Finding "Truth" a challenge, VANOC opts for fantasy

When I read the headline on Dave Obee's column I was a little confused.

Ditch the cynicism and enjoy the Games

Yeah, well... I don't have it in me to drop the cynicism. Obee makes a valid point in his column with respect to protesters. I would agree that those who feel the need to make a loud and disruptive statement over the games probably damage any cause they represent by:

a. Not making their cause clear;
b. Merging it with a thousand other causes that are just as unclear;
c. Pissing people off who are just trying to have fun (at a time when "fun" is coming at a high personal and collective cost);
d. Unwittingly contributing to an economic boost which they protest is not going to happen from holding a five-ring circus.

Obee then goes on to tell us how he was at the 1988 Calgary games and what a wonderful deal they were. Hmmm. I was also at the 1988 Calgary games... in Canmore. It pains me that Obee thinks the biathalon is boring. Being an involuntarily assigned part of the Olympic Games structure in 1988 was a huge pain in the ass, but since the only thing I saw was the biathalon, boring it was not.

Obee then goes on to explain why we should remain cynical.

Nice.

Now, VANOC has produced another reason not to believe anything they pop on us. Ron Judd at The Seattle Times got a press release from the VANOC spin merchants. If you weren't cynical before, you should be after you read Ron's words.

The press release was issued before the arrival of the Olympic flame in Victoria on Friday, 30 October. The media was expected to sit on it until after the "embargo" was lifted at 10:45 PDT on the 30th.

Amazingly, the VANOC fantasy fairies knew in advance how everything would go, and the exact words spoken by VANOC king-of-the-trough, John Furlong, and BC premier Gordon Campbell, even though they had not yet spoken them. The VANOC communications directorate even managed to capture the emotions of all those who spoke and participated in the event even though the event had not yet occurred.

Some of you might remember the blathering of Fox TV uber-right-wing nutball Glenn Beck, when he outright lied about the cost of the Vancouver Olympic Games in an effort to cast the Chicago Olympic bid as a bad Obama initiative. The White House Press Secretary tore Beck (quite deservedly) to shreds for yet another lie since, as anyone who could get to a keyboard pointed out, the Vancouver Olympics had not yet occurred.

While Beck certainly has a recurring problem with the truth, the recent activities of VANOC PR and communications give one a moment of pause. Did Beck perhaps get his information from VANOC? Both seem able to report on events which have not yet transpired.

I can hardly wait for the "Tears of Joy" stories from VANOC.

And here is the unaltered press release which described the sham from start to finish, before it ever happened.

VICTORIA, Oct. 30 /CNW/ - The Vancouver 2010 Olympic Torch Relay is officially underway with Him/Her revealed today as the first torchbearer to hold the Olympic Flame aloft on Canadian soil at the start of the historic 106-day journey celebrating Olympic Spirit and Canadian pride from coast to coast to coast.

XX, a (insert description here) was quickly joined by (short description) XX, (short description) XX, and (short description) XX who took turns carrying the flame as it left the grounds of the British Columbia Parliament Buildings in Victoria, BC, and set out on Day 1 of its odyssey across Canada.

XXX was especially chosen to kick-off the relay to highlight and celebrate (XXX).

Upon the relay's conclusion on February 12, 2010 with the start of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games, the flame will have burned brightly in over 1,030 Canadian communities and reached within 900 kilometres of the North Pole.

"The flame embodies the Olympic ideals of excellence, friendship and respect. These values resonate deeply with all Canadians," said Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, as he welcomed the flame at the public ceremony in downtown Victoria.

"The Olympic Flame will be travelling across Canada on the longest torch relay within a single country in Olympic history. With nearly 200 communities across Canada participating in local celebrations, this is a chance for Canadians from all parts of our great nation to share in the excitement as we count down to the Games' opening day."

With the glow of the Olympic Flame guiding their way, a ceremonial party of First Nations chiefs paddled across the waters of Victoria's Inner Harbour this morning towards the public welcoming ceremony cradling the flame from the dramatic jutting bow of a traditional canoe.

On shore, onlookers waved Canadian flags as they lined the harbourfront and sweeping green lawns of the British Columbia Parliament Buildings craning for their first look at the flame.

Traditionally painted with a Salish sea wolf on the blade-like bow, the Four Host First Nations canoe carrying the flame - a 13.5-metre ocean-going craft hand-carved from a single towering West Coast red cedar - was flanked on the historic voyage by two other canoes manned by representatives of the local First Nations who sang traditional songs.

Before docking, the Lil'wat, Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh chiefs asked permission to come ashore and passed the Olympic Flame, protected in a miner's lantern, to fellow leaders of the Songhees and Esquimalt nations upon whose traditional territories the Parliament Buildings stand. After a brief ceremony conducted in accordance with Salish protocols, the chiefly procession then carried the flame to a stage setup on the grounds for the start of the welcoming ceremony, accompanied by Aboriginal flame attendants Dina Ouellette and Aronhiaies Herne.

In a tribute to Jack Poole during the ceremony, the crowd bowed their heads in a moment of silence. The chairman of the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games' (VANOC) board of directors passed away last week just hours after the flame was lit by the sun in Olympia, Greece.

To honour his memory, Poole's wife, Darlene, ignited a small torch with the Olympic Flame and set the 1.2-metre community celebration cauldron ablaze on stage. This same cauldron will be lit in nearly 200 celebration communities across Canada as part of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Torch Relay, which officially starts today.

"What a magical moment," said John Furlong, VANOC's Chief Executive Officer. "We are embarking on an odyssey that we hope will shine a bright light on the people and places of Canada, starting right here in Victoria. For 106 days, we will have the time of our lives finishing back here in British Columbia for an Olympic Winter Games we hope will be marked in history as among the best."

Earlier this morning, at approximately 7:15 am (Pacific Time), the Olympic Flame touched down on Canadian soil at Victoria International Airport after flying for almost 24 hours on board a Canadian Forces CC-150 Polaris (Airbus A-310) aircraft from Athens, Greece, where the flame was entrusted to Canadian officials for the Games by members of the Hellenic Olympic Committee.

The flame was carried off the plane in a miner's lantern by Gregor Robertson, mayor of Vancouver: the Host City of the Games, as the stirring skirls of a solo bagpiper filled the early morning air. The Canadian prime minister and British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell were among the dignitaries on hand for the flame's arrival celebrated with a 50-member honour guard and a flyby of four CF-18 jets from the 409 Tactical Fighter Squadron streaking overhead in a classic box formation.

The same jets soared overhead at approximately 10:40 am as VANOC revealed the identity of XXX as the first torchbearer to carry the flame in the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Torch Relay, presented by Coca-Cola and RBC and supported by the Government of Canada. As the audience cheered, he/she ran through the crowd proudly carrying the curved metre-long winter white torch, officially starting the 106-day relay's 45,000-kilometre journey across Canada.

Moments later on Belleville Street, near the British Columbia Parliament Buildings, the first torchbearer flame handover took place - the first of 12,000 such exchanges marking the passing of the sacred fire to a new torchbearer. All 12,000 torchbearers will carry torches designed and manufactured by Bombardier and wear white uniforms accented with bright bursts of blue and green on the jacket's left arm, provided by the Hudson's Bay Company as keepsakes of their moment in Olympic history.

"The Olympic Torch Relay brings the spirit and energy of the Olympics to communities throughout British Columbia and across Canada," said Premier Campbell. "With the arrival of the flame on Vancouver Island, we are marking the start of an historic journey that will connect all Canadians and focus the eyes of the nation and the world on British Columbia when the relay ends here in just 105 days to kick-off the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games."

Today on Day 1 of the relay, the flame will visit 11 communities and places of interest in the Capital Regional District of the province and be carried by 147 torchbearers over 90 kilometres on foot, bike and boat. Among the areas visited are XX Aboriginal communities - the first of more than 100 First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities the flame will visit across Canada. More than 600 Aboriginal people are also playing important roles in the relay, such as torchbearers and honorary elder fire keepers.

Tonight, the Parliament Buildings in Victoria will once again welcome the Olympic Flame - this time as the site of the first community celebration of the 2010 torch relay. The celebration will include dance, theatre, visual and performance art, multimedia technology, and pyrotechnics. Members of the Victoria Symphony and hundreds of First Nations drummers and Les Cornouillers dancers will perform as the Parliament Buildings are painted in light with massive projections. Jeneece Edroff, 15, will light the community celebration cauldron on stage after she was selected by the community as their final torchbearer of the day.

Why listen to experts when you can get politicians to promote the big lie.

Despite the fact that Stevie Harper has decided to "impanel" a "non-partisan" group of so-called experts to determine the value and future of the Canadian mission to Afghanistan, there is already a group which is working diligently to evaluate what the overall NATO mission is actually accomplishing.

They have little in the way of positive news to report.

THE bloodshed in Afghanistan has reached levels not seen since the 2001 invasion as anger at bungling by an ineffective Government in Kabul and its foreign backers stokes support for the Taliban and other extremist groups.

[...]

"This place can only go up or down, and it's going down fast, which is something the international community simply will not understand," said a security analyst who has been working in and out of Afghanistan for 30 years.

Almost six years after the hardline Islamist Taliban were ousted, their insurgency is gaining strength, fuelled by resentment at NATO bombing of civilians, billions of dollars of wasted aid, a lack of jobs and record crops of opium, the raw material for heroin.

The fighting is spreading to places once relatively safe, including the capital and the western and northern parts of the country.

"This is a guerilla movement but it does seem to have a real momentum behind it at the moment," said Joanna Nathan, an analyst for the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank headed by former foreign minister Gareth Evans.

In Kabul, where suicide bombs have killed almost 50 people in two weeks, foreigners are increasingly ordered into "lockdown" -- barred by employers from leaving their heavily protected compounds, often behind armed guards, razor wire and concrete blast walls.

"It's all now too close -- people are jumpy," said a UN official who has lived in the dusty, chaotic city ringed by mountains for four years.

The revitalised Taliban have switched tactics back to traditional guerilla warfare after attempts to take on foreign troops under separate NATO and US commands in pitched battles last year resulted in heavy casualties.

On doesn't have to think too hard as to where this has happened in the past. How often have we heard, "They never won a battle when they engaged us in a real fight," only to be reminded that they actually won the war?

"They never evaporated into thin air. The Taliban were there, they have been there and they are here now," said government adviser and former minister Hamidullah Tarzi, carrying his trademark silver pistol.

"One reason for their renewed strength is that the people are more or less amenable to what they are doing and maybe some of the (NATO) bombardments have not been very wisely executed.

"That has helped the people get closer to the Taliban. They are dying and they feel that they are the same (as the Talibs) from the religious point of view."

Scores, possibly hundreds, of civilians have been killed in air strikes, mainly called in to support ground troops fighting rebels. The US-led NATO force, government officials and village leaders differ over details and numbers.

The Taliban-led insurgency is also being bolstered by drugs money -- the UN reported a 50per cent jump in this year's opium crop -- local and tribal disputes, and a lack of jobs.

With the wrecked economy and the dangers of getting crops to market, being a paid fighter for the Taliban is often the only way isolated Afghans can feed their families.

So, reconstruction, in real terms, clearly hasn't happened.

"It's important to emphasise: I don't think the Taliban themselves are wildly popular," Ms Nathan said.

"I don't think people want Taliban times back. It is a broad dissatisfaction with what is happening in the country now. I think the Taliban are very clever at appealing to people or groups that are locally disenfranchised or disempowered."

I'll be accused of taking a long leap here. Go ahead. Bang away. How the hell do you think a bunch of localized Reform Party fanatics managed to hijack a centrist Canadian political party and get themselves elected into a position of actually governing a population they absolutely despise?

Much of the violence in Afghanistan is rooted in ordinary crime as the conflict erodes security and the rule of law and young men desperately seek money.

"Some of my friends don't have jobs. They just walk the streets. They talk among themselves of kidnapping a foreigner just to make some money," said "Sayed", a university business student who did not want his real name used.

Guns are easy to come by and drug addiction in the country that supplies almost all the world's opium is rising.

Unemployment is near 40 per cent and many Afghans live in appalling conditions, with no running water, sewerage or electricity. Roads are poor and in the capital -- crammed with tens of thousands of squatters camped in mud brick huts -- most middle-class residents are lucky to have power a few hours a day.

"People thought democracy would give them everything -- jobs, roads, electricity, water -- but nothing of this sort has happened," Mr Tarzi said.

"In fact, it's getting worse. There is a lack of jobs, a lack of employment. Overall, nothing much has been done.

"The money that has come in has not been productive in relation to industrialisation."

That's because somebody, somewhere has an inverted view of what reconstruction was all about. In a country with absolutely nothing except an opium poppy crop to support itself, nobody offered anything better. Build schools, dig wells, even pave roads. Without a base industry or base industries, those things will become clients of whatever industry thrives. And right now, that is opium production.

Confidence in the Afghan Government, the first democratically elected administration in three decades, is fading fast.

President Hamid Karzai, 49, the philosopher and former freedom fighter who has ruled this country since 2001, faces criticism for his failure to stamp out the Taliban and raise living standards.

Dubbed "the mayor of Kabul", because he rarely leaves his palace and his Government's writ barely extends beyond the capital, Mr Karzai is battling to balance the demands of the people who elected him with those of the foreign backers who prop up his Government.

[...]

Domestically, Mr Karzai relies on a ragtag collection of former warlords, mujaheddin freedom fighters, ex-communists and others for support and is locked in a power struggle with his parliament. The President and the legislators -- a large number of whom are illiterate -- are coming to grips with democracy as much as with each other.

Mr Karzai has been criticised for failing to sack or prosecute corrupt officials and of handing out jobs as political favours to shore up support.

His Government has also failed to make serious inroads into the $3.3billion-a-year opium industry, which is tightly intertwined with the conflict and has been breaking production records almost every year since the Taliban's fall.

"The narcotics and insurgency feed into each other," said Ms Nathan.

[...]

Although it is a volatile area and a centre of Taliban support, the Dutch forces had forged close links with community leaders, cutting down the fighting, until a botched poppy eradication program by a US private security firm a few months ago, analysts say.

"Uruzgan was going OK until they went in with tractors and started ripping the poppy fields up," said the Kabul-based security analyst. "The Dutch had a good relationship with the people down there, the local leaders, but when they rip up your crop, what do you do? You grab your gun. They didn't even do that much damage to the crops in the end."

You can't win when you have enemies on both sides of the wire.

Australia is one of a small group of countries -- along with the US, Britain, Canada and The Netherlands -- willing to send its soldiers to where most of the fighting is.

Some European countries refuse to deploy their troops to the volatile south. Several members of the NATO-led force impose tough -- and, critics say, absurd -- limits, or caveats, on how their soldiers can be used, with some barring their units from fighting in the snow, above certain altitudes or at night.

Ms Nathan said: "It is incredibly important to have nations who are prepared to go south in a robust way, to go down there not laden by caveats; to go down there to do what is needed, when it's needed, how it's needed."

Note a couple of things here. Canada falls in with the group of countries fighting in the south of Afghanistan. It would explain, at least in part, the smear-job performed by Harper on his own country while addressing the Australian parliament. Howard and Harper, political soul-mates, both performing international acts of fellatio on George W. Bush, are locked into the Bush agenda, even if there isn't one.

The second thing worth noting is that the International Crisis Group is quite prepared to recommend that other NATO countries pick up the ball and run with it, including putting their troops in the dangerous areas and helping to eradicate the problem. The problem, whether anyone can see it or not, is the fact that the Bush administration has botched the task at hand so badly, that it will take a highly bolstered international effort to solve the problem.

But Harper has decided to create his own "panel of experts", not one of which has actually set foot in Afghanistan. They know nothing of the history of the place. They're going to read all about it, go there for a few days, meet as a group and then pass judgment on "the mission". All the while, they, and the Harper government will probably ignore the findings of the International Crisis Group.

That means we're wasting our money somewhere.

The Canadian government is one of the primary financial sponsors of the the International Crisis Group.

(H/T reader Cat for The Australian link)

Mea Culpa: As Alison was quick to point out to me, John Manley has been to Afghanistan. Even if his view was limited, he has at least the experience of being on the ground, primarily in Kabul. Jake Epp, as Minister of National Health during the Mulroney years did have some involvement with NGOs working in Afghanistan, although I am less likely to accept that it means anything. Remember, Jake Epp, after the Progressive Conservatives were all but wiped out in a federal election, joined the Alliance Party and threw his support behind Stockwell Day. I would question his judgement.