Magic Statistics

Next week NATO will convene a summit in Riga, Latvia—its first in a country that formerly belonged to the Soviet Union.  The main topic will operations in Afghanistan, but the possibility of expansion may also be discussed.

Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili pledged his countrymen that their nation would join NATO before the end of his first term in 2008.  The United States strongly supports Georgia’s application, but some European members are not so keen.

On November 16, the US Senate gave Saakashvili a boost by unanimously passing a bill expressing support for the accession of Albania, Croatia, Georgia, and Macedonia into NATO. The bill says promises 20 million US dollars of aid for the four aspirants, half of which will go to Georgia.
. . .
However, many European countries are more cautious, citing worries about how Russia and the breakaway territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia will react to potential Georgian membership of the alliance. At a recent European summit meeting in Finland with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, France’s president Jacques Chirac said that relations with Moscow were a higher priority than the issue of Georgian-Russian relations.

Russia is opposed to any expansion of NATO, but Georgia is not the only one of its South Caucasus neighbours interested in working with, and perhaps ultimately entering, the North Atlantic alliance.

There’s Azerbaijan.

Although Azerbaijan is moving closer towards NATO, it remains shy of talking about full membership of the alliance, apparently out of concern about the geopolitical implications of such a commitment.

On November 8, Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliev visited NATO headquarters in Brussels before flying to Moscow for talks with President Vladimir Putin. The two stops on his trip illustrated the delicate foreign policy Baku is pursuing with both NATO and Russia.

Opposition politicians say President Aliev is being too slow in embracing NATO.

And then there’s Azerbaijan’s neighbour and sometime adversary Armenia, which is slowly expanding its strategic horizons beyond relations with Russia.

Last year, Armenia and NATO agreed an Individual Partnership Agreement, or IPAP, under which they agreed to work together to forge a “Strategy of National Security and a Military Doctrine”. This is the basis for a programme of reform of the armed forces of Armenia up until 2015.

This irritated some politicians in Russia, which was presented with a finished document, despite regarding itself as Armenia’s chief military ally - and the only country to have its troops stationed on Armenian territory.

A recent poll showed that over 40% of Armenians now favour NATO membership.

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Cultivation of opium and other drugs is booming in Afghanistan and so is the number of child addicts.

Observers say that drug addiction among children has risen precipitously in recent years. This is especially true in western areas like Herat, because of the influx of returning refugees from neighbouring Iran, where addiction rates are high.

Dr Abdul Shukur Shukur, of the Shahamat Centre, a non-government institution that helps combat drug abuse, told IWPR that he had seen a 20 per cent rise in juvenile addiction over last year.

“We have children between the ages of six and 16 at our centre,” he said.

There are many reasons why children start using drugs, said Dr Shukur, including the lack of parental supervision, the large number of children orphaned by war, the return of refugees from Iran, and Afghanistan’s booming illicit narcotics industry, which means drugs are readily available.

The UN Office of Drugs and Crime estimated that the quantity of land under opium poppy cultivation was 60% higher in 2006 compared to 2005, and that this year's harvest totalled 6100 tonnes—92% of the world supply.

"Afghanistan is increasingly hooked on its own drug," UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa said after presenting the latest estimates for cultivation and production in September.

Mr Costa has now warned European mayors that Afghanistan’s bumper crop of opiates is about to flood their cities.

Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty today unveiled a surprising and controversial fiscal update.  In it, he proposes to implement regular federal debt repayments and dedicate the resultant interest savings to an ongoing series of tax cuts.  The plan calls for eliminating the total net debt of all Canadian governments by 2021.  At the same time, Mr Flaherty pledged that increases in federal government spending will not exceed Canada’s overall rate of economic growth.

[H]e guaranteed that all interest savings from debt reduction would be applied to cutting personal income taxes. These savings are expected to total C$700m in the current fiscal year to March 31, but could double over the next five years.

“This ‘tax back’ guarantee will give Canadians a direct stake and a direct benefit in how we manage government finances on their behalf,” Mr Flaherty said.

He also promised that Canada would have the lowest tax rates on new business investment among the major industrial countries.

Controversy arises from the promise to eliminate “net government debt” by 2021.  What exactly does that mean?

Mr. Flaherty said this measure of the financial liabilities of federal, provincial and local governments — minus public assets — is $414-billion today. He said it can be cut to zero in 15 years if Ottawa pays down debt, provinces run balanced budgets, and Canada Pension Plan and the Quebec Pension Plan assets grow sufficiently over that time.

Critics charged that the Tories have not made any new commitment to debt paydown because the proposal only envisions Ottawa continuing to pay down at least $3-billion of debt a year until 2021. They said that public pension plan assets are expected to do a vast majority of the work in balancing out net debt by growing sufficiently over 15 years.

The plan refers to the net debt of the federal and all provincial governments.  So, the plan’s successful implementation depends on obtaining provincial co-operation.  Given recent federal-provincial wrangles over the so-called “fiscal imbalance”, that’s probably a pipe dream.

Finally, although the finance minister promised to cut income taxes and limit growth of federal expenditures, he made no commitment about holding the line against increases in public pension premiums. 

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They may have changed their official name from Unification Church to Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, but most people think of Rev Sun Myung Moon’s acolytes as Moonies.  After a dormant period (in Canada, at least), they're knocking on doors in Richmond, a suburb south of Vancouver, BC.

A cult that first gained notoriety in the 1970s is actively recruiting in Richmond, The Richmond Review has learned.

Now known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, most locals are probably more familiar with the name Moonies, the term first used by the media in the United States to refer to the followers of the Unification Church founded by Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

Earlier this month, a recruiter was going door-to-door in the Shellmont neighbourhood, inviting residents for dinner at a home at 8760 Greenfield Dr.

The young woman, of Korean descent, posed a series of questions, such as whether the homeowner considers families to be of primary importance, and if people irrespective of cultural backgrounds should come together.

The story doesn’t say how the reporter knows the young woman is a Moonie, but the questions, presented in such a way that no civilised person could disagree, are definitely suspicious.

h/t: Religion News Blog

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