There seems to be some confusion as to whether or not AK47s and RPGs (rocket propelled grenade) were present in the video released by WikiLeaks of the slaughter of civilians, including two Reuters news staff, by the crew of an Apache helicopter in Baghdad in 2007. Consequently, I present here a brief primer on spotting AK47s and RPGs in hopes it will be useful to anyone trying to resolve this question by watching the video.

The name AK47 stands for Kalashnikov (its Soviet inventor) Automatic, model year 1947. That’s right, a design from just after World War two which has continued to be manufactured down through the decades to today, not because it represents some sort of perfection in rifle design, but because the thing is so damned durable, cheap, and easy to use.

Here’s a link to a Google image search on the term AK47.

As you might imagine, over the years there have been many variants and styles, but one thing which appears remarkably consistent is the curved magazine which contains the bullets.

The RPG, on the other hand, doesn’t appear to have quite the same amount of variety.

And here’s a link to a Google image search on the term Rocket Propelled Grenade .

This is a shoulder fired weapon with a very distinctive shape when the grenade part is attached to the launcher. One might describe it as almost phallic, with the grenade creating the impression of an elongated bulge at the front. I confess, while I had heard of it within the context of war reporting, I hadn’t given much thought to what it looked like, and recently, for some strange reason, was thinking that it must look something like a camera with a telephoto lens.

Now that we know what AK47s and RPGs look like, let’s look at some key frames from the video.

Is this fellow holding an AK47 or RPG?

It looks like he’s holding a gun of some kind, but with no distinctive magazine, and it doesn’t seem to fit the profile of an RPG.

How about this fellow?

Again, looks like a gun, but no magazine, and also, easy to to say, not an RPG.

So no one is carrying an RPG. But wait, how about this frame a little later of the first guy’s weapon again, but in a different orientation?

Let’s zoom in a bit on that.

Does that profile not look a bit priapic? This sequence of frames is very easy to miss, occurring for only a couple of seconds. You would think that the gunner would mention it, since a lucky shot from an RPG (they are inaccurate except at short distances) could do serious damage. Keep in mind, though, that even if it is a guy carrying an RPG, that doesn’t mean it’s open season on him if he isn’t clearly a belligerent.

What of this figure suspiciously hiding behind the corner: does he have an AK47 or an RPG?

Strange that they would miss an RPG carried by one of the men earlier, yet here mistake a camera for one. You and I, knowing now what we do, would certainly never have made such errors. But sadly, if we were filled with blood lust and adrenalin and in a similar psychological state, we just might.

That’s why the guys in the Apache will walk away from this even if it were reinvestigated and charges filed. I’m not convinced that any court using the standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt” could say that these fellows weren’t actually seeing what they wanted to see and calling it as they saw it; that is to say, there was no conscious intention to deceive in order to get permission to engage. As hard as it may be to stomach on first watching, the initial attack could be regarded as a regrettable failure of perception brought on by extreme and understandable conditions.

Firing on those giving aid to the wounded, however, was a clear war crime, and probably the real reason for the cover up. Yet even there, the only one who is in any danger of legal consequence is the controller. The crew of the helicopter sought and got permission to engage. That could be interpreted as an order, thus opening the door to the “just following orders” defence. I know, that hasn’t been admissible in an international court since the Nuremberg trials at the conclusion of World War II, but if you think any of those fellows will ever go before an international court, then I respectfully suggest you put down the pipe.

This concludes AK47 and RPG Spotting 101. I hope you will find this information useful with regard to determining just what is and isn’t (and might or might not be) in the WikiLeaks video, and I pray you will never need that kind of information to make the type of determinations required by the crew of that Apache.

We now know, thanks to WikiLeaks, that the US military lied about the killing of 11 Iraqi civlians, including two Reuters reporters, in 2007. “There is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force,” said its spokesman at the time. But the classified video released yesterday by the whistleblowing web organization plainly shows otherwise. No hostile actions by those on the ground; no threat to US forces; just some men walking through a courtyard, one appearing to hold a weapon pointed at the ground, the two journalists carrying cameras that the soldiers in the Apache helicopter overhead mistake for rocket-propelled grenades.

This isn’t shocking (though the video is); armies lie, truth being the first casualty of, well, you know. What’s interesting, though, is to go back and review the way The New York Times reported the story:

BAGHDAD, July 12 — Clashes in a southeastern neighborhood here between the American military and Shiite militias on Thursday left at least 16 people dead, including two Reuters journalists who had driven to the area to cover the turbulence, according to an official at the Interior Ministry.

The American military confirmed that the journalists, Namir Noor-Eldeen, top, and Saeed Chmagh, were killed as American forces battled insurgents in the area.

.
Every week we read ledes like this from Iraq and Afghanistan, presenting information that is patently unconfirmed, at least by the reporting organization, as “confirmed.” Yes, it’s our job as media literates to remind ourselves that second-hand information isn’t fact, it’s hearsay. But how often do we do so, and how often do we accept what we’ve read as “news” and move on? (The Times has now published a story that revisits the Army’s statements in light of the WikiLeaks video.)

What is appalling, though, is the way, one year later, the reporters’ own employer commemorated the killings. “The deaths of the two men brought an outpouring of tributes,” reported Reuters on the occasion of a memorial tribute held at its Baghdad bureau. “‘Namir was our favourite little brother with a big heart and a great talent who achieved great things in such a short time,’ said former Baghdad bureau chief Alastair Macdonald. Steve Crisp, Middle East Pictures Editor, added: ‘I can still see him walking out of the [Reuters] compound with his cameras slung over his shoulders laughing with Saeed on his way to his last assignment’.”

All well and good. Then this: “That was the morning of Thursday, 12th July 2007, in the fifth year of the U.S. and British led campaign to pacify Iraq and restore democracy after the overthrow and execution of the dictator Saddam Hussein.”

Oh really? That was the reason for the invasion? Not non-existent WMDs? Not phony links to Al-Qaeda? Not geo-political strategy? Not oil? But rather, peace and democracy?

It’s one thing for the Army to lie. It’s quite another for a major news organization to do so, and keep on doing so, five years along. The real way to honour Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh would have been, just once, to tell the truth about the war that killed them — the same truth they were in pursuit of when the US military opened fire.

An important story over at WikiLeaks concerns what appears to be the slaughter of innocent civilians by American forces, including two Reuters news staff, in Iraq . I should warn you that the video is very disturbing, taken as it is from the Apache helicopter doing the firing.

I’ll leave it to a political blogger to consider the big picture of what this says about the US military and their operations in Iraq, and restrict myself to a couple of technology related issues. The first, of course, must be to thank WikiLeaks for the courage they display in bringing us information that powerful entities like the US military don’t want us to have. They accept donations via paypal and some other options.

Secondly, I was struck by just how critical the role of accurate information is in this sort of situation. Elements of the US military do not always conduct themselves professionally, but nonetheless, command and control is professionally structured. Soldiers can’t simply fly around firing at whoever they like depending on how trigger-happy they’re feeling on any particular day. Before they can engage a target, they must request and get permission to do so.

But here’s the rub. The fellow removed from the heat of the action, who arguably should have a cooler head and better judgment, depends absolutely on the report of the people who will be doing the engaging for his decision on whether or not to engage. If you watch the video, you may be a bit stunned when you hear the gunner reporting that he sees people with RPGs and AK47s, because that simply isn’t apparent from the video.

I’m not an expert in military systems, but in light of this incident I would hope that someone in some military R & D lab somewhere is working on a system whereby the one who makes the decision could actually see the camera video in real time. That might have made a difference, if he could have said, “I don’t see a threat here, boys, simmer down and move on.”

Or maybe not. Even based on the verbal info he was getting, the guy granting the permission to engage should probably be court-martialed for approving the attack on unarmed civilians coming to the aid of a man wounded in the initial attack. No amount of technology can compensate for the criminally poor judgment of an officer.

Again, the video is very disturbing, but if you want to see for yourself, you can view it here. Here’s an MSNBC clip with some analysis, but same warning, as they show the video in an inset while they talk over it.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson announced in Question Period Friday that the government will comply with, rather than appeal, the Federal Court decision ordering it to repatriate Abousfian Abdelrazik, stranded in Sudan since 2003.

Good.

As Chris Selley writes: “It’s all over but the thousands of unanswered questions”

Here’s one.

How much did this July 2006 US Embassy memo figure in extending Abdelrazik’s exile?

“US Embassy DCM John Dickson made a demarche this afternoon re Abdelrazik . . . . He had been asked to deliver a message from the White House, specifically from senior levels of the Homeland Security Council. [US] Ambassador Wilkins might be calling Ministers Toves [sic] and Day tomorrow. Frances Townsend might also be calling.

“Dickson’s main message was that the US would like Canada’s assistance in putting together a criminal case against Abdelrazik so that he could be charged in the US. The US had information on Abdelrazik but at this point, it was not enough to charge him; the same might be true for Canada. If Canadian police or security agencies shared what they had, it might prove to be enough for the US to proceed, as the threshold for prosecution there was lower than here.”

Days later the US added Abdelrazik to the UN Security Council terrorist blacklist, despite not having sufficient evidence to charge him under their “lower threshold.”

And just so we’re clear here — the threshold for action was spectacularly lower. Recall that Maher Arar was renditioned to Syria the day after a wounded 14 year old Omar Khadr in Bagram prison was shown photos of Arar and coached into saying that “he looked familiar,” and the US evidence against Abdelrazik appears to be the unfortunate spinoff derived from waterboarding a schizophrenic halfwit 83 times in 2002 in order to elicit a false confession linking Sadaam and al-Qaeda that could be used to justify the US invasion of Iraq.

Here’s a question:

We don’t know what correspondence transpired after the memo above, written three years after Arar returned to Canada and during the time we were hearing advance notice of the O’Connor report which would clear him of all terrorism allegations two months later. Was Abdelrazik kept in exile at the Canadian Embassy in Sudan to avoid a similar debacle by someone who decided he was safer left there than he would be back in Canada?

Big hullaballoo following CSIS lawyer Geoffrey O’Brian’s testimony before the public safety committee, in which he said that Canadian intelligence agencies would make use of information obtained by torture from foreign agencies in the “one-in-a-million” eventuality that “lives were at stake.” In fact, said O’Brian, who has been with CSIS since its inception in 1984, “we would be bound to do so.”

Under further questioning from aghast committee members, he admitted that agencies often “have no idea under what conditions info received from foreign agencies is obtained” and “just because a country has a questionable or even abysmal human rights record does not mean info received from them is necessarily extracted by torture.”

That would be the old don’t-ask-don’t-tell-Syria defence. CSIS Director Jim Judd used it back in November 2006 to defend using Syrian intel on Maher Arar. So are we still trading info with Syria and Egypt? Yes we are, but now “with caveats.”

The committee members pressed on: “What Canadians want to hear is that we do not condone the use of information derived from torture.”

O’Brian: “I would love to give you a simple answer. The simple answer is that we will never use info from torture. I cannot say that because recipients of info do not know how that info was obtained. I can say we do not knowingly” — and he stressed this again — “knowingly use info extracted by torture.”

Huge stink in the Star, G&M;, and CBC.

On Thursday, CSIS Director Jim Judd and Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan appeared before the public safety committee. Judd:

“I think it’s unfortunate that Mr. O’Brian may have been confused in his testimony. He will be clarifying that via a letter to this committee. I know of no instance where such information has been made use of by our service.”

and

“He [O'Brian] ventured into the hypothetical. In the past we used information obtained by torture. Such information is not to be relied upon. We’ve changed our policies. Our policy now is under no circumstances do we condone the use of torture for any reason.”

He went on to explain that the intelligence agencies are directed in this by the federal government.

Okay, that seems pretty straightforward, right?

Next up — Minister Van Loan, from whence intelligence agencies are directed, responding to MP Mourani (italics mine):

“We do not condone the use of torture in intelligence gathering and our clear directive to our law enforcement agencies and intelligence services is that they are not to condone the use of torture, practice torture, or knowingly use any information obtained by torture.”

Uh-oh. There’s that “knowingly” again.

And here’s the relevant quote from O’Brian’s “clarification” letter (again, italics mine):

“I wish to clarify for the committee that CSIS certainly does not condone torture and that it is the policy of CSIS to not knowingly rely upon information that may have been obtained through torture.”

So we’re pretty well back to O’Brian’s previous “knowingly”, aren’t we? Namely, that because we can claim to have no clue how the info we get is obtained, we’re free to go ahead and use it.

O’Brian caught shit for losing control of the spin for a moment, and that’s all that happened here.

I’d also like to point out that the RCMP got a completely free ride in the media coverage.

In his opening statement to the committee on Tuesday, RCMP spokesman Gilles Michaud rejected the use of information obtained by torture as unreliable, but explained in regards to the RCMP’s use of intelligence obtained from foreign agencies:

“I want to be clear here — there is no absolute ban on the use of any information by the RCMP.”

Uh-huh.

As I write this, the Ontario provincial police monitoring the stand-off near Sharbot Lake have forsworn violence, despite the fact that a court of law has ruled that the protesters blocking “development” must abandon their resistance, and Frontenac Ventures shall be allowed to explore for uranium.

It’s all very courteous. Nobody is being bombed and civilians are not being abandoned to thuggery and assassination, so it is easy to pretend that a similar crime to that in Iraq is not being committed here. But I wonder if the difference is not mostly due to the length of time that has passed from the initial invasion of Ontario.

Canadians have been resident here for so long that we forget that our ancestors were invaders who colonized the original inhabitants, the Algonquins, against their will, stole the right to exploit natural resources, and imposed what only some people agree is a legitimate governance system — the very actions that many of us criticize the US for.

Nobody has called the US government to account for the fact that there were no promised Weapons of Mass Destruction. And nobody is calling the government of Ontario to account for its ongoing oppression of the two Algonquin communities in Sharbot Lake.

Here are the facts: the Algonquin communities who claim the land in question near Sharbot Lake have never signed a treaty with either British or Canadian governments. They self-identify as a sovereign nation, and their land claim remains outstanding. They do not recognize the legitimacy of the provincial court to make decisions based on the land at issue. Last month, Superior Court Judge Gordon Thomson ordered all signs, vehicles, buildings and other materials erected by the protesters to be removed. Algonquins ignored the order. About 10 days ago, the same judge issued an injunction ordering all representatives and supporters off the land. It also gave Frontenac unfettered access.

So here is where the similarities become striking. How is this different from the Americans installing their own governance in Iraq and pretending it is legitimate? Apart from the unspeakable violence and breakdown of public order, Ontario might be considered worse because it is displacing and dispossessing a people from land they have occupied for thousands of years, even though the province’s ownership of the land is recognized as being in dispute.

It’s not fun to regard non-aboriginal Canadians as invaders. None of my ancestors is a Canadian aboriginal and I prefer not to think of them as invaders. I prefer to think of them as pioneers. I feel that Canada is my home, completely. My great grandfather brought his brood to Edmonton in 1905 and I heard all of my family talk about the guilt they felt over how the Cree living here were treated by the invading governments. They did not mean to oppress other nations, but they benefited from that oppression, as I and every other non-aboriginal Canadian has to this day.

Lots of people have joined the Algonquins in their protest, including environmentalists. This stand-off is about localism versus globalism, capitalism versus environmental stewardship, and aboriginal rights. At its core, it is about who has the right to benefit — or protect — land.

Has this happened in Canada before? Sure, lots. Oka. Gustafsen Lake. Ipperwash. Caledonia.

The time has come
To say fair’s fair
To pay the rent
To pay our share
The time has come
A fact’s a fact
It belongs to them
Let’s give it back

There is a lot to like about Hugo Chavez. He is a socialist, which makes sense in South America’s colonized and polarized economies. He is all for integrating South American interests which, again, makes huge sense in a continent that could mass significant economic and political power if countries cooperated with one another. He is definitely anti-imperialist which simply means that he is willing to stand up for the citizenry’s right to benefit from their own resources. It takes more than a little spinal resolve to stand up to American energy companies (read: the current American government).

The US naturally demonizes Chavez as an enemy of democracy and a destabilizing political force. What that really means is that he’ll assert public control over Venezuela’s oil fields and that democracy there will not be interpreted as the right of a few lucky people to accumulate huge amounts of money using a resource that rightfully belongs to everybody.

So I admire him. But I have always worried about his oppressive tactics. This latest move is just another indication that Chavez’ brand of socialism is more autocratic than democratic.

Over the years, he has taken increasing control of the instruments of political power in Venezuela, particularly by packing the Supreme Court and turning the military into his personal militia. While Chavez’ fears of overthrow and even assassination are founded in reality, his long reach for power indicates that he is a dictator at heart. For all his populist talk, does he believe that his people should be able to determine their own future through democratic political processes? Plainly, no.

And this brings me to the truly icky scene of headscarved little girls standing up en masse and shouting words in English. So many aspects of this image bugged me that it is hard to know where to start. The learning of content by rote is, in itself, anti-democratic. By definition, a democratic education is one that supports a child to make her own decisions. This requires knowledge of content, certainly, but it also requires facility in critical thinking: being able to decide what makes sense, what is true, and what to do about it. Any regime, political or educational, that fails to support individuals to make these decisions is, by definition, undemocratic. And the people who live under such regimes are not, by any definition, free.

The best thing we can say about Chavez in this circumstance is that he doesn’t believe Venezuelans are qualified to discern the truth from a diversity of opinions. The worst thing we can say is that he knows himself to be a dictator. But let’s give him the benefit of the doubt: he is a military fellow by training and it may be there is no room in his head for dissent and diversity.

There is certainly no room in the Shia classroom for diversity of opinion. There, the price of dissent for a young girl is too horrible to imagine.

Diversity of opinion is a lot harder to allow than diversity of, say, cuisine or clothing. I do not particularly care what people eat or wear. I am offended by headscarves only because of what they represent about the nature and status of women, but I feel no urge to tell women who wear them of my feelings. It is harder for me to stomach the opinion of most of the Shia’s living in Sadr City: that Britain, America, and Israel are responsible for all the trouble in the world, that Americans invaded only to block the coming of the next holy Shia “messiah,” and that the world ought to be united against a common evil enemy: Jews.

See, that is the problem: diversity of opinion is a stablizing force in most of the western world. Where dissent is disallowed, political and economic instablity is sure to follow. But the Western world has no way to address fundamentalist Islam. These folks are happy to blow themselves up. Jail is nothing to them. Neither is the death penalty. How do we negotiate? Are we willing to give them what they want, when what they want is for women to lose their civil rights? For people who do not follow Sharia law to be beheaded in public?

That is the political puzzle for western countries in the next decades, (along with how to stop China and America from poisoning us all).

So, Don Imus has been fired from both his CBS and MSNBC gigs because he referred to the Rutgers women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos.”

Stupid? Yes. Racist? Certainly. A firing offence? I’d say so.

Then again, Rush Limbaugh once told a black caller to “Take that bone out of your nose,” and in another instance asked his listeners, “Have you ever noticed how all newspaper composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?” This would be the same Rush Limbaugh who once suggested Philadelphia Eagles’ quarterback Donovan McNabb was overrated because he was black.

And fellow paid-mouth Michael Savage said last year, in reference to the arrest of 17 suspects in an alleged bombing plot in Toronto, “”Whenever you see the word ‘South Asian,’ substitute the word for ‘terrorist,’ or reference to ‘terrorist.’” Earlier this year, after Melissa Etheridge won an Academy Award and thanked her wife and four children, Savage remarked: “I don’t like a woman married to a woman. It makes me want to puke. How’s that? I want to vomit when I hear it. I think it’s child abuse.”

Then again, Bill O’Reilly suggested that a young woman raped and murdered in New York last year was responsible for her fate because of the way she was dressed. And see here for a full range of other inspirational ditties uttered by America’s right wing talk show hosts.

And here’s what Don Imus hasn’t done. He hasn’t plumped for a deceitful, illegal war in Iraq that’s killed, as of today, 3296 Americans and at least 61,000 Iraqis (or over 655,000, if you believe the MIT study). He hasn’t demonized the word “Liberal,” thus effectively reducing his country to a one-party state. He hasn’t applied “yer either for us or agin us” rhetoric to American foreign policy. And he hasn’t been beating the drums for a war in Iran.

All this and more Messrs. Limbaugh, Savage, and O’Reilly do day after day, along with a host of other TV and radio screechers. So what say we keep Imus’s stupid remarks in perspective? And if we’re going to get rid of him, shouldn’t we also get rid of the guys whose talk actually ends up killing people?

It is General Rick Hillier’s duty to report the state of Canada’s armed forces, even if he uses inflammatory language like “decade of darkness” to describe the cuts that started under the Liberals in 1994. Perhaps moderate language did not get the attention of Liberals in the past. And perhaps the odd bit of hyperbole is called for considering what Armed Forces families have been putting up with for the past long years.

As he told the CBC, General Hillier is “the chief of defence staff. I describe things as accurately, as clearly, as bluntly as I possibly can.”

Even though Hillier did not name the Liberals specifically, Coderre mounted his high horse. Calling the General “a prop to the Conservative party,” he added, “I’m offended today.”

Yeah, well I’m offended too. I’m offended because this Liberal thinks he can get political mileage out of criticizing a guy for doing his job. Is this the kind of politician who is left after the Liberals cleaned house? Egads. We are in trouble.

In other news, the U.S. Congress says it will not support Bush in Iraq. That’s a start. Let’s see if next Congress will refuse to support Israel in Palestine. That might be the start of a solution. While nothing about extremist politics is simple or easy, one thing is clear: the engine of Islamist extremism is the western world’s oppression of Palestine.

Obviously, while Bush hasn’t spewed nonsense about the “axis of evil” lately, he cannot seem to utter words of reconciliation and peace to anybody. So he will have to ask his allies, particularly Europe, to do some of his talking for him.

And this will be difficult because the people who must be at the table include not only the factions in Iraq but also Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and . . . Israel. Analyzing the relationships, we know that Iran is largely Persian and a bit snooty about Arabia. Saudi Arabia is Sunni, has a lot of money, has used it to support civil unrest in Lebanon, and almost certainly funds a lot of the insurgency in Iraq. Everybody in the Middle East is extremely opposed to the existence of Israel. Israel knows this perfectly well and likely has a plan to obliterate any nation that makes an overt move against it. America is impotent at holding Israel to heel.

So the European Union is going to try, through the United Nations, to convince Israel to cooperate in the creation of peace. Looking back about 60 years, we can remember that Israel was created as a haven for Jews who had suffered at the hands of Europe for millennia, culminating with the murder of six million of them. Who will be president of the European Union, taking over from Finland? Germany.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha . . .

But there is a way through and it is simllar to the way that Canadians have always dealt with contentious, possibly lethal, issues. We seek 10 minute solutions. It reminds me of my kids. I ask them to do the dishes and they agree immediately, and swear they will do them in exactly 10 minutes. I have noticed, though, that they can put off doing the dishes for, well, days and even weeks. Conceivably, forever. All in 10 minute increments.

And so I wonder if we cannot get these contentious folks to the table, promise that they can resume their butchery almost immediately. But just put it off for, say, 10 minutes. Postpone hostilities for a day or two while we play videogames and eat pizza. It is a powerful and very effective tactic, even when used against monstrous forces (like mothers).

More seriously, I think that it is important for all of us to realize that democracy cannot be installed like a new porch or cable TV. Democracy requires that the majority of citizens put their own best interests aside long enough to consider the welfare of their fellow citizens. However, in countries where people are beheaded before football games, victims of rape are executed for shaming their families, women are burned for having a less than optimal dowry, war lords can order the assassination of entire families on the basis of any perceived offence, the majority of officials are corrupt, and so on . . . the average person cannot afford to consider what is fair or equitable. Life is so entirely perilous that people must survive by cunning and perseverance, by aligning strategically with the power that can offer the most protection, the most food for your family, and that is least likely to betray you. You are concerned entirely with interpreting gossip and making strategic plans — not rule of law.

In other words, before there is democracy, there must be peace. Before there is peace, there must be security. Before there can be security, there must be a common commitment from everybody to keep the trigger finger still. Long lasting peace is too much to ask for, given history and current power relations. But negotiators might be able to prevent war in small increments.