Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Who has Obama's Ear on Syria?

Seymour Hersh has just published a long article in The London Review of Books in which he claims to reveal some aspects of a major disagreement between various Washington players concerning US strategy in Syria.  In the article Hersh claims that the leadership of the military - the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), under its former Chairman, Martin Dempsey - had a very different idea from the Obama administration on strategy in the war.  In this they were supported by the head of the Defence Intelligence Agency, Michael Flynn.

Obama from the outset has said that for the war to end Bashar al-Assad must first step down.  The US blocked peace negotiations earlier in the war, saying negotiations should not take place, until al-Assad relinquished his presidency.  By making this a pre-condition the US was in effect backing continued warfare and saying that the US would support Assad's opponents until victory was achieved.  Clearly Obama believed that Assad was on the ropes and would eventually be defeated.   But it should have been obvious that there was no way Assad would yield power short of military defeat.  If he were to do so he would soon find himself either dead like Moamar Qadaffi, or on trial in his own country under a new government, like Saddam Hussein, or on a one-way journey to The Hague to face trial at the International War Crimes Tribunal.  


The Obama administration seemed to believe that there was a 'moderate opposition' which could take over government if and when Assad was defeated.  The DIA under Michael Flynn and Dempsey's JCS who had a lot of intelligence on what was happening on the ground knew that this was wishful thinking.  What was actually happening on the ground was that the opposition to Assad consisted almost entirely of jihadi groups such as Islamic State (IS), Jabhat al-Nusra and The Army of Conquest.  All of these are extremist Salafi fighters frequently using terrorist tactics and happily murdering others (Muslim or non-Muslim) who don't share their extreme ideology. The Free Syrian Army, the supposedly moderate group opposed to Assad, had been absorbed into one or other of the various jihadi groups.  Al-Nusrah and IS regarded them as a joke - but also a source of  modern weaponry freely supplied by the CIA.


The DIA and JCS were extremely worried about what would happen if Assad's Syrian Arab Army were defeated.  They feared a situation, which at best would be one of chaos, like that prevailing in Libya, or much worse the take-over of Syria by extreme murderous jihadis, who would gladly slaughter, by the the thousands, those who did not share their extreme views - Alawites, Christians, secular Sunnis etc.   


The DIA passed on their intelligence and concerns to the White House and State Department but got no response.  General Dempsey and the JCS chose a different way of dealing with the head-in-the-sand approach of the Administration. According to Hersh's informant, rather than challenge the policy head on, they chose to surreptitiously pass intelligence to al-Assad's military intelligence.  They did this by sharing intelligence they had gathered on the jihadi militias with other intelligence services (Germany, Russia and Israel) they knew or strongly suspected would pass the information onto Assad. Apparently they passed intelligence on the whereabouts, strength and aims of the various jihadi militias.  


Russia's entry into the war complicated matters for the Obama administration.  To the JCS it appeared obvious that US policy should be to ally with Russia to combat IS.  But the Obama Administration took a different view and regarded Russia as an enemy. Right from the start of Russia's involvement, the US (and the mainstream media) accused them of bombing not IS, but other combatants of Assad, who the US claimed were 'moderates' (see my earlier blog post Foul.  Your bombing our jihadis!).  This didn't change even when IS claimed responsibility for downing the Russian civilian airliner in the Sinai.  In fact there seemed to be an element of gloating in the US media's response to this terrorist action.  There was no attempt to explain why IS would retaliate against Russia if the Administration claim that Russia was not targeting IS were true.  


Another aspect of the war, which the DIA reported to the Obama administration, was the duplicitous behaviour of supposed NATO ally Turkey, which was allowing arms and recruits to freely cross its border with Syria to supply and support IS and Jabhat al-Nusra.  In fact we now know it was going much further in supporting IS by allowing convoys of tankers of stolen oil to enter Turkey where it was sold on the black market.  Obama is well aware of Turkey's behaviour and yet continues to publicly support its president, Erdogan, as was evident in his condemnation of Russia after Turkey had shot down a Russian plane.  


For some reason Obama is reluctant to challenge Turkey even though the US is well aware of Turkey's duplicity.  He is reported to have told Erdoğan’s intelligence chief at a tense meeting at the White House "We know what you’re doing with the radicals in Syria". Nonetheless he is apparently not prepared to do more. 


So why is Obama persisting in his apparently wrong-headed policy? There seems to be a little movement on the demand that Assad must step down before peace talks.  Secretary of State John Kerry after his recent meetings in Moscow has allowed that peace talks should begin, even while Assad remains in power.  But on US hostility to Russia and support for Turkey, nothing seems to have changed.  Similarly the claims of a so-called 'moderate opposition' continue.  British Prime Minister Cameron, who faithfully follows the US line, recently claimed seventy to eighty thousand such fighters.


The former head of JCS, Martin Dempsey, has retired and in his place Obama appointed General Joseph Dunford, who is reliably anti-Russian.  In October Dunford dismissed the Russian bombing efforts in Syria, telling the Senate Armed Forces Committee that Russia ‘is not fighting’ IS. He added that America must ‘work with Turkish partners to secure the northern border of Syria’ and ‘do all we can to enable vetted Syrian opposition forces’ – i.e. the ‘moderates’ – to fight the extremists. 


So who is giving the advice to Obama?  The role of the CIA is unclear. They have certainly played a big part in moving arms to anti-Assad groups.  But I suspect that besides the CIA the usual suspects are shaping policy.  By the usual suspects I mean the neocons, who have been responsible for so much bad policy in the Middle East.    In an earlier blog I quoted Andrew Sullivan


The closer you examine it, the clearer it is that neoconservatism, in large part, is simply about enabling the most irredentist elements in Israel and sustaining a permanent war against anyone or any country who disagrees with the Israeli right. That's the conclusion I've been forced to these last few years. And to insist that America adopt exactly the same constant-war-as-survival that Israelis have been slowly forced into... But America is not Israel. And once that distinction is made, much of the neoconservative ideology collapses.

One has to ask, in whose interest is continuing warfare in Syria?  It is certainly not in the interest of the European countries, who are being flooded with desperate refugees and threatened by terrorism.  Nor is it the interest of Russia.  But to those states who are implacably opposed to Iran, ongoing conflict is just the ticket.  A 'rational' though evil policy for them is to keep Iran's allies, Assad and Hezbollah, tied up in fighting, and bleed them to the maximum extent.  So Israel and Saudi Arabia were no doubt quite happy with the way things were going, before Russia intervened.  Turkey under the megalomaniac Erdogan seems to be more motivated by the prospect of gaining territory in northern Syria, and at the same time preventing Kurdish forces from doing the same.  

But is it really in the interests of the US to keep the fighting going? General Dempsey and the former JCS and Michael Flynn and the DIA didn't think so.  But they have been ousted and others are now in control.  Whose interests are they serving?  

Friday, December 18, 2015

On Clocks and Sundials, Sunsets and Solstices.

If you put a vertical stake in the ground, and observe every day, the time when its shadow points due south, you may come up with a surprising result.  If your clock is accurate enough you will find that the interval between the so-called "solar noon" from one day to the next is not exactly twenty-four hours.  In fact you will find that it varies from day to day.  

What this means is that "solar time" (i.e. time measured on an sun dial) and time as measured by a terrestrial clock - say a pendulum clock or the digital watch on your wrist are not exactly the same.  We'll come to the reason for this in a moment.  But first let me show you the magnitude of the difference.  It varies throughout the year.  The following shows the difference between the two.



The horizontal axis is the day of the year.  The vertical axis is the difference (in minutes) between clock time and solar time.  Above the horizontal axis the clock is ahead of the sundial and below the axis it is the other way around.  So now in mid-December the clock is slightly ahead of the sundial, but soon it will change (on December 25 to be precise) and then will be behind (until 15th April).  The relationship between solar time and clock time captured in the graph is known as the Equation of Time.  

Now for the explanation.  Those with a mathematical background might suspect that the above graph is the sum of two sine functions with different phases, amplitudes and periods, and indeed that is what they are.  That is because the phenomenon is due to two causes.  

The first is that the earth's orbit is elliptic and not circular.  This means that the velocity of the earth varies throughout the year as it orbits the sun.  It is fastest at the two "pointed ends" of the ellipse which occur in mid-winter (3rd January) and mid-summer (3rd. July) and slowest on the "flat ends" in Spring and Fall.   The consequence of the variation in earth's speed is that the time from solar noon to solar noon varies. This is because when the earth is travelling faster it will take more time to complete a rotation to face the sun (because the earth has moved around the sun - from position 1 to position 3 in diagram below) than it would when it was travelling slower i.e the distance from 1 to 3 is greater in January and July than in March and September, so the angle to the sun is from 1 and 3 is greater in the former than the latter. 



This implies that in mid-summer and mid-winter, the interval between solar noons  should be larger than in the Fall and Spring. This yields the larger amplitude sinusoid (period one year).  

The other reason for the difference relates to the tilt of the earth (which gives rise to the seasons).  I won't go into details, which can be found in Wikipaedia at 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equation_of_time

This is the reason behind the second, shorter period (six month), sinusoid.  

When these two sinusoids are summed one gets the equation of time graph above.

Apparently the variations in solar time were known to the ancient Babylonians (see Wiki article)  and Ptolemy tabulated the equation of time.  Ptolemy lived in Roman Egypt and was born about 100 CE.  In the Middle Ages various Islamic astronomers made improvements to Ptolemy's tables, especially the contribution due to the earth's tilt. 

One consequence of the difference between solar time and clock time is a fact which the very observant may have noted at this time of year. It is that the time of sunset has been gradually getting later since December 8 here in Victoria, BC (since Dec. 11th in London) even though the shortest day is not until 21st. of the month.  On the other hand, the time of sunrise will continue to get later until early in the New Year.  

In the December, up to the 25th, solar time is earlier than clock time, but with the difference diminishing as the month progresses.  This means that sunrises and sunsets are earlier than they would be if the earth's orbit were circular.  This pushes the earliest sunset to occur before the solstice (December 21st.) and the latest sunrise to occur after the solstice.


I am filled with admiration for the astronomers and mathematicians, both ancient and more modern, who worked all of this out.  The motion of the celestial spheres has been a continuing area of inquiry for some of the greatest mathematical minds of the ages. Apparently since time of Kepler (around 1600) many luminaries have studied planetary orbits and their  stability including

A heavenly galaxy of stars indeed!  







Saturday, December 12, 2015

IS as a Millenarian Sect

I have been reading a long and interesting article about Islamic State (IS, ISIL, ISIS, Daesh) by Graeme Wood.  It appeared in the March issue of The Atlantic but is still available online: 

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

Graeme Wood is a journalist (Canadian) and not a scholar of Islam, but he seems to have delved quite deeply into Islamic theology and history.  One thing that struck me in his article is the importance of apocalyptic thinking in the beliefs IS espouses.

Most of the major religions have millenarian or apocalyptic strains. The coming of the Messiah and the End of Days is a central tenet in Jewish belief.  When, in my younger days, I attempted to read the New Testament, I was struck by how much Jesus believed that the End of Days was nigh and preached that the Children of Israel better get their act together, because Judgement Day was coming.  This part of Jesus's teaching seems to has been conveniently forgotten, probably because it was obviously incorrect, the world having persisted.

And then after Jesus's death when the label of Messiah (or Christ) was pinned upon him, some Christians adopted a form of apocalyptic thinking, exemplified in particular in the Revelation of St. John.  For him Armageddon was on its way.  Interestingly the word Armageddon derives from an actual place, Megiddo, now in Israel.  It was an important location in a narrow pass through which the trade route from Egypt to Assyria passed.  There were a number of major battles there in ancient times.  

In Christian eschatology (end of times beliefs) of the Book of Revelation,  written by John the Divine, in exile on the island of Patmos, Jesus will return to earth and defeat the Antichrist (the "beast"), the False Prophet and Satan the Devil all together in the Battle of Armageddon.  After various other wild events, dreamed up in the lurid imagination of John, and involving a lot of fire and brimstone, Jesus will reign and the righteous will be saved.  

Mohammed, the Prophet, was well aware of Christian and Jewish beliefs, so it is not surprising that in Islam, there is a hadith  (writings claiming to be direct quotes of The Prophet) dealing with the End of Days.  It claims that Mohammed said that 

The Last Hour would not come until the Romans land at al-A’maq or in Dabiq. An army consisting of the best (soldiers) of the people of the earth at that time will come from Medina (to counteract them).

Dabiq is a city, now in northern Syria, close to Aleppo.  "Romans" was thought to refer to the Byzantines (the Second Rome) but others now think it refers to Christians in general.  According to the Prophet's prophecy, after the defeat of these Romans, the forces of Islam will go on to conquer Constantinople.  A messianic figure The Mahdi (remember General "Chinese" Gordon's expedition to Khartoum in Victorian days) will be instrumental in these victories and will reign for some years (variously 7, 9 or 19)  before the final Day of Judgement and the return of Jesus Christ.  

The name Dabiq has been adopted by IS for its propaganda magazine.  Apparently in 2014 when its troops captured the city and its surrounding plains there was wide rejoicing among its members, in belief that the decisive battle would soon come to pass.  Also in IS's propaganda messages there have been many references to Dabiq, whose significance has been missed by Western journalists. 

I gather from Graeme Wood's article that in the Muslim world belief in this End of Days is considered to be a somewhat vulgar indulgence by the masses.  In some ways this is not so different from the Christian world where believers in 'The Rapture' and their close cousins Armageddon survivalists ('Preppers'), are viewed with disdain by educated Christians and establishment churches.

Apocalyptic  considerations played no part in Al Qaeda's thinking. Both bin Laden and his number two Ayman Zawahiri were from elite Sunni families and looked down on lowbrow apocalyptic speculation. Apparently in Iraq in 2008 there was a lot of talk of the Mahdi and jihadi groups there were making tactical decisions based on their estimates of when the Mahdi was to be expected.  When Osama bin Laden was appraised of this he had to write to them and order them to desist.  It was from the jihadi groups (especially Al-Qaeda in Iraq) fighting in Western Iraq that IS emerged when it split from Al-Qaeda.  

Al-Qaeda is in many ways like an underground political organization with very clear earthly goals, albeit ones to do with the political revival of Islam.  This is not true of IS which sees itself as fulfilling prophecy. And part of that prophecy has to do with the End of Days.  This has lead some strategists to suggest that a way to defeat IS is to amass a huge modern western army in the vicinity of Dabiq, more or less inviting IS to do battle there.  It is claimed that it is a bait that they would not be able to resist. And when the western forces decisively defeat the IS forces, its credibility would be irreparably destroyed.

This could be true.  But I think Western leaders are very wary of sending more ground troops to Muslim countries.  Past experience suggests that when one dragon is slain, its blood only goes to fertilize the ground for the emergence of another more fearful and monstrous dragon.  

Graeme Wood suggests that in the long run IS might be defeated on a spiritual level by a quietist form of Salafi Islam.  These Salafis are just as unbending as IS in their literal belief in the Koran and in the divine word of the Prophet.   But their main emphasis is personal purification and compliance with the Koran.  In some respects they are like the Ultra-Orthodox Jews, who reject the legitimacy of the Israeli state, but go to extreme lengths to make sure their daily behaviour complies with 'The Law', even to the extent of having non-observant neighbours enter their homes on the Sabbath to turn on light switches. Mohammed preached against chaos, especially generated by discord between believers.  IS generates exactly this sort of chaos and discord and the quietist Salafis reject this behaviour.

Whether or not IS loses the spiritual battle only time will tell. Personally I can't see it happening.  The allure of fighting and dying in a righteous cause is much more appealing to the young than the non-ending rigours of an extreme ascetic life.   But at the same time I can't see how IS can continue if it stays rigidly attached to the very literal interpretation of 1400 year old scripture.  It is as if extreme Christian fundamentalists succeeded in obtaining absolute power in the USA - something that so far has only happened in the fiction of authors like Margaret Atwood.  An unbending attachment to scripture could not be sustained for long.  Compromises with the real world would have to be reached.  But this would lead to some weakening of the internal belief of the leadership and members.  Not only would it weaken the drive of the organization, in the case of IS it would lead the leadership open to the charge of takfir or apostasy, which would then make it the duty of other believers to overthrow the takfiri leadership.

I imagine that, like in every other organization, there is a spectrum of beliefs within the IS leadership.  The Caliph, Al-Baghdadi appears to be at one end of the spectrum - a true believer.   But I wonder about its military leaders.   They are said to be former officers of Saddam's Baathist army.  I don't know, but I can't picture these military men, who served Saddam, as extreme Salafis.  I suspect they are more driven by motives of power and revenge.  But at present they see their best strategy as going along with the extreme religious leadership. Who knows what might happen if the tide turns against IS, militarily. Will the religious leadership still put up with the Baathist soldiers?  Or will the soldiers try to take over the organization?  To me it seems that in the long run IS could be a victim of its own ideology.  But in the meantime it could cause an awful lot of  chaos and killing.  

Since Wood wrote his article IS seems to have adapted its tactics somewhat.  It seems to have followed Al-Qaeda's tactics of terror attacks on western targets, at least sponsoring, if not organizing, attacks in Beirut, Paris and the bombing of the Russian airliner.  So maybe it is not so constrained by prophecy and the Islamic texts as Wood suggests.  If true this is bad news for the rest of us.  

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Sonofabitch Bashar al-Assad.

Sheldon Richman  has an interesting article here
(http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43597.htm) entitled "Why Assad Isn't Our Son of a Bitch"

The statement "He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son a bitch" is attributed to Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) in 1939 referring to Anastasio Somoza dictator of Nicaragua, and the first of three Somozas to rule that country.  Of course the US has a long record of supporting brutal dictators (our sons of bitches) often after having helped install them into power.  In Latin America they are too myriad to list but they go back to the nineteenth century with Porfirio Diaz in Mexico and later including Pinochet in Chile, Noriega in Panama, Batista in Cuba and Papa Doc Duvalier in Haiti.  In Asia, Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan and the Philippines have all been ruled by US backed dictators.  In the Middle East of course there have been Saddam Hussein, Ali Abdullah Saleh (in Yemen) and Hosni Mubarak and now Abdel Fattah el-Sissi in Egypt.  And once upon a time, Bashar al-Assad, like his father Hafez al-Assad was one of "our sons of bitches".  

If you recall, in 1991 Assad pere (Hafez) backed the US-led coalition against Saddam Hussein in the First Gulf War, offering 100,000 troops. Syria was a very useful ally for the Coalition, because the support of a major Arab nation helped to lend the whole enterprise legitimacy in the Arab world.  Then following 911, Assad fils (Bashar) offered "intelligence" cooperation with the US and its allies.  What this meant in practice was that Syria acted as a contractor for US intelligence  - offering torture services for which the CIA or other agencies wanted a cutout.  Ask Meir Arar, a Canadian of Syrian birth, who was kidnapped while passing through JFK in New York and "rendered" to Syria where he was imprisoned and tortured.

So for a long time the Assads were "our sons of bitches".  But this changed in 2011 with the "Arab Spring".  Violence broke out at one or more demonstrations.  Who started it is not entirely clear, but the government responded with a very strong hand.   Soon al-Assad found he was the subject of sanctions by the US Government.  Other governments rapidly followed suit.

An important question is why did al-Assad go from being "our son of a bitch" to a pariah?  This was before the Syrian Army had started its arial campaign using barrel bombs and the like.  Was it simply because President Obama was a man of principle and champion of democracy and could no longer stand the brutality of dictators like al-Assad?  Hardly likely given the support it still lends to odious regimes such as that of el-Sissi in Egypt, or the royal family in Saudi Arabia.

In his article Richman suggests that the answer is Iran.  After the disaster of the Iraq War, Shiite Iran's influence in the region waxed considerably.  This caused considerable concern to the major Sunni powers, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.  They feared the emergence of a "Shia Crescent", running from Iran through Iraq and Syria to south Lebanon where Hezbollah has its roots.  I think this is one reason for the US dropping al-Assad, but I think the real reason lies with Israel.

Israel has long planned for the overthrow of any rival power in the Middle East. This has all been spelled out in the document 1996 A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, commissioned by Benjamin Netanyahu.   Among other things it called for the removal by force of Saddam Hussein and the destabilization of Syria.    With the the help of the Israeli fifth column of  Neocons in the US security establishment President G. W. Bush was persuaded that his manhood demanded the invasion of Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein.  If that had gone successfully no doubt he would have been persuaded by the mantra "Real Men go to Tehran".   But it didn't work out.  At least not for the United States.  Iran became stronger as a result of a Shiite government taking power in Bahgdad.  

Furthermore Israel was humiliated by Hezbollah when it invaded Lebanon (again) in 2006.  The Shiite Hezbollah receives armaments from Iran (via Syria).  Israel clearly wanted to cut off this supply route and deal a stinging blow to Iran.  

The best opportunity for Israel to hit at Iran was by destroying the al-Assad regime in Syria. Not only would it be one in the eye for the Iranian regime, it would also cut off Hezbollah from its weapons supply. So with the help of its faithful Neocon friends in Washington, Israel was able to persuade the Obama administration that it was time to cut Assad loose.  Obama was locked in a bitter struggle with Netanyahu over the nuclear deal with Iran, and probably felt he didn't want another conflict with Israel on his hands, especially since he was facing re-election.  So the US ditched its faithful son of a bitch and backed the opposition in Syria, even to the point of backing very nasty jihadi groups like Al Nusra (Al Qaeda in Syria)

I can see no reason why Iran should be considered a real threat to the USA.   But I think the following comment from Andrew Sullivan (on NeoConservatism) explains why it acts that way and wants al-Assad gone.  

The closer you examine it, the clearer it is that neoconservatism, in large part, is simply about enabling the most irredentist elements in Israel and sustaining a permanent war against anyone or any country who disagrees with the Israeli right. That's the conclusion I've been forced to these last few years. And to insist that America adopt exactly the same constant-war-as-survival that Israelis have been slowly forced into... But America is not Israel. And once that distinction is made, much of the neoconservative ideology collapses.

The results of NeoCon policies have been nothing short of a disaster on an epic scale.  I predict that one day historians will not be kind in their assessment of the policies and actions of this bunch of immoral warmongers.  

Friday, November 27, 2015

Turkey, Russia, France and the US.

Since the shooting down of a Russian jet by a Turkish F16 fighter, several things, which some commentators have talked of before, are becoming more apparent and indeed are becoming part of the mainstream discourse.  Perhaps the most obvious is that the interests of the outside powers involved in the Syrian civil war, differ in many respects and indeed in a lot of cases are downright contradictory.  Let me summarize what I see as the goals and strategies of the main players.

Turkey.  It should be clear by now that Turkey has no interest in defeating IS (ISIL, ISIS, Daesh).  Indeed all of the time that IS is fighting the Syrian Kurdish forces (YPG) Turkey will support IS, as it has been doing throughout the conflict.  It continues to allow weapons, supplies and jihadi fighters to cross its frontier into Syria.  At the same time it allows convoys of tankers, loaded with crude oil produced in IS held territory  to cross the frontier in the other direction.   

Turkey's ambitions seem to be (a) the defeat of the Assad regime in Syria; (b) dismemberment of Syria; and following from that Turkish seizure of territory in northern Syria, ideally to include Syria's second city of Aleppo.  The aim of this putative annexation is not only territorial aggrandizement, but also, and perhaps mainly, to prevent the Syrian Kurds holding a contiguous strip of land on the southern side of the Turkish border, the northern side of which is  home to a  large number of Turkish Kurds.   At present Turkey has only demanded a "no-fly" zone in northern Syria, with the claim that it would be a place where refugees could safely shelter.  Erdogan has been trying to sell this idea to the EU, which quite reasonably wants to stem the flow of refugees, through Turkey and Greece.   It is true that Turkey has a serious problem with refugees, but at present it seems to be using the refugees mainly as a tool to coerce EU support for its no-fly zone (plus extorting the huge cash payment, which Angela Merkel offered, along with the carrot of eventual Turkish entry into the EU).  Things seemed to be swinging in Turkey's direction until Russia entered the fray.

Russia.  Russia has had cordial relations with Syria dating back to Soviet times and the reign of Assad pere (Haffez).  It has long had a naval base on Syria's Mediterranean coast, indeed its only such base on the shores of the Mediterranean.  The possibility of the Assad regime falling and a US backed regime taking its place has no doubt caused considerable concern in Moscow.  So this is an important reason why Russia has backed the Assad regime.  Another reason I believe is that it is profoundly worried about Washington's proclivity for instigating regime change in countries not on its side.  It has seen this happen in Iraq, Libya and Ukraine and perhaps not unreasonably sees itself as a potential target if these activities are not checked.  I believe Russia felt that it had been tricked and betrayed over Libya when it voted in the UN Security Council for air strikes to protect civilians in danger and found instead that NATO carried on an air war to oust the Qaddafi regime.  

Russia also has a genuine fear of jihadi extremists growing in power in Syria.  It has a very large Muslim population and is surrounded all along its southern border by Muslim states.  It has fought jihadis twice in wars in Chechnya and against the US backed mujahaddin in Afghanistan.  It fears the growth of IS and its potential for turning attention northward to Russia, especially as numbers of Chechen, Uzbek and other Central Asian jihadis are reportedly fighting in Syria. 

Russia has international law on its side when it says that the Assad government is the recognized government of Syria, and it is fighting against an insurgency at the invitation of that legitimate government.  

In its arial campaign in Syria Russia has targeted groups fighting against the Assad regime, not just IS.  This has seriously upset the US, who maintain the fiction of a "moderate opposition" and especially of Turkey, who sees its close relationship with the Turkmen militias fighting along the Turkish border, being disrupted.  The fiction that these are "moderates" was exploded with the publication of video of their fighters chanting "Allahu Akbhar" over the half-naked body of the Russian pilot they had recently machine gunned as he descended in a parachute.  

That the shooting down of the plane was carefully planned in advance seems beyond doubt.  Emre Uslu, a Turkish writer, here (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43532.htm)
describes how the Turkish public was primed through a media campaign in the days before the downing of the jet.  The fact that there were Turkish TV news crews on hand to film the shooting down and the fact that the government had radar traces at the ready, all lead to the same conclusion of a well-planned event.

The United States.  Whether the US knew in advance of the shooting down is not known.  However it does seem unlikely that Turkey would do something like this without first informing the US, especially as the Turks immediately called for NATO support.  There certainly would be many factions in US power circles who would like to see Russia discomfited.  Russia's intervention into Syria had upset US calculations as much as it had upset Turkey's.  The US policy in Syria seems to be disingenuous at best.  It has backed the idea of regime change from the start and the CIA has been supplying weapons and support to opposition groups.  There are even claims that the CIA was behind the first violent protests against the government to which it responded rapidly and brutally.  At first the US seemed to believe that there was a non-extremist opposition to Assad which would take power once the government was toppled.  But as the war progressed whatever moderates there were seemed to be overwhelmed and subsumed into the more determined and violent jihadi groups.  David Cameron may claim to believe that there are 70,000 "moderates" fighting the Syrian Arab Army, but very few others do.  

But it seems that the CIA was prepared to continue arming opposition groups, even when they knew they were of the jihadi persuasion. They even knew of the emergence of IS and did nothing to prevent it, indeed may have encouraged it.    A Pentagon secret document of 2012 (declassified under pressure from Judicial Watch) states 

“…there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion.

It seems to be the same strategy that the US had used with the mujahaddin in Afghanistan i.e. arm any group, no matter how unsavoury, as long as they are the enemy of our enemy.  This policy came back to bite in Afghanistan, with the emergence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and it seems to be doing the same in Syria/Iraq with IS.  Indeed it was only when IS started murdering US and other foreign citizens in the most barbaric fashion, that the US felt obliged to take any action against IS.  But it has been doing in it in a most disingenuous way, for example allowing IS convoys of oil tankers to regularly transit to the Turkish border.  While there is no doubt many different opinions within the US government on how to proceed, it seems to me that defeating and replacing Assad is still the dominant one.  Enough bombing of IS is done to prevent a public outcry, but I don't think Washington wants the complete defeat of ISIS because it is an enemy of Assad.  Also I believe that there is large contingent of Israeli fifth columnists within the US power structure (the Neocons) who are happy to see an ongoing war in Syria in which the Assad government and its Hezbollah allies are seriously weakened.  Indeed it seems that Israel has the permanent annexation of the Golan  in its plans, and has been clandestinely supporting IS. In October an Israeli colonel was captured by Iraqi forces fighting with IS in the Salahuddin province of Iraq.   This article gives details including name, serial number etc. 

               http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43544.htm

No doubt the anti-Assad faction in the US were very unhappy when French and Belgian terrorist conducted their attacks on Paris and IS claimed to be behind it.  People started demanding the destruction of IS, and some wondered publicly why the US and its NATO allies had not been more successful in defeating it.  Which leads us to France.

France.  Until the November 13 attacks on Paris, France seemed to be squarely on the same side as Turkey and the US - the defeat of Assad was their main goal.  But the attacks seemed to have concentrated the minds of M. Hollande and his government.  Now they realize that their real enemy is IS, not Assad.  President Hollande has stepped up French bombing of IS and has dispatched France's aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean to add to the fire power. He has agreed with President Putin to coordinate French and Russian arial actions against IS.  Furthermore some members of the French government have stated publicly that the Syrian Arab Army of Assad could be of considerable use in fighting IS.  No doubt this is not what Washington wanted to hear, and certainly not what President Erdogan of Turkey wanted to hear.  

With the Paris attacks the world is waking up to the fact that IS is a much bigger menace than the Al Assad regime.  The latter has not declared jihad on Christendom, nor has it bombed civilian airliners or sponsored terror attacks in European and Middle Eastern capitals. Indeed the Syrian regime possesses a sizeable battle-hardened army which, with arial support and in alliance with Kurdish factions could no doubt defeat IS and deprive it of all territory.  Will it happen?   I doubt it.  The CIA and other Washington warriors don't like to lose. Will Erdogan get his "no-fly" zone.  Again I doubt it, not with Russia now fully committed to fighting against his plans.  It looks like the war could go on for quite a while longer, but I can't help feeling that it is swinging against the US-Turkey-NATO-Saudi side. 





Friday, November 20, 2015

What have US and Allies been doing in Syria?

It seems that Russia has accomplished more in a few weeks in combatting Daesh (IS, ISIS, ISIL) than the US and its allies (UK, France, Canada, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, Gulf States etc.) have accomplished in a year or more.  One wonders why this is so.  Are Daesh so clever strategically that they can outwit the combined intelligence and firepower of this formidable array of powers?  On might have been forgiven thinking this from the lack of progress toward that end.  

And then Vladimir Putin at the G20 Summit in Antalya, Turkey, comes along and once more embarrasses his counterparts in the West by revealing something of what is really going on.  He talked about intelligence on Daesh receiving funding from individuals in forty countries - no doubt some of those countries are in the list of US allies above - but more than that he revealed something I imagine Washington did not want ever made public.  In Putin's words:

I’ve shown our colleagues photos taken from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the scale of the illegal trade in oil and petroleum products,” 
“The motorcade of refueling vehicles stretched for dozens of kilometers, so that from a height of 4,000 to 5,000 meters they stretch beyond the horizon,” 
Iraqi intelligence has estimated that Daesh earns $50 million a month from the sale of oil produced in fields in Syria and Iraq under its control.  It is sold on the black market in Turkey.  If one were serious in "degrading and destroying" Daesh one would have thought that an obvious target was its funding, in particular its oil exports.  So why has the US and its allies not bombed these oil convoys?  Remember the "Turkey Shoot" on Saddam's army as it retreated from Kuwait after the first Gulf War.  A convoy of hundreds of oil tankers making its way northward across the desert should have made an even easier target.  But they didn't do it.  The excuse of incompetence just won't wash.  No military (or military intelligence) could be that incompetent.
So clearly the US did not want to cut off Daesh funding in this way.  Why not?  I think one answer is that the US sees ousting Bashar Al Assad's regime as a higher priority than destroying Daesh.  Its actions have pointed in this direction for a long time.  For example it did nothing to stop a long convoy of Daesh forces advancing on Palmyra to attack the city held by the (Assad's) Syrian Arab Army.  But it similarly allowed Daesh convoys to cross the desert to successfully attack and capture Ramadi in Anbar province of Iraq, and at that time held by the Iraqi army.  This one remains a mystery because the fall of Ramadi didn't apparently negatively affect Assad's forces at all.
But coming back to the oil convoys, there is another possible reason for letting them continue unmolested which I came across today.  In a piece by Pepe Escobar entitled "In the Fight Against ISIS, Russia Ain’t Taking No Prisoners" there is the claim that 
"Turkish Socialist party member Gursel Tekin has established that Daesh’s smuggled oil is exported to Turkey by BMZ, a shipping company controlled by none other than Bilal Erdogan, son of “Sultan”Erdogan".
If this is indeed true, then one could see one possible reason why the Coalition has refrained from bombing the convoys. The US has believed it needs Turkey's support in its Syria operations.  Just this year Turkey has permitted the US to use its Incirlik air base, which is much closer to the Daesh heartland than the airfields in the Gulf that it was previously using.  It seemed at the time that the quid pro quo for this was to permit Turkey to attack Kurdish forces (which have been fighting Daesh and been supported by the US).  But perhaps Turkey (or at least the odious unprincipled Erdogan) wanted to keep the oil flowing so that his family could continue to profit from it and at the same time so that Daesh could continue fighting his sworn enemy Al Assad.  
There is so much we don't know about this whole sordid war.  One thing is clear many people are dying and being driven out of their homes and a country is being destroyed.  Now that some blowback is being felt in Europe with the refugee crisis and the murderous Paris attacks, perhaps we can hope (but not expect?) that some of the parties involved will start acting with some honesty and integrity.  






Monday, November 16, 2015

Some thoughts on the Paris outrages.

While we still don't know the full story of how the Paris attacks came about, the broad outlines are becoming somewhat clear.  It seems the attacks were carried out by seven or eight jihadis in three groups. They seem mostly to have been French or Belgian citizens with a base in Brussels, perhaps involving three brothers.

There are some disturbing aspects of the attacks.  The first is that the terrorists don't need to attack planes, trains, airports, stations or other transportation facilities as has been their choice in the past.  To strike terror one doesn't even need bombs.  Although the numbers are not yet clear it seems as if a few men with AK 47s were able to slaughter many innocent civilians in a very short time in a part of Paris where people were out enjoying meals, music and fellowship.  Although all of the assassins apparently had suicide belts they didn't really need them in order to inflict huge carnage, and install fear and terror in the civilian population.  This doesn't bode well for the future.  Just a few AKs in the trunk of a car is all that is needed for this sort of attack.   Suicide vests, also easily transported, add to the lethal and terrorizing power. 

Another disturbing fact is that most of the killers were French or Belgian citizens and that they were able to avoid interception by the security services of the French state which apparently enjoy greater powers of surveillance than most other Western countries.  We should remember this when other governments ask for even more intrusive powers than they already have.   

France has a greater problem with its Muslim population than most other European countries.  This I think in part is a consequence of the Algerian war of the 1950s and 60s.  It was a vicious brutal war with atrocities on both sides.  Many French felt that they had been sold out when De Gaul agreed to peace talks with the FLN leading to eventual independence.  Remember the OAS and the Algerie Francaise factions in France.  There were fears of an army mutiny and more than one attempt on De Gaul's life.  When the war ended many (900,000) pieds noir (ethnically French Algerians) and a smaller but still significant number (about 90,000) of ethnic Algerian harkis  (who had served in the French army fighting to keep Algeria French) sought safety in France.  The French government sought to restrict the entry of the harkis in spite of the fact that those who remained in Algeria were frequently tortured and murdered by the FLQ or by lynch mobs.  It was a huge betrayal that led to a perpetual sense of resentment.  As the Wikipedia article on the war puts it "The abandonment of the "Harkis" both in terms of non-recognition of those who died defending a French Algeria and the neglect of those who escaped to France, remains an issue that France has not fully resolved".

This population of once-loyal Algerians formed the nucleus of the Algerian population in France, and there has been a strong sense of resentment and betrayal in that community ever since then.  Couple this with a mutual sense of resentment from many of the native French population (no doubt exaggerated by the influx of the pieds noir) and the difficulty for Algerians and other Muslims from former French colonies of obtaining good jobs and acceptance in the society and one has a very volatile and unstable situation.  Recall the riots of a few years back when cars were burnt;  and many of the banlieus, where many of the Muslim population reside, became essentially no-go zones for the police.  All of this occurred without the outside influence of the wars that have plagued Iraq, Syria and Libya in the twenty-first century and before the rise of Al Qaeda and ISIS.  This community is an ideal recruiting ground for murderous jihadi organizations.

Compared to other European countries (save perhaps Belgium) France has been much less successful in integrating its Muslim minorities.  I think the bitter legacy of the Algerian war is a major reason for this.  Sad to say,  I also believe that there is also a strong streak of racism among the French.  I don't know much about Belgium but I suspect that the strong links between French-speaking Wallonia and France itself means that attitudes in France carry over to Belgium.

And I believe it is for this reason that ISIS has made France its number one European target.  I suspect it is not that France is bombing ISIS in Syria (after all many other countries are involved in that), but simply the fact that there is such a large pool of potential assassins and networks of sympathizers in France, that it makes it is much easier for them to carry out attacks in France than elsewhere. 

The Charlie Hebdo  attacks of last January were not organized by ISIS nor were the many "lone-wolf" small-scale murders carried out, especially against Jewish targets, in France and Belgium.  

While ISIS and other jihadi movements are a threat to much of the world, especially the Arab world, the threat to France looks particularly strong. France's future looks very bleak.

Post Script.   After posting this blog I came across this article by Robert Fisk of The Independent.  What he says reinforces my argument.  He also points the finger at Saudi responsibility.  Its worth reading.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/france-s-unresolved-algerian-war-sheds-light-on-the-paris-attack-a6736901.html

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

New Government. New faces.

Already I am beginning to get tired of Justin Trudeau's voice and image.  But that is not his fault, just the overkill of broadcast journalism.  He ran a good campaign and the Liberals deserved to win, although they got some fortunate help from what turned out to be blunders by opposing parties.

The NDP were outflanked on the left by the Liberals.  Thomas Mulcair in his campaign tried too hard to reassure voters that things wouldn't change too much, at least on the economic front.  He wanted to convince voters, especially in Ontario, that the NDP were not a 'tax and spend' party, and that they wouldn't run deficits the way Bob Rae's NDP government in Ontario had done.  So right from the early days of the campaign he promised to balance the budget. I think most voters realized that if he were to keep this promise then he would have little room for any of the programs he wanted to introduce e.g. universal child care.  That meant his credibility was open to question, especially after the Conservatives tried to play up how he had switched parties - from a Quebec Liberal to the NDP - and how he had publicly expressed admiration for Margaret Thatcher.  

The Conservative blunder was over the niquab issue.  It backfired, not so much because it wasn't successful in Quebec, but rather because it was too successful.  It pulled a lot of support from the NDP - Quebec was the party's base in the last election - and when this started showing up in the polls, the Anyone-But-Harper voters in the country at large, saw that the best way to defeat Harper was to go with the Liberals.  The Liberals too opposed Harper on the niquab ban, but unlike the NDP did not lose support in Quebec over it - mainly because they didn't have a lot of support there to begin with, but also because what support they did have was concentrated in the greater Montreal area, with urban voters more used to, and tolerant of, differences than many in other parts of the province where the NDP had its support. Harper also probably overegged the pudding when he went on to describe setting up a snitch line for reporting "barbaric cultural practices".  Perhaps this generated a revulsion among Canadians at large who didn't like the idea of the government trying to police cultural standards.  I can see why many Canadians from ethnic backgrounds would have been seriously turned off of the Conservatives by this action, not to mention those among what Harper had called "old stock Canadians" of a more liberal and tolerant nature.

So much for the post mortem.  What about the future? In jest I have been saying that the Liberals should create a Ministry for the Repeal of Odious Legislation of the Harper Government.  There would certainly be enough to keep them busy for a good long while.  They could start with the Fair Elections Act, which was anything but.  While at that task they could consider alternative electoral systems.  My favourite, which would not require too radical a change, is to consider preferential ballots in the way they do in Australia.  Apparently this system has been used in Canada before - it was used in BC until being abolished by WAC Bennett, in the sixties.  An interesting aside on this system is that it was proposed by the Victorian-era Oxford mathematician Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll.

Other targets for the Ministry for Repeal would include the bills, passed by the Harper government, as it liked to be called, which loosened environmental standards;  muzzled Government scientists; and the vindicative criminal justice bills including those involving mandatory sentencing.   

A further bill outlawing the practice of hiding legislation in thousand page budget bills should be passed.  Perhaps a first task would be to read through all these pages of verbiage and find out what is actually in them!

Such an act prohibiting omnibus legislation wouldn't normally be necessary with honourable people running the show, but this deceptive practice became common under the secretive and paranoid Conservative government.   

When it comes to external affairs Trudeau has already begun to move. Apparently he has told Obama that Canada will cease participating in the bombing of ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria.  Also cancellation of the F35 fighter jets is on the cards.  He wants to improve relations with Iran, presumably with a reopening of embassies.  

Of course a big issue for the new government is climate change policy. It is perhaps too soon for Trudeau to announce a new policy at the upcoming meeting in Paris, but he could at least announce an ambition to do at least as much, or more than, whatever the US offers.

There is a lot to do!  Certainly much bad stuff that Harper brought in needs to be rolled back.  Justin Trudeau promised a lot in general terms on election night.  Let's hope he is able to translate those good intentions into practical policy.  

PS. One good result of the election was that several of the more obnoxious Conservative members lost their seats, and we won't have to see them on TV any more.  Specifically:  PM Spokesman Paul Calendra;  Minister for Immigration Alexander;  Finance Minister Joe Oliver (he was more insufferable in his previous role as Natural Resources Minister).  Its too bad that the champion of contemptuous bad manners, Pierre Pollievre retained his seat, along with the parliamentary thug, Peter van Loan.  Also gone (to jail) is Dean del Mastro.

Thursday, October 8, 2015

Foul! You're Bombing our Jihadis!

The hypocrisy of the US and NATO criticism of Russian bombing in Syria is stunning. 

"They are not bombing ISIL.  They are recklessly killing civilians!"  

As if NATO bombing were somehow insulated from inflicting death and destruction on non-combatants.  
And as if the targets of the Russian attacks were not Islamic jihadis, intent on destroying anyone and anything who disagree with their Wahabbi inspired brand of Islam. 

The Nusra Front, which so far seems to be the main target of the Russian bombs, started life as the Syrian branch of ISIS (ISIL, Daesh). After internal disagreements (probably power struggles for control) they broke away and adopted the name al-Nusra.  Fighting with Nusra are fighters who still call themselves al-Qaeda, still nominally commanded by bin Laden's colleague, Ayman al-Zawahiri.  These groups are fighting to overthrow the Assad regime, and replace it with some kind of fundamentalist mediaeval Islamic state.

But because they are fighting Assad, they somehow became acceptable to the US, whose priority in Syria is to remove Assad. There are Wikileaks documents showing US plans for such a regime change going back to 2007.  So on the principle that 'my enemy's enemy is my friend' somehow the non-ISIS jihadi opposition became "moderate" jihadis, ones who we could support.   

Russia has no such illusions, and is clear that it wants to support the Assad regime.  So it is fighting all of Assad's enemies.  So far they seem not to have done much against ISIS, but no doubt that will happen when they have inflicted sufficient damage on the Nusra crowd, for the Syrian army to recapture territory lost to them.  

And when they do turn their bombs on ISIS I am sure that they will be far more effective than NATO has ever been.  We have had over a year of NATO bombing and during that time ISIS has got stronger capturing new territory, including Palmyra and its World Heritage Roman ruins.  The most technologically advanced military in the world couldn't even hit a convoy of unprotected ISIS white Toyotas crossing the desert on their way to take Ramadi.

Is this because the NATO airforces are incompetent?  Or because they have inadequate intelligence?  Or because somehow ISIS is too canny to be caught?  

Of course it is not.  It is because NATO doesn't want to destroy ISIS all the time that Assad is in power. I am confident that the thinking in Washington is that they will deal with ISIS after Assad has gone.  

The removal of the Assad regime has always been the US number one priority.  But they could not sell another regime-change war to the American public.  So they provided weapons, financing and expertise to an assorted bunch of groups fighting Assad, including a lot of extreme jihadis.  The few non-extremist opponents of Assad have for the most part been destroyed or taken over by one or other of the jihadi groups.  Many of the weapons and foot soldiers ended up with ISIS.  But after ISIS's barbaric public executions of foreigners including Americans, something had to be done, so a bombing campaign was initiated.   But it has always been a half-hearted affair.  Enough to convince the public back home that they were fighting the evils of extremist terrorism ('we fight it over there so we don't have to fight it over here'), but not enough to inflict real damage on ISIS.

But that is about to change.  I am prepared to wager that Russia, allied with Syrian Army and Kurdish troops, will do more damage to ISIS in a few weeks than the US with its various allies has done in nearly two years.

What happens then is another question.  Hopefully the US will give up on its regime-change obsession and peace talks can begin.  The Syrian people have suffered too much and much of the suffering can be put at the doors of outside agents.  I suspect a lasting peace, maintaining Syria's territorial integrity, can only be reached if there is an agreement between the outside actors to support a strong central government.  Unfortunately that still seems a long way off. 






Friday, October 2, 2015

Vladimir Putin's Address to UN.

No doubt Vladimir Putin is not a very nice person. Nor Bashar el Assad. Just to survive, yet alone rise to (or stay at) the top, in the worlds they inhabit, one doubtless needs to be very ruthless.
But Putin is not Hitler, intent on world domination, and it would make sense to pay attention to what he has to say. In his speech to the UN Security Council he made some sharp and uncomfortable observations. Of particular importance I think was of the need for all countries to respect the sovereignty of others - a principle laid down with the Peace of Westphalia over 350 years ago, but seemingly violated at will since the end of the Cold War.

He admits to Soviet misdeeds in this realm and goes on to castigate the US and NATO for destroying states in North Africa and the Middle East - Libya, Iraq and, although he doesn't mention it by name, Syria.   Another example carried out by the Saudis, with US complicity, is Yemen  “Yemen after five months looks like Syria after five years,” said the international head of the Red Cross after visiting Yemen.

He could also have mentioned how the US has developed the art of illicit de-stabilization and regime change since the Second World War. During the Cold War these operations were predominantly carried out in Latin America, their so-called "backyard"  - Guatemala (1954), Dominican Republic (1961), Chile (1973), Cuba (unsuccessfully, 1959), Nicaragua (1980s) but there were also other operations closer to the Soviet Union  for example in Iran (1953).  Since the ending of the Cold War it has got completely out of hand - Iraq, Libya, Syria and ongoing covert operations against the government of Iran, not to mention US involvement in Ukraine and the destabilization of Venezuela.

And the results of these so-called "democracy-promoting" exercises? Well as Putin says, “An aggressive foreign interference has resulted in a brazen destruction of national institutions. … Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress, we got violence, poverty and social disaster."

He describes how ISIS emerged from the ruins of Iraq - many former Iraqi army soldiers, who no longer had a position, but still had weapons, joined Al Qaeda in Iraq; then fighters from Libya started finding their way to Syria along with weapons from Qadaffi's arsenals funnelled by the CIA; and units trained by the US and Gulf State allies, as the so-called "moderate opposition", started defecting. And so ISIS was born.

Another thing Putin warns against is using terrorist groups to achieve political ends. It seems now common practice in the ME. But while the US and the West fulminate against terrorism, they have been as bad as anyone in using jihadi groups for their own ends, going back at least to the US use of mujahadeen in Afghanistan, out of which emerged Al Qaeda.   Probably the CIA are currently supporting some of the imagined "more moderate" jihadi groups in Syria.

All in all it is not a pretty picture. And not one which is clearly accepted in most of the western media. It is easier to divide the world into 'goodies' and 'baddies'. Of course our side are the 'goodies' in the white hats. Putin is portrayed as wearing a black hat, but clearly he understands what is going on. Maybe he doesn't wear a white hat. But he points out that our side doesn't either. And he pleads for a better way of conducting international relations.

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Citizenship, C24 and the Election.

It was no surprise that the Conservative government chose to revoke the citizenship of several dual-citizen Canadians in the middle of the election campaign - indeed a day or two  before the leaders' debate on foreign policy.  I have no doubt that they had this in mind when they passed the Bill C24 back in June.

Similarly I have no doubt that it played well with a big part of the electorate and that the Conservatives picked up quite a few votes over the issue.  From Harper's point of view both Justin Trudeau and Thomas Mulcair played exactly the role he had crafted for them - that is being forced to defend the rights of convicted terror plotters in front of a national audience.  

The rights and wrongs of the issue can be debated.  Certainly I can see the point of view that those convicted of  plotting or conducting terrorist crimes don't deserve to keep their Canadian citizenship. There are of course arguments on the other side, namely that it creates two types of citizenship (those who have had it since birth and those who have gained it later in life) and that by revoking a dual citizen's Canadian status one is essentially exporting a problem to another country, that of the dual citizen's other nationality.  

These are issues open to debate and I could be persuaded either way.

However there is one very big objection I have to C24 and it is one I think that both Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Mulcair would have done well to emphasize in the televised debate.

This objection is that the decision to revoke lies solely with the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration (or in reality with the Prime Minister, since the Minister serves only at the PM's pleasure).  

To me this seems to bypass a fundamental principle that decisions affecting basic liberties and rights are made not by the government of the day, but by the courts with due process being followed.  C24 as it stands gives far too much power to the government of the day and I fully expect that it will be overturned as unconstitutional when the first challenge to it reaches the Supreme Court.

As an example of how it could be abused consider the case of Mohammed Fahmy, a dual Egyptian-Canadian citizen convicted in Egypt on charges of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, which since a military coup overthrew the elected Brotherhood government, has been a banned terrorist organization in that country.  Fahmy was alleged to have supported the Brotherhood through his journalism for Al Jazeera.

As is well-known he was eventually released following a pardon.  But he is now in a position where his Canadian citizenship could be revoked at the stroke of a pen by the current Minister.  Nobody of course expects this to happen. But suppose Fahmy had been a less sympathetic figure.  Suppose for example that he was a radical Marxist and had been a strident critic of Canada's involvement in the bombing of Libya and Syria.  Suppose he had publicly questioned the official narrative on 911, or that he had, in his journalistic career, exposed some wrongdoing by a member of the government.  Suppose he was someone like George Galloway in the UK.

The temptation to get rid of him might be too hard for a minister to resist, especially if he had little support among the public at large.  

Such power is not compatible with a truly democratic society where the rule of law is paramount.  As they say everybody deserves his day in court.  

Bill C24 could be amended by requiring any revocation of citizenship to occur after a Government application to a citizenship court.  Or perhaps even simpler to allow a judge in sentencing someone convicted of treason or terrorism, to include in the sentence the revocation of Canadian citizenship.  

As I say, I fully expect the law as it stands, will be overturned by the Supreme Court.  Stephen Harper probably expects that as well.  But for him it doesn't matter. It has provided him with a wedge issue during the election campaign, by which he can make his opponents look soft on terrorism.  Unfortunately he seems to have had some measure of success in this.