Only in Germany You Say?

Via Matt Yglesias, news that two German cabinet ministers and a senior military officer have resigned over a recent airstrike in which a number of civilians were killed

Franz Josef Jung, Defense Minister of Germany at the time of the Kunduz airstrikes gone bad, got demoted to the Labor Ministry in the post-election cabinet reshuffle and will now be resigning from the cabinet altogether. General Wolfgang Schneiderhan and State Secretary Peter Wichert have already resigned over this matter.

In light of the fact that all this is happening in part because of an increased American emphasis on the need to reduce civilian casualties, it does strike me as worth wondering whether you can imagine anything comparable happening in the United States? In any bureaucratic organization, it’s one think to adopt rules or policies saying that such-and-such is a priority. It’s another thing entirely to demonstrate that doing such-and-such is, in fact, crucial to one’s career.

Or in Canada.

Minister McKay's 'the dog ate my homework' excuses are an embarrassment. He was Foreign Affairs Minister then and Defence Minister now. It is time for him to go.

What Would Philip Berrigan Do?

I have just finished reading Phil Berrigan's wonderful autobiographical work, Fighting the Lamb's War. His was an uncompromising Catholicism. He loved the Church but was never afraid to take it on. Reading the Irish Times' report on the decades long cover-up of abuse in Ireland I longed for a voice like his to lend some moral clarity to this.

Andrew Sullivan, whose love of the Church is palpable, has this to say

If the Catholic church were a secular institution in Ireland and had been found guilty of child abuse to the massive extent the Church has, it would be forced to close. Its top officials would not be issuing statements of apology and regret, but serving sentences in jail. The name of John Paul II would not be a revered mantra; it would be synonymous with the head of an international organization that had to be dragged kicking and screaming to acknowledge its own long-running, institutional brutalization of generations of defenseless children.

Unto the least of these.

Krugman on Dubai

Paul Krugman puts it like this:

As far as I can tell, there are three ways to look at it — three stories, if you like, about what Dubai means.

First, there’s the view that this is the beginning of many sovereign defaults, and that we’re now seeing the end of the ability of governments to use deficit spending to fight the slump. That’s the view being suggested, if I understand correctly, by the Roubini people and in a softer version by Gillian Tett.

Alternatively, you can see this as basically just another commercial real estate bust. Either you view Dubai World as nothing special, despite sovereign ownership, as Willem Buiter does; or you think of the emirate as a whole as, in effect, a highly leveraged CRE investor facing the same problems as many others in the same situation.

Finally, you can see Dubai as sui generis. And really, there has been nothing else quite like it.

At the moment, I’m leaning to a combination of two and three. For what it’s worth (not much), US bond prices are up right now, suggesting that the Dubai thing hasn’t raised expectations of default.

Anyway, we continue to live in interesting times.

Yes, but a bet against Roubini is often a risky bet.

Dubai and Derivatives

This should warm your heart on a cold fall day. It turns out that Dubai, whose economy is in free fall as I write, taking world markets down with it, is a global leader in innovative derivative products. Wow! Just like Iceland! As the Global Arab Network describes it

NASDAQ Dubai’s equity derivatives market has won the Futures & Options World (FOW) 2009 Award for “Best Innovation by an Exchange in Product Design, Middle East.”

Commenting on the November 2008 opening of the market and its early growth, UK-based FOW said: “Pushing ahead with the launch amid the worst (global) recession for decades, and when some in the industry voiced doubts, is to be applauded.

“The resulting platform offers greater risk management scope for investors in the region, at a time of extreme market volatility.”

Equity derivatives trading volumes on NASDAQ Dubai have increased sharply in 2009, reaching a monthly record of 21,330 in October.

Jeff Singer, Chief Executive of NASDAQ Dubai, said: “FOW is a leading opinion former in the derivatives industry and we are delighted to be recognized by its Award. Our derivatives offer hedging opportunities for regional and international investors with exposure across UAE and wider Middle East markets.”

We have learned nothing.

A Note on References

I have not known what to do until now about books I refer to. So I have decided to do this.

Because I live in Toronto, I will first try to provide a link to the Toronto Public Library. My second choice will be the University of Toronto library. UT allows for the purchase of reader cards giving access to one of the better university library systems on the planet.

When all else fails I will provide a link to the purchase of a used copy via Amazon Canada.

I have no interest in shilling for book retailers, particularly when I only buy books (always used) when all else fails.

If You Require Service in English, Press 1

If you have ever spent a stroke inducing hour talking to a clueless "customer service rep" in Mumbai, Benoit Duteurtre's novella Customer Service will ring hilariously true.

Our oppressors are no longer jack-booted thugs but hapless call centre operators clinging to the bottom rung of the middle class in third world countries.

Lost in Space

Where is this guy going with this?

Though an extraordinarily perceptive commentator and brilliant academic, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff appears completely tone deaf.

In a week in which Conservative poll numbers have rightly gone off a cliff as allegations of willful blindness on the abetting of torture take hold, Ignatieff has been pretty much silent. And now news from the Globe's Jane Taber that he is "unplugging" himself and embarking on a tour to listen to Canadians. Key quote . . .

“This is all about listening to Canadians,” he told his caucus. And he advised them to be patient and work hard - noting that every question in Question Period and that every bit of work done in a committee is part of the re-building process for the Liberals. He said he was “certain” that rewards would come.

This minority government deserves to fall. The Minister of Defence is on life support. If a plug needs to be pulled, it should be his. This is not a time for contemplation; it is a time for taking the reins. Or as Lawrence Martin suggested in his column this morning

Nobleman Ignatieff has brought in new advisers, including some veteran Chrétien warriors. The Afghan detainees file is their first big test. We'll soon get an idea whether they will follow Mr. McKenna's advice and change course or whether it will be more of the same: Liberal popguns, Conservative cruise missiles.

Wallen Audio

I posted yesterday on Pamela Wallen's drinking of the Conservative kool-aide. Here is a link to the audio.

Ms. Wallen is the second former journalist to trade in their reputation for the party. As I noted earlier, Peter Kent has been doing the same, as has Lewis McKenzie.

This Time the Tragedy is Ours Too

I have been reading Philip Berrigan's wonderful autobiography, Fighting the Lamb`s War. More than anything else it is an account of what can happen when both morality and the rule of law are trumped by the pursuit of military goals no matter how noble. In the 1960s and 70s, the U.S. almost tore itself apart over an immoral and ultimately futile conflict. Though Canada supplied munitions and logistical support it largely avoided the catastrophe of Viet Nam.

This time we are not so lucky. It is becoming increasingly clear that the region is descending into a kind of moral chaos reminiscent of two generations ago, as this story from today`s Democracy Now so clearly shows



And given the allegations we have heard this week about Canada`s role in what may amount to war crimes, we are this time following them. It is time for our political leaders to make a stand: this war has become indefensible. This is not to besmirch the heroic effort made by our soldiers. It is to say that no more should be injured, killed or traumatized in pursuit of what are now unrealizable and unworthy goals.

Conservative Journalists' Hall of Shame

This is disgusting. Former journalist and Conservative Senator Pamela Wallen is on CBC's The Current this morning shilling for the Harper government on Afghanistan. A balanced report, it followed Wallen's breathtaking analysis with comment by two Conservative insiders. This is sad but not surprising, but what is is her willingness, given her reputation, to bend the truth to the needs of the government.

First she dismissed Richard Colvin's testimony, saying "I don't know what his motives were". His motives, Pam, were apparently to tell the truth, at considerable cost to himself.

Second, and much more egregious, she is suggesting that we are accusing front line CAF members of participating in torture. This is appalling. No one is suggesting that Canadian soldiers were complicit in this, or acted in anything but good faith. Senior officials are accused of ignoring overwhelming evidence that prisoners were handed over to abuse and torture. This is abetting. And abetting is a war crime. It is a crime in international law and a crime in Canadian law. No one is pronouncing anyone guilty. But a serious allegation has been made and it must be investigated.

Ms. Wallen has a sterling reputation. It is incredibly sad that it has been squandered in such a sad way.

Really, Lew?

Retired general, frequent commentator and former conservative candidate Lewis McKenzie has suggested a neat, plausible and wrong solution to the Afghan debacle: pass it back to the Military Police Complaints Commission.

Really, Lew?

As one report describes it

The Conservative government has gone to extraordinary lengths to try to prevent any public airing of how the CAF’s policy on Afghan detainees was developed and implemented.

It went to court to prevent the Military Police Complaints Commission (MPCC), an autonomous government agency, from investigating the Afghan detainee issue and since failing to obtain a court ruling entirely shutting down the MPCC inquiry has sought to systematically obstruct its work.

Last July the Justice Ministry sent letters to persons subpoenaed to appear before the MPCC to warn them against participating in pre-hearing interviews. To do so, the letter claimed would put their reputations at risk, could lead to public accusations they are lying, and might result in their having to bear the moral burden of unwittingly exposing members of the military and others to disciplinary penalties.

Later the government filed a motion to prevent 22 witnesses, including Colvin, from appearing before the MPCC on the grounds that their testimony would violate the national security provisions of the December 2001 Anti-Terrorism Act.

According to a lawyer for Amnesty International, which in conjunction with the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association first appealed to the MPCC to investigate the Afghan detainee issue, the government’s attempt to use the Anti-Terrorism Act to prevent CAF personnel and civil servants from testifying at the MPCC inquiry "demonstrates" that it "is willing to go to any lengths to prevent witnesses from testifying."

As a result of the government’s actions, the MPCC inquiry has yet to hear a single witness. In a further patent attempt to derail the MPCC inquiry, Defence Minster Peter MacKay announced in September that the current MPCC chair, Peter Tinsley, will be forced to immediately step down when his current contract ends on Dec. 11.

I am sure that the MPCC is capable of doing this work if the Harper government lets it. I am equally sure that it has no intention of doing so.

This is about war crimes. Crimes against humanity. So who are you shilling for, General McKenzie? Your former CAF colleagues? Or your political friends?

Your take on this one isn't credible.

The Muppets Bohemian Rhapsody -- A Classic

Another Voice

In a lead editorial today, the Globe & Mail lent its support to Richard Colvin, praising his courage in speaking out about the torture of Afghan detainees. It fell short, however, of calling for an independent judicial inquiry. It concluded that

[i]f his research is sound, Mr. Colvin could do nothing but speak out in these circumstances. If he is correct, Canada was engaged in an immoral and illegal exercise, under Canadian and international law. In doing so it was undermining the success of its mission. The Canadian Forces' own manual on how to conduct a counterinsurgency campaign makes clear that breaches of the law of armed conflict will send local citizens over to the side of the insurgents.

As I noted earlier today, neither Canada's image or the success of its counterinsurgency efforts are what is at stake here, as important as these may be. Mr. Colvin's allegations are that Canadian officials have contravened both international and Canadian law. Though he has not said it, Mr. Colvin has in effect accused them of abetting torture and hence of war crimes. It is trite, though sadly necessary, to say that this must be investigated.

Not Yet, Not Yet

The Globe & Mail's ROB had an interesting piece by Brian Milner yesterday on an interview with Harvard economic historian Niall Ferguson. While his is now a minority voice following the record run-up in stock prices this year, and while I believe his inflationary fears are dead wrong, he still bears listening to.

His concern is that the recovery that is underway is largely illusory, driven by unsustainable or one-time government expenditures and currency fluctuations. As he puts it

I don't think it's possible to infer from the stock market rally anything resembling a sustained recovery," the peripatetic professor says in an e-mail exchange. He rightly notes that at least half (and probably much more) of the third-quarter U.S. economic growth of 3.5 per cent stemmed from one-off government measures and that the consumer remains tapped out.

The stock market rally has been largely due to near-zero interest rates and a weaker dollar. In foreign currency terms there's been no rally.

And unlike so many others (see this entry in Paul Krugman's blog from earlier today) he puts his admittedly modest money where his mouth is, noting

I am out of U.S. stocks and currently have a modest cash pile. The commodity and stock market rally since March looks to me to be coming to an end. I am genuinely not sure what happens next.

Having narrowly avoided a Great Depression by using massive fiscal and monetary stimulus, we are now in uncharted waters.

Me too, Niall.

It is About War Crimes!

Last week I wrote a brief, tongue-in-cheek entry I titled "Rick Hillier -- War Criminal". Today comes news from CBC's The Current that two Canadian authorities on international law and the prosecution of war crimes, Payam Akhavan of McGill University and Errol Mendes of the University of Ottawa, are suggesting that the evidence presented by senior diplomat Richard Colvin last week requires at the very least an independent inquiry to determine if such crimes were committed by Canadians and thus if there is a need for prosecution of such crimes. Here is Professor Akhavan being interviewed by CBC Newsworld on this subject yesterday:


What both of these legal experts are concerned with is preservation of international law. They understand that the jobs of frontline soldiers are extremely difficult and both are clear that the responsibility does not lie here anyway, but with senior civilian and military officials who are alleged by Mr. Colvin to have approved such transfers with direct knowledge (from him) that abuse was a possibility if not a likelihood.

Nor must we wait for others to act. Canada has laws on the books regarding war crimes and crimes against humanity. As in international law, the standard is one of abetting, or knowingly handing over prisoners to likely abuse or torture. This is no longer about politics or ethics or reputation -- it is about enabling crimes against humanity.

Resign, Minister McKay.

A More Balanced View on Public Debt and Interest Rates

As usual, Krugman has a more nuanced and appropriate view on public debt and interest rates. I quote it in full:

On the face of it, there’s no reason to be worried about interest rates on US debt. Despite large deficits, the Federal government is able to borrow cheaply, at rates that are up from the early post-Lehman period, when market were pricing in a substantial probability of a second Great Depression, but well below the pre-crisis levels:

Underlying these low rates is, in turn, the fact that overall borrowing by the nonfinancial sector hasn’t risen: the surge in government borrowing has in fact, less than offset a plunge in private borrowing.

So what’s the problem?

Well, what I hear is that officials don’t trust the demand for long-term government debt, because they see it as driven by a “carry trade”: financial players borrowing cheap money short-term, and using it to buy long-term bonds. They fear that the whole thing could evaporate if long-term rates start to rise, imposing capital losses on the people doing the carry trade; this could, they believe, drive rates way up, even though this possibility doesn’t seem to be priced in by the market.

What’s wrong with this picture?

First of all, what would things look like if the debt situation were perfectly OK? The answer, it seems to me, is that it would look just like what we’re seeing.

Bear in mind that the whole problem right now is that the private sector is hurting, it’s spooked, and it’s looking for safety. So it’s piling into “cash”, which really means short-term debt. (Treasury bill rates briefly went negative yesterday). Meanwhile, the public sector is sustaining demand with deficit spending, financed by long-term debt. So someone has to be bridging the gap between the short-term assets the public wants to hold and the long-term debt the government wants to issue; call it a carry trade if you like, but it’s a normal and necessary thing.

Now, you could and should be worried if this thing looked like a great bubble — if long-term rates looked unreasonably low given the fundamentals. But do they? Long rates fluctuated between 4.5 and 5 percent in the mid-2000s, when the economy was driven by an unsustainable housing boom. Now we face the prospect of a prolonged period of near-zero short-term rates — I don’t see any reason for the Fed funds rate to rise for at least a year, and probably two — which should mean substantially lower long rates even if you expect yields eventually to rise back to 2005 levels. And if we’re facing a Japanese-type lost decade, which seems all too possible, long rates are in fact still unreasonably high.

Still, what about the possibility of a squeeze, in which rising rates for whatever reason produce a vicious circle of collapsing balance sheets among the carry traders, higher rates, and so on? Well, we’ve seen enough of that sort of thing not to dismiss the possibility. But if it does happen, it’s a financial system problem — not a deficit problem. It would basically be saying not that the government is borrowing too much, but that the people conveying funds from savers, who want short-term assets, to the government, which borrows long, are undercapitalized.

And the remedy should be financial, not fiscal. Have the Fed buy more long-term debt; or let the government issue more short-term debt. Whatever you do, don’t undermine recovery by calling off jobs creation.

The point is that it’s crazy to let the rescue of the economy be held hostage to what is, if it’s an issue at all, a technical matter of maturity mismatch. And again, it’s not clear that it even is an issue. What the worriers seem to regard as a danger sign — that supposedly awful carry trade — is exactly what you would expect to see even if fiscal policy were on a perfectly sustainable trajectory.

And one last point: I just don’t think the inner circle gets how much danger we’re in from another vicious circle, one that’s real, not hypothetical. The longer high unemployment drags on, the greater the odds that crazy people will win big in the midterm elections — dooming us to economic policy failure on a truly grand scale.

So What About the Risk of Inflation?

From the FT.Com today comes news that interest rates on short term U.S. debt has been bid into negative territory. The lesson here? Watch what they do and not what they say. We have been treated to a deluge of "news" lately on an impending inflation disaster arising from public sector debt. Well, if that is the case, then why are banks and others willing to pay the U.S. government to lend money to them, suggesting that defaul and inflationary concerns are, ahem, somewhat exaggerated.

Another Voice Heard

Rick Salutin has a column in today's Globe&Mail on the Colvin testimony from yesterday. He too is suggesting that the lesson here is that the Afghan mission is deeply flawed, is enhancing if not increasing the efficacy of those it claims to fight and should be ended as soon as possible.

Yet like the Peter Desbarats interview I described earlier, I think this misses the point. Mr. Colvin is suggesting that we are complicit in the same war crimes that we so loudly condemn the U.S. for. If what he has claimed is true, and I see far less reason to doubt his veracity than I do officials such as Minister McKay or former CDS Rick Hillier, then an extremely serious crime has been committed. This deserves to be investigated in the most transparent manner possible. It is not a matter of spin or image or polling but of justice. And until justice is done, the current minister needs to stand aside.

Peter Desbarats on Afghanistan and Torture

Respected journalist and former Somalia Inquiry commissioner Peter Desbarats is on CBC's The Current this morning (no transcript or audio available at this time). He seems to feel quite strongly (and I agree) that a public inquiry would simply be an opportunity for the Harper government to punt this potentially devastating issue up the road.

He also feels that the issue is unlikely to have legs. Canadians, he suggests, are showing no outrage in this. Our understanding of the Afghan mission is minimal. More important, we get far more mileage, apparently, out of pointing our fingers at those awful Americans rather than looking at our own actions. We are allegedly complicit in the torture of innocent civilians. Our government. Our military. Our civilian officials. Just like the evil Bushies.

This is tragic.

Horror in New Orleans

While I have followed convincing allegations of involuntary euthanasia following Hurricane Katrina, and had not until now realized the extent to which race-based vigilantism occurred.

Hence this incredibly disturbing video from Democracy Now:

John Gray on Keynes

The current London Review of Books has an excellent review of Akerlof and Schiller's groundbreaking work on behavioral econcomics, Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy and Why it Matters for Global Capitalism, by noted political philosopher John |Gray.

While the review is generally positive, the telling point that Gray makes is that the error addressed by Keynes and the one that drove last year's crisis was not psychological, as Akerlof and Schiller would have it, but epistemological. As Gray puts it:

The central flaw of the economic orthodoxy against which Keynes fought in the 1930s was to imagine that an insoluble problem – human ignorance of the future – had been solved. The error was repeated in the 1990s, when economists came to believe that complex mathematical formulae could tame uncertainty in the murky world of derivatives. Steeped in history as they were, this was a delusion that none of the classical economists entertained. It began to shape economics only towards the end of the 19th century, with the rise of Positivism, according to which the natural sciences are the only legitimate repository of human knowledge. It was the formative influence of this philosophy on the Chicago School that enabled the orthodoxy of the 1930s to re-emerge triumphant, and the result was an immense boost to the prestige of economics as a discipline. Economists could claim to be scientists, who with the aid of their mathematical magic could pierce the veil that conceals the future.

The hegemony of Positivism in economics obscured Keynes’s scepticism about probabilistic knowledge, his most important contribution to the discipline.

This was of course the core of Hayek's work -- his insistence that where individual knowledge fails the collective wisdom of markets will succeed. Yet s Gray notes

Hayek said that governments could never know enough to plan the economy successfully – a claim vindicated by the miserable record of central planning in Communist countries. At the same time, he attributed near omniscience to markets, and never doubted that if left to its own devices the economy would liquidate mistaken investments and return to equilibrium. Against this, Keynes had shown that there is no market mechanism that ensures revival; economic contraction can be self-reinforcing, and only government action can then create a way out.

From this Gray draws the obvious inferences that

Keynes and the classical economists before him knew that there is no realm of market exchange that obeys laws of the kind that can be formulated in the natural sciences. Economics and politics are not separate branches of human activity, and economic life cannot be studied independently of social divisions and political conflicts among populations, along with their cultures and religions. Familiar to Keynes and most of the economists of his generation, these truisms have been forgotten, or rejected, by many economists today. The result is an economic imperialism that tries to explain every human activity in terms of a conception of rational action that does not work even when applied to the behaviour of markets.

Thus while behavioral economics may be a useful expansion of the scope of economic analysis,

[i]t must be doubted, though, that the authors will succeed in persuading economists of the inadequacy of the conception of rational action. The profession is one of the few areas of human activity in which that conception is applicable. In its intra-academic varieties, at any rate, economics is insulated from the world not only by its narrow explanatory methodology but also because it rewards the mathematical modelling that resulted in nearly all of its members failing to anticipate the financial crisis. As institutionalised in universities, the notion of rational decision-making is self-perpetuating. Economics as currently practised may have only a slight grip on market behaviour, but it seems to be powerfully predictive of the behaviour of economists.

A Little Bit of Fun

A little example of the excellence of The Onion

Boy Finds Own Real-Life E.T.

Bringing it Home

Stalin famously quipped that one death is tragedy while a million is a statistic. This story from Jesus Manifesto underscores the tragedy that the larger issue often misses:

The two young parents and their three small children were returning from the nearby city of Yatta to their home village of Tuba. At 11:00 a.m., they encountered CPTers just south of the village of At-Tuwani. After the CPTers warned the Palestinians about the settlers seen earlier in the morning, the family chose a longer path toward Tuba, accompanied by the CPTers.

As the group crossed Mashakha Hill, they saw four settler men on a ridge fifty meters above them. The settlers ran toward the Palestinians and began to circle them. A fifth settler, masked and hooded, appeared from the valley below. When the Palestinian man told them he was only trying to walk home, a settler shoved him.

As the CPTers attempted to step between the Palestinians and settlers, the settlers pushed them to the ground, hit and kicked them, and stole their two video cameras. The settlers then walked to the illegal settlement outpost of Havat Ma’on (Hill 833), where they disappeared among the trees twenty minutes later. The Palestinian family arrived home safely.

For decades, residents of Tuba Village had a direct road to the village of At-Tuwani, and onward to the regional economic hub of Yatta. The Israeli settlement of Ma’on and its neighboring outpost of Havat Ma’on were built directly on that road, blocking all Palestinian traffic and forcing villagers onto long dirt paths through the hills, taking them as much as two hours out of their way.

Colvin Transcript

Here is a complete transcript of Richard Colvin's opening remarks yesterday:

Why should Canadians care?

One may ask rhetorically, 'Even if Afghan detainees were being tortured, why should Canadians care?' There are five compelling reasons.

First, our detainees were not what intelligence services would call 'high-value targets,' such as IED (improvised explosive device) bomb-makers, al-Qaida terrorists or Taliban commanders. 'High-value targets' would be detained under a completely different mechanism that involves special forces and targeted, intelligence-driven operations. The Afghans I am discussing today were picked up by conventional forces during routine military operations, and on the basis typically not of intelligence but suspicion or unproven denunciation.

According to a very authoritative source, many of the Afghans we detained had no connection to the insurgency whatsoever. From an intelligence point of view, they had little or no value. Frankly, the NDS (Afghan intelligence service) did not want them.

Some of these Afghans may have been foot soldiers or day fighters. But many were just local people - farmers, truck drivers, tailors, peasants; random human beings in the wrong place at the wrong time; young men in their fields and villages who were completely innocent but were nevertheless rounded up. In other words, we detained, and handed over for severe torture, a lot of innocent people.

A second reason Canadians should care is that seizing people and rendering them for torture is a very serious violation of international and Canadian law. Complicity in torture is a war crime. It is illegal and prosecutable.

Third, Canada has always been a powerful advocate of international law and human rights. That is a keystone of who we are as Canadians, and what we have always stood for as a people and nation. If we disregard our core principles and values, we also lose our moral authority abroad. If we are complicit in the torture of Afghans in Kandahar, how can we credibly promote human rights in Tehran or Beijing?

Fourth, our actions were counter to our own stated policies. In April 2007, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said publicly that "Canadian military officials don't send individuals off to be tortured." That was indeed our official policy. But behind the military's wall of secrecy, that, unfortunately, is exactly what we were doing.

And finally, even if all the Afghans we detained had been Taliban, it would still have been wrong to have them tortured. The Canadian military is proud and professional organization, thoroughly trained in the rules of war and the correct treatment of prisoners.

I would like to quote the authoritative military manual on counter-insurgency. It says that "the abuse of detained persons is immoral, illegal and unprofessional .... Torture, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, is never a morally permissible option, even if lives depend on gaining information .... The methods used (by the military) must reflect the nation's commitment to human dignity and international humanitarian law."

Even when we look at our U.S. allies, who work with us in Kandahar, their top commander Gen. David Petraeus lists 10 'big ideas' of counter-insurgency. One is 'Live your values.' He said that "whenever we place expediency above our values, we end up regretting it." In a counter-insurgency, "when you lose moral legitimacy, you lose the war."

Canada's counter-insurgency doctrine makes the same points: "Persons not taking part in hostilities" - including fighters who have been detained - "must be treated humanely. Once (local) citizens have lost confidence in (foreign) military forces ..., their sympathies and support will be transferred to the insurgents."

Counter-insurgency is an argument to win the support of the locals. Every action, reaction or failure to act become part of the debate. In Kandahar, Canada needs to convince local people that we are better than the Taliban, that our values were superior, that we would look after their interests and protect them. In my judgment, some of our actions in Kandahar, including complicity in torture, turned local people against us. Instead of winning hearts and minds, we caused Kandaharis to fear the foreigners. Canada's detainee practices alienated us from the population and strengthened the insurgency.

Thank you.

Hospitality as Faith

At the very core of Gospel life is the practice of hospitality. We are called not only to see Christ in the other but to personally to reach out. To deny others, particularly the lowliest and most difficult of others, is, we are told, to deny Christ.

I recently read Christine Pohl's work on Christian Hospitality, Making Room. A practical and thorough guide not only to the practice of hospitality but its subversive nature, it nevertheless left me somewhat uncomfortable as rather than acknowledge the necessary risk in reaching out to others as a necessary and indeed core element of hospitality, it concerned itself with alleviating such risks. So while it drew at length on the work of Dorothy Day among others, it failed to acknowledge how Day and her Catholic Worker houses of hospitality refused to be deterred by the risks arising from their work.

I am reminded of Deitrich Bonhoeffer's remark in The Cost of Discipleship that when Christ calls us he bids to follow him and die, or John Howard Yoder's in The Politics of Jesus that our journey of discipleship does not end at the foot of the cross but on it. The risk of hospitality is not a problem, it is the point.

Nor can we legitimately insulate ourselves from this through the creation of institutions specializing in hospitality. The point of engaging the other is not to transform her or him but ourselves. We cannot have this done for us by others. This is a point that Ivan Illich made so poignantly in has later work, and that others drawing on his work, particularly John McKnight, have made so clearly since.

So it was somewhat concerning to see a radical faith site such as The Jesus Manifesto discuss hospitality recently with such an emphasis on risk. Yes, in reaching out we will meet sketchy and perhaps even dangerous people. We need not approve what they do, but we are called to avoid judging, condemning or shunning them. The world already has an abundance of this. The Church is called not to reinforce this but to transcend it.

The Smoking Gun

Perhaps the key link in the emerging Afghan horror is current Ambassador the the PRC, David Mulroney. In 2007, Mulroney was an ADM for Foreign Affairs on the Afghanistan file. Richard Colvin is insisting that his supervisor at the time made every effort to both silence him and make sure that no paper trail existed, according to CBC news.

A 2007 bio for Mr. Mulroney notes

his direct responsibility to the Prime Minister to co-ordinate all Canadian government activities in Afghanistan including the efforts of DND, DFait, CIDA, SolGen etc. The new overarching responsibility permits the high level focusing & merging of Canadian efforts to a common goal.

In other words, if our PM did not know about this it was either willful ignorance or incompetence. Choose your poison, Mr. Prime Minister.

Another Remembrence Day

In a week when our complicity in evil in Afghanistan is finally coming to light, it is well to recall the twenty year anniversary of another crime against humanity: the murder of six Salvadoran priests and two of their helpers on November 16, 1989 by U.S. backed Salvadoran death squads.

Catholic Anarchy offered the following quote from one of the murdered priests, Ignacio Ellacuria, SJ:

The developed world is not at all the desired utopia, even as a way to overcome poverty, much less to overcome injustice.

Indeed, it is a sign of what should not be and of what should not be done. We must turn this sinful history upside down, and out of poverty. We must build a civilization in which all can have life and dignity.

It is particularly tragic that governments that provide the strongest support for measures such as torture and murder are usually supported by a particular segment of the church. WWJD indeed.

Rick Hillier -- War Criminal?

CBC News is reporting this morning that Foreign Affairs official Richard Colvin is reporting that among others he warned of what was happening to prisoners turned over by Canadians to Afghan authorities in 2006-07 was then CDS Rick Hillier.

Readers may recall Hillier's and Army Commander Andrew Leslie's startlingly bellicose statements at the start of the Afghan mission. It would appear that there might have been more than just words here.

We should perhaps be more humble in our finger pointing at the U.S. and particularly the hapless Bush administration. We should also never forget that abetting torture is a war crime.

What Did They Know and When Did They Know It?

It has always seemed unlikely to me that the financial sector and government regulators had no idea that credit default swaps being sold by AIG on mortgage debt were inadequately backed. Now comes news from Floyd Norris of the New York Times that not only was this known, but that Goldman Sachs and Merril Lynch among others was insuring themselves against an AIG default. As Norris describes it,

At least two banks — Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch — had purchased protection against an A.I.G. default. It is possible that others had as well, but the inspector general did not ask.

Goldman, the report states, had spent more than $100 million to buy $1.2 billion in protection against an A.I.G. default. That enabled Goldman to argue that it really did not stand to lose if A.I.G. went under.

Merrill said it had spent $40 million in such fees, but the report does not say how much protection Merrill had purchased.

AIG of course was also insuring Canadian mortgages in competition with CMHC, and it was no doubt many of these mortgages that the Harper government purchased on such generous terms over the past year. Surely if the banking sector on Wall Street knew of AIG's shortcomings, so to did Bay Street and hence given their close relationship, the Harper government.

The Ugly Truth

Richard Colvin, a Canadian civilian official who was head of the Kandahar reconstruction team in 2006-07, testified to a special committee of the House of Commons today that Canadian troops in Afghanistan routinely turned over prisoners to Afghan authorities who they knew would be tortured. As the Globe & Mail is noting tonight,

All of the prisoners Canada handed over to Afghanistan's notorious intelligence service in 2006-07 were tortured and many of them were likely innocent, a federal official has testified.

Intelligence officer Richard Colvin, a former diplomat in Afghanistan, testified before a special House of Commons committee Wednesday.

He told MPs that captives taken by Canadian troops and handed over to the Afghans were subjected to beatings and electric shocks in 2006 and early 2007.

“According to our information, the likelihood is that all the Afghans we handed over were tortured,” he said in his opening statement.

“For interrogators in Kandahar, it was standard operating procedure.”

Mr. Colvin was careful not to blame Canadian soldiers for carrying out the transfer orders, rather accusing the civilian and military leadership of creating the legal framework and policies that created the danger.

In a blistering indictment of Ottawa's handling of the situation, he said the Red Cross tried for three months in 2006 to warn the Canadian army in Kandahar about what was happening to prisoners, but no one would “even take their phone calls.”

Canada took a staggering amount of prisoners, roughly six times more than British forces and 20 times more than the Dutch, he told the committee.

The vast majority of them were not “high-value targets” such as Taliban commanders, Al-Qaeda operatives or bomb-makers, but rather ordinary Afghans, many with no connection to the insurgency.

The Harper government has been trying to avert this testimony for several months and both Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Defence Minister Peter MacKay have denied that the government was warned about the treatment of prisoners Canadians were handing over.

It is more than ironic that former journalist Peter Kent led the Conservative attack on Colvin today. It would appear to signal a government desperate to derail an issue that could (and should) undo most of the gains they have made recently.

Extremism and the IDF

While the world focuses on the vulnerability of a nuclear state to religious extremism in Pakistan, Haaretz today reports that members of an IDF battalion are publicly threatening not to remove settlers if ordered to do so, noting that

[a] number of Israel Defense Forces from the Nachshon Battalion on Monday hung a sign at their basis proclaiming that their unit would refuse to evacuate Israelis from West Bank settlements.

The move comes nearly a month after soldiers from the Shimshon Battalion waved banners with the same message during their graduation ceremony in Jerusalem. Two soldiers were expelled from their brigade and given 20 days in military prison following that incident.

Given that this is essentially mutinous behavior, it deserves to be taken extremely seriously. No one is suggesting that the Netanyahu government will not immediately curb such behavior. But as the influence of religious extremism grows within the IDF, there should be concern the the military of the regions only superpower harbors such extreme views.

Sullivan and Palin -- What Gives?

Until now I have not been sure what to make of Andrew Sullivan's seeming obsession with Sarah Palin. While he seems to become remarkably focused on a single topic from time to time, this focus or obsession usually proves to be defensible in the end.

Today's decision to stop all other work on his Daily Dish blog to focus on the Palin (non?) issue takes this to a new level. Yes, the former Alaska governor's trailer park populism has captured the imagination of the loonie right in the U.S.. And yes this element is, shockingly, not yet a spent force. But it is three years to the next presidential election and it seems difficult to conceive that by that time Palin will not look pathetic instead of powerful. Her fifteen minutes will have expired long ago.

Yes Palin and her ilk are frightening. And Sullivan would serve us well in turning a public spotlight on this seemingly delusional woman. But while her constituency is capable of making a lot of making a lot of noise, it is difficult to believe that in the end they will not prove impotent.

The End of Fatah/PA

In a move rejected by Hamas, former Israeli defence Minister Shaul Mofez made headlines yesterday calling for negotiations with the radical Palestinian organization following the immediate creation of a Palestinian state on 60% of west bank territory with negotiations to follow on the rest. An initiative like this is supported by a large majority of Israelis.

Whatever the outcome, this and the resignation of PA President Mahmoud Abbas signal that the PA and the Fatah movement it evolved from are a spent force. It is arguable that it never was a legitimate force in Palestinian politics but rather a creation of an Oslo peace process conceived in dishonesty and doomed to failure. And the legendary corruption of Arafat and his cronies certainly sealed its fate.

One can only be hopeful that negotiations with a Palestinian entity, no matter how distasteful, that has legitimacy with those it claims to represent will at last bear fruit.

Still Waiting for a Tune from the Fat Lady

Unemployment numbers released today in Canada and the U.S. indicate a worsening labour market. In one sense this is not surprising -- employment is always a lagging indicator. But this, combined with unprecedented productivity growth and worsening prospects for manufacturing are causes for concern in what otherwise appears to be a robust recovery.

More than anything, this would seem to indicate that it is not time to put on the fiscal or monetary brakes. As so many have noted, for all the noise about public sector debt, interest on government bonds shows little real concern; there is much more smoke than fire here. This remains an opportune time for public investment in crumbling infrastructure.

The Bank of Canada and the U.S. Fed have shown little interest in tightening monetary policy though the giveaways to the banks are being curtailed on both sides of the border. In short, main street is still in trouble and the role for government remains significant.

Of Anglicans and Agendas

I have been trying to puzzle out the recent decision by the Catholic Church to receive members of the Anglican confession (back?) into the Church. My initial impression was that this confirmed a Catholic agenda of homophobia and misogyny. And I still think this is the case. After centuries, it turns out that other issues just aren't all that important; if you oppose the ordination of women and support keeping gay men (and priests) firmly in the closet, welcome home.

Perhaps the one good to come out of this may be a large increase in the number of married priests. The question is will this finally undermine the requirement of a celibate priesthood? Along these lines, I found the following very touching story on Andrew Sullivan's blog this morning:

Now that the Catholic Church has decided married Anglican priests are welcome to join the fold so long as they're opposed to the ordination of women and gays, I find myself thinking about my sister's college friend in the early 1980s. He was a devoted Midwestern Catholic who very much wanted to become a parish priest, preferably in his native Indiana. He fell in love with my sister, who regarded him (in that deadly parlance of young women everywhere) as "just a friend."

The night before he was to be ordained, he called her. If there was even a hope she could one day see him as her husband, he would forgo his ordination. She told him the truth: no.

I've thought many times over the years about his painful position and the Church's ridiculous celibacy requirement (particularly given the history). How many young men could the Church recruit into the priesthood if it would acknowledge a simple truth: most human beings crave the sustaining and enriching bond of a partner? That question doesn't even touch on women and gay Catholics who feel the call to minister.

How does the Church in the 21st Century double down on "thanks but no thanks" to thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of Catholics who yearn to lead others in the Profession of Faith? What does the Anglican decision communicate to Catholics priests who sacrificed the the foundation of a loving, human companion for life?

Of course, what the Anglican offer communicates to female and gay Catholics who yearn to become clerics is clear.

My sister's friend never received his parish appointment. He was scholarly guy, so the Church sent him on to grad school, then law school, then to a PhD program. He has since the 90s been an ordained priest who serves as an attorney in the legal division of the Vatican. When my sister became engaged to marry nine years ago at age 40, he offered to fly back to the states to perform the ceremony. They were unable to coordinate their dates.

Over the past years, I have come to believe that fundamentalism of whatever stripe does not buttress faith, but corrodes it. It is almost always a profession of fear where faith is too weak to withstand challenges to it. It is not a sign of strength but of weakness.

Microsoft as IBM?

Daniel Lyons of Newsweek has an interesting article today on the performance of Microsoft over the past decade under Steve Ballmer. He refers to the period since 2000 as a lost decade. It is hard to disagree. Though Microsoft remains the giant of the tech world, it has become, Lyon notes

a bit of a joke. Yes, its Windows operating system still runs on more than 90 percent of PCs, and the Office application suite rules the desktop. But those are old markets. In new areas, Microsoft has stumbled. Apple created the iPod, and the iTunes store, and the iPhone. Google dominates Internet search, operates arguably the best e-mail system (Gmail) and represents a growing threat in mobile devices with Android. Amazon has grown to dominate online retail, then launched a thriving cloud-computing business (it rents out computer power and data storage), and capped it off with the Kindle e-reader. Microsoft's answers to these market leaders include the Zune music player, a dud; the Bing search engine, which is cool but won't kill Google; Windows Mobile, a smart-phone software platform that has been surpassed by others; and Azure, Microsoft's cloud-computing service, which arrives next year—four years behind Amazon.

For me, Vista was the end of the line. I understand the new Windows 7 is an excellent OS, but Microsoft was almost apologetic in its introduction; we screwed you with Vista and now we will sell you an expensive fix. But I left the office suite years ago. OpenOffice is a more than adequate substitute that is free.

Lyons is correct that MS will continue to dominate the OS and office suite markets (for those who insist on paying -- i.e. corporations). But this is not where the world is going. Apple will continue to capture the top end of Microsoft's market. But that market itself is shifting to other mobile devices (netbooks, smartphones etc.) where it has little presence. Like IBM, who ironically succumbed to new kid Microsoft a generation ago, it seems destined to control a market to no longer much matters.