.
In summary, this appears to be GM's strategy for emerging as a viable company: Borrow money from the government, convert most of it into equity, then use some of the cash to pay off the part that wasn't converted into equity -- and declare victory. Then, for the win, increase your sales by lobbying the government that already bailed you out into paying people to buy new cars, watering down the initial environmental motive behind "Cash For Clunkers."
But it appears that this little shellgame didn't impress enough of the right people since the recently appointed CEO, Fritz Henderson, has fallen on his sword as of this past weekend. Maybe it was because GM continues to tank badly - cheque kiting aside:
Analysts cautioned, however, that a successful IPO depends on the company turning a profit and financial results for the period between the end of the bankruptcy in early July and Sept. 30, showed that it lost $1.2-billion.
It didn't help that GM couldn't sell Saab and Saturn to anyone. I generally feel that the rich are stupid but there are limits. And while they're happy to toss money into a shit pit when it comes from the state - because it's mostly working people who end up footing the bill - they're generally more discerning when it's their own private capital. And while I take a certain amount of pleasure in seeing these assholes proven to be the utter idiots that they are, after so many years of stuffing down our throats the bullshit about the efficiency of markets, their idiocy is our pain:
“GM employed 200,000 people directly and they indirectly employ over one million, and then you have all the intellectual capital and skilled labor," said Sheldon Stone, head of the corporate restructuring arm of Amherst Partners. "If they were to have gone under and collapsed in the same fashion as Lehman did it would have sent tremendous shock waves through economy that we would have not have recovered from for a long, long time.”
So, don't shed too many tears for Fitzy. He'll be joining Wagoner, the previous captain of the SS Shitbox out on some Caribbean golf course, enjoying their golden pensions while GM workers have had to take a hit on theirs.
PRIME MINISTER STEPHEN HARPER has had a remarkably easy ride over the past two minority governments. He's been incompetent on the economy and undermined the population's faith in their H1N1 plans. He's been mean-spirited and taken every opportunity to attack the arts, Muslims, the unemployed, et al. He's lied, broken promises, had a government that has gone against the sentiment of the vast majority of Canadians on the war in Afghanistan and climate change. He had Maxime Bernier the incompetent dolt who leaves classified government documents at his girlfriend's house and Rona Ambrose as Environment Minister, though she had no knowledge or qualifications for the job.
How does he survive? It's not fundamentally anything to do with his ability to keep his people under control. This is a useful myth. If anything, the Stalinist-like paranoia of this government should itself be an easy target for the opposition parties and the media. Nor is it about his particularly skillful ability to spin the government's message in a way that connects with people. He's just not personable. No, it's fundamentally the result of a politically weak opposition in parliament.
I'll admit that I'm not one of those who thinks that the NDP should lash up with the Liberals to unite "progressives". I think for the NDP, trying to differentiate themselves, this would be a disaster. And it would be counter-productive to the needs of the vast majority of the population. The Liberals are a party of business, like the Tories, though they are, in their language, more pragmatic, consensus-builders, etc. than the latter. But we shouldn't forget that it was the Liberals that sent our troops to Afghanistan. And it was the Liberals, under Chretien and Martin who slashed social spending to eliminate a deficit created in no small part by cuts to taxes for corporations and the wealthy under Tory Brian Mulroney. And, of course, the leader of the Liberals is notorious for having supported torture by the US government to gain information from "suspected terrorists."
However, this perfect storm of timidity and political consensus - disguised behind occasional bouts of oppositional fervour over silly technical side-issues (like Bernier forgetting his briefcase) - couldn't last forever. Sooner or later, they would be hoisted on their own petard just as with enough manure and rain, something eventually must sprout.
The prisoner scandal appears to be that thing. Even with lickspittle, Tory toad columnists Rosie DiManno and Christie Blatchford working overtime to justify every inhumanity the Tories and their military enforcers implement, the opposition has finally found something that they can nail the Tories on. And the Tories attempt to smear a man of obvious ability, commitment and honour, has blown up in their faces. They are now fighting a rearguard action to try and prevent a public inquiry on the prisoner torture issue. They have clearly lost the initiative and everything they now do simply looks like cover-up and back-pedaling.
This breach in the Tory fortress and sense of purpose and momentum by the opposition - with the Liberals having to hide Ignatieff to be able to take advantage of this opportunity - could help to reinvigorate not only the anti-war movement, but also other broadly anti-Tory forces across the country. This moment won't last forever - that's for certain. And the opposition has demonstrated an uncanny ability to discover ways of missing any opportunity that comes their way. The social movements, the union movement in particular, need to be taking this opportunity to put the boot in to the Tories - over EI, social spending, Afghanistan, Omar Khadr, climate change and more.
If we miss this chance, we'll have no one to blame but ourselves for several more years of Tory government, including the possibility of a majority next time around. And that is a possibility just too depressing to consider.
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