Hard Landing for Clean Coal

They're latter day Alchemists, the scientists of the Dark Ages who promised to turn base lead into gold. Today they've returned to tantalize us with dreams of "clean coal," an abundant, non-polluting and virtually limitless supply of cheap energy that lies, not in the Middle East, but right here under our own feet.

Like all dubious schemes, the clean coal idea is delightfully simple. Burn dirty coal to produce electricity but, instead of releasing all that toxic greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, you "sequester" it. In other words, you capture the CO2 before it leaves the smokestack, compress it until it liquifies, and then pump all that nasty stuff into subterranean chambers where it can be stored, out of sight/out of mind, forever. Or so the story goes.

The Devil, of course, is in the details.

The first detail is where do you store this stuff? The next is what happens if, Heaven forbid, the stuff leaks back out to the surface? Then there's the detail about making this technology work and at an affordable price. Don't forget to work out who'll be on the hook when we have those unfortunate accidents, other than nearby surface dwellers who'll be dead.

You see, to make this work, you have to find a way to secure CO2 at a high-enough pressure that it's compressed enough to liquify it. High pressure, like high water, is always looking for a way out. Stick a pin in a balloon and you'll get the idea. In terms of subterranean caverns, a seismic event substitutes nicely for the pin.

Now my own Vancouver Island has coal resources. Yet this big tectonic plate subduction zone I call home isn't an ideal candidate. When the "Big One" hits (and we keep getting reminded that could be any day) it's been predicted by some that the entire island could be shifted eastward up to 15 feet.

But surely there are better places, aren't there? There must be places that are absolutely seismically stable, eh? Hmmm, maybe not. The reality is that you don't need a scale 9 or an 8 or even a 7-Richter event to pop one of these underground, high-pressure balloons. But earthquakes are only part of the equation. You see, ground moves even without earthquakes. There's a whole bunch of things going on under your feet every day. There are gases and liquids down there. There's heat down there, a lot of it. You've got things like underground rivers upon which our groundwater resources rely.

So, carbon sequestration brings an inevitable risk of failures and leaks, so what? Well that all depends on a number of factors such as the size of the gas escape, whether it's detected quickly, how many people are in proximity to the leak and, of course, whether you're one of them. The stuff is colourless and odourless so... well, just sayin'.

Harper latched on to a long underway carbon capture experimental plant in Saskatchewan, slapped his picture on it and presented it to the gullible national press corps as "his" sequestration initiative. Yippee, we're saved! Stevie came through after all! A few problems. It's an experimental operation, an experiment. It's but one plant, just one. It assumes that the storage part (the hard part) is viable. It ignores the reality that, even if all the problems are solved and we do manage to find a means of truly secure sequestration, transforming our coal plants into clean coal plants will take decades to accomplish - time we haven't got - and a lot more money than we imagine.

But what about the United States? Surely if there's one country that ought to be pursuing clean coal technology it's America, right? Of course it is. American wealth is bleeding out to buy foreign oil to feed its fossil fuel dependency. The US sits on enormous coal reserves. Switching from Islamic oil to domestic coal energy is so obvious, it's a no brainer. Everyone's on side - Bush, McCain, Obama, Congress, even Oprah (although it's rumoured that tool, Dr. Phil is, predictably, waffling).

However, according to the New York Times, America's clean coal initiative is faltering:

"...the nation’s effort to develop the technique is lagging badly.

In January, the government canceled its support for what was supposed to be a showcase project, a plant at a carefully chosen site in Illinois where there was coal, access to the power grid, and soil underfoot that backers said could hold the carbon dioxide for eons.

Coal is abundant and cheap, assuring that it will continue to be used. But the failure to start building, testing, tweaking and perfecting carbon capture and storage means that developing the technology may come too late to make coal compatible with limiting global warming.

“It’s a total mess,” said Daniel M. Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley.

Plans to combat global warming generally assume that continued use of coal for power plants is unavoidable for at least several decades. Therefore, starting as early as 2020, forecasters assume that carbon dioxide emitted by new power plants will have to be captured and stored underground, to cut down on the amount of global-warming gases in the atmosphere.
Yet, simple as the idea may sound, considerable research is still needed to be certain the technique would be safe, effective and affordable.

Scientists need to figure out which kinds of rock and soil formations are best at holding carbon dioxide. They need to be sure the gas will not bubble back to the surface. They need to find optimal designs for new power plants so as to cut costs. And some complex legal questions need to be resolved, such as who would be liable if such a project polluted the groundwater or caused other damage far from the power plant."

It's becoming obvious that the miracles of carbon capture and carbon sequestration are an awfully long way off. This ought to be the technological challenge for America for the 21st century, something on the scale of the Manhattan Project.

It's much too important and far too early to write this off. Perhaps a genuine president willing to invest funding equal to a small hunk of America's warfighting budget could make this a reality. There are so many unknowns, neglected opportunities. However what is apparent is that we can't rely on carbon capture technologies as a solution to our GHG problems. We can't bank on it at all because the clock is running and it may just be too little, too late.

Gomery Slaps Harper on Mulroney

There was a time when retired judge John Gomery was Stephen Harper's darling. That was when the sponsorship scandal was underway and Gomery was handing Harper a ticket to 24 Sussex Drive.

Now it's Harper who's in Gomery's crosshairs, this time over the enquiry into Mulroney's shady dealings with KarlHeinz Schreiber.

Gomery's comments to Canadian Press suggest he sees what's coming as a set up:

"The man who headed the inquiry into the Liberal sponsorship scandal is questioning how serious Prime Minister Stephen Harper is about an inquiry into the Mulroney-Schreiber affair.

"It's clear this is not a high priority for him, because he's not treating it as a high priority," retired judge John Gomery told The Canadian Press in an interview Wednesday.

"Once you've said you're going to do something, usually you're expected to do it within a reasonable period. And the period is getting beyond reasonable."

But the prime minister has delayed action, first while the Commons ethics committee conducted hearings, and then while a special adviser, University of Waterloo president David Johnston, compiled two preliminary reports on the affair.

Johnston recommended a relatively narrow probe into lobbying activities that Mulroney undertook for Schreiber after leaving office in 1993. That would exclude the so-called Airbus affair that centred on Air Canada's purchase of European-built jetliners while Mulroney was still in power.

Gomery called it "unprecedented" for Harper to ask an outside party to decide on the scope of the proposed inquiry.

The prospect of a narrow probe may be making it difficult for the government to find a judge willing to take the job, Gomery speculated.

Any commissioner "is going to be criticized from Day 1 if he follows that (mandate) and restricts the evidence to certain periods of time, certain facts. If he goes a little bit more broadly, he may be challenged in court for exceeding his mandate."

It was a different story, said Gomery, when former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin gave him a broad mandate to delve into the sponsorship affair that erupted under predecessor Jean Chretien.

"Generally speaking, I was able to go where I thought I should go to get the answers that I needed to get. I don't think that's the case for the (Mulroney-Schreiber) inquiry, if it's ever conducted."

What, a set up? By our Furious Leader, Little Stevie Harpo? To let Mulroney off the hook and spare his government embarrassment? Ya think?

Sucks To Be a Have Not!

Forget the rich, the poor just keep getting poorer. Now the world's poorest people are facing another kick in their collective ass - a major drop in their already meagre living standards caused by the ongoing collapse of ecosystems and biodiversity. From BBC News:

Damage to forests, rivers, marine life and other aspects of nature could halve living standards for the world's poor, a major report has concluded.

Current rates of natural decline might reduce global GDP by about 7% by 2050.
The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) review is modelled on the Stern Review of climate change.

"You come up with answers like 6% or 8% of global GDP when you think about the benefits of intact ecosystems, for example in controlling water, controlling floods and droughts, the flow of nutrients from forest to field," said the project's leader Pavan Sukhdev.

"But then you realise that the major beneficiaries [of nature] are the billion and a half of the world's poor; these natural systems account for as much as 40%-50% of what we define as the 'GDP of the poor'," he told BBC News.

The TEEB review was set up by the German government and the European Commission during the German G8 presidency.

The two institutions selected Mr Sukhdev, a managing director in the global markets division at Deutsche Bank, to lead it.

The trends are understood well enough - a 50% shrinkage of wetlands over the past 100 years, a rate of species loss between 100 and 1,000 times the rate that would occur without 6.5 billion humans on the planet, a sharp decline in ocean fish stocks and one third of coral reefs damaged.

However, putting a monetary value on them is probably much more difficult, the team acknowledges, than putting a cost on climate change.

The report highlights some of the planet's ecologically damaged zones such as Haiti, where heavy deforestation - largely caused by the poor as they cut wood to sell for cash - means soil is washed away and the ground much less productive.

An early draft of the TEEB review, seen by BBC News, concluded: "Lessons from the last 100 years demonstrate that mankind has usually acted too little and too late in the face of similar threats - asbestos, CFCs, acid rain, declining fisheries, BSE and - most recently - climate change".

Long Live the King, King Harper?

Like his American Idol, George w. Bush, our own Furious Leader, Stephen Harper is dead keen on usurping the power of the legislature in order to concentrate it in his own hands. He and his faceless, unelected minions in the PMO are the Ringmasters of Harper's parliamentary circus.

From the Toronto Star:

"When Prime Minister Stephen Harper stood in Parliament and introduced a bombshell motion to formally recognize the Québécois as a nation within Canada, he surprised not just the country but his own cabinet minister ostensibly in charge of the file.
Michael Chong, intergovernmental affairs minister at the time, says Harper never consulted him about the bold move – made in November 2006 – even though he was responsible for Ottawa's relations with the provinces.

A few days later, Chong resigned his post, saying he disagreed with the intent of the motion.
Academic and author Donald Savoie cites that incident as one example of the growing concentration of power in the Prime Minister's Office – at the expense of MPs, bureaucrats, cabinet ministers and ultimately the public.

He argues that Canada has evolved into a court-style government, where the prime minister sits as "king" and has a "court" of select senior ministers, mandarins and lobbyists that rule the nation. Savoie says Parliament has been reduced to a bit player and cabinet ministers are now mere pawns."

Obviously imperial rule appeals to a leader who values secrecy above anything else and considers that notions of accountability stop well short of his elevated throne. This guy has no respect for our people, our Parliament or our democracy.

Update: h/t Ken Chapman for drawing attention to Lawrence Martin's piece on the "Sun King" in today's Globe & Mail.

"Not a team man. Not a big advocate of democratic decision-making. The flaws of Stephen Harper are spelled out in Preston Manning's book, "Think Big."

In the Reform movement of the late 1980s and '90s, Mr. Harper wanted to do everything himself, Mr. Manning said. "He had serious reservations about Reform's and my belief in the value of grassroots consultation and participation in key decisions and my conviction that the adjective to distinguish our particular brand of conservatism should be 'democratic.' " Not only did Mr. Harper take a dim view of democratic tendencies, Mr. Manning recalled, but if he didn't get his own way, he would get up and leave."

That pretty much sums up Harper today, more warlord than prime minister, a creepy sort of guy to be hanging around in our prime minister's office, too obsessed with plotting to have much time left over for serving the country.

Bolton Dodges Arrest for War Crimes

Okay, it was mainly high drama, but it took security guards yesterday to keep British environmental writer George Monbiot from placing neo-con John Bolton under arrest for war crimes.

From The Guardian:

"Bolton had defended the US's right to launch pre-emptive nuclear attacks and to promote regime change or, if necessary, a military attack on Iran to prevent it acquiring nuclear weapons. As a lawyer, he said, he was not prepared to offer a view either on rendition or torture of suspects, because he had not studied the issues - a claim that provoked dismay.

Afterwards, Monbiot, a contributor to the Guardian, said: "I'm disappointed I couldn't reach him, but I made what I believe to be the first attempt ever to arrest one of the perpetrators of the Iraq war, and I would like to see that followed up."

The Trial of George W(anker) Bush

I'm looking forward to getting my hands on former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's tell-all book.

It's not that there's much in it that we didn't already know. It's that a former insider is essentially standing witness against his former boss, a man who may be a mass murderer on a grand scale.

What interests me is McClellan's admissions of what fueled Bush's decision to invade Iraq - his vanity. The former aide says that Bush's overarching objectives were to be a wartime president and win a second term in office. Taken in this context, George Bush is a war criminal and a mass murderer. It was all about this frat boy rising out of his career of serial failures to stand tall as the victorious Commander in Chief of the United States of America. That thousands of his own people would have to die and hundreds of thousands of innocents abroad would lose their lives was of no moment to Barbara Bush's wretched hellspawn.

To get his way, Bush turned on the American people and attacked them with a lethal brew of deception and fearmongering. Fully aided and abetted by a collaborative, right-wing media, Bush convinced his people that Saddam was a genuine threat to the world and, above all, to the United States and each and every one of them. Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, even nukes, and was buying the raw materials for his arsenal (remember the "yellowcake"?) even while he was denying it. Worst of all, he was in cahoots with al-Qaeda and could even deliver chemical, biological and nuclear weapons into their hands for use against the U.S.

George w. Bush soaked the American people in the blood of innocents. He sullied and besmirched the honour and integrity of the volunteers who signed on to serve their country in its armed forces. He cajoled and intimidated and bribed other nations to serve as his collaborators, his enablers.

What does a man such as George Bush and what do his principal minions deserve for this treachery? They deserve to become an example to those who might be tempted to do this all over again some day. They deserve to be arrested and brought to the prisoners' dock in shackles to stand trial for war crimes, crimes against humanity and mass murder. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith, Wolfowitz, Perle, Rice, Gonzales and yes, even Powell, should answer for all the killings and the torture and their abuses. Then they should be put in cages in their very own Spandau somewhere and held, incommunicado, for the rest of their lives.

For these people are villains of the very worst kind, those who kill for glory. Tyrants.

One More Roll of the Dice - Iran

Asia Times Online reports that Bush will launch a bombing campaign against Iran before the end of August.

"Two key US senators briefed on the attack planned to go public with their opposition to the move, according to the source, but their projected New York Times op-ed piece has yet to appear.

The source, a retired US career diplomat and former assistant secretary of state still active in the foreign affairs community, speaking anonymously, said last week that the US plans an air strike against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The air strike would target the headquarters of the IRGC's elite Quds force. With an estimated strength of up to 90,000 fighters, the Quds' stated mission is to spread Iran's revolution of 1979 throughout the region. "

Asia Times has identified the senators who've threatened to go public as Senator Diane Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Senator Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana.

The idea of American air strikes on Iran gives everyone cause for concern. Air raids are unlikely to have much effect and could even backfire. Many experts believe bombing could cause the Iraqi people, including dissenters, to rally behind Tehran's hard-liners. It's also widely thought that an American attack on yet another Muslim country, the third, could strengthen the hand of Islamist radicals throughout the Muslim world. Then there's the issue of the West's dependence on Persian Gulf oil routes. Iran is well stocked with modern, anti-ship missiles which could easily shut down Persian Gulf tanker routes. With the American and world economies already reeling from the subprime mortgage meltdown, a closure of the Persian Gulf oil routes could have a massive effect on world markets and global oil prices.

Day by day the prospect of military confrontation grows stronger. ABC News reports that Pakistan may now be aiding Iran by agreeing to hand over members of the tribal militant group Jundullah who Iran claims are working as spies for the CIA.

Jundullah, a Baloch insurgent movement, is known to have been carrying out attacks on Iranian army facilities and officers. According to ABC, US intelligence officers frequently meet with and advise Jundullah leaders. It also claims that the United States is using Iranian exiles to funnel money to Jundullah without requiring White House acknowledgement and Congressional oversight.

"Pakistani government sources say the secret campaign against Iran by Jundullah was on the agenda when Vice President Dick Cheney met with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in February.

Some former CIA officers say the arrangement is reminiscent of how the U.S. government used proxy armies, funded by other countries including Saudi Arabia, to destabilize the government of Nicaragua in the 1980s."

Climate Change - There's No Going Back

Here's some tough news for global warming deniers - the climate we once knew is gone and it's not coming back, at least not for many centuries to come.

The US government's own Climate Change Science Program has issued its report on what lies in store for agriculture, water resources and biodiversity over the next five decades and it's clear that big changes are in store.

The rise in concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from human activities is influencing climate patterns and vegetation across the United States and will significantly disrupt water supplies, agriculture, forestry and ecosystems for decades, a new U.S. government report says. From the International Herald Tribune:

"The changes are unfolding in ways that are likely to produce an uneven national map of harms and benefits, according to the report, released Tuesday and posted online at climatescience.gov.

According to the report, Western states will face substantial challenges because of growing demand for water and big projected drops in supplies.

From 2040 to 2060, anticipated water flows from rainfall in much of the U.S. West are likely to approach a 20 percent decrease from the average from 1901 to 1970, and are likely to be much lower in places like the fast-growing Southwest. In contrast, runoff in much of the Midwest and East is expected to increase that much or more.

Farmers, foresters and ranchers nationwide will face a complicated blend of changes, driven not only by shifting weather patterns but also by the spread of non-native plant and insect pests."

From the CCSP summary:

Grain and oilseed crops will mature more rapidly, but increasing temperatures will increase the risk of crop failures, particularly if precipitation decreases or becomes more variable.

Higher temperatures will negatively affect livestock. Warmer winters will reduce mortality but this will be more than offset by greater mortality in hotter summers. Hotter temperatures will also result in reduced productivity of livestock and dairy animals.

Forests in the interior West, the Southwest, and Alaska are already being affected by climate change with increases in the size and frequency of forest fires, insect outbreaks and tree mortality. These changes are expected to continue.
Much of the United States has experienced higher precipitation and streamflow, with decreased drought severity and duration, over the 20th century. The West and Southwest, however, are notable exceptions, and increased drought conditions have occurred in these regions.

Weeds grow more rapidly under elevated atmospheric CO2. Under projections reported in the assessment, weeds migrate northward and are less sensitive to herbicide applications.
There is a trend toward reduced mountain snowpack and earlier spring snowmelt runoff in the Western United States.

Horticultural crops (such as tomato, onion, and fruit) are more sensitive to climate change than grains and oilseed crops.

Young forests on fertile soils will achieve higher productivity from elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Nitrogen deposition and warmer temperatures will increase productivity in other types of forests where water is available.

Invasion by exotic grass species into arid lands will result from climate change, causing an increased fire frequency. Rivers and riparian systems in arid lands will be negatively impacted.
A continuation of the trend toward increased water use efficiency could help mitigate the impacts of climate change on water resources.

The growing season has increased by 10 to 14 days over the last 19 years across the temperate latitudes. Species' distributions have also shifted.

The rapid rates of warming in the Arctic observed in recent decades, and projected for at least the next century, are dramatically reducing the snow and ice covers that provide denning and foraging habitat for polar bears."

http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap4-3/default.php

These are changes that will occur regardless of any measures that may be taken in the near future to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The forecasts are based on what exists today. Can the forecasts be worsened by failure to dramatically cut GHG emissions? Absolutely. The future could be much, much worse unless we somehow find the social and political will to make the drastic changes necessary to break our carbon addiction.

What does the future hold? I just don't see the big emitters of the world reaching any meaningful consensus in time to avoid the problems that are looming. We're struggling just to reach agreement on greenhouse gases alone and haven't even begun to come to grips with the other environmental, resource and population challenges that, taken collectively, could pose as great a threat to mankind as global warming itself.

One thing is clear. In terms of climate change, there's no going back. In addition to wrestling with GHG emissions we also need to be taking action, now, on remediation and adaptation. Of course that too is hampered by the heel-draggers fighting the rearguard action on emissions controls. The last thing they want is an informed, public discussion of just what does lie in store for our countries in the next half century.

Five Weeks?

It's one thing for Max Bernier to have left classified, highly sensitive documents on his girlfriend's coffee table. It's another matter entirely for her to have them for five whole weeks.

Five weeks?

Bernier and Harper need to answer for that. Why weren't the documents recovered the minute Bernier realized he'd left them behind? Did he just forget he'd left them at Couillard's apartment? Was this an isolated incident or the sort of thing Maxie is prone to when he's on the hunt? Has somebody done an inventory of the former minister's documents to veryify that there's nothing else laying about where it's not supposed to be? Is Harper properly managing his cabinet? Are other Con ministers just as negligent as Bernier?

Let's face it, Harper's cabinet isn't exactly the faculty from the Rocket Academy but something more akin to the supporting cast from a Charlie Chaplin movie. Bernier wasn't just the minister of tractor parts, he was foreign affairs minister and yet he operated like a rank amateur.

It's time that Parliament got to the bottom of this. Somebody has to and it's plain that Harper won't do it.

Ferraro - She's Back (barf)

And so the narrative begins that Hillary was laid low by misogeny, pure sexism. The nomination campaign plainly wasn't fair because it was tainted by sexism from, you know, "those people." It wasn't Hillary's astonishingly inept campaign, it wasn't all the young people who turned out for Obama and, Lord knows, it wasn't Hillary's overflowing bucket of gaffes, sleaze and character flaws.

And if you have any doubt that Hillie wuz robbed, you can take the word of nutjob Hillaryite Geraldine Ferraro, who showed up on (naturally) Fox News to reveal how Hillary was pilloried by the black press:



Ferraro plainly singled out the New York Times' Bob Herbert as a prime example of those evil black journalists plotting to undermine Hillary. That'd be the Bob Herbert who wrote this in his column, "If there was ever a story that deserved more coverage by the news media, it's the dark persistence of misogyny in America."

I have had my fill of these clowns who ignore everything Clinton did to earn her failure and instead blame it on sexism. Okay, Obama did make one reference to Annie Oakley, so what? If that's what all the bitching's about, then it's utterly pathetic. What about Hillary saying "I think he's a Christian" or bleating about representing all the "hard working, white" Americans?

Bush Mouthpiece Finally Comes Clean

Former White House spokesman Scott McClellan has decided to try selling something different - the truth.

In his newly released memoir, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," McClellan writes that the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated "political propaganda campaign" led by President Bush and aimed at "manipulating sources of public opinion" and "downplaying the major reason for going to war."

From the Washington Post:

"...He describes Bush as demonstrating a "lack of inquisitiveness," says the White House operated in "permanent campaign" mode, and admits to having been deceived by some in the president's inner circle about the leak of a CIA operative's name.

The book, coming from a man who was a tight-lipped defender of administration aides and policy, is certain to give fuel to critics of the administration, and McClellan has harsh words for many of his past colleagues. He accuses former White House adviser Karl Rove of misleading him about his role in the CIA case. He describes Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as being deft at deflecting blame, and he calls Vice President Cheney "the magic man" who steered policy behind the scenes while leaving no fingerprints.

McClellan stops short of saying that Bush purposely lied about his reasons for invading Iraq, writing that he and his subordinates were not "employing out-and-out deception" to make their case for war in 2002.

But in a chapter titled "Selling the War," he alleges that the administration repeatedly shaded the truth and that Bush "managed the crisis in a way that almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option."

McClellan describes Bush as able to convince himself of his own spin and relates a phone call he overheard Bush having during the 2000 campaign, in which he said he could not remember whether he had used cocaine. "I remember thinking to myself, 'How can that be?' " he writes.

The former aide describes Bush as a willing participant in treating his presidency as a permanent political campaign, run in large part by his top political adviser, Rove.

"The president had promised himself that he would accomplish what his father had failed to do by winning a second term in office," he writes. "And that meant operating continually in campaign mode: never explaining, never apologizing, never retreating. Unfortunately, that strategy also had less justifiable repercussions: never reflecting, never reconsidering, never compromising. Especially not where Iraq was concerned."

BC Supreme Court to Harper - Back Off!

"I cannot agree with the Canada's submission that an addict must feed his addiction in an unsafe environment when a safe environment that may lead to rehabilitation is the alternative."

With that finding, BC Supreme Court judge Ian Pitfield ruled it would be unconsitutional for the Harper cryptos to shut down Vancouver's safe injection site.

"Society cannot condone addiction, but in the face of its presence it cannot fail to manage it, hopefully with ultimate success reflected in the cure of the addicted individual and abstinence," says the ruling.
It says that certain sections of the federal Controlled Drugs and Substances Act are inconsistent with section 7 of the Charter and are of no force and effect.

Pitfield's ruling says denial of access to the site "amounts to a condemnation of the consumption that led to addiction in the first place, while ignoring the resulting illness.

"While there is nothing to be said in favour of the injection of controlled substances that leads to addiction, there is much to be said against denying addicts health care services that will ameliorate the effects of their condition,'' he wrote.

Federal health minister Tony Clement, shown above, was unavailable for comment or at least that's what it sounded like he was trying to say.

Pushing the Fear Agenda

Thanks to Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria for shining a spotlight on a Simon Fraser University report that reveals how "terrorism" statistics have been gamed for nothing other than to make us all afraid - very afraid.

"The U.S. government agency charged with tracking terrorist attacks, the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), reported a 41 percent increase from 2005 to 2006 and then equally high levels in 2007. Another major, government-funded database of terrorism, the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terror (MIPT), says that the annual toll of fatalities from terrorism grew 450 percent (!) between 1998 and 2006. A third report, the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), also government-funded, recorded a 75 percent jump in 2004, the most recent year available for the data it uses.

The Simon Fraser study points out that all three of these data sets have a common problem. They count civilian casualties from the war in Iraq as deaths caused by terrorism. This makes no sense. Iraq is a war zone, and as in other war zones around the world, many of those killed are civilians. Study director Prof. Andrew Mack notes, "Over the past 30 years, civil wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Bosnia, Guatemala, and elsewhere have, like Iraq, been notorious for the number of civilians killed. But although the slaughter in these cases was intentional, politically motivated, and perpetrated by non-state groups-and thus constituted terrorism as conceived by MIPT, NCTC, and START-it was almost never described as such."

Including Iraq massively skews the analysis. In the NCTC and MIPT data, Iraq accounts for 80 percent of all deaths counted. But if you set aside the war there, terrorism has in fact gone way down over the past five years. In both the START and MIPT data, non-Iraq deaths from terrorism have declined by more than 40 percent since 2001. (The NCTC says the number has stayed roughly the same, but that too is because of a peculiar method of counting.) In the only other independent analysis of terrorism data, the U.S.-based IntelCenter published a study in mid-2007 that examined "significant" attacks launched by Al Qaeda over the past 10 years. It came to the conclusion that the number of Islam-ist attacks had declined 65 percent from a high point in 2004, and fatalities from such attacks had declined by 90 percent.

The Simon Fraser study notes that the decline in terrorism appears to be caused by many factors, among them successful counterterrorism operations in dozens of countries and infighting among terror groups. But the most significant, in the study's view, is the "extraordinary drop in support for Islamist terror organizations in the Muslim world over the past five years." These are largely self-inflicted wounds. The more people are exposed to the jihadists' tactics and world view, the less they support them.

The University of Maryland's Center for International Development and Conflict Management (I wish academic centers would come up with shorter names!) has released another revealing study, documenting a 54 percent decline in the number of organizations using violence across the Middle East and North Africa between 1985 and 2004. The real rise, it points out, is in the number of groups employing nonviolent means of protest, which increased threefold during the same period.

Why have you not heard about studies like this or the one from Simon Fraser, which was done by highly regarded scholars, released at the United Nations and widely discussed in many countries around the world-from Canada to Australia? Because it does not fit into the narrative of fear that we have all accepted far too easily."

There you have it. The far-right Bush/Cheney/McCain/Harper gang keep telling us that we're in a fight for the very survival of our civilization because they don't dare acknowledge that Islamist jihadism is collapsing under its own weight. They can't, make that won't, tell us the truth because it undermines what Zakaria properly calls their "narrative of fear."

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/fareed_zakaria/2008/05/the_only_thing_we_have_to_fear.html

Pot Luck

Some unwitting air traveller in Japan just scored a bag of pot.

It happened at Tokyo's Narita airport. A Japanese customs officer chose a suitcase at random and placed a bag containing 142 grams of cannabis inside. It wasn't an attempt to plant dope on a traveller but an exercise to test the airport's sniffer dogs' ability to detect the contraband. Big problem #1 - the dogs couldn't find it. Big problem #2 - the officer who planted the pot couldn't remember which bag he'd put it in.

The officer has apologized. The pot remains - wherever, dude!

Natural Disasters - the Tip of the Iceberg

Thinking of natural disasters triggers some graphic images. Earthquakes in China, cyclones in Burma, tsuanmis in Indonesia - the stuff we see all too regularly on TV. The numbers sometimes seem staggering - 40,000 here, 150,000 over there, another 80,000 somewhere else.

At times it seems like a demented "flavour of the month" club. Whatever gets on the late news wins. That's the disaster that will trigger our consciences and then our politicians' response. Suddenly aircraft will be lined up to fly relief workers and supplies wherever - why wherever we happen to be looking at the moment. But what about all those places we don't see, the people and places that don't win the contest for network coverage?

A study just released by the Brookings Institute reveals that, when it comes to global natural disasters, we only see the tip of the iceberg:

"...every year for the past twenty years, more than 200 million people have been affected by natural disasters, most of which never make it to the nightly news in America. Yet the effects of even localized disasters are felt by affected families for years – long after the TV cameras have moved on to the next disaster.

...groups which were already vulnerable before the disaster tend to suffer disproportionately from the devastation. For example, globally, for every one adult male who drowns in a flood, there are 3-4 women who die. Most obviously, this is because in many countries girls are less likely to learn how to swim or climb trees than boys. Vulnerable groups also experience discrimination in the provision of assistance. In many camps where persons displaced by natural disasters live, food is -- at least initially -- more likely to go to healthy and strong men than to children or the disabled. And in New Orleans, it was the elderly, the immigrants and African-American communities who disproportionately suffered the effects of Hurricane Katrina.

Chances of surviving a natural disaster are much higher in developed countries than in developing ones. For example, in 1988, an earthquake registering 6.9 on the Richter scale hit Armenia, killing some 55,000 people and leaving 500,000 homeless. Less than a year later, in an even stronger earthquake, 7.1 on the Richter scale, hit San Francisco, California, killing 62 and leaving 12,000 homeless.

Climate change affects natural disasters, both sudden-onset environmental events and long-term phenomena such as sea level rises. In fact, the severity and frequency of disasters, particularly what are called hydrometerological disasters (cyclones, hurricanes, flooding, mudslides, drought) are increasing. Natural disasters will be with us for a long time. While we cannot control where an earthquake will strike or a cyclone will turn, we can strengthen our collective ability to respond to these disasters and to mitigate their worst effects. And given the projections of the impact of climate change on natural disasters, we have no time to waste."

Read the full report here:

http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2008/0515_natural_disasters_ferris.aspx?emc=lm&m=215767&l=18&v=988319

On the subject of natural disasters, aftershocks that hit China today are reported to have caused the collapse of a staggering 420,000 homes. No estimate yet on the number rendered homeless.

The Revenge of Couillard - Bye, Bye Max!

Mad Max Bernier has finally wound up in the ditch. Turns out that his jilted girlfriend, Julie Couillard, did him in after all, not so much because of her tenuous former links with biker gangs but because Maxime left classified documents at her place. From the Toronto Star:

"...Bernier's departure came just a few hours before Couillard was about to go on air at the French-language television station TVA to say that her former lover was careless with classified documents."

What does this tell us about Bernier? Nothing we didn't already know. He was (and presumably remains) a dolt, utterly unsuited to the lofty job of foreign affairs minister that Harper bestowed on him. The guy was a walking disaster from Ottawa to Kandahar.

What does this tell us about Harper? Plenty, although not much that we didn't already know. Our Furious Leader isn't very good when events force him off his script. It's no wonder he's such a "talking points" control freak. He should have dumped Bernier a long time ago when his blatant incompetence became public during his visit to Kandahar. That, however, would have meant conceding awfully poor judgment in the first place and you don't readily get that sort of admission from Harpo.

Curious isn't it that it wasn't Maxie's string of blunders that forced Harpo's hand but the threat of a scorned woman's revenge. Well, Stevie's going to have to suck on this one for quite a while.

Here's another thing that Mad Max illustrates about Hapless Harper - his caucus is razor thin on talent and, even then, he chooses really poorly. Look at the cast of flops and duds - Rona Ambrose, Gordy O'Connor, Johnny Baird, Tony Clements, Vic Toews and, of course, Maxime Bernier. If they're his first picks, imagine Harper's "B" team.

All things considered, it's not such a bad thing that Harpo has run flat out of ideas. If he had'em, who would he appoint to implement them?

Comrade Harper Doesn't Want to Run the Government, He Wants to Own It!

Docile, complacent, timid. Those words pretty much describe the Canadian media and how they've let down the people of this country as Comrade Stephen has forcefully insinuated himself between the Canadian government and the Canadian people.

You no longer have access to your government. You have access to Comrade Stephen and his minions, the political commissars of the PMO, the Prime Minister's Office. Our Furious Leader and his faceless cadre will decide what you need to know about the federal government's workings and that'll be exactly what they want you to know and nothing more. Does that sound a little bit Stalinist to you? Well, yeah, it is. Does it seem undemocratic, un-Canadian even? It is and it's a stain that taints everyone who supports the Harper government.

The Toronto Star is publishing a series this week called "Secret Capital":

"In the 6th-floor office of a nondescript building sit the gatekeepers, the bureaucrats who decide what Canadians learn about the workings of their government.

Questions on the hot issues of the day all get funnelled through this office, the "communications and consultations" unit of the Privy Council Office, housed in the Blackburn building that fronts the Sparks St. pedestrian mall.

Throughout the government, it's known simply as "downtown," the place where decisions are made on who speaks on issues and what they say. In the Conservative government's clampdown on communications, this is Ground Zero.

Public appearances by cabinet ministers – whether it's a speech or an interview – are carefully staged, starting with a "message event proposal" vetted by the Privy Council Office, the bureaucratic wing of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO).

And in a marked change from previous governments, now even basic demands for information from reporters, once easily fielded by department spokespersons, are sent to this office for review – and often heavy editing – before they are okayed for public release, government insiders say.

David Taras, a professor in the department of communications and culture at the University of Calgary said, 'You can control events for so long, you can only manipulate for so long and ultimately I think this has harmed the Harper government to the extent that Harper's image has become `Mr. Partisan, Mr. Mean, Mr. Control Freak,'

"It's just got to a point where control is the image of what his government is. That's damaging. ... You wonder what they're running from and what they're afraid of," he said.

The clampdown could get worse. Auditor-General Sheila Fraser recently revealed that the government is proposing a new policy that would require all communications "products" to be vetted by the Privy Council Office.

One government official said the new rules would formally enshrine in policy the unwritten rule that now exists.

"The screws are being tightened bit by bit. It's gotten very extreme in the last six months. Just more and more delays, more and more control over things, less and less things getting approved," the official said."

http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/429906

It's time those who support Harper's assault on Canadian democracy face up to their choice - defend Canada and our democracy or empower Harper.

The Parallel Universes of George and Hillary

As I've watched Hillary Clinton's ill-fought campaign, particularly over the past six months, I've been struck at how she seems to have learned and adopted so many of the political tactics of the outgoing hooligan, George w. Bush. The Guardian's Gary Younge lays it out beautifully:

"As the primary season draws to a close it has become increasingly apparent that Hillary Clinton has run her campaign with the same contempt for intelligence, decency and democracy that Bush has run the country. Like the Bush administration, her campaign has been sustained by cynicism, divisiveness and fear-mongering, leaving a toxic and rancorous rift in its wake. Like the White House, her aim has been to win at all costs. And like the White House, it has produced the same result. Failure.

It is a continuum not of policies - on that front she is closer to Barack Obama than either of them would concede - but a mindset that has served America ill these past seven years. Creating a bespoke reality out of whole cloth and then hoping people will not just buy it, but wear it.

In a last, desperate bid to resuscitate her campaign, Clinton will put her case for the ratification of the results of the Michigan and Florida primaries to the Democratic National Committee rules and bylaws committee later this week.

Both states held their primaries in January, in defiance of Democratic party rules. The party warned them beforehand that their delegates would be disqualified if they went ahead, and asked the candidates not to campaign there. The candidates obliged. The states went ahead anyway. Clinton won both. Her senior adviser, Harold Ickes, was on the committee that voted not to recognise them. Obama's name was not even on the ballot in Michigan.

Back in October last year Clinton said uncomplainingly of Michigan: "It's clear, this election they're having is not going to count for anything."

But then she won both. Now everything is different. Speaking before a crowd of senior citizens in Boca Raton, Florida, last week she went into metaphorical hyperbole, comparing the battle to seat the delegates from Florida and Michigan to the suffragettes, the civil rights movement and Zimbabwe - where more than 40 people have been killed in election-related violence. "We're seeing that right now in Zimbabwe," she explained to a crowd of senior citizens. "Tragically, an election was held, the president lost, they refused to abide by the will of the people. So we can never take for granted our precious right to vote."

Clinton insists she is winning the popular vote. She's right. But only if you tally votes with the same degree of selectivity as Robert Mugabe. For her claim to make sense, you would have to count the discounted Florida and Michigan primaries and discount the legitimate caucuses in Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington state, three of which Obama won. These four states do not reveal popular vote totals. It's like saying if you include your goals that were ruled offside and don't recognise your opponents' headers (it is football after all) then you really won the game.

The reason Clinton has had to resort to this sophistry reveals another trait she shares with Bush - hubris. She believed she would have the nomination sewn up by Super Tuesday. She woke up on the following Wednesday out of money, ideas and volunteers. It was a month and nine contests before she won again. By then the momentum was Obama's and, though he has stumbled, he has been running with it since. By most reckonings he leads by about 190 delegates and 400,000 votes. Even if Michigan and Florida were counted, she would still trail in delegates.

And, like Bush, she has appealed to the basest instincts of the electorate to dig herself out of a hole. First came fear. "It's 3am in the morning and your children are safe and asleep. Who do you want answering the telephone [in the White House]," went her ad.

Then there is racism. The most recent example of which was her claiming that Obama's "support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again", as evidence of her own viability. Later she would concede that equating "white" and "hard- working" was a "dumb comment".

On Friday she was lambasted for intimating that she was staying in the race because, like Bobby Kennedy, Obama may yet be assassinated. It was clumsy. But a reasonable reading of the context shows she neither said nor meant anything of the kind. Her problem is that by now the general impression is that there is almost nothing she wouldn't do or say. It would indeed take something that dramatic and tragic for her to win.

Like the Bush administration, the issue is no longer whether she leaves the stage with her reputation irreparably tarnished, but what state she leaves it in and how many people she is prepared to take with her."

Carbon Trading a Scam? Who Could've Known?

Big polluters in the West have really taken to carbon offset programmes. It's nothing more than paying some government or corporation in the Third World to implement some form of GHG reduction programme to "offset" the excessive emissions of its Western patron. It's what George Monbiot has described as moving food around on a plate.

What's wrong with carbon trading? Nothing, in theory. In practise, however, there's plenty wrong with it

A key problem is that it relies on the industrial polluter to fund a project that will actually result in a reduction of GHG emissions and that wasn't already in the works anyway. It's sort of like letting the banditos guard the stagecoach. From The Guardian:

"Leading academics and watchdog groups allege that the UN's main offset fund is being routinely abused by chemical, wind, gas and hydro companies who are claiming emission reduction credits for projects that should not qualify. The result is that no genuine pollution cuts are being made, undermining assurances by the UK government and others that carbon markets are dramatically reducing greenhouse gases, the researchers say.

The criticism centres on the UN's clean development mechanism (CDM), an international system established by the Kyoto process that allows rich countries to meet emissions targets by funding clean energy projects in developing nations.

A working paper from two senior Stanford University academics examined more than 3,000 projects applying for or already granted up to $10bn of credits from the UN's CDM funds over the next four years, and concluded that the majority should not be considered for assistance. "They would be built anyway," says David Victor, law professor at the Californian university. "It looks like between one and two thirds of all the total CDM offsets do not represent actual emission cuts."

Governments consider that CDM is vital to reducing global emissions under the terms of the Kyoto treaty. To earn credits under the mechanism, emission reductions must be in addition to those that would have taken place without the project. But critics argue this "additionality" is impossible to prove and open to abuse. The Stanford paper, by Victor and his colleague Michael Wara, found that nearly every new hydro, wind and natural gas-fired plant expected to be built in China in the next four years is applying for CDM credits, even though it is Chinese policy to encourage these industries."

It may just be that there are not nearly enough legitimate CDM projects to meet the demands of Western emitters but, if that's the case, there's nothing to be gained from letting them manipulate the process. The UN needs to reform the process, perhaps by eliminating the brokers and taking in-house the job of identifying qualifying CDM investments.

Paying for Iraq in Canada

Every time you go to the gas pump you're paying for George Bush's misadventures in Iraq and you're paying a lot.

The Independent on Sunday reports that the Great Bush Blunder has trebled the world price of oil:

"The oil economist Dr Mamdouh Salameh, who advises both the World Bank and the UN Industrial Development Organisation (Unido), told The Independent on Sunday that the price of oil would now be no more than $40 a barrel, less than a third of the record $135 a barrel reached last week, if it had not been for the Iraq war.

He spoke after oil prices set a new record on 13 consecutive days over the past two weeks. They have now multiplied sixfold since 2002, compared with the fourfold increase of the 1973 and 1974 "oil shock" that ended the world's long postwar boom.

Goldman Sachs predicted last week that the price could rise to an unprecedented $200 a barrel over the next year, and the world is coming to terms with the idea that the age of cheap oil has ended, with far-reaching repercussions on their activities."

Dr Salameh told the all-party parliamentary group on peak oil last month that Iraq had offered the United States a deal, three years before the war, that would have opened up 10 new giant oil fields on "generous" terms in return for the lifting of sanctions. 'This would certainly have prevented the steep rise of the oil price," he said. "But the US had a different idea. It planned to occupy Iraq and annex its oil.'"

So the next time you fill'er up, remember to thank George Bush and his pals for that extra twenty or thirty bucks you're leaving at the cash register. It's no wonder Harper wanted Canada to fight in Iraq.

Two-Wheeled Whining

Riding a bicycle to work is great for the environment but it's also dangerous. Truth be told, a fair number of cyclists ride as though they're in a fencing match with their four-wheeled rivals. They dart and dodge and weave in and out, sometimes going for the narrowest of paths to avoid being blocked or slowed down by motor vehicles.

A lot of cyclists, especially bike couriers, are their own worst enemies, alienating and sometimes infuriating drivers and pedestrians alike. I saw more than one bicycle courier down when I practised in Vancouver and there was always very little sympathy to be seen in the pedestrians who passed by.

A recent fatality has the Toronto Cyclists Union demanding blood. On Thursday a cyclist was killed after running into an open car door (presumably a parked car) and falling into the road where he was run over by a van. Police are deciding whether to charge the driver of the parked car with failing to take "due precautions." I don't think there's a chance in hell of a conviction.

Here's the problem. Absent a marked, bicycle lane, a cyclist weaving his way through the curb/parking lane is essentially "lane splitting." The lane is already occupied - by the parked vehicle he strikes. The vehicle doesn't strike the cyclist, it's parked. The moving vehicle is the bicycle. Yes, sure, the car driver opened the door but the vehicle itself was stationary and the cyclist either wasn't paying attention and didn't see it in time or was going too fast to be able to stop in time.

A bicycle on a public road is just another vehicle. The rider is obliged to honour traffic lights, for example. Bicyclists have been charged and convicted for speeding. So, what gives them the right to indulge in lane splitting so they can illegally pass (on the curb side) slower motor vehicles? Nothing exempts them from the duty to take "due precautions" either.

I've been riding motorcycles for over 40-years and, from that perspective, the way bicyclists maneuver through city traffic seems nothing short of suicidal. I ride one of those really big, adventure touring bikes - a big, bright yellow machine with a big, not always bright me atop it. This isn't a flimsy bicycle with a rider hunched over the handlebars. Even then I always have to maintain "conspicuity" which means positioning my motorcycle in the way required by the road and traffic conditions to make me as visible as possible to every other vehicle on the road, in front of me, beside me and behind me. If I'm going to survive I have to ride as though I was invisible to every other user of the road. The driver who's going to kill you is the driver who doesn't see you. Simple as that.

From the newspaper account it sounds as though the cyclist was 1) lane splitting, 2) passing in the curb lane, and 3) riding too fast for the conditions around him. I might be wrong about those facts but it sure sounds to me as though the cyclist was the author of his own misfortune.

In our overcrowded cities there are no miracle answers to the car versus cyclist problem save, perhaps, establishing a few bicycle lanes on secondary streets with strict laws forcing cyclists to use them. I know cyclists aren't going to like this but those who insist on riding in congested, downtown traffic areas ought to have to go through some sort of training/licensing programme. Knowing how to ride a bicycle isn't the same as knowing how to ride one safely. A cyclist who doesn't know how to ride safely or won't ride safely has no business mixing it up with pedestrians and vehicular traffic.

The Wisdom of the Ages

One of the greatest inventions of the Roman empire was concrete. When the empire collapsed the knowledge of concrete was lost for nearly two thousand years. Today our societies couldn't function without it.

But what of the engineering behind Stonehenge or the great pyramids? Is that too just a matter of lost knowledge? Watch this guy, Wally, show how he can single-handedly build his own Stonehenge.

Harper's Malignant Narcissism

One of the best Canadian e-zines is Metaball.

In the March, 2008 edition, Metaball editor RK Finch presents a brilliant psychological dissection of Stephen Harper entitled "The Singular Face of Megalomania." This is a "must read" for those of us who can't quite put our finger on what truly lurks inside our Furious Leader:

http://metaball.ca/2008/ball_Mar-08/0308_01.html

Getting Off on the Right Foot

Hard to believe but it's happened again! Another severed right foot in a running shoe found washed up on the shore of an island in southern coastal BC. Four detached feet - right feet, clad in running shoes, washed up on local islands, and not a clue where they're from. Police disclosed that the first two recovered were size 12. Details haven't been released on the last pair.

RCMP attempted to interrogate the feet but found they weren't responsive even when repeatedly tasered.

I've Seen This Movie Before

Responding to a critique by Castor Rouge of my critique of Stephane Dion this morning, I had a flashback to 1974. I was one of many menial scribes conscripted to cover the federal election campaign that year.

It was the challenger, Tory Robert Stanfield, versus Pierre Trudeau with David Lewis batting for the NDP.

Canada was in a mess with runaway inflation. Bob Stanfield campaigned on a promise/threat of wage and price controls to stabilize the economy. Make no mistake, Stanfield was promoting a very unpopular idea. He scared the living hell out of a lot of people, particularly organized labour.

Pierre Trudeau pounced. He got up on stage and lambasted Stanfield, warning voters that, if the Tories formed the next government, they would wake up one day and "Zap, you're frozen!" It was a shrewd bit of politicking and it worked. It stampeded the labour vote out of the NDP corral and into the Liberal camp. Trudeau won, Stanfield lost. David Lewis even lost his own seat.

Just a few months later, newly re-elected prime minister Pierre Trudeau introduced - why wage and price controls of course.

Bob Stanfield was a wonderful guy, honest and direct. However he looked like an undertaker and utterly lacked charisma. He went into that election advocating an unpopular policy, unpopular but necessary, that his rival was able to use to beat him senseless.

I think Stephane Dion is something of a latter-day Stanfield. He has no discernible charisma and he wants to champion an unpopular policy, one that can easily be used by his opponents to scare voters.

Like Pissing Into the Wind

One in ten. It doesn't make much difference what you're trying to achieve, if you're scoring 10% it almost always means you have a problem.

The carbon tax has a problem.

It's not so much a problem with the merits of the idea itself or the political hurdles it poses. Its main problem is the guy who says he'll stake all to make it happen - Stephane Dion.

The latest Toronto Star/Angus Reid poll shows that Dion isn't the guy to sell a carbon tax to the Canadian public.

"Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion's approval rating has sunk to its lowest level yet, with nine of 10 Canadians saying they disapprove or are not sure of his performance as the head of the party, according to the latest Toronto Star/Angus Reid opinion poll.

Not since former Liberal leader John Turner bottomed out with a 14 per cent approval rating shortly after losing the 1988 election have things been so bad for the head of Canada's most successful political party. Just 10 per cent of those surveyed stand behind Dion's leadership, the poll shows, compared to 32 per cent for Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

What's worse is that the number of people who said they were unsure about Dion's performance has dropped from 46 per cent at the end of last summer to 30 per cent this month, meaning that Canadians are making up their minds about a leader who has had difficulties rallying his party behind him as well as communicating his party's positions to potential voters.

"What's really disheartening is it's almost as if everyone's made up their minds already," said the polling firm's Mario Canseco. "Those who actually have something to say about Dion are saying negative things."

The online poll of 1,004 Canadians is considered accurate to within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times in 20."

I know this news is going to upset loyal Dion supporters and there are plenty of you among Liberal bloggers. You support Dion, you stand by him faithfully and that's all very nice. What you aren't going to do is get him elected.

The Liberal Party brand is propping up Dion, not the other way around. Canadians' dislike and distrust of Stephen Harper is propping up Dion.

The election may be won or lost on Dion's leadership. Yet he's intent on transforming it into a referendum on carbon taxes. With this pleasant, well-intentioned, intelligent but hapless character at the wheel, Dion may be dooming initiatives such as carbon taxes in a vain attempt to save his own political neck.

We'll have another leader of the party but a loss on a de facto carbon tax referendum may just set back that initiative for years to come, if not permanently. Once the Canadian voters believe they have spoken, it's going to be enormously difficult for another leader to get them to change their minds.

Dion's legacy may be that of a failed leader who gambled on really bad odds and wound up dragging down the environmental initiative with him.

The carbon tax initiative is too important to be put to a referendum by a leader who can't even sell himself.

The good news. Canadians are still waiting for the LPC to come up with a leader they can support. The party can retake the government - only not until it does some essential housekeeping.

Until then it's just pissing into the wind.

Westminster Tinkers with Nature

Genetics and reproductive technology are front and centre in the British Parliament this week.

One bill will provide for the creation of "savior siblings." It's the creation of in vitro children intended to supply tissue for a sick older child. So, for example, little Jimmy could be manufactured to furnish a bone marrow transplant for big brother Johnny. It's unclear what fate would await Jimmy should Johnny require a new heart or a fresh pair of lungs.

The other big deal is the creation of "cybrids." These are blended human/animal embryos that will be permitted for research purposes only, at least for now. From the New York Times:

"The idea is to take an animal egg — say a cow egg — and remove its nucleus. This would remove most of the cow’s DNA from the egg. Human DNA would then be introduced, and the embryo would be allowed to begin to grow. (The introduction of human DNA would normally be done by putting an entire small cell, such as a skin cell, into the animal’s egg. On being zapped with electricity, the two cells readily fuse, and the nucleus of the skin cell then becomes the nucleus of the egg.) The new nucleus thus contains only human DNA. The technical term for this procedure is interspecies somatic cell nuclear transfer, or interspecies cloning.
If the embryo were allowed to keep growing, and was then implanted into a woman, it would — presumably, and assuming nothing went wrong — grow into a baby. However, the aim is not to produce humans this way; under the new law, embryos will have to be destroyed at 14 days (the time that the embryo begins to differentiate into cells of different types). Rather, the aim is to collect stem cells from the embryos for use in medical research."

Is this just a simple genetic experiment or the camel's nose slipping under the tent? Right now, no one can say for sure.

The Boy Who Cried "No Wolf!"

Words kill.

That's why we can be held accountable for our words when they do just that. Canadian law students are taught the case of the guy who yelled "fire" in a crowded movie theatre sending the audience stampeding for the exits where a number were crushed to death. Now the prankster hadn't killed anyone himself, at least not directly, but he was convicted of their deaths.

The idea behind this is that we're all deemed responsible for the likely consequences of our acts. You can't say the guy in the movie theatre intended to kill those people. But here's the question - did he know or ought he to have known that he would trigger a stampede that could lead to the deaths or injuries of the other moviegoers? Were those deaths foreseeable if he'd bothered to think it through?

You see, as a general rule, we're all deemed in the eyes of the law to intend the logical consequences of our acts. If it's not logical or if it's not foreseeable you're not held accountable. If you're insane or an automaton, you have a defence. If it's an outright fluke that you couldn't have foreseen, you have a defence. However, if you have a functioning mind and cause plainly foreseeable harm, Bingo!

Which brings me to someone who I'll assume, for the purposes of this discussion, has a functioning mind and isn't insane, the National Post's Lorne Gunter. This character is but one of several "journalists" at the paper who never pass up an opportunity to claim that the global warming theory is a scam. That's plainly the policy of the newspaper itself. Indeed the Spot's web page still links to no fewer than 40 denialist rants it published going back a year ago. One sided, never ending. Gotta be a reason for that, don't you think?

It's pretty obvious that there are a great many politicians, including our Furious Leader, who don't like having to act on global warming. Oh they'll call it the greatest threat to the nation, tuck it away and then go off in search of ways to defund the government - monkey business as usual. The only thing that will make these types do anything responsible is when public opinion leaves them no choice. And shaping that public opinion is the specialty of folks like the Grunter.

The National Spot and it's clutch of pompous, ill-informed asses, is fighting a rearguard action. Eventually public opinion will reach a critical mass and no politician will survive who defies it. But, in the meantime, there are powerful groups who see a lot of money to be had in postponing that day for as long as possible. There's a direct, financial value in every disbeliever these guys can create. That's why the old RJ Reynolds "science" crowd has moved out of tobacco denialism and into global warming denialism. All you have to do is follow those who are following the money.

The best science available warns us that the longer we wait to deal with this, the worse it will be for us in the long run. Both remediation and adaptation become significantly more difficult, more harsh, and less effective the longer we put this off. And, of course, there are those - the poorest and most vulnerable in far-off lands - for whom these options will be foreclosed outright. Their option is but to die.

As a former reporter I don't like the idea of journalists being censored or censured for what they write but I'm becoming less convinced of absolute freedom of the press. It seems to me that press freedom, like all freedoms, has to come with some responsibilities. These people are influential. They are opinion makers. We need them to represent every view and yet there must be some line in the sand. A journalist can't walk into a theatre and yell "fire" and then claim press freedom as his defence.

Of course Gunter and those of his ilk will never be on the hook for their perfidy. Who will ever be able to calibrate the amount of damage they will have caused when, at last, even they can no longer get away with this nonsense? Who will ever be able to attach names of the dead to a particular article that he wrote? Better yet, by the time the hens do come home to roost, this clown will be long gone and a generation that's never heard of him will be living with the consequences he and his have bequeathed to them.

Words kill. Maybe not here, maybe not today, but there and there and over there and very soon.

For more on Lorne Gunter, Terry Corcoran and the rest of the National Post's clown car journalists, do a search on desmogblog.com

Burying the Traces of Don Rumsfeld

He was a Neo-Con man's man, Bush's first defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.

Like all the other Neo-Cons who were infiltrated into the Bush administration by Dick Cheney, Rummie wasted no time in implementing plans to revolutionize the way America killed people in other countries.

Rumsfeld's vision caught the imagination of some leading lights. England's pre-eminant military historian, Sandhurst lecturer and newspaper columnist, John Keegan, practically swooned over Rumsfeld in a piece of grotesque flattery he wrote for Vanity Fair. Later, as the war in Afghanistan blurred into Iraq, Keegan boldly assured readers of the Telegraph that all was well, America would prevail - quickly and handily.

It was the US Army in particular that Rumsfeld set out to transform from a lumbering, conventional warfighting machine into more of a light brigade, special operations force capable of deploying rapidly and conducting hit and run warfare, often covertly. It was a bold and radical move entirely in keeping with the Neo-Cons who are now seen as a gang of failed revolutionaries, their grand experiment in tatters.

I thought I detected a glint of Rumsfeld's Brave New World army in a story (May 15) that recently emerged from Afghanistan about a US special forces and intelligence operatives conducting covert raids on Afghan villages resulting in the deaths of innocent civilians. It sounded eerily like the targeted assassination operation the Americans ran in Vietnam known as the Phoenix Program. Now, less than a week after that report came out, the Pentagon is moving to shut down the special forces' authority to carry out secret counterterrorism missions on its own around the world. From the Washington Post:

"The decision culminates four years of misgivings within the military that the command, with its expertise in commando missions and unconventional war, would use its broader mandate too aggressively, by carrying out operations that had not been reviewed or approved by the regional commanders.

Roger D. Carstens, a 20-year veteran of Special Operations missions who is now a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington policy institute, said the Special Operations Command finally “came to the conclusion that its role is not to be that of a global Lone Ranger who shows up at the last second to dispatch the bad guys.”

“That just can’t be done,” Mr. Carstens said, “or rather it should not be done.”

The change is the latest rejection of initiatives that Mr. Rumsfeld set forth during almost six years as defense secretary, before stepping down in 2006. His successor, Robert M. Gates, has increased the size of the ground forces, a move Mr. Rumsfeld resisted; signed off on a plan to keep more troops in Europe than Mr. Rumsfeld had envisioned; and called for future budgets to focus on the weapons needed to fight insurgents and terrorists today, rather than on investments in next-generation technology advocated by Mr. Rumsfeld."

Mr. Rumsfeld outlined his views in 2004 by advocating what was known as a new Unified Command Plan, one that would have shifted the center of gravity within the military. It declared that the Special Operations Command “leads, plans, synchronizes, and as directed, executes global operations against terrorist networks.” He stressed that his reorganization was intended to permit the command to send out its own small teams to capture or kill terrorists."

McSame Part Deux

Here is a sampling of the clips now being released that ought to be enough to bury John McSame for all time.

McCain Flips All Over Himself

Forget Obama's supposed vulnerability. McCain does himself in - over and over again.

Ted Kennedy's Seizure

Ted Kennedy had a seizure over the weekend. The New York Times has just posted a story that Kennedy has now been diagnosed as having a brain tumour.

Tortured to Death in Abu Ghraib

America doesn't torture. Of course it doesn't. But, when it does, it goes to crazy lengths to conceal it.

If you've got a strong stomach, I urge you to check out Errol Morris' piece, "The Most Curious Thing," published in today's New York Times:

http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/the-most-curious-thing/?8ty&emc=ty

Running on Empty

Even the most powerful political leader on earth can't get very far without a tankful of political capital. That tank inevitably begins to run low during the final months of a lame duck president's term. In the case of George w. Bush, it's not low, it's empty.

Shrub's Middle East farewell tour proves the point. He got up and delivered inflammatory speeches that failed to spark any reaction save for apathy. He went begging for more oil and got snubbed and shown the door.

George's failure, from day one, has been his inability to understand the essential need to understand. This is a guy who's boasted that he follows his "gut instinct" on major issues.

Gut instinct isn't necessarily bad when it's preceded by an accurate understanding and thoughtful deliberation. It works as the best alternative when you've done your homework and still haven't come up with one clear solution. It's not, however, a substitute for understanding or deliberation. Without the groundwork, gut instinct is no more than a wild-ass guess (WAG) and often something worse, a silly, wild-ass guess (SWAG).

Invading Iraq with 160,000 troops was a WAG. Deciding to occupy the country without tripling the number of boots on the ground was a SWAG. No understanding, no deliberation.

It didn't take long for important people around the world to figure out how Bush worked which is a key reason why everything he's touched - be it America's economy, its environment, Iraq, New Orleans, its influence abroad, even its military adventures - has wound up on the heap in the biffy.

Bush went to the Middle East and claimed that he can solve the Israeli/Palestinian dilemma before he leaves office in January. With what, another SWAG? This guy is either trying to scam everyone or else he's just plain delusional.

Remember when Bush confided to certain world leaders, including Canada's own Paul Martin, that he was guided by God, in effect God's instrument in the White House? That meant his decisions were divinely inspired, making him, in effect, a demi-god. And, as we all know, demi-gods don't have to understand, don't have to contemplate. All they need do is go with their divine, gut instinct.

It's a sort of hucksterism rarely seen since the days of the old medicine shows but it's one that no one's buying any longer. Bush is empty, done, finished. No one believes him any more, no one seems to feel the need to humour him either.

In critical moments past, sitting presidents have sometimes called in their predecessors for advice. Think any future president will be running up long-distance phone bills to the trained chimp in Crawford?

The Suzuki Factor

David Suzuki's endorsement of Stephane Dion's carbon tax initiative is a mixed blessing.

Suzuki's outspokeness has made him a bit of a lightning rod for criticism that he's an extremist, a granola munching tree-hugger.

I think Suzuki sees the global warming issue as a politico-scientific challenge. Both sides have to work together like a team of horses or nobody gets anywhere - ever.

If Dion truly has the fortitude to stand behind the carbon tax policy and if David Suzuki genuinely believes there is no other way, the two must work together and very publicly.

For his part, Dion has to show a degree of genuine leadership that's rarely seen in the timid. He must refine his initiative, stand behind it, explain it, defend it and then persuade Canadians that it's not just a nice idea but an imperative.

For his part, Suzuki must use his considerable professional influence to enlist a large body of the best scientific minds in our country to join him in supporting the carbon tax proposal. They need to lend their voices, their credentials to present a solid scientific consensus on the issue. They need to assist Mr. Dion by doing everything in their power to explain the merits of carbon taxation to a sceptical and sometimes ill-informed public.

I think the concept is workable. A lot of the already stated fears are misplaced. For example, there's no reason that home heating fuel cannot be exempted from these taxes. I believe there are similar workarounds for other problems.

That's not to say that carbon taxes won't be felt. Of course they will as they must if they're to work. That's the whole point. The idea is to get people to change their energy consumption habits. If you must commute an hour each way to work, you might want to help us all out by ditching that SUV. Maybe you'll suddenly see the merits of car pooling or mass transit. Maybe jobs will have to relocate closer to the available workforce as has happened elsewhere, relieving already chronic congestion in our metropolitan cores.

Here's another thought. We don't consume energy equitably so why should those who consume substantially more not expect to contribute more in tax? If you want to live in a 4,000 sq. ft. house in exburbia because that's where you can afford that elevated lifestyle, don't complain that it's expensive to clog up the highways commuting downtown to work. That's your choice, live with it. If you want to spend your weekends racing about the lake in your ski boat rather than kayaking, that's your choice, live with it. If the taxes are unacceptable, change your lifestyle. Just don't bitch to me about how you choose to live your life.

McCain's Lobbyist Friends

For years John McCain has championed a campaign to cleanse Capitol Hill of the scourge of lobbyists. Well he's not even president yet and he's already delivering on that promise. He's driven a bunch of them out of the Washington - aboard his campaign bus. They in turn are driving his campaign. Do you think they figure that John's going to take an axe to them if he wins?

Don't Get Smug, We're Really Not That Much Better

A few observations from Bill Moyers taken from his new book, "Moyers on Democracy":

"Democracy in America is a series of narrow escapes, and we may be running out of luck. Now all bets are off. We have fallen under the spell of money, faction, and fear, and the great American experience in creating a different future together has been subjugated to individual cunning in the pursuit of wealth and power -and to the claims of empire, with its ravenous demands and stuporous distractions. A sense of political impotence pervades the country - a mass resignation defined by Goodwyn as "believing the dogma of 'democracy' on a superficial public level but not believing it privately." We hold elections, knowing they are unlikely to bring the corporate state under popular control.

The earth we share as our common gift, to be passed on in good condition to our children's children, is being despoiled. Private wealth is growing as public needs increase apace. Our Constitution is perilously close to being consigned to the valley of the shadow of death, betrayed by a powerful cabal of secrecy-obsessed authoritarians. Terms like "liberty" and "individual freedom" invoked by generations of Americans who battled to widen the 1787 promise to "promote the general welfare" have been perverted to create a government primarily dedicated to the welfare of the state and the political class that runs it. Yes, Virginia, there is a class war and ordinary people are losing it.

The conclusion that we are in trouble is unavoidable. I report the assault on nature evidenced in coal mining that tears the tops off mountains and dumps them into rivers, sacrificing the health and lives of those in the river valleys to short-term profit, and I see a link between that process and the stock-market frenzy which scorns long-term investments - genuine savings - in favor of quick turnovers and speculative bubbles whose inevitable bursting leaves insiders with stuffed pockets and millions of small stockholders, pensioners, and employees out of work, out of luck, and out of hope.

When the state becomes the guardian of power and privilege to the neglect of justice for the people as a whole, it mocks the very concept of government as proclaimed in the preamble to our Constitution; mocks Lincoln's sacred belief in "government of the people, by the people, and for the people"; mocks the democratic notion of government as "a voluntary union for the common good" embodied in the great wave of reform that produced the Progressive Era and the two Roosevelts. In contrast, the philosophy popularized in the last quarter century that "freedom" simply means freedom to choose among competing brands of consumer goods, that taxes are an unfair theft from the pockets of the successful to reward the incompetent, and that the market will meet all human needs while government itself becomes the enabler of privilege - the philosophy of an earlier social Darwinism and laissez-faire capitalism dressed in new togs - is as subversive as Benedict Arnold's betrayal of the Revolution he had once served."

That Flushing Sound is Hillary's Last Shred of Integrity

To borrow a line from Keith Olbermann, "shut the Hell up." Right now Hillary Clinton is nose-deep in the cesspit of her own hypocrisy.

It's all about Hillary's attack questioning Obama's ties to '60s radicals and it's got a lot of those very radicals questioning why Hypocrite Hillary is overlooking her own history with them. From the Washington Post:

"...her comments baffled two retired Bay Area lawyers who knew Clinton in the summer of 1971 when she worked as an intern at a left-wing law firm in Oakland, Calif., that defended communists and Black Panthers.

"She's a hypocrite," Doris B. Walker, 89, who was a member of the American Communist Party, said in an interview last week. "She had to know who we were and what kinds of cases we were handling. We had a very left-wing reputation, including civil rights, constitutional law, racist problems."

Malcolm Burnstein, 74, a partner at the firm who worked closely with Clinton during her internship, said he was traveling in Pennsylvania in April when Clinton attacked Obama for his past interactions with William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, members of Students for a Democratic Society who went on to found the bomb-making Weather Underground.

"Given her background, it was quite hypocritical," Burnstein said. "I almost called the Philadelphia Enquirer. I saw what she and her campaign were saying about Ayers and I thought, 'Well, if you're going to talk about that totally bit of irrelevant nonsense, I'll talk about your career with us.' "

The very things she's accusing Barack of could be said of her with much greater evidence," said Tom Hayden, a leading anti-Vietnam War activist, author and self-described friend of the Clintons.

Robert Reich who went to Yale Law School with Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton and later served in the Clinton administration, called Hillary Clinton's attack on Obama "absurd," adding: "That carries guilt by association to a new level of absurdity. Where does guilt by association stop? I mean, she was a partner of Jim McDougal in the 1980s, for crying out loud." Reich is now an Obama supporter.

Clinton's associations date to her years as a student leader at Wellesley from 1965 to 1969. It was the height of student opposition to the Vietnam War, and Carl Oglesby, the president of Students for a Democratic Society, came to campus to speak.

"I gave a talk at Wellesley, where she was a student," Oglesby said in a telephone interview from Amherst, Mass., where he is recovering from a stroke. "I can't say that I was a close friend of hers. It was more of a passing acquaintance. I liked her. I think of her as a good guy. I think she has a good heart and a solid mind. And I support her in the current primary."


Oglesby now talks warmly about Clinton. In an interview with Reason magazine, he called their association "a friendship, a comradeship, within the context of the movement. She and I, for a while, were warm with each other. She and I were semi-close."
But Oglesby said he has not contacted Clinton because he is afraid that he could harm her candidacy.

"A friend of mine mentioned me to her not long ago, and according to him she got a case of the shakes. I think it was because she could imagine if any of her considerable enemies on the right wanted to do her in, they would be happy to discover a relationship between her and me," he told the magazine."

I think what Hillary is revealing is what many Democrats most fear - that she's willing to do anything, say anything on her way out the door, even if she winds up kneecapping the Democratic Party in the process. Between the blatant pandering and the hypocrisy, not to mention race-baiting, Hillary has also put her last shred of integrity into the toilet.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/18/AR2008051802101.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter&sid=ST2008051802293

Up Against the Wall, MotherF__ker!

You have to be pretty close to 60 now to remember when that phrase literally rolled off the lips of college students from one end of America to the other. It was the late 60's/early 70's and American youth, or a good number of them, were in revolt. They were tired of a war without end, tired of the killing, tired of the draft, tired of blatant, institutional racism.

I was in the states doing my undergrad at the time and what a time it was. Protests everywhere, seemingly a daily event. On campus the SDS or the Weathermen, no one knew for sure, got into the Army ROTC building one night and what the blast didn't destroy the flames certainly did.

For all its absurdity and contradiction, it was a cleansing moment for America. It couldn't last and it didn't. The long-haired radicals shaved, put on Brooks Brothers suits and button-down Oxford cloth shirts and became investment bankers. But it was important while it lasted for it exposed the deep wound in American society and forced everyone to see it and, when that happened, Washington had to respond.

America could use another of those radical, cleansing moments right now but it's not going to happen. Why not? Because there's no generational divide, no draft and no powerful mass media.

The Bush wars are being fought by America's "all volunteer" army which is technically correct even if those hapless volunteers didn't understand they might wind up being held hostage by their own government and forced to fight year after year after year. It's a hidden draft, a perverse blend of voluntary enlistment and indentured servitude. It's wicked cruel, the handiwork of cowards, rapscallions and utter reprobates.

The trick, of couse, is "all volunteer." If you don't sign on for it, you're safe. You can forget all about it. And that's exactly what most American youth are doing, forgetting about it. The effects are plain. After 9/11, nine out of ten recruits were high school graduates. That's now down to seven of ten. In addition, the use of moral waivers to allow the military to accept volunteers with criminal records or other issues has skyrocketed. And even that isn't working which is why many of those early volunteers are now serving their fourth tours in combat, tours that have been extended to 15-months a pop.

Because there's no draft, at least not yet, America's youth, especially the privileged kids (and their parents) have nothing to fear. So long as you can hold that all volunteer army captive, they're safe.

No draft, no generational divide. When old people begin sending draft notices to young people, the chasm opens instantaneously. Anger and resentment and distrust build rapidly and settle in.

No powerful mass media either to make the American people see what's being done to their country. No courageous mass media to raise proper hell over the abuse of the all-volunteer soldiers. There's the obligatory occasional story, sure, but they're far and few between and not enough to make those who prefer not to see look at it, certainly not enough to trigger public outrage. There's nobody to expose the deep wound in American society.

And that, kids, is how America came to have so many motherfuckers and so few walls to put them up against.

McCain's Slave Army

John McCain's grasp of history and current events is pretty wobbly but his vision for the near future must be giving nightmares to America's hostage soldiers.

The Bush regime still maintains the tyrannical "stop loss" cudgel to force its soldiers, regulars and reservists, to keep on serving - and fighting and dying - for years beyond their intended commitment.

There are now American service personnel on their third, sometimes even fourth tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq, many essentially held against their will. The reservists, in particular, have found themselves trapped with desperate families and ruined businesses or careers awaiting their eventual return home.

Here's the brutal truth. John McCain intends to keep these people fighting for the foreseeable future or until America wins the already lost Afghan and Iraq wars. He intends to keep these people hostage because the only other way he can continue "to victory" is to draft replacements.

The giveaway is found in McCain's recent speech where he outlined his vision for bringing American troops home after winning Iraq and Afghanistan by 2013. This is what he said,

"By January, 2013 America is welcome [sic] home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom."

By 2013 some of these indentured troops will have served in combat longer than any Western soldiers for centuries.

Years ago I read some post-WWII American studies of just how long the average soldier can function in combat. The results were quite interesting. Long before the body goes, the mind fails. Often the soldier either becomes unusable or deeply disturbed. There are already plenty of reports of psychological damage being sustained by American troops due to extended tours. What will four more years of fighting bring to these who have already "sacrificed terribly?"

There's not even a slight chance that McCain would ever get congressional approval for a draft. That means, as Rumsfeld said, "you go to war with the army you have." McCain's war is going to have to be fought, on and on, by the very same army that Rumsfeld had back in 2003 when he launched the adventure in the Iraqi sandbox.

I wonder if John McCain's memory is good enough to recall what happened the last time the American army became hopelessly demoralized?

Surprise, Dead Men Tell No Tales

The RCMP have announced they'll pursue no charges in the Cadman Affair. What a surprise!

Chuck, of course, is long gone, lost to cancer in 2005. Before he died he told his wife, daughter and son-in-law about an apparent bribe offered by some Conservative fixers to get him to vote to defeat the Liberal government of Paul Martin.

Unfortunately this man of such great integrity didn't get into details of who, what, when and where - the information the cops would need to build any case warranting prosecution.

With Cadman dead and the possibility of the others voluntarily incriminating themselves pretty slim, there's really nothing for the cops to go on but that doesn't mean they shouldn't have tasered a few highly placed Conservatives just to avoid the appearance of favouritism.

So, what does the RCMP announcement tell us about the Cadman affair? Precisely nothing.

Can Bernier Stop Embarassing Harper?

Maxime Bernier's days are numbered. Canada's New Government's foreign affairs minister has pretty exotic tastes - in girlfriends and now, it appears, in air travel also. It's bad enough that he's utterly bungled his job, he doesn't need controversy about his high life.

The latest scandal involves a $22,573 bill Bernier rang up for airfare - yes, for one - to attend a 2-day conference in Laos last November. Basic airfare for that trip comes in at about $7,000. Two of Mad Max's aides clocked airfares of $18,500 for the same trip.

Bernier is a walking disaster. It seems he can't open his mouth - or his pants - without bringing unwanted attention on Stephen Harper.

Max, on behalf of the Liberal Party of Canada, I'd like to say "thanks."

Bush Goes Cap In Hand to Riyadh

Like Oliver Twist in the orphanage, US President George Bush has picked up his gruel bowl and flown to Riyadh to ask the House of Saud for "more please." Bush is making a private visit to King Abdullah's "ranch" (didn't know they had those in Saudi Arabia) to beg the Saudis to increase oil production and exports to the US.

From the New York Times:

"When Mr. Bush was last here in January, a similar request caused him some embarrassment. The president asked the Saudi oil minister to increase production, and was publicly rebuffed. He then took up the matter with the king, but the conversation did not get very far.

The president has little choice but to try again. Back in Washington, Democrats like Senator Schumer of New York are pressing for sanctions against Saudi Arabia. Mr. Schumer wants to limit arms sales to the kingdom, saying he wants them to “cooperate and not strangle American consumers.”

The Bush White House opposes such methods. But with gasoline nearing $4 a gallon, clearly Mr. Bush is looking for some cooperation.

In an interview with CBS Radio before leaving Washington, Mr. Bush was asked what he would tell the king this time that he did not say when he was here last.

“That I didn’t say last time?” he asked, adding, “The price is even higher.”

There it is kids. Bush the Younger, the Scourge of Afghanistan, Desert Conqueror of Iraq, the annointed Leader of the Free World, taking his begging bowl and an enormous gift basket of America's national pride to kneel at the feet of the House of Saud. Now I have seen everything. It's all become so clear. The horror, oh the horror.

The last picture I can remember of Bush and a Saudi noble they were only holding hands and kissing cheeks. I wonder what George is going to have to kiss this time?

Hillary's Post Mortem

Hillary may refuse to accept that she's as dead as the moose hanging in some working man's bar but her campaign staff know she's finished, and why.

Michelle Cottle at The New Republic interviewed some Clinton campaign staffers and reveals their telling insights. A really worthwhile piece, "What Went Wrong?":

http://www.tnr.com:80/politics/story.html?id=f7a4a380-c4a4-4f84-b653-f252e8569915

Funny Incurious George Should Criticize Appeasers

Contemptus Stultus

We've all heard the story of George w. Bush's thinly veiled slight of Barack Obama over the Senator's statements that he would talk to America's "enemies", namely Iran and Syria. Without naming Obama directly, the frat boy who has miserably failed the American people every day of his administration, even back before 9/11, was obviously exploiting the opportunity of a speech to commemorate Israel's 60th anniversary in order to get in a few partisan digs for John McSame.

Bush ought to appreciate appeasers, not condemn them. He's relied on a gang of spineless appeasers in order to get his way and drag America down ever since 9/11. Without appeasers (yes, including Her Ladyship, Dame Hillary), George might have had to wait a few more months before invading Iraq by which time Hans Blix would have given Iraq a WMD Clean Bill of Health. Without appeasers, Americans wouldn't be living under the scourge of the Patriot Act. Without appeasers, Bush and Cheney would have been impeached and probably indicted by now. Without appeasers America might not remain at the feet of Big Oil today. Without appeasers, America might not have tolerated the privatization of war itself.

The appeasers did more than just prostrate themselves before their self-proclaimed emperor. They empowered him with tools to intimidate and coerce those who refused to appease the puppet prince. These appeasers even allowed Bush to twist and pervert their Constitution to suit his will. These appeasers allowed Bush to institutionalize torture, to dishonour their own military, to arrest and imprison anyone, indefinitely, without charge - to fly them to some of the most vile nations on the planet where their dirty work could be carried out unseen, unheard.

Mister Bush ought to appreciate appeasers. Without them he'd be nothing - and wouldn't the world be an infinitely better place for that?

Save the Polar Bear - From Bush, Harper & Big Oil

Okay, I know better, it's my fault. I know that if something sounds too good to be true, chances are it is.

Like the announcement yesterday that the US had declared the polar bear a species in imminent danger of extinction. Yippee, it's "Save the Bears Day!" Not.

What was I thinking? This is the Bush regime, the same pack of bait and switch clowns the world has had to endure for seven and a half years already. Surely if we've learned anything it's that, when these creatures say anything, you can bet they mean something else altogether.

Yes, Washington has declared the polar bear in imminent danger of extinction. But the Bushies have also effectively said "so what?" The Independent sums it all up very nicely:

"Yesterday marked the first time the US Endangered Species Act was used to protect a species threatened by climate change. The US Geological Survey says that two-thirds of the world's polar bears could be gone by 2050.

The bears will only be protected from the direct effects of hunting, and some other activities, because of limits imposed by the Interior Department. It invoked a seldom used loophole to make it easier for the energy industry to actually expand activities that already threaten the bears and their habitat.

The Interior Secretary, Dirk Kempthorne, who spent much of his political life opposing the Endangered Species Act, said it would be "inappropriate" to use the polar bear listing "to regulate global climate change."

American scientists believe that sea ice loss will likely result in two-thirds of the polar bears disappearing by mid-century.

The plight of the polar bear has also caused vehement disagreement within the Bush administration and last month the conservative Canadian government refused to list the polar bear as endangered. Canada has some 15,500 polar bears and it has given the polar bear its weakest classification, that of "special concern", saying the animals were in trouble but not at risk of extinction.

President Bush is publicly committed to the rapid expansion of oil and gas exploration along the Alaskan coast, even at the cost of the polar bears' habitat and opposes any moves to combat global warming through regulation.

But faced with overwhelming scientific evidence that already rapid loss of sea ice is accelerating, Mr Kempthorne said and he no choice but to declare the species threatened. "Sea ice is vital to polar bears' survival," he said. "This has been a difficult decision. But in light of the scientific record, and the restraints of the inflexible law that guides me," he had made "the only decision I can make."

So, kids, what's the lesson from all this? It's that these right-wing governments will follow the law when it's "the only decision [they] can make" but then they'll do everything in their power to make sure their decision is virtually meaningless.

The North American Oil Lobby, also known as Bush/Cheney/Harper, know that, so long as they're at the wheel, Big Oil rules baby!

"If I Were a Terrorist"

Here's how James Pence would attack America - if he were a terrorist

Caesar Returns

French divers have recovered a bust of Julius Caesar from the bottom of the River Rhone.

What makes the bust special is that it's the only known example that predates Caesar's assassination in 44 BC. The scupture was carved two years earlier in 46 BC. It's believed that it was dumped hastily after Caesar's death lest it offend the new powers in Rome.

Afghanistan's Phoenix Programme?

The "Phoenix Programme" is straight out of Vietnam. It entailed covert, US special forces assassination squads that raided country villages to execute suspected Viet Cong officials and sympathizers. Postwar analysis revealed their targeting information was routinely poor and they wound up murdering a lot of innocents.

Now a United Nations official is sounding the alarm about something that sounds remarkably similar underway in Afghanistan. UN rights official Philip Alston met with reporters today to disclose at least three recent raids in the south and east by foreign ("western") intelligence agents that led to the deaths of innocent civilians.

Alston said the raids involved US personnel from a special forces base in Kandahar.

What's particularly troubling to Alston is that no one is taking responsibility and the killers are operating with total impunity, two other characteristics of the Phoenix programme.

Alston said government officials confirmed the victims had no connection to the Taliban.

Another "Senior's Moment" for John McCain?

Okay, the guy who wants to be America's Commander in Chief first and president second can't tell a Sunni from a Shiite but, does it really matter? America winds up fighting each of them by turns. Saddam's Iraq was a Sunni outfit, remember? It was the mortal enemy of Shiite Iran, ring a bell?

But there is further reason to question John McCain's faculties in his speech announcing his latest turnaround - the withdrawal of most American forces from Iraq by 2013. Here's what Senator McSame had to say about that:

"By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom," the Arizona senator said.

He described his hopes for the scenario in the country by the end of his first term in office: "The Iraq war has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering form the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension."

Now of course, Iraq was created "centuries" ago - by the Brits and French - in the wake of WWI. The basis for the sectarian tensions is largely external and primarily Western.

It was the Allies who promised the Kurds their own homeland when the Ottomans were crushed and then reneged with the Treaty of Sevres.

It was the Allies who divvied up the Middle East between the French and British, drawing neatly surveyed straight lines without regard for the inevitable consequences of coralling conflicted ethnic and religious groups within the same territorial structures.

It was the Brits who chose the minority Sunnis to run the place, considering them the most effective, most reliable for British purposes.

If McCain doesn't understand these realities, he'll never be able to comprehend the powerful secessionist forces maneuvering in today's Iraq. Maliki is backed by the Badr organization which supports the division of Iraq into an oil-rich Shia south, an oil-rich Kurdish-north and a comparatively impoverished Sunni centre.

It is America's chosen foe, Muqtada al Sadr, who represents the nationalist force within the Shiite population. However the guy who most wants to hold Iraq together also insists on complete withdrawal of American forces. This leaves Washington in a horrible double-bind that politicians like John McCain ignore at America's peril.

If Washington wants America's agenda to prevail in Iraq, as McCain suggests, it can only perpetuate the Shia-Sunni divide which, ultimately, will extend to an Arab-Kurd divide. That instability will ensure that American troops will be there en masse far beyond 2013.

At some point John McCain will have to realize that you can't get out of Iraq until you disarm the sectarian landmine left by the French and British in 1920 and you can't do that with grade-school perceptions of reality.

Why Hillary Is Yesterday's News

HIllary Clinton has a good grip of politics, politics past that is. In many ways she appears like just another rich, old white man; the kind that has ruled the United States since the Revolution. The ranks of those people have been full of reformers who've done remarkably little to transform their country into a nation for the 21st century.

Hillary Clinton meant it when she claimed to be the candidate to appeal to "hard working Americans, white Americans." That was no gaffe. That was her specialty, outright pandering and wedge politics, the kind that ought to be reviled. Her loyalty to black America was always feigned which is why black support for Clinton quietly bled out as this campaign wore on. Yet her support from working-class white Americans hasn't been as universal as she would like to crow. She's done well where racism still smoulders but where those embers are dying out, it's a different story.

As Timothy Egan writes in today's New York Times, Hillary's "white America" is becoming yesterday's news:

"...on May 20, when [Oregon] voters... could finally end the Democratic presidential marathon by giving Senator Barack Obama an outright majority of pledged delegates, don’t expect to hear much about how a black man has broadened the playing field for his party by winning a heavily white state. Apparently, white people in Gore-Tex country don’t count as much as white people in Appalachia. Nor, if you look at Colorado, a Bush state that Obama won this year, do white people who sing “Rocky Mountain High” matter as much as white people who sing, “Almost heaven, West Virginia.”
It’s absurd, of course, to tout the implied superiority of “hard-working Americans, white Americans,” as Hillary Clinton said last week of her core supporters. And those other white Americans, in Iowa, Wisconsin, or here in Oregon — all heavy Obama supporters — are slackers? Not to mention black supporters.

The map of counties that Hillary Clinton won big this year shows a broad swath of Appalachia and rural America, places where a Democrat is unlikely to prevail in the general election. The scab of racial animus can be thick in those counties, judging by exit polls of Clinton supporters who say they would never vote for a black man, and by anecdotal reporting.

The political math of the future lies with the new America — fast-growing communities in Virginia, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and elsewhere, where people are trying to step out of the cement shoes of race. Yes, race is still a factor there — it’s coded and complex — but not as raw as in other states. The transient nature of these places, where nearly everybody is from somewhere else, makes it difficult for old biases to harden."

And that's why Hillary doesn't have a hope in hell of a comeback in 2012. She's yesterday's news and that's just the way she likes it.

Edwards Backs Obama

It's probably not much of a surprise but John Edwards has decided to endorse Barack Obama for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. Edwards is expected to make the announcement at an Obama rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan tonight.

From the New York Times:

"On the campaign trail in the past year, Mr. Edwards regularly attacked so-called establishment politicians like Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and teamed with Mr. Obama against her in debates.

His campaign sounded similar themes to Mr. Obama’s – both candidates positioned themselves as change agents who would clean house in Washington.

Throughout his second bid for the Democratic nomination, Mr. Edwards clashed repeatedly with Mrs. Clinton, criticizing her for accepting campaign contributions from lobbyists, a practice that he fiercely opposed.

And much of his campaign pitch centered on the notion that Washington politicians have become corrupted by the influence of lobbyists for drug companies, oil companies and other corporate interests.

“You can’t just trade corporate Republicans for corporate Democrats,” he told audiences frequently, an attack aimed at Mrs. Clinton."

And Good Luck With That

Afghanistan intends to ask the international community for another $50-billion in aid at the donors conference in Paris in June.

Unfortunately Afghanistan is old news, a country where the international community is already looking for the exit door. Lives have been wasted and billions squandered transforming Afghanistan from a failed state under the Taliban to a failed state under the rule of warlords.

I suppose massive amounts of aid will be promised in Paris but whether that aid will ever reach Afghanistan is another question. Much will probably hinge on next year's Afghan elections. Who will wind up running the show and what will their agenda look like? No one knows. At the moment, Karzai seems to be everyone's default choice but no one is particularly happy about it.

Afghanistan's other problem is that you can only be the poster boy for so long. Since the Taliban were routed in 2001, Afghanistan has been a bottomless pit for Western assistance, military and civil. However, with a government as corrupt and compromised as Karzai's, it's been little more than pissing into the wind. That sort of frustrating effort has a limited shelf life and Afghanistan has already passed its "best before" date.

No matter how hard we try not to notice, there are other problems in the world as deserving of our assistance and we're doing no one any favours by neglecting them. Food shortages, disaster relief, sectarian violence abound seemingly everywhere outside the borders of the Western world.

Besides, what's in it for us? Both Russia and China have a very tangible, economic interest in Afghanistan. They want at the mineral resources and want to run pipelines across the entire country. Why then aren't they handling the security? I don't think they would do a worse job of it than we have.

No, I don't think we'll be seeing $50-billion worth of sincere, binding commitments coming out of Paris next month. If America wants to prop up Kabul to keep it out of the sphere of influence of the Russians and Chinese, that's none of our business. We can put our money and our soldiers' lives to better use than as fodder for Washington's geopolitical games.

Hillary Wins W. Virginia in a Landslide!

Well maybe it was more like a mudslide or one of those mine collapses. There's no question that Senator Clinton handily defeated Barack Obama by a 2-1 margin but (and there's always a "but") it was West Virginia! That's about as big a deal as, well, not very much.

West Virginia has 28 delegates. That's it, 28. Maryland has 70, Missouri 72, and California 370. That's why to someone trailing in the final weeks of a campaign, triumph in the least literate state in the union has to be taken out of all proportion.

Dana Milbank had a fun piece in today's Washington Post in which he compared what remains of the Clinton campaign to Monty Python's "dead parrot" sketch.

"...Clinton has crossed the Blue Ridge and is over the green hills of West Virginia, home of what she calls the "hardworking Americans, white Americans." This is Clinton Country.

2:57 p.m., Yeager Airport, Charleston, W.Va.: A steep descent brings Clinton's plane to Charleston's hilltop airport. After an appropriate wait, she steps from the plane and pretends to wave to a crowd of supporters; in fact, she is waving to 10 photographers underneath the airplane's wing. She pretends to spot an old friend in the crowd, points and gives another wave; in fact, she is waving at an aide she had been talking with on the plane minutes earlier.

Customer: "That parrot is definitely deceased, and when I purchased it not half an hour ago, you assured me that its total lack of movement was due to it being tired and shagged out following a prolonged squawk."

Pet-shop owner: "Well, he's, he's, ah, probably pining for the fjords."

Customer: "He's not pining! He's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! He's expired and gone to meet his maker! He's a stiff! Bereft of life, he rests in peace! . . . His metabolic processes are now history! He's off the twig! He's kicked the bucket, he's shuffled off his mortal coil, rung down the curtain and joined the bleeding choir invisible! This is an ex-parrot!"

At the convention centre, a crowd of 89-supporters has gathered to celebrate Hillary's victory:

"There are some who wanted to cut this race short!" Clinton says from the faux-wood lectern. They boo.

"I am more determined than ever to carry on this campaign," she says. They cheer.
"There are many who wanted to declare a nominee before the ballots were counted or even cast," she says. They boo.

"This race isn't over yet," she says. They cheer.

The sound system emits a loud screech of feedback. The confetti cannons fire.
See? She wasn't dead; she was just pining for the fjords. "

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/13/AR2008051302862.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter

Shoving the Genie Back In The Bottle

With all the problems facing the world - global warming, resource exhaustion, freshwater depletion and desertification, species extinction, overpopulation and migration, terrorism and security - you would think there wouldn't be room for anymore. But there is.

Also on today's menu is nuclear proliferation and, according to a report in today's Washington Post, it's a problem on the verge of getting out of control:

"At least 40 developing countries from the Persian Gulf region to Latin America have recently approached U.N. officials here to signal interest in starting nuclear power programs, a trend that concerned proliferation experts say could provide the building blocks of nuclear arsenals in some of those nations.

At least half a dozen countries have also said in the past four years that they are specifically planning to conduct enrichment or reprocessing of nuclear fuel, a prospect that could dramatically expand the global supply of plutonium and enriched uranium, according to U.S. and international nuclear officials and arms-control experts."

The list includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Libya, Algeria and Morocco. There are already seven nuclear plants underway in Egypt and Turkey. Even Yemen wants one.

"We are concerned that some countries are moving down the nuclear [weapons] path in reaction to the Iranians," a senior U.S. government official who tracks the spread of nuclear technology said in an interview. He declined to speak on the record because of diplomatic sensitivities. "The big question is: At what point do you reach the nuclear tipping point, when enough countries go nuclear that others decide they must do so, too?"

Mohammed ElBaradei, the director general of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency and a winner with the IAEA of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize for his work preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, has likened the pursuit of "latent" nuclear capability to buying an insurance policy.

"You don't really even need to have a nuclear weapon," ElBaradei said at a recent international conference of security officials in Munich. "It's enough to buy yourself an insurance policy by developing the capability, and then sit on it. Let's not kid ourselves: Ninety percent of it is insurance, a deterrence." I

Although they don't like to admit it, it was the original nuclear weapons powers that made a joke out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty under which lesser nations were supposed to give up the right to nukes while the nuclear weapons states undertook to disarm. With decades of indifference to their NPT obligations by the United States, CCCP/Russia, China, France and Britain, the rest of the world saw no reason they shouldn't ignore the treaty either. Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea so far and there'll undoubtedly be more to come.

I suppose a recommitted nuclear disarmament agreement might be theoretically possible but don't count on it. There's a global arms race underway involving the US, China, India and Russia that will almost certainly preclude any agreement on disarmament by the nuclear powers.

Keeping Carbon Taxes Visible

Can a tax aimed at achieving a social objective be effective if it's invisible?

That seems to be a stumbling block on carbon taxes on gasoline. Last week I filled up the VW with regular at a breathtaking $1.27 a litre. That afternoon I saw the price had jumped to $1.32.

That's five cents a litre in the course of as many hours. When I saw that, I sure wasn't thinking of the 3-4 cents a litre carbon tax BC levies. I was wondering where the overall price was going to be six months down the road.

Surely any sin tax is much more meaningful when you recognize you're paying it. But when that sin tax is utterly submerged in much larger market fluctuations, there's an "out of sight/out of mind" element that comes into play.

I support a carbon tax to discourage wasteful use of fossil fuels leading to unnecessary release of greenhouse gases. I'm just not sure the pump is the best possible place to be collecting it when fuel prices are predicted to just keep increasing in the foreseeable future.

It may be there is no better way but I'd like to see someone explore alternatives.

A 650,000 Year Record

387. That's a record for the past 650,000 years (sorry Steve, sorry Stockwell). We've now pumped atmospheric CO2 levels to 387 ppm (parts per million). That's an increase of about 40% since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

From The Guardian:

The figures, published by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on its website, also confirm that carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than expected. The annual mean growth rate for 2007 was 2.14ppm – the fourth year in the past six to see an annual rise greater than 2ppm. From 1970 to 2000, the concentration rose by about 1.5ppm each year, but since 2000 the annual rise has leapt to an average 2.1ppm.

Scientists say the shift could indicate that the Earth is losing its natural ability to soak up billions of tons of carbon each year. Climate models assume that about half our future emissions will be re-absorbed by forests and oceans, but the new figures confirm this may be too optimistic. If more of our carbon pollution stays in the atmosphere, it means emissions will have to be cut by more than currently projected to prevent dangerous levels of global warming.

Martin Parry, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's working group on impacts, said: "Despite all the talk, the situation is getting worse. Levels of greenhouse gases continue to rise in the atmosphere and the rate of that rise is accelerating. We are already seeing the impacts of climate change and the scale of those impacts will also accelerate, until we decide to do something about it."

A Pox on All Their Houses

Who is going to lead Canada's next majority government?

I don't know and neither do you because that person hasn't won their party's leadership yet.

Neither Stephen Harper nor Stephane Dion has struck the essential chord with the Canadian public to lift their parties out of the minority rut. If anything, each is propping up the other's mediocre performance. The best thing Stephane has going for him is Stephen and the best thing Stephen has going for him is Stephane.

Stephen has shown even the Tory faithful that he's a cold, secretive, manipulative guy, the sort few are willing to trust. Stephane has shown himself a weak and uninspiring leader with utterly atrocious communications skills.

Now before you jump on me for critiquing Stephane Dion, think about this. When you run for the leadership of a party, you're representing that you have the skills and the aptitude for the job. You're representing yourself to be able to reach beyond card-carrying party faithful and connect with the general public. After you win that leadership you have to make good on those promises. All you won was the right to lead but you have to perform and perform well.

Stephane Dion is a good man. He's certainly intelligent and well-intentioned. He probably has enough skills to get at least a passing grade. It's on the other part, aptitude, that he fails badly. It's the aptitude that's necessary to reach out to the general public - charisma, confidence, clarity. This is where Mr. Dion repeatedly comes up empty.

Stephane Dion's command of the English language is not good and it's not one bit better than it was when he was running for the leadership. He ought to have dealt with that, he plainly hasn't and that's inexcusable.

So, let's clean house. It's time for an election. Conventional wisdom in Liberal ranks holds that Mr. Dion, regardless of his performance, has won the right to lead our party into the next election. If that's the way things are then, fine, let him lead but let's get this over with so that the Liberal Party of Canada can actually move ahead.

Look at it this way. The first party, Liberal or Conservative, to move to a powerful, effective leader will form the next majority government of Canada. Wouldn't it be great if that party was ours?

No Wonder Bill's Looking a Bit Glum

Hillary Clinton's nomination campaign isn't just out of money, it's in the red to the tune of $20-million. It's believed at least $11-million of that debt is in the form of money loaned by Clinton to her own campaign.

This suggests Hillary is now entering the "pay as you go phase" where the amount of campaigning she'll be able to do will be governed by the wad of cash in hand at any given point. There have been rumours in recent weeks of antsy creditors looking for payment on outstanding bills.

Her senior advisor, Howard Wolfson, told Fox News Sunday, "There is no reason for her not to continue this process." Actually Howard there are about twenty million reasons but, then again, who's counting?

Arms Race Update - Hainan Island

It's got all the makings of a James Bond movie: a fortified island, an underground submarine base, even a hidden tunnel through which nuclear subs come and go unseen. It exists and it's giving the Indian navy absolute fits.

A big part of the arms race now underway focuses on containing China, including China's blue water access. Two key players in this are the Indian and US navies.

The Indian navy has announced that its sphere of influence will stretch from the Persian Gulf all the way eastward to the East China Sea which, entirely coincidentally, covers every bit of China's shoreline. To do this, India has embarked on an ambitious plan to expand its fleet. There's even talk of an Indian designed and built nuclear sub in the planning.

Is this sort of thing a threat to China? Of course it is. The Americans have made no secret of wanting permanent basing in the Persian Gulf specifically so that the US could sever Chinese access to Gulf oil if the need should ever arise. Not that anyone's saying they would ever do that, of course, but hey.

So what's China doing? Well it's building up its own navy with a healthy supply of blockade busters, its own designed and built fleet of nuclear subs. Of course, having a gaggle of subs and keeping them from being obliterated in a blitzkrieg air attack are two different things and that seems to be where the Ya Long naval base on Hainin Island comes in.

The picture at top left shows sleepy Ya Long in 2002. The bottom right shows the development of Ya Long as it stood in early 2007, complete with shore installations, breakwalls and piers. Somewhere in there is an underground submarine cavern, believed capable of housing about two dozen nuclear subs.

From Asia Times Online:

"Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Defense Minister A K Antony have said that all steps are being taken to protect India's security interests and sea lanes.

In a more detailed reaction, India's navy chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta said India has been aware of the base and would like to avoid a situation where it faces the prospect of a large number of nuclear submarines in its neighborhood.

"'Though India is not worried about Beijing building a strategic naval base on Hainan Island in the South China Sea, it is concerned about the numbers. Nuclear submarines have long legs [traversing anywhere between 7,000-15,000 kilometers] it is immaterial where they are based,' Mehta said.

The latest reports will only deepen the already heightened China focus of India's ongoing US$50 billion defense modernization exercise. This week, India tested for the third time the 3,500 kilometer-range Agni III ballistic missile that would be capable of hitting Beijing and Shanghai. New Delhi has said that the Agni III is now ready for induction. China's capabilities are of course far advanced, with its missiles capable of hitting over 11,000 kilometers."

GlobalSecurity.Org, in a 2006 report, noted that satellite imaging sleuths have been spotting all manner of interesting things popping up in China

"Three times in the past few months, they've stumbled across unusual military installations using Internet programs that allow those online to view satellite and aerial images of the world.

In the most recent find, users spotted an underwater submarine tunnel off China's Hainan Island. They've also found a mock-up of a Taiwanese air base in China's western desert. In a bizarre discovery, a computer technician in Germany noticed a huge and startlingly accurate terrain model in northwest China that replicates a sensitive border area with India."

China is also expanding its influence into Pakistan and Afghanistan, something else bound to give India fits.

Obama's Secret Weapon - the "D - Bomb"

Yeah, sure. Bring on Reverend Wright. Bring on Michelle Obama's gaffe about "pride in America." Bring on Obama's, well, ethnicity.

At the end of the day, John McCain's supposed advantages over Barack Obama wither and die just as soon as anyone drops the "D-Bomb."

"D" stands for "draft" which is exactly what Johnny Boy will have to wind up doing if he wants to transform Bush's follies into a more permanent debacle. America doesn't have enough troops to keep this silliness going much longer. You can only "stop loss" reservists - keep them from returning to their ruined businesses and overstressed families - for so long. There are people who are now on their fourth tour of Iraq and/or Afghanistan. You can't keep making them go, you just can't.

If McCain wants to "fight to win" in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's going to take a lot of soldiers, a lot more than Bush's "marking time" force of the past three years. The US Army is facing a huge problem now. A lot more people, plenty of them held against their wishes for one year or more, want to leave than newcomers want to join. You have to release your hostage soldiers at some point but then what? They'll have to be replaced with even more new, inexperienced and - in many cases - unwilling. There's only one answer - you have to institute a draft.

The only way McCain will be able to maintain his wars, even without winning them, is to draft replacements. McCain's personality is not strong enough to overcome, with voters, the dislocation, dissatisfaction and dissent of the past six years. Try as he might, and must, he can't bury the legacy of George w. Bush. Yet, without answering even one of the strategic blunders of Bush/Cheney, without renouncing the way they abused their Constitution and the nation itself in the pursuit of their ideology, McCain merely proposes to carry on more powerfully. He doesn't understand that it's already been proven that a huge power advantage often means almost nothing at all and can even be a handicap.

Just by standing on principle, Obama ought to be able to beat McCain by a wide margin. Just show that he has to draft and that's the overwhelming end of John McCain.

Memo to Obama:

"Read Above"

The Hillary Blues

I feel badly for Hillary Clinton, ...sort of. She seems to have come down with the virus that's spread throughout the US government in the 21st century - hubris.

Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.

Hubris, of course, is a creature of mythology which holds it to be followed by Nemesis.

Hubris is the toxic sludge that results from mixing arrogance with delusion. Once consumed, it leads its victims to self-destruct.

Now I blame Cheney/Rumsfeld for spreading the virus to the highest ranks of the US government. Iraq and Afghanistan today are the Nemesis to their earlier Hubris.

Let's face it. Hillary was about as relevant to the women's movement as John McCain is to the POW's presidential aspirations. Hillary was anatomically correct but I never heard her really championing womens' rights, did you? In fact it seems Hillary was, if anything, bent on appearing masculine, tough - a man, just with some internal organ and skeletal differences. She wanted to be seen as equivalent to a male president, a full-bore, always ready-to-destroy Commander in Chief. That got her into talk about "obliterating " Iran. Sorry, you don't want someone who begins by seeing that as an option. No one can tell. Circumstances could someday just get you there (but that's not even very likely) but you've already introduced this as an annihilation scenario. Sorry, Hilly, but that would've been too gauche even for Goldwater. I think we're all a lot better off without leaders constantly surfing that edge.

Obama? Is he running as a "white man"? Look, there's no question he's trying to cover that demographic but there's also no question that he's not going to compromise his message of change to get it. When Hillary reached for the draft and Crown Royal there was no longer any doubt about her conviction, her altruism. She took the crown of Queen Pander.

Hillary went to the extreme out of desperation. And it was out of her desperation that we got a glimpse at the true Hillary. Her leadership would slavishly follow the prevailing winds. There was no bottom, no shelf even where her foot would land and hold to prevent her from falling ever more inward. Once we saw Hillary, in her full hubris mode, we knew she wasn't fit for the job. Worse yet, we knew we could never trust her, no matter what, for the truth.

Goodbye Hillary. You and Bill had a damned good run.

Too Many Cooks

The United States, with its "one size fits all, so long as it's our size" approach is learning some tough lessons in reality from the Iraq war.

One lesson is that you can only expect so much from multi-ethnic, hobbled together artificial states. When things go really well it's a lot easier to be an "Iraqi" than when things go badly when it's much easier, sometimes even safer, to fall back into being an Arab or Kurd, Sunni or Shiite who just happens to live with his or her tribesmen inside some survey lines drawn by the Brits and French a century ago.

Another lesson is that the Middle East is a part of the world where historical grievances have lives of their own. The U.S. itself is still trying, with mixed success at best, to get over its own issues with 18th and 19th century slavery and ingrained 20th, even 21st century racism (see Obama, Barack). Why would it expect peoples with even more recent problems for which there has been no atonement, no forgiveness and healing processes or rituals to just put those grievances aside and forget about them? These are challenges of a generational scale at best and to ignore them or try to sweep them aside is and will be inevitably self-defeating.

Washington has to decide whether it wants a unified, stable Iraq or not. If it wants that sort of Iraq, a properly functioning nation, there are prices that will have to be paid to get there.

One price is recognizing that today's Iraq cannot accommodate the interests of more than one nation. It's going to be a Herculean struggle just to address its own interests and the needs of its people. It's patently ludicrous to believe that Iraq can unify and overcome its internal threats and challenges if America complicates the burden, by an order of magnitude, by leveraging control of Iraq's oil reserves and establishing permanent military bases in that country. It can't be done.

The anything but secure Maliki government is being asked (told) to introduce a national oil law that would allow foreign companies, as in American, to control Iraq's oil fields and exploit its reserves way into the future. Here's the problem. It's in essence the same deal that the French and the British imposed on the Arabs when they were Top Dogs in that same region almost a century ago. It's the same deal that one Arab government after another overthrew in order to establish state control of their oil resources - governments such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran. The wealth from Saudi oil goes to the Saudis, not Texas.

How long will the restive tribes of Iraq put up with an oil regime that's already been overthrown in neighbouring Arab states? Quick answer - not long although there will probably be years of unstable government and violence before they get there.

The permanent military base issue - the one Washington struggles not to mention - is another landmine to a unified Iraq. These bases are already built or under construction. In a peaceful Iraq they would have just one purpose - force projection and that pretty much targets any and all states within aerial refueled, fighter-bomber range of Iraq. I guess that would mean Iran and Syria to be sure but pretty much all of the Persian Gulf region.

Now some, perhaps only a few, Sunnis might begrudgingly accept an American military presence aimed at Shiite Iran but it's hard to see how Iraq's Shiite majority would tolerate it. And here, once again, we have an American policy setting Sunni against Shia - hardly the sort of thing that helps forge unity.

A viable, stable and peaceful Iraq may no more than a fantasy. But if it's worth trying to achieve then all unnecessary pitfalls have to be removed. That means the current Bremer-crafted oil policy and the notion of permanent US military bases in Iraq. If Washington really wants those things it had better give up the notion of democracy for Iraq and start scouting around for a brutal strongman to run the place, someone a lot like the one they just hanged.

A Feminist Explains Why She Can't Support Hillary

This is from Stephanie Salter, a columnist at the Terra Haute, Indiana Tribune-Star.

"A friend who teaches in public school here in Indiana was appalled not long ago when an e-mail from a colleague went out to everyone in the school’s cyber-address book.

The subject of the e-mail was Barack Obama and how he is “secretly” a radical Muslim bent on destroying the United States from within. A widely circulated pack of lies — e.g., he took the oath of office holding a Koran — the e-mail boasts that its contents are verifiable on the legitimate myth buster, snopes.com, which is the opposite of true.

At least my teacher friend’s colleague didn’t send out one of the popular e-mails that insist Obama shows all the signs of being the antichrist.

I wish I could say I was kidding, but I can’t. I live in the United States of America — a country in which most people are alleged to be literate — and I am about to participate in a historic presidential primary. But I am starting to wonder if some of my fellow citizens have a grasp on reality, let alone the issues.

A jihadist? The antichrist? Oh, for God’s sake.Before anyone is tempted to play the region card, don’t. Indiana has no exclusive claim to people who are spending time this spring telling one another that Obama is a jihadist and/or the antichrist. Google offers about 2.25 million hits on the latter subject. (Mercifully, renunciations are part of the volume.)

...I’m a 1960s feminist who thought I would never live to see the day a woman would make a viable run at the U.S. presidency. I look at how smart, brave, tough and committed Hillary Clinton is, and I see someone who is more than capable of being commander in chief.

But one of the great things about being a feminist is knowing that liberation means searching your head, heart and gut, then acting freely on what you discover there.

Four weeks ago, I watched Clinton go for the cheap shot and turn Obama’s lengthy, measured observations about frustrated working-class Americans into Bittergate. My head, heart and gut yelled, “Blatant foul!”

Clinton chose, repeatedly, to call Obama’s remarks “elitist” and “out of touch” with ordinary Americans. She emphasized, repeatedly, that his excerpted words were made at a private fundraiser in San Francisco — as though she had never been the focus of such an event — and she encouraged her campaign operatives across the country to keep piling on.

Ignoring all the times her words and deeds have been perverted out of context by her enemies, Clinton chose to play the nasty old game in which victorious ends justify crummy means. Knowing that Americans need more division like we need more conspiracy theories, she chose to further divide.

My head, heart and mind said, “Go to Plan B. Barack Obama is smart, brave, tough, committed and capable of being commander in chief — and he struggles mightily against cheap shots to deal honestly with the complexities and contradictions of his country and its people.”

No waffles, no sexist slurs, no al Qaida, no Satan. Just a rational decision. My idea of the American Dream."

That Enormous Sucking Sound

It's the thoroughly pulped brain tissue being steadily sucked from the skulls of American voters.

Who is a greater threat to America today? Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda or the Reverend Jeremiah Wright? If you watch American cable network news or read that country's newspapers you would have to conclude it's Wright, by a huge margin.

The country is cash-strapped, debt-ridden, with a broken military struggling to hold the fort in two bottomless foreign wars. There is no end of serious issues for American voters to be weighing carefully but, instead, someone dangles a bit of shiny tinsel in front of them and they're off and running.

Why in hell doesn't Dick Cheney simply bomb Reverend Wright into the Promised Land? Fact is, Dick knows that this guy is one of the few bright lights on the Republican presidential horizon this year.

American voters are being treated like a pack of total dummies and apparently that's just the way they like it. Hillary Clinton, multi-millionairess that she is, can run around and lambaste others as "elitist" and somehow be taken seriously. Hillary is the quintessential fat old white man only with a minor anatomical discrepancy.

John McCain is off in Geriatric Fantasyland, dreaming of wiping out the humiliation of Vietnam if only America can find some war, somewhere it can win and determined to keep bombing the hell out of somebody until he finds it. America is reeling under its financial mismanagement and yet McCain now wants to deregulate financial markets and make permanent those irresponsible tax cuts for the rich. This guy has already run straight off the pier and yet nobody's noticing because of some angry black preacher who doesn't influence a damned thing?

Just Askin, That's All

Rumours are surfacing of yet another pending arrest in the Sponsorship Scandal. Okay, now this is eight years and two governments after the fact.

This proceeding, if it comes to pass, needs to be put under some scrutiny. Remember we're dealing with the RCMP here, the same once-proud outfit whose commissioner gamed the last election with a spurious, mid-campaign press release about a possible scandal involving hinted wrongdoing by Ralph Goodale.

Now that same tattered remnant of a national police force is headed by whom? Why it would be my old lawschool classmate and life-long Tory insider Bill "Bubbles" Elliot. Much as I like Bill it does trouble me that Harper appointed a total partisan to head the RCMP.

Now in the justice system, appearances count. The mantra goes that justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. In other words, it's all got to be above board and completely beyond suspicion. That's not being picky. There's a good reason for it, the best in fact. If the administration of justice is tainted with the appearance of favouritism or bias, it can undermine the one thing the system cannot do without - public confidence in its integrity.

The appearance on this one - well it stinks frankly. You have the Harper Cons now reeling from a succession of scandals - Mulroney, Cadman, In & Out, etc. - and they could really use something to distract the public and turn the tables on the Libs. What have they got? Precious little - unless they can milk that sponsorship scandal one more time, especially now that an election is looming.

The RCMP hasn't done too well on the smell test lately. If they're going to launch another politically-charged proceeding - at this late stage - when they're headed by a lifelong partisan - and having displayed an openness to dodgy interference in the last election - they damn well better come up with a very convincing explanation of the timing and they'd better not count on the benefit of the doubt if their story has that now all-too-familiar stink to it.

Meanwhile the force can explain why it's not proceeding with perjury charges against Mr. Mulroney. The Commish, after all, worked in Mulroney's government. Maybe they don't think that Mulroney's sworn statements that his only involvement with Schreiber was a few meetings for coffee constitutes perjury. If so, I'd love to hear them come out with it.

"He's Not Really Black"

Muncie, Indiana florist Judy Benken says she'll be voting the way her family has voted for generations - white.

Benken told the Toronto Star that she'll support Barack Obama, claiming, "He's not really black – he doesn't have those pronounced features."

"Muncie, Ind., is divided by rail tracks. Its more upscale north, including Ball State University, is expected to back Obama; its gritty blue-collar south expected to support Clinton.

The south side is also the remnant of a once-proud industrial sector that barely exists these days, supplanted by the north side's university and service industry."

http://www.thestar.com/World/Columnist/article/421225

Who's Not Talking to the Taliban? We're Not - It Seems

Canada's clear as mud policy on Afghanistan got just a bit murkier this week. First came the news from Lt.-Col. Gordon Corbould, the new battle group commander, and Sgt. Tim Seeley, a civilian-military co-operation officer for Canada's Provincial Reconstruction Team, that our military would be reaching out to Taliban members, trying to engage them in talks.

Two days later, speedball DefMin Peter MacKay put the boots to that little bit of insubordination, telling Canadian Press:

"We are not talking to the Taliban. We are not having direct discussions with terrorists. We won't, will not, that will not change. What we are doing obviously in reconstruction and development and daily contacts that happen is encouraging people to move away from the Taliban's influence, to renounce violence."

Pistol Pete told the press that the government - no make that the cabinet - ah hell, make that Boss Harper - will set military policy, not the military and, besides, Harper gets all the quality military advice any Leader could want from Jungle Dick Cheney who's never more than a scrambled phone call to a secret cellar away! Besides, Pete noted, when it comes to Canada's rapidly mildewing New Government, if the Taliban want to talk, they'll first have to go through Furious Leader's political commissars in the PMO just like everybody else.

After assuring the press that we're winning in Afghanistan, hands down, DefMin MacKay slipped back into the cardboard shoebox where Furious Leader keeps the rest of his sock puppets. In an adjoining room, the Prime Minister herself, just finishing up a double portion of delicious Taliban short ribs, was heard to utter what most observers suspect was a satisfied belch.

Too Good to Pass Up

Well, well, well. It seems legendary Rolling Stone Keith Richards' autobiography is soon to be released. That prompted the following priceless response from Sir Mick Jagger:

'I would have thought you'd actually have to be able to remember your life to write about it.'

When you think about it, maybe Jagger's got a point.

From the Globe & Mail

Dead Ducks All In a Row

Special Ed Stelmach has a problem and it's one that's not going away.

Ed's problem, or at least his latest problem, is the toxic waste dump also known as the Athabasca Tar Sands. Getting ersatz oil out of Athabasca's bitumen tar uses an awful lot of water - fresh water that's turned into a black, oily waste that has to be pumped into tailing ponds built out of earthen walls.

These tailing ponds are big. They can be seen from the shuttle as it orbits in space. And they're not getting any smaller because no one, it seems, has any plan for dealing with this toxic sludge. Now I don't know what the lifespan of an earthen wall may be but I'm pretty sure it's not all that long. No one's really sure how much of this stuff may seep into the groundwater or when or just who may be effected by it eventually.

When it comes to the Tar Sands and the rich array of environmental threats associated with that boondoggle, Special Ed clings to the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" school of environmentalism. When native villages downstream get swept with cancer or migratory birds die in the tailing ponds, he proclaims the Tar Sands an environmental triumph and brands his critics as outsiders, sh*t disturbers.

So now Ed has five or six hundred dead ducks on his hands and, of course, it's not really about the ducks at all but where they died - the tailing ponds. That defeats the "out of sight, out of mind" firewall on which people like Ed rely so heavily. The timing couldn't have been worse, coming at the same time as Ed had dispatched his Number Two to the US to promote the Tar Sands. How did Ed react? Predictably. Ed tried to set up the province of Alberta as the underdog, the David to the environmentalists' Goliath. Why not? That kind of bullshit has worked great for the White House for the past eight years. Who cares whether the statement is utterly ridiculous so long as your target audience is willing to swallow.

Now it turns out that a Seattle scientist is calling "bullshit" on Ed Stemcell's claims that the normal, annual loss from the Tar Sands ponds is only 20-birds. Jeff Wells belongs to a group that conducted research at just one operation in 2003 that found, even with bird-deterrence programmes in place, 705 birds died in just a four week span. That's one operation, the Albian Sands project, and just four weeks. Albian Sands is a joint venture of Shell and Chevron-Texaco, operator of the Muskeg River mind about 75-kms. north of Fort McMurray.

Makes you wonder. If Ed's going to deceive the public about a few hundred migratory birds, when it comes to his cherished Tar Sands, what else is he willing to hide and bury and lie about? My guess is that he'll do whatever he thinks it takes.

No one seems to be asking why these tailing ponds are being left to grow and spread? The wealth associated with those tailings is leaving Athabasca and much of it is leaving Canada with the American oil companies running these mines. Simply leaving these tailings unresolved as a future threat to the region doesn't sound like much of a plan.

The National Spot ran the predictible opinion piece dismissing the incident as just a few hundred birds that otherwise would have fallen to hunters anyway. What was interesting was the furor that sparked in readers' letters. People were uniformly incensed with the Post's whitewash. Maybe there is hope yet.

The satellite picture at the top shows the Albian Sands project. I expect you can figure out for yourself what those black objects are at the top left.

Taliban Steve's New Look

"Once we get rid of the bad people, we can carry on

with full force

in terms of the reconstruction and development"

- Stephen Harper, Kandahar, 2006

With those words our Furious Leader, Lardo, swept aside the Taliban insurgents and al-Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan as a gang of unruly imps.

Oh my goodness that how that great lump was full of jingoistic pronouncements about how we would bring democracy to that country and liberate its women and spread freedom throughout the land and we would never, ever "cut and run," not on his watch. Now there was a Commander-in-Chief for Canada cut from the very same cloth as his American Idol, George w. Bush.

And how things change even for fierce warriors like Mr. Harper, real men of action and resolute principle.

Harper to the UN General Assembly 21/9/2006

"After all, if we fail the Afghan people, we will be failing ourselves. For this is the United Nations' strongest mission and, therefore, our greatest test. Our collective will and credibility are being judged. We cannot afford to fail. We will succeed."

Parliamentary Debate on Extension 17 May, 2006

"Mr. Speaker, working with our allies and the Afghan people, Canada has achieved great things. But there is more to do.

Afghanistan remains the fifth poorest country in the world. The Taliban is seeking to regain power. And too many people have to resort to drug trafficking to meet their families’ needs.

We need to extend our mission so we can work to finish the job the previous government started.

We need to improve the security situation in southern Afghanistan to bring it in line with the north and west of the country.

We need to ensure that children in southern Afghanistan will be able to go to school without fear of attack.

And we need to ensure that people there can get the things we take for granted: clean water, mine-free roads, reliable sources of energy.

Stability in southern Afghanistan will also help the Afghan National Government focus on improving the country’s emerging democratic infrastructure: An independent human rights commission, A professional police force and a new central bank."

Funny how Harper has staunched the flow of that drivel lately. By all appearances he's dropped Afghanistan like the proverbial hot potato. Now it's the preserve of Harpo's minions - McKay and Bernier. Let those losers get saddled with it. As for the "bad people," suddenly getting rid of them has become SO 2006. Now we want to negotiate with them.

You want hypocrisy? There it is.

Dust Off the Mormon, McCain Can't Run

The US Constitution provides that only a "natural born citizen" can become president of the United States. There's now some uncertainty over whether John McCain fits the bill.

McCain, you see, wasn't exactly born in the United States but in a US military base hospital in the Panama Canal Zone.

Nobody seriously believes McCain will be disqualified but some argue the constitution is unclear. From the Washington Post:

"...Sarah H. Duggin, an associate law professor at Catholic University who has studied the "natural born" issue in detail, said the question is "not so simple." While she said McCain would probably prevail in a determined legal challenge to his eligibility to be president, she added that the matter can be fully resolved only by a constitutional amendment or a Supreme Court decision.

"The Constitution is ambiguous," Duggin said. "The McCain side has some really good arguments, but ultimately there has never been any real resolution of this issue. Congress cannot legislatively change the meaning of the Constitution."

Senators sympathetic to McCain's position, including Democrats Claire McCaskill (Mo.) and Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), dropped an earlier attempt to quell the eligibility controversy with legislation. McCaskill acknowledged in an interview that there is "no way" to completely resolve the question short of a constitutional amendment, a cumbersome process which could not be concluded before November. "

Then there's New Hampshire resident Fred Hollander who just won't let it go. Fred has filed suit in a US District Court claiming that McCain isn't a "natural born citizen." Good luck with that one Fred.

McClatchey Newspapers reports that Mr. Straight Talk has done it again. He's now calling for Russia to be ousted from the G-8.

"One major problem: He can't do it because the other G-8 nations won't let him.

But the fact that he's proposing to try, risking a return to Cold War tensions with the world's second-largest nuclear power after 20 years of prickly partnership, raises questions about McCain's judgment. It also underscores that many of his top foreign-policy advisers are of the same neo-conservative school that promoted the war in Iraq, argue for a tougher stance toward Iran and are skeptical of negotiating with North Korea over its nuclear program.

The Group of Eight, or G-8, as it's popularly known, makes decisions by consensus, so no single nation can kick out another. Most experts say the six other countries — Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Japan and Canada — would never agree to toss Russia, given their close economic ties to their neighbor. A senior U.S. official who deals with Russia policy said that even Moscow would have to approve of its own ouster, given how the G-8 works.

"It's not even a theoretical discussion. It's an impossible discussion," said the senior official, who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly. "It's just a dumb thing."

Ocean "Dead Zones" Growing

They're called "Dead Zones," vast areas of ocean that are so hpoxic, lacking in oxygen, that they can't support marine life. Global warming climate change models predicted that these dead zones in tropical areas of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans would expand and the latest research shows those predictions were spot on. From the Los Angeles Times:

"Oxygen-starved waters are expanding in the Pacific and Atlantic as ocean temperatures increase with global warming, threatening fisheries and other marine life, a study published today concludes.

Most of these zones remain hundreds of feet below the surface, but they are beginning to spill onto the relatively shallow continental shelf off the coast of California and are nearing the surface off Peru, driving away fish from commercially important fishing grounds, researchers have found.

Researchers believe these phenomena are linked to subsurface layers of hypoxic water in the tropical Pacific and Atlantic oceans that have been thickening over the last 50 years, according to the analysis published today in the journal Science.

The study, led by Lothar Stramma at the University of Kiel in Germany, warns that the spread of hypoxic waters that suffocate marine life is consistent with climate models forecasting what would happen as greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere.

The trend, the study points out, eerily echoes a scenario that unfolded about 250 million years ago, when 95% of life on Earth went extinct after heat-trapping carbon dioxide spewing from volcanoes warmed the planet and the oceans became stripped of oxygen."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-deadzone2-2008may02,0,1285619.story?track=ntothtml

America Awash In Nutjob Preachers

It's laughable how Republicans and even some bottom-feeding Demutantes are playing up Obama's former preacher Jeremiah Wright.

Anyone taking a "fair and balanced" look at the role of nutjob preachers in the circles of American power politics would conclude that these political vultures and the media that join them at the carcass are outright racists. You might be drawn to that conclusion when you notice that the only one who gets splashed on your TV screen or in political speeches is that black guy.

Meanwhile, as noted in Consortiumnews.com, the right stays tight with far more dangerous religious extremists of its own:

"... it's not news that a viciously anti-American religious figure has invested billions of dollars in financing the U.S. conservative movement and put fat wads of cash into the pockets of many prominent Republicans, including members of President George W. Bush's own family.

While Sen. Obama has to explain what he knew and when he knew it about Wright's angry sermons, the Bush Family floats above its financial and political associations with the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a South Korean theocrat who had denounced the United States as "Satan's harvest" and likened American women to "prostitutes."

In his angry sermons, Moon has gone further than saying "God-damn America" - as Wright did - to vowing to sweep aside American democracy and individualism as he builds a one-world state.

Once his plan to "swallow entire America" is complete, Moon told his followers in one sermon, there will be "some individuals who complain inside your stomach. However, they will be digested."

But Moon's hatred of America is not deemed news, in part, because Moon has financed the Washington Times since 1982 to the tune of more than $3 billion, according to former newspaper insider George Archibald.

Moon also has lavished many millions of dollars more to pay for conservative conferences and to bail out key right-wing figures when they have found themselves in financial distress, including Republican direct-mail guru Richard Viguerie and the late Jerry Falwell."

The ConsortiumNews account is pretty revealing:

http://consortiumnews.com/2008/050108.html

Harper Tories "Despicable" - Really?

The lead author of a study of Vancouver's safe injection site says the attempts by the Harper government to muzzle scientist researchers and misrepresent their findings are "despicable." From the Globe & Mail:

"An article published in the International Journal of Drug Policy charges that the Conservative government interfered in the work of independent scientific bodies, attempted to muzzle scientists and deliberately misrepresented research findings because it is ideologically opposed to harm-reduction programs.

"From a scientific perspective, it's despicable," said Evan Wood, a research scientist at the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and lead author of the study. "Governments should not hand-pick grants based on ideology."

In 2003, the Liberal federal government approved North America's first safe injection facility, allowing public health officials to provide sterile needles and emergency medical care to intravenous drug users.

The facility, called Insite, was granted an exemption from Canada's drug laws on the condition that the pilot project be subjected to rigorous scientific evaluation.

Since then, Dr. Wood said, there have been 22 peer-reviewed papers published on the program and they have all shown a positive benefit to users, such as reduced rates of transmission of HIV-AIDS and greater use of rehabilitation services.

An independent scientific review led Health Canada in the spring of 2006 to recommend that funding for the project be extended and that similar programs be tried in other cities.

But federal Health Minister Tony Clement intervened, saying there were too many unanswered questions and placed a moratorium on this type of research. The journal article says that was done at the behest of police organizations and based on political concerns, not sound public health policy."

Who Isn't Talking With the Taliban?

As near as I can tell, the answer is "nobody."

Hamid Karzai has been negotiating with the Taliban for quite a while. Karzai's opposition, the United National Front, aka the Northern Alliance warlords, are trying to negotiate a separate deal of their own that would see an alliance of Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara and Taliban warlords (there's something to sit up and notice), the Brits have been dealing with the Taliban for a couple of years, we're now trying to get into talks with them and even the Americans, for all their swagger and John Wayne "gung ho" every now and then let slip that they're talking to the Taliban also. The Pakistanis are sure talking to them, even negotiating a ceasefire deal.

These must be heady times indeed for the Taliban leadership. So many calls, so many offers. That must be such a body blow to their morale, eh? My guess? I think they'll find the United National Front overtures most enticing. It's coming from their former enemies, the Northern Alliance tribal warlords, and it offers a means to marginalize both their Pashtun rival, Karzai, and the infidels, NATO and the US. I mean what's not to like in that deal?

Is it just coincidence that, at this very moment, both the Russians and the Chinese are firming up their interest in the region? Ya think? Look at it this way, if you want to build pipelines across Afghanistan to Iran (Russia and China) and railroads into Afghanistan (China), are you going to back Hamid Karzai, the guy who, seven years down the road, is still struggling to keep a grip on square one? Or are you going to look for a deal with the locals who have expanded their power and who effectively control most of the country, the UNF?

The Russians know all too well what happens to infidels when the Afghan tribes get together. I'm sure the Chinese know the same thing. Karzai knows, he was in on the last one. Maybe we're even figuring it out. That would certainly account for our recently lowered expectations, our seismic shift from idealism to realism. We're keeping one eye over our shoulder as we're busy with the other one looking for the door.

I think we're going to pay a big price for our years of demonizing the Taliban when we ought to have been focusing our very limited effort on al-Qaeda. Now we're trying to drive a wedge between the two of them after seven years of relentlessly driving them into each others' arms. My Lord, what must they make of our clumsy childishness?

One other event that I just can't write off to coincidence - the pending retirement of General Rick Hillier. Even ultra-right scribes like Peter Worthington were aghast that Hillier would step down after having just won a three-year extension on the war for his troops. No one can say for sure what's in Hillier's mind but I think he owed it to his soldiers to see this through - after all he expects nothing less of them, does he? Somehow my mind keeps coming back to that Vietnamese phrase - di di mau.

Memo to Lardo

Memo to Lardo:

We've checked and, sure enough, you don't pay the public and armed services of Canada, we do. Their job description requires them to work for the best interests of the country, not for the furtherance of your political fortunes.

Look here, you abysmal control freak, take the gags off the public service and the armed forces. If they've got something to say, let us hear it. When we want to hear from you, we'll let you know.

Let's have their opinions, their insights, their considerable experience and invaluable knowledge, not your censored, perverted version of what you would have us believe. You don't have to agree with them and you certainly have every opportunity and the full means of Parliament at your disposal to explain your position when you disagree and choose another path. If you've got a case, make it and, this being a democracy, we'll decide.

You see, Stevie, when you gag the public and armed services, you impose a form of partisan, political censorship on them and on us. That's undemocratic and what's undemocratic in Canada is unpatriotic. You're being unpatriotic and those who shill for you are just as unpatriotic and even those who merely sit on their hands and support you are not one bit better.

Look here chum, we have plenty of reason to be suspicious of you and yours. If you'll do something this egregious when you have only a bare minority government, how underhanded will you be if we ever give you a majority?

Every now and then, Steve, you can't help but reveal just how deeply you hold the country and the Canadian people in contempt. It's time you showed a little respect, Steve, for Canada, for Parliament and for us lowly Canadians. We're not cattle and we're sure as hell not your serfs either.

What's Next for Harper, a Gulag?

There are times when Canadians have to put aside their political affiliations and stand up for the country, its institutions and its very democracy.

In my opinion, it speaks volumes for the patriotism of Tories that they sit mute, continuing to support their Leader (do I need to translate that into the original German?) when he steadily gags our government, establishing himself as some sort of autocratic emir served by a cadre of faceless, unaccountable political commissars in the Prime Minister's Office, the PMO.

The essence of democracy is the free flow of information and transparency. There is no free flow of information, no full democracy, when the flow of information is constrained and filtered and manipulated for political advantage. This is not democratic, this is not the Canadian way, but it is very much the way of the Conservative Leader, Harper.

First he gagged Canada's environmental scientists, forcing them to communicate to the public only through the PMO. Information would be submitted to Harper's political commissars to be censored, shrunken, warped and shaped, not to reflect the truth but to reflect Mr. Harper's chosen message. That, friends, is thought control and nothing but.

How many conservatives did you hear howling in protest, coming to defend Canadian democracy when Harper raised that dark curtain around the environment ministry? How many conservatives finally rose up to defend Canada when he did the very same thing to the defence ministry? How many chose Canada over Stephen Harper? Damned few.

Now Harper wants to muzzle Parliament's independent agencies, institutions such as Elections Canada and the Auditor General in the very same way. The Harper regime has issued draft rules that would require even those who are supposed to be independent, at arm's length from the government, to submit their intended public statements to the PMO for vetting or filtering, blatant censorship.

Even with the Tory rank and file sitting mute in the face of this outrage, the rest of us, which includes the overwhelming majority that did not vote for this thug, need to yell "no, enough". We need to show conservatives and their Leader that this is Canada, not Stevieland, and that he's not the choice of most Canadian voters and he can damn well stop acting like he's the Dick Cheney of the True North.

It's time to take the gags off the environment and defence ministries and it's time to stop Harper muzzling Elections Canada, the Auditor General and others.

Here's something to think about. If Harper will so blatantly abuse Canadian democracy while he's in a minority, what excesses will he resort to should we ever be blind enough to give the Tories a majority?