The (Spectre of a) Chinese Threat

The following is an article by the Associated Free Press found on Yahoo! News.

Latest Chinese missile to target US carriers: report
TOKYO (AFP) - China plans to equip its upcoming missiles with infrared
technology to give them the ability to hit US warships in Asia, a Japanese
newspaper said Wednesday.

The upgrade is part of preparations for a potential conflict over
Taiwan, which China considers part of its territory and which has a security
pact with the United States, the Sankei Shimbun said.

Citing unnamed military sources in Japan and Taiwan, the conservative
newspaper said that China was developing an infrared detection system for its
medium-range Dongfeng-21 missiles so they can pinpoint warships.

The upgraded Dongfeng would discourage the United States or Japan from
sending in their warships equipped with the Aegis technology designed to shoot
down incoming missiles, the newspaper said.

The Dongfeng-21 has a range of some 2,150 kilometers (1,350 miles). The
Sankei estimated that around 100 are deployed.

Western analysts have also speculated that China is also developing a
next-generation long-range Dongfeng-41 capable of hitting the US mainland.

Beijing has repeatedly threatened to invade Taiwan, where nationalists
fled in 1949 after losing the civil war to Mao Zedong's communists, if the
island declares formal independence.

The United States and Japan in a first-of-a-kind statement in February
2005 declared that a peaceful resolution of Taiwan Strait issues was a common
strategic objective of the Pacific allies.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/070516/usa/china_us_taiwan_japan_military

The question this raises is an interesting one. Is China really a threat? The Associated Free Press seems to think so. But, then again, all American-owned and operated media outlets during the Cold War were completely convinced that the Soviet Union was an imminent threat and that a red tide of communism would sweep across Europe and the rest of the world unless American governments continued to pursue a foreign policy of containment and the American people continued to vote for governments that would put money that could have improved the quality of life into military spending. Is China the new Soviet Union? The new threat that only exists in the imagination and on paper, but hardly not in reality?

Al-Qaeda and the threat of Islamo-fascism was the initial spectre which the American government seemed to wish to do imaginary battle with. But the problem with that route has become apparent. The Islamo-fascists might not have any military infrastructure or nice toys like the Soviets did, but they can certainly fight. Afghanistan and Iraq turned out much differently than what the Bush Administration thought they would. Afghanistan is turning out quite all right, yes. But the Afghanistan mission has required a significantly higher investment than what was initially anticipated. Sadly, there are still people working in defence policy who believe that there is such a thing as an "easy in, easy out" mission and that by simply killing the bad guys, you can create a successful and highly developed liberal democracy.

With a cost-benefit analysis, one can see that making the Islamo-fascists of the Taliban and al-Qaeda the enemies of America for the next 50 or so years would be highly unprofitable. With these enemies, it requires the US to engage them in direct action in order to make such an intangible enemy more "real" to the American public. And direct action results in casualties and the loss of resources. Casualties hurt the resolve of the American public and the loss of resources hurts the economy. The whole purpose of making an enemy for the American people to rally against is the benefit of the economy. Ever seen "Flags of our Fathers"? The average American will not care what really happened at Iwo Jima, but they will love to hear, see, eat, smell and touch the myth of it- the romanticized version. And in order to get a piece of that myth, they'll be willing to open their wallets. When they open their wallets, the ponderous wheels of the country's economy begin to turn even more rapidly and the people- or, at least, some of the people- get richer.

With a pull-out of American troops from Iraq seeming to be a very real possibility for the near future, is someone getting ready to make a much more profitable enemy? China would be as perfect as the Soviet Union was. China has nukes just like America does. With both sides pointing nuclear missiles at each other's capitals and main population centers, it would be suicidal for either side to engage each other directly. They could fight over resource-rich third-party countries to the conflict and skirmish with each other via proxy wars just as the US did with the USSR. Very few Chinese and Americans would die from the ordeal, but both sides would see great benefit to their military industrial complexes and, by extension, their economies. A mutually beneficial business partnership to some. A heinously amoral and wasteful endeavour to those of us who still have moral consciences.

Cold War Two anyone?

EU-Russia Summit... and Polish meat

The much anticipated EU-Russia summit is set to take place later this week. In the lead-up to it, the European Council of Foreign Ministers is meeting to draw up a strategy and a list of grievances that need to be addressed with the Russians.

What is most interesting about this is that I recently completed a simulation course at University which dealt with a series of European Council meetings. During the negotiations about the internal energy market, the issue of Polish meat exports to Russia came up and became a central point for the debate. After a somewhat satisfactory resolution was generated and the class-time was up, our professor condescendingly assured us that, "The European Council would never waste so much time on debating Polish sausage." She punctuated the sentence with a roll of the eyes. I begged to differ, but what do I know? My name isn't followed by a series of letters alleged to convey learnedness and wisdom.

Apparently my professor was quite wrong. As was the case in our simulation, Polish meat exports have become a major talking point from the EU side of things for the future EU-Russia summit. I guess I can now smirk and say something witty like, "The European Council would never waste so much time debating on whether or not it should be debating about Polish sausage."

The following is the article, taken from EuroNews:

EU and Russia approach summit gnashing teeth

An EU summit with Russia scheduled for this Thursday and Friday threatens to degenerate into acrimony, over problems ranging from Polish meat to Kosovo. The 27 European Union foreign ministers have been meeting in Brussels to discuss a growing list of disputes involving Russia and new EU members once within the Soviet sphere.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier of the EU's current presiding nation Germany stressed that both sides needed each other. "Complicated though the situation is," Steinmeier said, "in times of difficulty it is particularly important to talk. Right up to the summit we will try to resolve the conflict concerning Polish meat."

This is one of the economic blockages: A Russian ban on Polish meat imports - over fraud cases Moscow says - is well into its second year. In retaliation, Warsaw is vetoing the launch of new EU-Russia strategic partnership negotiations. These would cover energy, trade, human rights and foreign policy. Certain groups at the European Parliament last week even suggested cancelling the summit in the southern Russian town of Samara.

Russian-EU ties are further beset by: differences over Serbia's breakaway Kosovo province; Moscow's fury at Estonia's removal of a Soviet monument from Tallinn city centre; Russia's interruption of oil supplies to a Lithuanian refinery; and Russian anger at a planned US missile shield in Eastern Europe.

http://www.euronews.net/index.php?page=europa&article=422169&lng=1

An Issue of Pedagogy

First of all, I want to begin this entry with an apology. It seems I'm always apologizing here for this, but etiquette still demands it: sorry for the absence. A dozen or more things cropped up and got in the way of writing here in, well, over two months. Embarrassing to say the least, but it's my intention to write here more often. At this current point in time, I'm working on my Honours thesis in University so I should be in the writing mentality quite often over the next year and I'll certainly be spending a lot of time sitting in the library and looking to a computer, like the one I'm using at this very moment, as my salvation from a stack of books describing the inhumanities of Africa's conflicts.

As I'm mentioning academia, I feel it would be relevant to move on to the main topic of this entry: pedagogy. Or, rather, the administration of pedagogy at Universities with a particular focus on the degree programs offered by the University of Calgary's Faculty of Social Sciences.

As you might be able to glean from my past entries and the above two paragraphs, I am an Honours Political Science student at what we'll hitherto refer to colloquially as "the U of C". I have been a student at said institution for just past two years now (I took my first year at Mount Royal College to ease into the post-secondary life) and cannot say that I am impressed. I have no problems with the aesthetics of the buildings, as some do. To be honest, I couldn't care what they look like. I also do not have any problems with the teaching styles of my professors. I've disagreed with the ideological orientations of some of my professors and have been upset by their biases but I see that to be a good thing to have at a University- once your degree is finished, you are going to have to go out into the real world and deal with people of all kinds of backgrounds, so you had better get used to learning how to work around or with such differences of opinions now.

What I do have a problem with, however, are the degree requirements. The system by which my Faculty in particular grants degrees to paying customers is a joke. For such a sweeping remark to be justified, I should explain the way the system works to those who have not studied at the U of C.

The Faculty of Social Sciences here, apparently, feels that its students must be "well-rounded" in their education. In other words, it is not enough for a Political Science student to study Political Science. A Major in one of the Social Sciences must also have a background in several other areas too. To this end, there are things in the system called "Area requirements". There are three categories to these requirements. Area I consists of courses offered by the Faculty of Humanities but also includes some Physical Activity courses and even a few classes from the Faculty of Fine Arts. Area II consists of courses offered by the Faculty of Social Sciences other than the student's Major. Area III consists of courses offered by the Faculty of Sciences.

So what does this all mean? Basically, what it means is that a Political Science student, like myself, cannot take courses relevant to our degree or to our future careers. Instead, I am expected to pick and choose from a very restricted menu as if I were a customer at a cheap sushi bar. It is not, however, a system which belongs at a well-reputed post-secondary institution to which I am paying thousands of dollars to get an education and a slip of paper which is supposed to get me access to higher-paying and much more meaningful forms of employment.

For example, let's say I'm someone who just wants this slip of paper at the end of the four years and doesn't care particularly about how I get there. I could get a Bachelor of Arts with a Major in Political Science but only 25% of my courses might actually be Political Science courses or even be politically related. The rest of my degree could be made up of ball-room dancing (Area I), brain chemistry (Area II- Psychology) and meteorology (Area III). What good would this person serve in a political bureaucratic position? Let's check it out. Say I apply with this butchered degree to the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. I get the job. I am now a Political Officer with Canada's own diplomatic corps. But what do I know about diplomacy? Very little. But I know how to dance, can prescribe amphetamines for headaches and can predict with some degree of accuracy when it's going to rain. Scary.

In my case, I am very picky about which classes I choose to satisfy my degree requirements. I cannot justify to myself taking, for example, "Climatology" from the Department of Geography when I know that class would serve no purpose to my improvement as an individual or provide me with a better way to serve my future employer. But many can and do. Many just aren't willing to sift through the thousands of classes on the calendar during registration to find something that will not only fit the Faculty's imposed degree requirements and their own personal self-imposed requirements for graduation.

The point of this ramble is, what right does the Faculty of Social Sciences have to impose such illogical requirements? Why is it that a Physical Geography class meets a requirement for a Political Science degree when a Human Geography course is specifically left out? Do they seriously think that soil variation and topography will be useful skills for students of political philosophy to acquire?

To be honest, I find the system absurd and in immediate need of revisal. But with such a stuffy and collegial atmosphere to the Faculty, would they be open to change? Would they understand that students in this current day and age are career-minded and not interested in wiling away their days on a campus taking obscure courses on subjects which are entirely unrelated to their interests or their favoured raison d'etre? Or would they just splutter and scoff, "Well, this is the way things have always been here?"

Perhaps the best thing which I can take away from this University are the words a friend of mine said yesterday as she applied to convocate in June. "I've given up on trying to understand this place. The things they do here don't make any sense and, to be honest, I don't think they ever did make sense."

Missed Opportunity

Hello everyone and sorry for not updating this in a terribly long time. A week or so after my last post on here about the murder of Jamal Khalifa, I left to Europe to visit with family for a little over two weeks. And, when I returned, I had a heap of course work to blaze through before I could get around to writing here.

The chance to write here again comes as quite an interesting coincidence as, just as I chose to take the opportunity to post, Britain chose to deny an opportunity for peace- and the continued growth and integration of the European Union to its logical conclusion. Today, a vote was held in the British Parliament on whether or not to renew the UK's nuclear arsenal. In 2024, Britain's nuclear submarines go out of service. Prime Minister Blair's proposal, which was voted on today, would have the government spend 15 to 20 billion pounds on several Trident nuclear submarines to replace the current aging fleet and the maintenance of Britain's current nuclear weapons arsenal.

I have a running theory on what the pre-conditions would be for the European Union to develop into a super-state. In order for Europe to become one country, the following would have to take place:

1. The European Constitution, or some other treaty, would have to be developed to give the European Council direct authority over the European Rapid Reaction Force. This, I believe, will happen when the problem of Transnistria- a breakaway republic of Moldova thought to be the world's main weapons bazaar for the world's insurgenices and human rights abusers- becomes relevant to Europe once accession talks are opened with Ukraine or Romania gains enough confidence to begin complaining to the EU on Moldova's behalf. Removing the illegal regime in Transnistria and enforcing Moldovan sovereignty would require a heavier contribution from the EU than just the six-month deployment allowed under the current ERRF mandate.

2. The decommissioning of nuclear weapons in the United Kingdom. Public opinion in the UK is much more receptive to the idea of nuclear disarmament. In France, it is less so and France is much more guarded about its national sovereignty- and the tools with which a state can defend it. But if Britain were to give up its nuclear weapons to Brussels or disarm, France could be isolated by the rest of the Union and slowly wittled down until it would yield to a process of measured disarmament.

3. External free trade agreements. The Internal Market is something which benefits the Union strongly. But by dropping trade barriers with one or two other states not in the EU, Europe would take on another characteristic of a state. Within the United States of America, there are very few tariffs and obstacles to trade between states. But the US also has an external free trade agreement, NAFTA, with Canada and Mexico. International trade is one sign of stateship and if Europe makes such an agreement as a whole, it displays this mark of stateship.

4. The development of the position of the High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy would help centralize foreign policy on the EU level, rather than on the state level. Every country has a Foreign Minister and if Europe is to be one country, it will need one too. Not 27.

5. The secession of Scotland from the UK. This will set off a chain effect that will devolve and decentralize power within the current states to make them much more managable components of the European Union. Many argue that one problem with Canada is that the provinces are much too large and thus are unable to look after and speak on behalf of all of their interests. If the United Kingdom were simply broken down into England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, they would more easily be able to argue for their interests within a federal European state.

These, in my point-of-view, are the five pre-conditions for European unification. There was an opportunity to meet one of these requirements today, but it was lost. The House voted 409-161 in favour of renewing the Trident missile system in 2024, and to keep Britain's nuclear arsenal well into the 2050's. However, 87 of the 161 voting against the proposal were of Blair's own Labour Party and the success of the proposal is owed to the intervention of the Conservatives on Blair's behalf. Blair now owes his job to the Conservatives- a dangerous prospect. Had the Conservatives not taken pity, a vote of no confidence would have taken place, plunging Britain into another election and ending the political career of Tony Blair.

It may seem dire that Britain will have its nuclear weapons until 2050, simply because of the manuevering of the Conservatives. But there is still hope. "This is not the end of the story by any means," Labour legislator Jeremy Corbyn told Sky News. "This is a very big rebellion ... in favor of peace."

Personally, I look forward to the next chapter.

The Murder of Jamal Khalifa

Just came across some unfortunate news. Apparently, the brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden was murdered in his hotel room today by an armed gang in Madagascar. "The murder happened around 1:30 am (2230 GMT) in the morning around Sakaraha. Jamal Khalifa was attacked by about 10 bandits. He was in a hotel. They stole a laptop computer and a suitcase," Ramananarivo (the chief investigator of the murder) told the Associated Free Press.

The question is: who did this? And, perhaps more importantly, why? Was this just an armed gang taking some very obscure vengeance for the bombing of a US embassy in Tanazania by al-Qaeda? It seems utterly illogical that they would. Madagascar and Tanzania have very peripheral ethnic relations with one another. Aside from that, there is very little association between the two countries that would cause the murderers to feel any sort of kinship with those killed in the terrorist attacks. Additionally, Jamal was only a brother-in-law to Osama bin Laden. The family has already disowned Osama and maintain no contact with him. So killing his brother-in-law wouldn't really be a major blow against the man. But, then again, killing Jamal might have been the worst a mob of thugs in a backwater African country could do.

More likely, it was simply a coincidence that Jamal has any relation to Osama bin Laden. Mr. Khalifa was a gem trader in Madagascar with several other businessmen from Saudi Arabia. It may very well have been that the killing was just something that happened as a side-effect of a theft. The armed thugs might have been aware of some valuable information on the gem industry in Madagascar on his laptop.

But there is a sneaking suspicion that surrounds the killing. It smacks of the same distastefulness and political intrigue that went with the murder of Litvinenko. There were no radioactive isotopes involved here. But who has an interest in Africa, a desire to capture Osama bin Laden, a lot of money to throw around, and a tendency to not have any moral qualms with committing acts of murder? A lot of countries and agencies come to mind. But chief among them is the United States of America and their CIA.

Was Jamal still keeping in touch with his brother-in-law Osama bin Laden? Did the NSA get wind of some suspiscious communication traffic from Jamal's laptop? Did the CIA commission some vagrants in the streets of Madagascar to kill Jamal, take his belongings, and drop them off for their reward? It's possible. But like the murder of Litvinenko, we may never know why Jamal Khalifa died. And that, in itself, feels like a sore defeat for democracy and human rights.

An Ode To MATO

First of all, I have to apologize for the long delay between posts. A combination of schoolwork and getting ready for my family's visit to Europe have gobbled up a huge bulk of my time and this has prevented me from writing as much here as I would have liked. I had a burning desire to write about the executions in Iraq and a few other topics but those are a little out-dated to be writing about by now.

An article appeared recently in the current edition of TIME magazine that got my interest. This particular piece dealt with the question of establishing effective peace and security in the Middle East while thwarting Iran's imperialist ambitions. The answer that the writer came to was this: MATO. The nomenclature is dumb, but the idea behind the name of this organization was most certainly not. MATO, or the Middle East Anti-Terrorism Organization (technically it should be MEATO, but I think that's even a less appealing acronym to be known by), would be more or less like NATO, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It would provide collective security for all of its member states and would coordinate to provide humanitarian, peacekeeping and peacemaking operations throughout the Middle East. For all intents and purposes, it would be NATO- just concerned with a specific geographic area of the world. Instead of the Soviet Union as the "big bad guy", it would be Iran. Open military conflict between the MATO member states and Iran would, in theory, never have to break out because the threat of so many neighbour states uniting against it would be enough to intimidate Iran out of its crazy foreign policy.

There are some problems with this idea, however. It assumes that Tehran is rational and will understand such basic concepts as Mutually Assured Destruction. But notice that we just said that the hope was MATO would scare "Iran out of its crazy foreign policy". Crazy implies a lack of rationality. So it is entirely possible that some whackjob in Tehran might hit the big red button that blows up the Middle East anyway. This, though, was the line of thinking during the Cold War: NATO would never work, no amount of nuclear weapons would ever work, because Moscow was certifiably insane. It's possible that Iran will realize that its citizens will not be very supportive of war, especially not war with fellow Muslim countries. But even that might not be enough if the government in Tehran is too detached from the people. After all, when was the last time you saw a photo of Ahmadinejad surrounding himself with ordinary people in Iran? He's only ever seen hanging out with his buddies from the Revolutionary Guard and their opinions are hardly representive of the thoughts and beliefs of the Iranian people.

Another problem is that the organization's intentions might be different from what we in "the West" want. The principle "enemy" of MATO could easily shift from Iran to Israel, the organziation becoming an easy modicum for coordinating attacks against the single non-Muslim state in the region. In order to prevent this from happening, it would be necessary to have Israel hold a seat in this organization. As all member states would be acceeding to a collective security agreement, it would stand that no member state could attack another member state. MATO, in effect, could be a kind of legal means by which many Arabic countries would be prevented from attacking Israel. With this kind of hard and fast guarantee of security, support for the Zionists in Israel would be greatly depleted and proper progress could be made on peace talks between Israel and Palestine. The Israeli issue would be solved because they have their guarantee of security from their neighbours, the Palestinian side would be solved by the withdrawal of support for Hamas by their chief Arab backers as well as the threat of the entire region acting to force compliance.

While this idea has its holes and its flaws, it shows promise. MATO would be a headache. It would require huge amounts of work and compromise between people and states that have rarely shown a willingness to work together. But given the alternative- continued conflict in the Middle East- it doesn't look so bad. We are all entitled to our differences. I'm just a fan of resolving them with words instead of guns.

Can Africa Do It?

The smoke has cleared in Somalia. The Islamic Courts Union, whether its rule was good or bad, is now nothing more than a memory. During the ICU control of Mogadishu, several Internet cafes were set up throughout the city- a sign of some kind of "Western" normalcy pleasantly replacing the khat-induced bloodbaths that were such a vivid memory of the UN Operation Enduring Hope. The ICU, acknowledging that khat does make you crazy, banned the use of the drug which had become a daily activity for many Somalis. The price of an AK-47 assault rifle in the open-air arms bazaars of the city shot way up as supply reduced when the ICU reined in the Klinsyr clan and its particularly ambitious warlord- the same group responsible for smuggling a huge volume of small arms and light weapons from the Middle East into Somalia as well as some of the recent acts of piracy in the Suez Canal.

There was a brief flurry of violence as the Ethiopian military and the small vestiges of the legal government of Somalia pushed into Mogadishu to displace the ICU. The Americans dropped a rain of bombs for good measure, claiming those crazy al-Qaeda guys were hiding in random villages, but succeeded only in killing swathes of civilians. The Internet cafes closed down. The price of AK-47's continued to increase as demand now went up and the supply remained at a fairly small trickle because of the recovering Klinsyr operations. It could have been a disaster in the making- another "Black Hawk Down", but this time with Ethiopians against Somalis in the heart of Mogadishu.

But the Ethiopians did something smart. They realized that if they moved their troops into the capital of their neighbour, it would be interpreted as an act of war by the people of Somalia. The Ethiopians would not be liberators, come to save them from an oppressive Islamist regime. Instead, they would be seen as conquerors come to deliver the final death blow to Somalia- so fearful of the might of the Cish people. The propaganda prospects would simply be unlimited for the ICU. They could whip the people of Mogadishu up into such a frenzy, they wouldn't need khat to get every man, woman and child to grab the nearest inanimate object and use it as a weapon against the hapless Ethiopian force.

Knowing this, the Ethiopians stopped their force outside Mogadishu's outskirts and told the Somali government's forces to seize the capital themselves. If the legitimate government wanted to exert its legal authority over Mogadishu, it would have to do it with legitimate government forces, not their friends. This was an interesting juxtaposition from the Americans, who micro-manage many of the conflicts they become involved in internationally. The Americans are only now just making serious efforts to hand over authority for peacekeeping and policing in Iraq to the actual Iraqi government. For the longest time, the Americans simply disempowered the new regime in Iraq by insisting on using American forces to solve Iraqi problems. The Ethiopians, on the other hand, had their strategy quite well-conceived before moving into Somalia to oust the ICU.

The Ethiopians even have an exit strategy. This will make sure that the Somali people, and any demagogues that might try to advantage of the situation, do not see that the Ethiopian force is an occupation force intent on either absorbing the troubled country into itself or is trying a neo-imperial gambit in the region. Who will be taking Ethiopia's place in assuring security in the country while the UN-sponsored government asserts its control? The African Union.

If you're apprehensive about the idea of African Union troops trying to ensure security in Somalia, you're not the only one. The African Union has made little progress in stopping the Janjaweed massacres in Sudan. In fact, nearly every pan-African collective security agreement and peacekeeping operation has failed miserably. The history of mistakes, errors, and poor planning is a long one. Explaining what went wrong and how things could have been done better in the history of the African Union and its predecessors, the Union of African States and the Organization for African Unity, could easily be the topic of a thesis, and is far too detailed a topic to get into here. Sudan is a nasty place. The Janjaweed have a great deal of resources at their disposal, what with having the support of the Sudanese government in Khartoum. But Somalia is an even more difficult place, having a long history of internecine warfare and being heavily armed through American and Soviet meddling during the Cold War (Colt and RSA used Somalia as a weapons proving ground, equipping rival militias with experimental weapons, then watching the news to find out how many casualties their weapons were able to inflict, then modifying their weapons accordingly). If the African Union has its hands full with Sudan, how can it seriously hope to handle Somalia?

When one looks at the list of countries providing troops to the Somalia operation, ones hopes are not dramatically raised. South Africa, Nigeria, Uganda, and Malawi. South Africa has a very advanced war machine at its disposal. The Nigerians try hard, and make up for the lack of weapons technology with their effort. Uganda was the home of Idi Amin, and it is still believed that Hutu generals escaped from Rwanda into Uganda and continue to mastermind the chaos of the Congo from the comfort of Uganda. Malawi has long been embroiled with rebels of various causes that keep giving the government a hard time through guerilla warfare. It's not encouraging.

So the question is: Can African do it? Can Africa break the long tradition of botched operations and dependency on Europe to get anything done in terms of providing security and defending human rights? I suppose we'll find out soon enough. The first detachments of the African Union peacekeeping mission are due to arrive in Somalia to begin relieving Ethiopian troops next week.

The Compass Is Broken

After killing some time while waiting for another class to start at University, I came across the following Political Attitudes test. It had been one I took a while back, and I managed to stumble across it again. The URL is www.politicalcompass.org

It's curious to see how ones beliefs and opinions on matters can change so profoundly over the course of only a few years. According to this test, when I originally took it two years ago my political attitudes were more in line with a Red Tory: strong government involvement in the economy and socially conservative. Now I seem to be more in line with a liberal egalitarian: personal freedom, small government becoming involved in the economy only in a moderate role to ensure some measure of social justice.

One peculiar thing, however, about these political attitudes quizzes is that they also take into account the personal biases of the person designing the test. The questions tend to be more normative and qualitative. Stuff like "The government has no place in the bedroom." The test then asks you to either "Strongly Agree", "Agree", "Disagree" or "Strongly Disagree" with this very interpretative question. The example stood out in my mind and might not be the best choice to illustrate my point, but it seems that the political attitudes of the test designer are highly reflected in the results received by the people taking the test. To a left-wing socialist, I might find myself being placed on the right-side of the spectrum of ideologies. To a neo-conservative, I will probably be judged as a socialist bringing my crazy ideas from Europe with me like the carrier of some viscious disease.

In other words, take political attitudes tests with a grain of salt. They over-simplify very complex systems of philosophy and world-view. Even calling someone a "liberal egalitarian", precise a term as that might seem, is over-generalization. What is a "liberal"? The word "liberal" is usually defined in everyday language as "numerous" or "generous". For example, "He fired into the forest, liberally." Or "He is very liberal with his money." This could mean that a liberal would promote "liberal", that is to say "numerous", controls over the economy of a country through Crown Corporations, public works projects and heavy taxation/susidization. But liberal is also conceived of as being "forward-thinking" and "socially progressive". Forward thinking? In what society? In Iran, forward thinking would be questioning the current social status of women as being "half of a man" in terms of legal rights. In Canada, forward thinking might be construed as... well, I don't think we've decided what forward thinking is yet. European Union ascension? Gay marriage? Legalized marijuana? The Political Compass says I should be libertarian on all of those things as I'm a very mild liberal. But there's only one of those three things that appeals to me and it definitely has nothing to do with drugs that could drastically damage my liver, brain and lungs nor does it have anything to do with forcing religious figures to perform ceremonies that are against their moral conscience. If you haven't guessed it yet, I'm a big fan of the EU and believe firmly that Canada would be better served through closer economic and political ties to Europe than to the United States.

The reason for this rant? Ambiguity of political language. One man's liberal is another's conservative. Political Attitudes tests are good fun for wasting time and entertaining notions about whether you really could be compared to the Green Party in Germany and at the same time be as socially libertarian as Nelson Mandela. Quizzes that claim to be the be all and end all of determing political ideology are jokes. And, to a degree, it does a discredence to the discipline of Political Science when there are no fundamentally univeral terms by which we can associate different people's beliefs into roughly working systems without confusing the heck out of everyone else in our field. But, then again, we probably don't want to wind up with such specific terms as Philosophy that we wind up losing our breath when referring to our own self-label. "Deontological liberal egalitarian with utopia-welfarist tendencies" somehow seems less appealing to the common voter than "liberal" or "idealist".

War From Afar

The United States is an empire. This has become an unequivocal fact. Even the most staunch pro-America fanatics could not excuse the actions of the Bush Administration when it unilaterally invaded Iraq, committing an act explicitly deemed illegal and against human interests by the United Nations. During the Cold War, imperialist acts could be excused as being part of a greater world-wide struggle against the forces of communism- a battle for the freedom of humanity in all corners of the globe. During the War on Drugs, the invasion and oppression of numerous Latin American countries was excusable, perhaps, because illicit narcotics being produced in those places were hurting Americans and, indeed, people all around the world.

But the war on terrorism is a stretch as an excuse for breaches of international law. The Americans stretched it to the breaking point in Iraq. And it would seem Bush realizes this. Or, at least, someone in the Pentagon does, as the American imperial war machine has taken up a new way of exerting its interests and agenda upon other states: war by proxy, and war by strategic bombing.

The war by proxy is something that has been going on in the news for the past couple of weeks. On New Year's Eve 2006, Ethiopian bombers attacked Mogadishu Airport as a prelude to an overt invasion and seizure of power from the Islamist regime that had displaced the warlords. Ethiopia did not do this because they felt particularly threatened by Somalia. It is true that Somalia has been, and could again be, a problem for Ethiopian security. During the 1960's, the Mogadishu government managed to achieve widespread support through the utilization of a policy similar to Hitler's "Lebensraum". That is to say, the Somali government decried the way East Africa was carved up by the British and other colonial powers at the end of the World Wars. The predominant language spoken in Somalia is Cish and, as some may be already aware, language is often believed to be the main basis for the determination of a national group. So, using this argument, Somalia claimed to be the appropriate political representation of those peoples in East Africa that speak the Cish language. Unfortunately, due to the way the Europeans ignorantly carved up Africa, large numbers of Cish speakers were left living as minority groups in Kenya and Ethiopia. Somalia eventually invaded both Kenya and Ethiopia in 1965, the Somali-Ethiopian War not ending until 1966 with the defeat of the Somali invasion, due in no small part to the interference of British Special Forces units operating in Somalia in support of Ethiopian and Kenyan troops.

Perhaps with memories of this war, or due to a more sinister agenda, Ethiopia was only too willing to fight America's war against the Somali Islamists, who were making promises to people in Mogadishu that "all Somalis will some day live under the same flag". But the issue with Somalia is not solely Ethiopia's.

Apparently, the Americans have an agenda there too. How is this known? Because the Americans, being bad poker players, finally showed their hand- all the while without exposing themselves to gunfire, in keeping with their war by proxy. Yesterday, an AC-130 gunship (for those unfamiliar with these things, they're massive plains capable of dropping thousands of rounds per second from multiple machineguns and cannons, used extensively during the Vietnam War as part of the American strategic bombing campaign that left thousands of civilians dead) flew over the town of Amfadow in the southern tip of Somalia, not far from the border with Kenya. The reason? Suspected al-Qaeda operatives were hiding out there. As if that wasn't bad enough, the Americans have moved a small segment of the fleet they have standing watch over the Persian Gulf to Somalia- blockading what little sea traffic exists off the coast of the country. From these naval vessels, several helicopters launched today to engage in a series of rocket attacks on the same town- Amfadow. Unconfirmed reports from the Somali Defense Ministry, now again controlled by the "legal" government of Somalia that went into exile when the Islamists seized Mogadishu in a bloodless coup, state that 31 civilians were killed. The designation of the American helicopters are presumed to be Apaches, given the extent of the damage (an Apache attack helicopter is practically a small army in a flying tin can due to the sheer amount of firepower it packs, a complicated interface allows the pilot to see exactly where he is aiming through cameras mounted just under the muzzle of each gun and filtered into a display that projects the image directly into the retina- effectively allowing the human to merge with the machine in something almost out of a sci fi movie).

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman had this to say about the attacks: the bombings were "based on intelligence that led us to believe we had principal al-Qaeda leaders in an area where we could identify them and take action against them. We're going to remain committed to reducing terrorist capabilities where and when we find them." Gee. That sounds an awful lot like the line about "Iraq possesses or intends to possess weapons of mass destruction. Iraq also harbours terrorists." Maybe someone didn't read the memo about Saddam being hated by al-Qaeda for his secular policies and Sunni background. If that's the case, here's a memo for the Pentagon: "We're onto you. We've heard this story over and over again- the boogeyman is out to get us. And guess what? It's not funny any more and, one of these days, we're going to put a stop to your oppression."