Know Your Limit - A Trillion Tonnes. Global Warming Gets New Metrics.

Climate scientists have come up with a new approach to measuring anthropogenic (man-made) global warming. They've worked out the maximum quantity of carbon dioxide we can cram into our atmosphere if we have any hope of staying within the 2-degree celsius target. It's a trillion tonnes.

Now that's not another trillion tonnes, but a trillion tonnes all in. A second study just released puts the ceiling at 0.9 trillion tonnes. From the Environmental News Network:

Rather than basing negotiations on short-term goals such as emission rates by a given year, the researchers say the atmosphere can be regarded as a tank of finite size which we must not overfill if we want to avoid a dangerous temperature rise.

Climate policy has traditionally concentrated on cutting emission rates by a given year, such as 2020 or 2050, without placing these goals within the overall context of needing to limit cumulative emissions.

...The first study, led by Myles Allen from the University of Oxford, UK, found that releasing a total of one trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere between 1750 and 2500 would cause a "most likely" peak warming of two degrees Celsius. Emissions to 2008 have already released half of this.

Allen said in a press briefing this week (27 April): "It took 250 years to burn the first half trillion tonnes and, on current predictions, we'll burn the next half trillion in less than 40 years."

David Frame, a co-author of the Allen paper and researcher at the University of Oxford, said that these findings make the problem "simpler" than it's often portrayed.

"[The findings] treat these emissions ... as an exhaustible resource. For economists, this way of looking at the problem will be a huge simplification," Frame said.

"Basically, if you burn a tonne of carbon today, then you can't burn it tomorrow ...you've got a finite stock. It's like a tank that's emptying far too fast for comfort. If country A burns it, country B can't. It forces everyone to consider the problem as a whole."

What's not mentioned directly in the article is the enormously powerful significance of a global ceiling on carbon emissions - rationing. It makes possible arguments we haven't heard much of before. For example, we've got around 6.7-billion people today. If we allocate the remaining half-trillion tonnes on a per capita formula it would be disastrous for the industrialized nations. Even under an international cap and trade system, carbon quotas could become enormously expensive. It brings to mind the situation in California where farmers with water quotas choose to simply sell their quotas to desperate municipalities and give up farming altogether.

I expect these studies could be right. After all, there has to be some limit to the atmospheric emissions the earth can sustain. Everybody pretty much already knows that. But to put a number on it gives the debate an entirely new dimension, a clear yardstick against which each nation can be measured and, in seeking co-operation, clarity could be toxic.

What's Going on With CanWest?

Is it just me? I can't open the web sites for any of the CanWest papers - NaPo, VanSun, OtCitz - the whole bundle.

Every other news site opens just fine. Anyone else having this problem?

Big Oil-Big Coal Need Your Help to Save Global Warming

Don't Count on America to Save The World

The Europeans may be stumbling along independently but the rest of the world, including the three guys who pass themselves off as Canada's political leaders, waits for America to take the lead in the fight against anthropogenic global warming.

Brian Mulroney, to his credit and to what ought to be Canada's embarrassment, was the last Canadian prime minister to seriously embrace environmentalism. His counterpart, Margaret Thatcher, was the first British prime minister to really take global warming seriously.

Canada signed on to the Kyoto Accords and then pretty much put the freshly inked document in some cabinet in Ottawa to gather dust. I'm willing to cut the Libs a good deal of slack. It took time to get Kyoto ratified and, when they took over from Mulroney, they were left to save a nation staring into an abyss of debt and deficits.

Then along came Big Oil's own Stephen Harper who derided Kyoto as a "socialist plot" to effect a massive transfer of wealth. I guess we have to thank everybody's Gods that Harper wasn't from tobacco country or we might be selling cigarettes in elementary schools today. Harper knew the strongest bond he had to his American idols, Messrs. Bush and Cheney, was the Athabasca Tar Sands, a mega project that was the key to Canada's ascent to energy superpowerdom, a dream that would never be fulfilled if Kyoto was enforced.

Steve might not have delivered a majority government to his Conservative Party but he certainly ran interference for Big Oil for more than three years until the rival Liberal Party could come up with its own Athabasca-friendly leader.

When it comes to the global warming issue both Messrs. Harper and Ignatieff (along with their pound hound "Scrappy Jack") have been playing it safe. Iggy, oblivious or indifferent to the distinction between 'informed' and 'misinformed,' has even pronounced that an informed Canadian public has said "no" to carbon taxes and that's an end to the idea. So our (giggle) leaders have decided to await their climate change cues from Washington where, curiously enough, the people with actual ideas now reside while Ottawa remains an empty vessel.

But don't count on America to lead the world out of this mess. There's more than enough opposition in Congress, generously egged on by the Carbon Lobby, to thwart any meaningful action to even marginally reduce America's overall carbon emissions. R.J. Samuelson, writing in today's Washington Post, says the best-possible scenario still sees emissions growing through 2030.

Re-engineering the world energy system seems an almost impossible undertaking. Just consider America's energy needs in 2030, as estimated by the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Compared with 2007, the United States is projected to have almost 25 percent more people (375 million), an economy about 70 percent larger ($20 trillion) and 27 percent more light-duty vehicles (294 million). Energy demand will be strong.

But the EIA also assumes greater conservation and use of renewables. From 2007 to 2030, solar power grows 18 times, wind six times. New cars and light trucks get 50 percent better gas mileage. Light bulbs and washing machines become more efficient. Higher energy prices discourage use; by 2030, oil is $130 a barrel in today's dollars. For all that, U.S. CO2 emissions in 2030 are projected to be 6.2 billion metric tons, 4 percent higher than in 2007. As an example, solar and wind together would still supply only about 5 percent of electricity, because they must expand from a tiny base.

If Samuelson is right and this is America's bottom line on global warming, start investing in those companies that want to put huge mirrors in the upper atmosphere. Because if America takes this position it's going to be almost impossible to get China and India to slash their carbon output. The fate of the world is very much in the hands of those three nations.

If Washington isn't going to take the lead someone else has to and in North America, that comes down to Canada. We have to at least try to lead by example or else accept our fate and the far worse fate we've bequeathed to our children and grandchildren. This is a moment in which we need the strongest possible leadership and it's nowhere to be found.

Republicans' Tortured Logic

The Republican leadership, or what's left of it, has gone off the deep end in its response to the Bush administration torture memos. They all follow the same predictable, even hackneyed pattern we've seen so often over the past eight years. First deny and then justify and attack your critics.

The denial at first was a blanket, "America doesn't torture" rebuttal. Oh there might have been a couple of waterboardings but no biggie because America doesn't torture. Now that we learn that one Qaeda operative was waterboarded a mind-boggling 183-times in the span of two months that story has moved on down the denial line.

Now the denial tactic is to claim that waterboarding isn't torture anyway. They point to the SERE programme, an acronym that stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, in which some military personnel experience waterboarding - sort of. It's the "sort of" that's overlooked although it reflects the difference between being shot with a gun or shot with a water pistol.

I watched the Vanity Fair clip of Chris Hitchens enduring a staggering 10-seconds of waterboarding and it drove home how what Hitchens experienced was nothing remotely like waterboarding. Yes he was strapped to his board. Yes they put a towel over his face. Yes they poured water onto the towel. But Hitchens trial by torture didn't begin to resemble what the al-Qaeda suspects received.

The essence of torture is to make the subject helpless. All power passes to his tormenter. The victim has no control. His fate is totally in the torturer's hands. The victim is psychologically prepared for the experience - incarceration, isolation, beatings, stress positions, deprivations and abuse of all varieties. By the time he comes before his torturer he's been well and truly tuned up. He never knows when his ordeal will end nor does he know how it will end, whether he will even survive.

Hitchens, like the US military's SERE students, were never placed in that position of desperate helplessness. They knew they were there to experience something, to become somewhat familiar with some aspects of it, but never to truly endure it. Hitchens, for example, never lost control, not for a second. He was given a safe word, 'red.' As soon as he said the word the demonstration (the name actually used by his instructors) would immediately stop. He was given two metal rods, one for each hand, that he merely needed to drop and that would also bring the demonstration to an immediate end.

What the Republicans say their own military personnel experience and what the Republican leadership and functionaries inflicted on their captives were as night and day. It's pure sophistry to dismiss one as the same as the other. It's a cowardly, baldfaced lie.

Those more directly in the spotlight, Dick Cheney and former CIA Director Porter Goss, are playing a different game. In a wicked double-team, Cheney is calling for the release of sensitive CIA reports while Goss attacks Obama for exposing the CIA's secrets to America's enemies. This is truly standing logic on its head. What the government has released so far doesn't compromise the CIA's operational secrets unless it's now become a torture agency instead of an intelligence agency. However it's entirely conceivable that the reports Cheney wants made public could well expose CIA operational secrets. Once the bad guys know what the torture victim actually said and put that together with what happened, they'll know what else may be coming and what tactics they need to do to counter the threats.

I have no doubt that Cheney knows Obama can't release the reports he claims will justify his misdeeds. It's because Cheney knows it that he's challenged Obama to do it, to create his excuse. He'll be able to say that anyone prosecuting him is out on a political vendetta that has nothing to do with the waterboarding. Which is precisely why Cheney ought to be the very first indicted. This cowardly, devious bully has done too much, dodged too much to be allowed to get away with this.

What's never mentioned by the Repugs is just what Cheney had in mind when he ordered an individual waterboarded nine score times. The veep who has never been known to be honest says he was after 'intelligence' on the terrorists and their other plots against the United States. The intense scheduling of these inquisitions, however, supports an alternate account of the whys and wherefores. This comes from the interrogators themselves who have come clean and said they were under constant and heavy pressure to extract a confession from their victims of a link between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein.

And that explanation is consistent with the very nature of torture because that's what torture has always been about - manufacturing facts that didn't exist before the thumbscrews were turned. Torture is used for extracting admissions about things real or imaginary. The only thing that matters is what the torturer wants to hear, not what the subject truly knows. That's why torture is the tool of monsters and why its victims are normally executed quiety afterward.

Cheney's lies became too much for an FBI interrogator, Ali Soufan, who recently went public in The New York Times:

One of the most striking parts of the memos is the false premises on which they are based. The first, dated August 2002, grants authorization to use harsh interrogation techniques on a high-ranking terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, on the grounds that previous methods hadn’t been working. The next three memos cite the successes of those methods as a justification for their continued use. It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence.

--There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions — all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process.

--One of the worst consequences of the use of these harsh techniques was that it reintroduced the so-called Chinese wall between the C.I.A. and F.B.I., similar to the communications obstacles that prevented us from working together to stop the 9/11 attacks. Because the bureau would not employ these problematic techniques, our agents who knew the most about the terrorists could have no part in the investigation. An F.B.I. colleague of mine who knew more about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed than anyone in the government was not allowed to speak to him.

False confessions, false accusations, trumped up excuses for war - a veritable vipers' nest of lies, manipulation and betrayal. And how many innocent lives have fallen victim to the connivances of these monsters?
http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/fbi-special-agent-ali-soufan-who-interr

Election Scandal Hits BC Libs

Two scandals have given the British Columbia NDP a chance to get their own back. Turns out our Solicitor General likes to speed - a lot - but isn't so keen on paying his fines. He's had to forfeit his driver's licence.

"He has to go," said Mike Farnworth.
"He is the province's top cop - the minister responsible for road safety and the enforcement of the traffic code. It is unacceptable. He has lost all credibility."

And then there's Mission candidate Marc Dalton and the matter of an e-mail he sent a decade ago that seems to equate homosexuality with pornography.

In an interview, he said his views have changed over the years and that, in any event, he would not impose his views on the public should he be elected an MLA.

"Yes. I have changed. Why? I have gotten older. I've become more open minded. That's where I am as life progresses," he said. "I've changed in the sense of tolerance."

Unlike NDP leader Carol James who pretty much dumped Ray Lam cold after two embarrassing photos came out on Facebook, Premier Gordo Campbell - very much a sinner himself - has decided he'll stand by his man, er men.

Yeah, But It's Still Toronto

Sometimes it's hard for other Canadians to give Torontonians their due but, an experiment conducted by the Toronto Star did find they're remarkably honest.

The paper dropped 20 wallets with identical contents at various spots in the Toronto area. 15 were returned and the paper is trying to get back to two other callers who've said they've found wallets.

Only three wallets have disappeared without a trace. One, it seems, had been dropped in the prestigious Osgoode Hall Law Library. Two others were returned sans the money that had been inside. One of those had been dropped in the lobby of the Globe & Mail.

So, fair enough, Torontonians are genuinely an honest bunch. Now, if they just weren't from Toronto they might even be likeable.

http://www.thestar.com/living/article/624319

Alberta - You're Number One!

Not that being the top of The Guardian's "most viewed" stories list is really something to brag about. Not when that numero uno story is about the environmental catastrophe called the Athabasca Tar Sands. Not when that Tar Sands story is about how the government needed a promo video showing a beautiful, pristine seaside beach.

Seaside Beach? Wait a minute, when did landlocked Alberta get any kind of seaside? From The Guardian:

"We think it's quite funny - a landlocked province in Canada presenting an image of itself as an island," said Sheelagh Caygill of Northumberland Tourism, which is now fondly hoping to piggy-back on the international campaign. News of the gaffe is spreading like wildfire on the internet with tags such as: "Come to Alberta - no, wait, it's Britain."

The curious choice of a seaside beach for a place which has none, was spotted by Peter Bailey, a Canadian looking for places to take his dinghy. He initially thought that the scene might be set on one of Alberta's many lakes, whose sandy shores and unpolluted water are important to the tourism drive.

Oil extraction is concentrated in Alberta's Oil Sands region, which include landscapes vaguely similar to Northumberland's unspoilt coast. But Bailey tracked down the real setting - halfway between the drama of Bamburgh castle and the kipper-smoking village of Craster - after a marathon email session with the Canadian government, tourist authorities and their PR advisers.

Ottawa has responded by suggesting that the choice of Northumberland symbolised the fact that "Albertans are a worldly people". Tom Olsen, head of media relations for Canada's prime minister Stephen Harper, said: "There's no attempt to mislead here. The picture used just fitted the mood and tone of what we were trying to do."

I suppose Exalted Furious Leader really didn't intend to make himself and his home province the laughingstock of Britain. As for the atrociously lame excluse that Albertans are a worldly people? Maybe, that is if you could find an alternative world where everyone had ginormous-assed pickup trucks and drove as though red lights were just one man's opinion.

They've Known All Along - Denialist Lobby Scam Exposed

They called themselves the "Global Climate Coalition," a group of climate experts who represented the fossil fuel industry and their message was clear: "The role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood."

But, within their closed ranks they understood well enough to write this in an internal memo from 1995: "The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied.”

Cannot be denied, it seems, was subject to interpretation depending on who was paying and how much. From The New York Times:

The coalition was financed by fees from large corporations and trade groups representing the oil, coal and auto industries, among others. In 1997, the year an international climate agreement that came to be known as the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated, its budget totaled $1.68 million, according to tax records obtained by environmental groups.

Throughout the 1990s, when the coalition conducted a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign challenging the merits of an international agreement, policy makers and pundits were fiercely debating whether humans could dangerously warm the planet.

Today, with general agreement on the basics of warming, the debate has largely moved on to the question of how extensively to respond to rising temperatures.George Monbiot, a British environmental activist and writer, said that by promoting doubt, industry had taken advantage of news media norms requiring neutral coverage of issues, just as the tobacco industry once had.

“They didn’t have to win the argument to succeed,” Mr. Monbiot said, “only to cause as much confusion as possible.”

They weren't mistaken. They knew the truth, knew it was undeniable, and then proceeded to line their pockets by denying it. Who can tell just how much damage these bastards have done, how many lives will be needlessly lost to their perfidy, how much suffering they and their patrons have inflicted.

Read more here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/science/earth/24deny.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&em

All in Good Fun?

It's become a popular cartoon in Israel - Ahmed and Salim. The South Park-style characters spend their days playing computer games and posting rude messages on Facebook. In the afternoons, however the Arab brothers always find time to bomb buses, gun down Israeli girls and incinerate cafes.



What is this, Rin & Stimpy Wage Jihad?

Since posting this I checked out a couple of other episodes of this on YouTube. They really are pretty racist and are definitely designed to dehumanize Arabs.

Aw, Grandpa! Another McCain Senior's Moment

Poor old John McCain, getting dumber by the day.

Yesterday, on FOX News, McCain came to the defence of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's gaffe about 9/11 terrorists entering the United States through Canada. Even though Napolitano had already apologized for her mistake, it didn't stop McCain from putting both left feet in his mouth: "Well, some of the 9/11 hijackers did come through Canada, as you know."

Coming from a guy who believes Shiite Iran fosters Sunni al-Qaeda and that Iraq borders Afghanistan and that the American economy should be entrusted to Phil Gramm, I guess this delusion is to be expected.

Thank god this guy didn't become president.

Somebody Please - Conduct a Poll So Harper Knows What to Do on Khadr

The Harpies have been up and down like a toilet seat at a frat house party over whether they'll appeal a Federal Court directive that they get off their swollen backsides and stand up for Omar Khadr, the Canadian child soldier abused by his American captors at Guantanimo.

Yesterday, Foreign Affairs min Cannon told the Commons the Harpies wouldn't be pushed around by any damned judge or any damned laws or even what is just plain right and would appeal the ruling. Then they said they might not, then they would, then maybe not. Naturally nobody thought to flush.

Late yesterday, CBC News got the word from Cannon's office that the appeal was definitely "on." Today CBC News got the word from the office of the Exalted Furious Leader that his minions will be "reviewing the decision" and then deciding whether to appeal.

Can't somebody simply conduct a poll so these buttheads can figure out what to do?

In Canada, Britain's Prime Minister Could Be a Dead Man

British PM Gordon Brown had better keep his temper on his own side of the Atlantic. Over here, we kill men for less. From The Guardian:

The strain shows, say current and former Brown aides: among other things, it has inflamed a temper that has always been the subject of gallows humour among those who work with him.

The prime minister, 58, has hurled pens and even a stapler at aides, according to one; he also says he once saw the leader of Britain's 61 million people shove a laser printer off a desk in a rage.

Another aide was warned to watch out for "flying Nokias" when he joined Brown's team.

Pens and a staper, even cell phones? In Canada this guy would be dead meat. He'd be Tasered straight into the Afterlife or, as it's known at "A" Division headquarters, given "The Full Mountie."

The Right's Psychoses - An Epidemic?

Why has America's Right turned psychotic? Seriously, they're mentally ill. They've lost contact with reality. From Boehner to Limbaugh, Hannity to Beck, these people are babbling on about things that have no grounding in reality. This is the level of rationality you sometimes get from strange folks in torn clothes on street corners in big cities. This is truly the Tinfoil Hat Brigade.

From Wiki:

People experiencing psychosis may report hallucinations or delusional beliefs, and may exhibit personality changes and disorganized thinking. This may be accompanied by unusual or bizarre behavior, as well as difficulty with social interaction and impairment in carrying out the activities of daily living.

Consider a sobbing Glenn Beck leading a taxpayer revolt with the unfortunate name of "teabagging" against a president who is cutting taxes for 95 per cent of the population. If the people who embrace Beck's lunacy aren't themselves delusional, cut off from reality, then reality has ceased to exist.

Bill Maher wrote this in today's Los Angeles Times:

The conservative base is absolutely apoplectic because, because ... well, nobody knows. They're mad as hell, and they're not going to take it anymore. Even though they're not quite sure what "it" is. But they know they're fed up with "it," and that "it" has got to stop.

Here are the big issues for normal people: the war, the economy, the environment, mending fences with our enemies and allies, and the rule of law.

And here's the list of Republican obsessions since President Obama took office: that his birth certificate is supposedly fake, he uses a teleprompter too much, he bowed to a Saudi guy, Europeans like him, he gives inappropriate gifts, his wife shamelessly flaunts her upper arms, and he shook hands with Hugo Chavez and slipped him the nuclear launch codes.

Do these sound like the concerns of a healthy, vibrant political party?

...It's sad what's happened to the Republicans. They used to be the party of the big tent; now they're the party of the sideshow attraction, a socially awkward group of mostly white people who speak a language only they understand. Like Trekkies, but paranoid.

...That's what you are, the bitter divorced guy whose country has left him -- obsessing over it, haranguing it, blubbering one minute about how much you love it and vowing the next that if you cannot have it, nobody will.But it's been almost 100 days, and your country is not coming back to you. She's found somebody new. And it's a black guy.

The healthy thing to do is to just get past it and learn to cherish the memories. You'll always have New Orleans and Abu Ghraib.

These lunatics are so missing the point. The Right's flight out of reality isn't Obama's doing, it's Bush's doing - well Bush and the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The al-Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center were sufficiently traumatic as to leave many Americans a tad unhinged and unable to defend their connection with reality. They no longer discerned, they believed. They believed what they were told by George w. Bush, by Dick Cheney, and by the rightwing media types such as Limbaugh, Hannity and O'Reilly. They wrapped themselves up in a shroud of deception woven by these characters and remained there huddled against the chill of their fears. Reality was uncertainty, a discomfort to be avoided. Debate was unpatriotic, dissent treasonous.

They were told that the 9/11 attacks were the failure of the Democratic president, Bill Clinton, and they believed. They were told that bin Laden's group was aided and abetted by Iraq's Saddam Hussein, and they believed. They were told that Hussein was a monster who was concealing biological, chemical, perhaps even nuclear weapons of mass destruction with which he intended to attack the American homeland either with his own long-distance weaponry or by handing the devices over to al-Qaeda, and they believed. They were told that debt didn't matter, and they believed. They were told that borrowing money from foreigners to fund tax cuts for the rich would trickle down into a new prosperity for them, and they believed. They were told that the path to security and comfort didn't depend on new, well-paid jobs but on home ownership, and they believed. They were told that their homes would just keep skyrocketing in price allowing them to fund extravagance on the equity, and they believed. They were told what to hate and who to fear and never to question their land's God-given exceptionalism, and they believed.

These people were fed an entire social and political construct that was nothing more than a manipulative diet of lies and, yes, they believed. Now that they are reaping the whirlwind of this litany of false beliefs, they're confused and outraged.

True conservative Republicans understand they have a big job ahead of them. Reagan and Nixon knew a good thing in the South when they saw it but they grabbed it without losing their support everywhere else. Bush/Cheney took 'everywhere else' for granted and, for a while, 9/11 made that possible, a real freebie. But Bush/Cheney got too dependent on the South, on the Stupid Vote and, as their numbers steadily tanked, they clung tenaciously to it once they discovered it was the only lifeboat that would have them.

The SS Republican now lies on the bottom. All that remains is that humble lifeboat with Sean Hannity at the bow and Rush Limbaugh at the helm and all those angry and confused people at the oars who don't know how to row and can't stop muttering about teabags.

Just One of My Faves

I don't have anything approaching a really extensive music library but, that said, I've got a lot and I do know what I like, even if I sometimes have to dust this stuff off to remind myself. Just in case you're not familiar with some of these wonderful artists I'm going to start posting some random picks of stuff it can't hurt you to hear. Like John Hiatt:

Best Browser? IE8, Firefox, Mozilla, Chrome?

Anyone who's read my blog knows all too well that I'm not 'up' on technology these days. I've been thinking about all the browsers that seem to be out today, including the latest Internet Explorer 8. Is there one of these that's head and shoulders over the others? Does the operating system make any difference (I'm Vista 64X).

Please let me know what you prefer and why.

Cheers

FOX (Naturally) Runs Interference for Cheney

You knew this had to be coming from the network that's sure Dick Cheney's reputation needs defending more than America's.

Super-Taser

This is why we need the CBC.

A CBC News investigation has found some older models of Tasers prove to be far more powerful, as much as 50% more, than specified. The X26 models were manufactured by Taser International before 2005. Roughly 10% of the weapons sampled proved to be excessively powerful.

Scientists who performed the tests noted that Tasers are unlike other electronic devices in that there are no international standards governing their production.

Taser International, true to form, denies everything.

Alberta ran tests that also came in with 10% results. The province has now sent the first batch of its Tasers to Ontario for testing and is moving to set up a testing facility in Alberta. It plans to eventually test all 1,100 Tasers in service in the province.

Saskatchewan Weasels Out of Greenhouse Gas Pledge

Like no one saw this coming. Hey, it's Saskatchewan, what did you expect?

The Canadian province that's doing the best during this recession says it can't afford to meet its commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions 32 per cent by 2020.

The flatland province's supposed EnviroMin, Nancy Heppner, said Saskatchewan will come up with a new policy pretty soon, one that will feature Alberta-style intensity based targets. The message? Don't expect anything good from Alberta's mini-me anytime soon.

Afghanistan Stalemated

If the past eight years have taught us anything, it's that our military commanders in Afghanistan have been consistently unduly optimistic. That makes it really hard to believe American commander, Maj-Gen Michael Tucker, when he announced that our side is now in a 'stalemate' with the insurgents in the key battlefield regions of southern Afghanistan.

The problem is that, even if General Tucker is totally accurate, we're losing badly. Why? Because in this type of warfare, time is not on our side and we've squandered eight years - far more time than we ever really had - to arrive at a stalemate.

The general alluded to this when he said that a surge of foreign troops isn't really going to make much difference. From CBC News:

Asked if that would suffice, Tucker said it should because "you can only put so many foreign troops in Afghanistan." He is the deputy chief of staff for American military operations in Afghanistan.

"This country does not - they're somewhat xenophobic in that regard," Tucker said. "They don't necessarily like to have a lot of foreign troops. And so we think what we have is enough to get the job done as efficiently and as quickly as possible without breaking through some of those thresholds that they have."

Reading between the lines, all that's missing is the phrase "at this late stage." In that context it becomes, "[at this late stage] you can only put so many foreign troops in Afghanistan" and at this late stage the Afghan people are 'somewhat xenophobic' and no longer 'like to have a lot of foreign troops."

When the population turns xenophobic about foreign troops in their land to the point that you're pushing their thresholds of tolerance, you've lost the political war, the only war the Taliban are interested in winning, the only war they need to win to claim eventual victory. More troops would allow you to escalate and expand the military war, the one we've been fighting since we arrived eight years ago, but that won't decide the issue except to decide it against you.

What a godawful mess.

A Glimmer of Hope in America

There's a momentum building in some American media this morning to finally get to the bottom of who ordered the waterboarding of al Qaeda suspects and why. Best of all, those calling for an inquiry aren't looking at hapless Justice Department stooges any longer. Not any more. Now all eyes have shifted to Dick Cheney and his minions.

McClatchey Newspapers, the former Knight Ridder news service and the only American news organization to steadfastly dispute their president's lies in the runup to the invasion of Iraq, has broken the story of documents indicating that Cheney used torture in the fullest medieval sense to extract false confessions, not intelligence, and that he directed Justice Department lawyers to furnish legal opinions to suit his vile purposes. This is, of course, the same creep who pressured America's intelligence agencies to cherrypick information in order to create a warped justification for invading Iraq.

As soon as word leaked out of one al-Qaeda captive who'd been waterboarded 180 times and another who got the treatment 83 times it was obvious that his torturers and their bosses weren't after 'reliable intelligence.' They were torturing these people for the same reason the Khmer Rouge tortured their own people, for the same reason that medieval monarchs had unfortunates tortured - to extract false confessions.

Barack Obama had to have known and feared what would happen with the release of these documents. He had to have known they would shine a veritable spotlight on key players within the Bush regime. He must have feared the prospect that an investigation and prosecution, once begun, could spiral out of anyone's control and even disrupt his efforts to undo much of the damage bequeathed America by the Bush charlatans. He had to have feared the guilt, the angry recrimination and the social division this dark truth would inflict on his countrymen. What a frightening prospect for someone trying to stop a runaway locomotive.

But the deed, it appears, is done. The genie is out of the bottle. This leaves FOX and the gaggle of miscreants such as Hannity, Beck and Limbaugh no option but to make themselves look even more disingenuous, more loathsome, by denying what happened or, worse, finally trying futilely to justify it. This could be the wheel on which they too are finally broken.

There is now a glimmer of hope.

Dick Cheney's Grand Inquisition. Cheney's Dirty, Rice Too.

Obama's release of CIA torture memos sent Dick Cheney and Karl Rove into full flight to FOX News studios to announce that, okay, they tortured but it was to gain important intelligence that kept America safe from further terrorist attacks.

It turns out Dick and the gang were a lot more Old School than that. They were using torture in the run up to their invasion of Iraq to get known al-Qaeda bigwigs to falsely admit to an Iraqi involvement in the terrorist movement.

You see, everyone - from the top prelates of the Spanish Inquisition to the worst monsters of the Khmer Rouge - has used torture for the same purpose, to extract confessions, false confessions. Britain's Tower of London was in that very business too. You charge somebody, torture them into confession and with a volley of a firing squad or the swoosh of a headsman's axe, all your problems are over.

Once again the story filtered out via McClatchey Newspapers and their veteran correspondent Jonathon Landay:

The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney and others who advocated the use of sleep deprivation, isolation and stress positions and waterboarding, which simulates drowning, insist that they were legal.

A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration.

"There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used," the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.

"The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."

So what's a guy to do when he can't get his captives to volunteer any link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein? Why torture him and just keep torturing him until he says whatever you want to hear. When reports came out about people being waterboarded 180-times, it didn't make any sense. Now it does. These monsters were trying to extract false confessions to bolster their designs to wage an illegal war of aggression. The truth didn't matter. They wanted a justification as cover for an obvious war crime.

But wait, there's more! Remember those Justice Department lawyers now under the crosshairs for their memos justifying torture? McClatchey reports that newly declassified documents show these sycophants "...were operating not on their own but with direction from top administration officials, including then-Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice."

Attorney General Eric Holder told reporters that he'd "follow the evidence wherever it takes us" in deciding whether to prosecute any Bush administration officials who authorized harsh techniques that are widely considered torture.

There's no longer any cutout to protect Dick Cheney. This isn't going to wind up at a dead end with a handful of sacrificial Justice Department lawyers. Cheney was telling them what to write just as he was telling his torturers to get these captives to say what he wanted them to say. It's precisely the same way as he pressured the intelligence agencies to say what he wanted them to say too. This creep is positively medieval. There's a word for people like Dick Cheney. It's "Evil."

This isn't over, not even remotely. We're told there are more documents, more disclosures to come.

Lovelock Coming to Toronto

He's one of the foremost environmental scientists of our era, the man who literally sounded the alarm and drove the debate on global warming. Dr. James Lovelock himself is coming to Toronto on May 26 for a lecture sponsored by Corporate Knights. Tickets are $75. Details at the Corporate Knights web site - www.corporateknights.ca.

Lovelock will be explaining the thesis of his latest book "The Vanishing Face of Gaia."

Extending an Open Hand to Hamas

Bush's idea of dealing with Hamas was to send in arms and money to spark a civil war among the Palestinians hoping to overthrow the Palestinian's democratically elected government.

Today's Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has brought Hamas a different message. Where Bush/Cheney said we won't deal with Hamas, Clinton has said we won't deal with Hamas unless...

"We will not deal with nor in any way fund a Palestinian government that includes Hamas unless and until Hamas has renounced violence, recognized Israel and agrees to follow the previous obligations of the Palestinian Authority," Clinton told the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs committee.

Clinton said she has made the U.S. position clear during conversations with Arab and other allies. The United States has pushed for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where an independent Palestinian state exists alongside Israel.
"We want to leave the door open" to including Hamas, Clinton said.

With that, Mrs. Clinton has very deftly put the ball right in the middle of Hamas' court.

Re Dziekanski - Elliott Has Some Explaining to Do

Earlier today I wrote an item about a curious statement RCMP Commissioner Bill Elliott made during an interview with the Toronto Star. Here's what Elliott said:

"We will make submissions to the inquiry," said Elliott. "I think it's fair to say that we will say if we had to live life over again, and I'm sure that our members would say – I've never discussed this with them because I've never discussed this incident with them – if they had to live life over again, there are things that they would do differently."

At first I thought that Elliott was saying that he'd never discussed the Dziekanski business with members of the RCMP. That sounded patently ridiculous so I concluded he must have meant that he hadn't discussed it with the four officers involved - keeping his distance so to speak in contemplation of an investigation. Then I got this comment from Dr. Dawg:

"A day after the release of an eyewitness video of the events leading up to Dziekanski's death, the RCMP commissioner called the four officers involved in the incident and expressed his support, according to the partially redacted e-mails.

"I have just now placed calls to all four members. I spoke to three of the four," Elliott wrote in an e-mail dated Nov. 15 to Gary Bass, the RCMP deputy commissioner for the Pacific region.

"I know this is tough on you and all our folks in E Division. Please be assured of my ongoing support," Elliott wrote.

One of the several troubling aspects of the Dziekanski affair has been the persistant efforts of the RCMP to mislead the Canadian public.

The CBC story revealed that, far from not talking to members about Dziekanski, Elliott moved with the speed of a veteran political functionary to bring the controversy into his Ottawa headquarters where he could institute damage control:


Dziekanski died after being zapped with a stun gun at the Vancouver International Airport on Oct. 14, 2007, by RCMP officers who were called to help deal with the Polish immigrant, who apparently became agitated from spending 10 hours at the airport. From that day, RCMP e-mail exchanges obtained by access to information requests suggest the force moved quickly to create a strategy.

The strategy involved all answers being vetted in Ottawa, including ones described by RCMP Commissioner William Elliott as "tough or dirty questions" from the media.

You can read the entire CBC News report from last July, here:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2008/07/16/bc-rcmp-emails-taser.html

This erases any remaining doubt that Elliott was and is directly and fully responsible for the way the RCMP misled the Canadian public and our media. It's time he moved on.

Moonwalker to US Government - Bring Out the Little Green Men

Okay, he has a PhD in aeronautics and 'astronautics' from MIT. And okay, he was an astronaut and he did walk on the surface of the moon and holds the record for the duration of his moonwalk.

I get all that BUT the guy's from Roswell, New Mexico!

Former Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell has added his voice to the chorus saying that alien life does exist and that his government should stop the cover-up. From The Guardian:

"We are being visited," he said. "It is now time to put away this embargo of truth about the alien presence. I call upon our government to open up ... and become a part of this planetary community that is now trying to take our proper role as a spacefaring civilisation."

Growing up in Roswell, New Mexico - where some UFO experts believe a crash took place in 1947 – Mitchell said residents of the town "had been hushed and told not to talk about their experience by military authorities" and were told they would suffer "dire consequences" if they did.

Residents relayed eyewitness accounts of alien sightings to him because they "didn't want to go to the grave with their story. They wanted to tell somebody reliable. And being a local boy and having been to the moon, they considered me reliable enough to whisper in my ear their particular story."

RCMP Commish Didn't Discuss Dziekanski?

The RCMP's new Tory boss, Commissioner Bill Elliot, gave an interview to the Toronto Star in which he's quoted as making this curious statement about the Tasering death of Robert Dziekanski:

"We will make submissions to the inquiry," said Elliott. "I think it's fair to say that we will say if we had to live life over again, and I'm sure that our members would say – I've never discussed this with them because I've never discussed this incident with them – if they had to live life over again, there are things that they would do differently."

Bill Elliott has never discussed the Dziekanski killing with members of his very own RCMP? That strikes me as quite astonishing in that this one incident has brought international disgrace on his force and has plainly undermined the public's support and trust in the RCMP.
I hope what Elliott is trying to say is that he hasn't discussed the incident with the four officers directly involved.

"Frankly, as commissioner of the RCMP I'm concerned about our officers not using enough force and putting themselves in danger."

Elliott acknowledged he is concerned about the "potential" erosion of public confidence in the RCMP, insisting he doesn't take Canadians' support "for granted."

But, citing anecdotal evidence, he said he does not believe the Dziekanski affair or all the scrutiny on the RCMP's use of Tasers has significantly damaged people's confidence in the national police force.

Asked if part of the problem for the RCMP has been its refusal to admit any mistakes were made, Elliott said: "Well, maybe it is."

If Elliott hasn't spoken to serving members of the RCMP about the homicide of Robert Dziekanski, it's pretty obvious that he hasn't bothered to find out what the Canadian people think either. Throughout this sorry business, Commissioner Elliott has seemed contentedly oblivious, even indifferent. Someone needs to remind him of "the buck stops here" rule. It was very much Commissioner Elliott's RCMP that continued to insist on its bogus account of what actually happened until it backed down and apologized just this past Monday. Elliott needs to figure out that the responsibility for having misled the public is first and foremost his own.

The Sad State of America's Supreme Court

There was a time when American courts thought the American Consitution defended 13-year old girls against strip searches by overeager school officials. Then George w. Bush stacked his country's highest court with uber-right zealots. The result? Dahlia Lithwick, writing in Slate, says that's all going to change today:

After [yesterday's] argument, it's plain the court will overturn a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals opinion finding a school's decision to strip-search a 13-year-old girl unconstitutional. That the school in question was looking for a prescription pill with the mind-altering force of a pair of Advil—and couldn't be bothered to call the child's mother first—hardly matters.

...even if you were never a 13-year-old girl yourself, if you have a daughter or niece, you might see the humiliation in pulling a middle-school honor student with no history of disciplinary problems out of class, based on an uncorroborated tip that she was handing out prescription ibuprofen. You might think it traumatic that she was forced to strip down to her underclothes and pull her bra and underwear out and shake them in front of two female school employees. No drugs were found. But even those justices lacking a daughter, a niece, or a uterus had access to an amicus brief in this case documenting the fact that student strip searches "can result in serious emotional damage" and that student victims of strip searches "often cannot concentrate in school, and, in many cases, transfer or even drop out." Savana Redding, herself a data point, described the search as "the most humiliating experience" of her life. Then she dropped out of school. And five years later, at age 19, she gets to listen in on oral argument in Porky's 3: The Supreme Court Says "Panties."

...in recent years, the high court has slowly chipped away at the privacy rights of students—frequently based on the rationale that there were drugs!!! Somewhere in America!!! Drugs!!! Creating danger!!! (This led an annoyed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to dissent in a recent case that the court was peddling "nightmarish images of out-of-control flatware, livestock run amok, and colliding tubas" to justify drug tests for any student with a pulse. )

Ah, bless Ruth Bader Ginsburg. With Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas wiping their jackboots on America's consitution at every opportunity, Barack Obama needs to take back the keys to what's become America's Supreme Court clown car.

http://www.slate.com/id/2216608?nav=wp

My Open Letter to Michael Ignatieff

What follows is a letter I sent by e-mail today to the Liberal Party Leader, Michael Ignatieff. I will promptly post any reply he may chose to make.

Dear Mr. Ignatieff.

Congratulations on the success you're showing. It looks as though you have a fairly good chance at becoming the next prime minister.

I'm writing because I'm troubled by a couple of aspects of your leadership that, for the only time in more than 40-years, are undermining my ability to support the Liberal Party. I know that I'm not alone in these concerns.

I gravely dislike your tendency, when you get on the wrong side of an issue, to dismiss your critics or impugn their motives. You did this when you had to retreat from your support for the totally illegal conquest of Iraq. More recently you did this same thing on the Tar Sands. After declaring the Tar Sands the cornerstone of Canadian prosperity for the 21st century and a key to national unity itself, you smeared Tar Sands critics within the Liberal ranks as being anti-Alberta. Do you really believe that is the only motivation anyone could have for being steadfastly opposed to the Tar Sands? Your blithe suggestion that environmental concerns relating to the Tar Sands were a mere matter of carbon emission controls betrayed either a grave lack of understanding or an indifference to this environmental disaster.

Mr. Ignatieff, our country and our world are facing enormous problems. When you were born the earth's population was about two million. Today it's nearly seven and headed within just a few decades to somewhere in the high nines. As the experts say, we've exceeded our carrying capacity. We're eating our seed corn. Our global, ecological deficit is manifest in our collapsed fisheries, spreading deforestation, species extinction, desertification and salination of coastal regions, resource exhaustion, a looming and global freshwater crisis, air, water and land contamination and global security threats from terrorism to nuclear proliferation to disease migration.

Canada is blessed. The worst of these impacts are being felt elsewhere but they are spreading, in some cases quite rapidly, and their reach is global. Yet we're focused on but one problem - global warming and, even on that, we're not getting beyond the talking phase. As Jared Diamond explains in his excellent book Collapse it does mankind little good to solve one of these problems. Each and every one of them must be solved if it is not to present an existential threat.

There are organizations that take this very seriously even if their political masters do not. Among them are the Pentagon and the British Ministry of Defence. On the CBC programme Ideas, Gwynne Dyer presented many of their voices in a 3-part series entitled Climate Wars. If you genuinely care about Canada and our children's future, you need to listen to these. You'll find them at this link: http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/features/climate-wars/

There's really nothing new in them except for one thing. Dyer explains, very convincingly explains, how the prospects of getting the necessary international consensus to respond to our problems is going to be derailed by war. In fact, the odds of this happening are very high. That is because some very large and very powerful nations feed their people from farmland irrigated by glacier-fed rivers. The stability of China and India very much depends on the Himalayan glaciers and those are right now in full retreat. Not only will water shortages destabilize China and India but they will put them at odds with their respective neighbours, Russia and Pakistan. One thing all four of those nations have in common is that each fields a nuclear arsenal. I assume you have a working knowledge of the theories of nuclear escalation and what is commonly known as nuclear winter so I won't go into them here.

History abounds with nations or tribes that have collapsed when they're suddenly overtaken by an inability to feed their people. One of Dyer's guests familiar with these things says that each of these entities had one thing in common. When their resources became inadequate, they attacked their neighbours. Wars of subsistence at times transform into wars of extermination.

But Dyer's series isn't entirely negative, not at all. He concludes that we need to get off fossil fuels now. Not sometime later in this century but now. Then his guests go on to describe alternate energy sources that are both practical and affordable and either non-carbon emitting or carbon neutral that are proven and available today. Two powerful forces stand in the way. One is obstruction by the fossil fuel industry. The other is an absence of political leadership. One who foresees projects such as the Tar Sands continuing through the 21st century would seem to fall into that second category.

For the sake of Canada and the sake of our children and their children, I would ask you to listen to those radio documentaries and use them to inform your opinion. You seek the position to lead our country into the future. The Climate War broadcasts show the leadership we need so urgently if we are to have a future and what probably lies in store in just a decade or two if we don't get it. I urge you to visit these issues not as an annoyance or a burdensome obligation but as a genuine opportunity, perhaps the best you will ever have, to become the great leader Canada needs at this very moment in time.

Thank you for giving this your consideration.

Regards

Obama Keeps Door Open on Torture Prosecutions

Barack Obama says it's up to his attorney-general to decide whether to prosecute the directing minds behind the CIA's torture of suspected terrorists. From BBC:

US President Barack Obama has left open the possibility of prosecuting officials who wrote CIA memos allowing harsh interrogation methods.

...the president's comments marked a change of tone amid growing pressure from the Democratic Party not to rule out potential prosecutions.

They reflect the increasingly complex political situation around the decision to release the memos, he says.

"With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that that is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws," Mr Obama said.

He also said he could support a congressional investigation of the issue if it was conducted in a bipartisan way.

Clearly Obama has yielded to unexpected outpouring of anger, even outrage, at the announcement by his chief of staff on Sunday that the president would not allow anyone to be prosecuted, including those who gave the orders to torture. It's obvious that he's aware of the danger of the Repugs rallying to defend their own and, if necessary, making martyrs out of them.

Chrysler's Problems - Boardroom Not Shop Floor

There's been no end of bitching lately about the stubborness of Chrysler's union employees in resisting the concessions demanded by Italian automaker FIAT. But when it comes to the automaker's downfall, there's plenty of blame to spread around and a lot of it goes straight up to the boardroom.

The Washington Post is reporting that Chrysler Financial's top brass turned their noses up to a $750-million loan package from the US government because, "executives didn't want to abide by new federal limits on pay."

The government had been offering the loan earlier this month as part of its efforts to prop up the ailing auto industry, including Chrysler, which is racing to avoid bankruptcy. Chrysler Financial is a vital lender to Chrysler dealerships and customers.

In forgoing the loan, Chrysler Financial opted to use more expensive financing from private banks, adding to the burdens of the already fragile automaker and its financing company.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/20/AR2009042002156.html?hpid=topnews

A Self-Fulfilling Nightmare?

The advent of cell phone cameras may have ushered in a new dynamic in the relationship between police and the public.

In Western societies, law enforcement by police depends largely on voluntary compliance. Cops generally expect a significant level of obedience from the citizenry. That's reflected in criminal laws prohibiting us from obstructing police officers. OPO can definitely land you in jail. But surely our cooperation with our police is based more on our respect for them than fear of punishment for disobedience. I think most cops are all too well aware of that.

What happens, then, when the population comes to lose that respect for the police, when that essential trust in their legitimacy and intentions falters? For most of my life I held the RCMP in high esteem but no longer. The majority of the people I speak with seem to feel at least somewhat the same way.

Once that trust is gone, what remains? What else is there but fear or at least some mild apprehension? That's a pretty dramatic shift from a positive to a negative relationship. It seems to me that fear of another person is like a petrie dish to grow anger, resentment, even hostility.

Back when most people respected the cops there was a small minority who simply loathed them and wished them ill. Surely this breakdown in the public's relationship with our police has to have swelled those ranks.

And how does this play out from the cops' perspective? It can't be morale building to feel the chill coming from the man on the street. They must know that hidden among the ranks of the law abiding there is now a larger group that wishes them ill. Can that do anything but increase their own fear of the civilian community?

Our police live in fear and they let us know it. Even in the quietest, most peaceful little town, the cop who sits down in Tim Horton's has a state of the art pistol at his side, mace in his belt and a bulky bulletproof vest protecting his vital organs from threats unseen. He might even have a Taser in his arsenal.

Somehow over the past couple of decades we've transformed cops from law enforcement officers into urban combat warriors. There's something chilling about seeing a riot shotgun clipped into the front seat of a cruiser as though the occupant was on his way to the OK Corral.

It's bad enough that more of us are coming to distrust, some even fear our police but it's worse yet when we're reminded so vividly that these guys with all the firepower fear and distrust us. That can readily cause some of them to overreact, some of which will be caught on a passerby's cell phone camera, that will heighten our distrust in and fear of the cops, and on and on it goes.

While doing my undergrad studies in the states, twice I was pulled over by traffic cops while riding my motorcycle to school. Both stops were over very petty matters. Neither resulted in so much as a ticket. But on both occasions the cop approached me with a drawn pistol. Maybe the Canadian flag I'd sewn on the back of my jacket when I rode through Europe somehow alarmed these people. Their drawn guns sure as hell alarmed me. But that was a particularly bad time for the cops in that area, a number of them had been shot, and they had grown very fearful of the public. This is how the cycle seems to work.

This is an ideal opportunity to nip this in the bud, so to speak. The remedy lies with the police themselves. They need to find a new way of interacting with the public, one that understands some civilian might be recording just about everything they do. I don't suggest they all don sackcloth and ashes but I do think they need to reach out the Canadian people, acknowledge that they need to change and, above all else, convince us to again give them our trust and support.

George Will, Peggy Noonan - Torture Is Something You Do Really Quietly, Now Move Along

Vancouver Dipper Dumb As A Post

If you want to become a member of the legislative assembly it helps if you don't post pictures of yourself with your pants down on Facebook. From the G&M:

“An issue was made regarding inappropriate material on my private Facebook page,” Ray Lam, NDP candidate for Vancouver False-Creek, said Sunday night in a statement.

“I regret this material and the associated comments that have now become public.

“I do not want this to be a distraction in the election campaign and have advised the party that I am stepping down.”

Is this guy really so stupid that he didn't realize that anything you post on Facebook is effectively public?

The photos were posted Sunday on media websites after being spotted on Mr. Lam's Facebook account.

By late Sunday, the photos were no longer posted on the social-networking site.

In one, a smiling man tagged as Mr. Lam hugs a woman in a low-cut dress, his hand on her breast.

In another, the same man is with friends, his pants pulled down to display his underwear.

Is Mr. Lam so bereft of judgment to not understand that posing for pictures of himself copping a feel and dropping his drawers wouldn't eventually blow up in his face?

Stephen Harper - Author, Economist, Lecturer Extraordinaire

That's how Furious Leader Steve lists his occupation on the Parliament of Canada web site. Author, Economist, Lecturer.

Now I've always understood that one's occupation was directly, even intimately related to how one earns his/her income. To channel George w. Bush, your occupation is what you do to put food on your family.

Well I was curious about Steve's authorship so I took a look at Allbookstores.com and, surprise, surprise there is a Stephen Harper listed and he is indeed a prolific author. Here are some of the titles of recent works by Stephen Harper:

The Quest for the Wicker Man, Historical Folklore and Pagan Perspectives; Insanity, Individuals and Society in Late Medieval English Literature - The Subject of Madness; Capturing Enigma - How HMS Petard Seized the German Naval Codes; Ek Was Dar; White Christmas in Saigon; and everybody's all time favourite - Miracle of Deliverance - The Case For The Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Wow, that's a lot of books but the focus on madness, pagan folklore, espionage and nuclear holocaust is just a tad creepy, no?

I've looked through several biographies and haven't found much on Steve's sterling career as an economist. Presumably if his talents as an economist were every bit as good as his abject failure to see this freight train of a recession barreling down the track, he probably wouldn't have lasted very long. He did drop out of University of Toronto after two months and went from there straight into the mail room at Imperial Oil in Edmonton but he studied economics at the University of Calgary (Chicago North) well after that.

As for lecturer, Wiki has a notation that Harper has been an occassional guest lecturer at his alma mater, University of Calgary but that doesn't sound like much of an 'occupation.'

What am I missing here? Where does the 'author, economist, lecturer' business come from?

http://www2.parl.gc.ca/parlinfo/Files/Parliamentarian.aspx?Item=0218BF67-EF3A-4A8D-8AB4-0229E4FCAA54&Language=E

Think Big Oil Has Folded On Global Warming?

In public Big Oil may be saying all the right things, but it's no accident that Republicans in Congress are still working furiously to fend off any meaningful action to slash America's carbon emissions. Why would Big Oil give up? Big Tobacco sure hasn't.

In Defence of Obama on Torture

Barack Obama has stirred up a hornet's nest of angry indignation from the left over his decision not to prosecute CIA officers who tortured terrorism suspects.

I think he is right.

It's a facet of 'victor's justice' that the only people ever prosecuted for following orders are those from the vanquished's side. The other side doesn't prosecute its own people because that calls into question the very legitimacy of the state and the chain of command. That's not to say there should be no prosecutions. To the contrary, you prosecute not those who carried out the orders but those in authority who issued the orders.

Obama has said he's not going to prosecute the CIA officers who did the dirty deeds. He has not said that he won't be calling to account those who aithorized and directed these crimes.

I suspect he's cognizant of the risks of taking on too many challenges all at once. He's put an end to torture. That, for now, ought to be enough. Dealing with Gonzales, Feith, Rumsfeld and perhaps even Cheney can wait until the immediate crises confronting America and the Obama White House are under control.

When you prosecute the little guys it paves the way for scapegoating and cover-up. That's a common tactic of the right. It's what they did at My Lai and what they did at Abu Ghraib. They used the proles as whipping boys while the real criminals, the directing minds, drifted back into the safety of obscurity.

On Their Way Out

One facet of troubled times is a spate of economic Darwinism that accelerates the demise and disappearance of familiar names. Huffington Post has a list of 12-brands expected to depart this mortal coil before the end of 2010 including Crocs, GM's Saturn, Avis and Budget rent a car, Hearst, one of Gap, Old Navy or Banana Republic (nod to ON), United Airlines, Eddie Bauer (no, say it ain't so), Palm, a slew of Conde Nast's stable of magazines and Chrysler (although Dodge and Jeep are expected to survive).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/12-brands-that-will-disappear

Servants, Not Masters - What a Novel Idea

With our own police controversies boiling over, it's been easy to lose sight of the killing of bystander Ian Tomlinson by British police responding to a rowdy protest at the last G20 summit in London.

Taking a page out of the RCMP handbook, the British cops made up a story about how Tomlinson died and why. Like the Vancouver airport quartet, there happened to be a bystander, an American, who used his cell phone camera to video the final police assault on Tomlinson determined that the man's family know the truth.

Britain's police watchdog says it's time for a shake up in the way police wield their power. From The Guardian:

Nick Hardwick, chair of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), called for a national debate over how police maintain public order and demanded much tougher political accountability, warning that police should remember they were "the servants not the masters" of the people.

He made clear his concerns about incidences of officers disguising their identifying numbers, which should always be displayed on the shoulders of their uniforms, arguing that colleagues should have reported such wrongdoing.

"I think that raises serious concerns about the frontline supervision," Hardwick said. "Why was that happening, why did the supervisor not stop them? What does that say about what your state of mind is? You were expecting trouble?

"I think that is unacceptable. It is about being servants, not masters: the police are there as public servants."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/apr/19/ipcc-police-g20-protests

Name Your Tune

Here's the deal. Name your favourite (or, if you can't decide, one of your very favourite) Canadian songs. Since I opened this thread, I get first dibs. Mine is The Mary Ellen Carter by the late Stan Rogers. What I like most about it is that it's a song that speaks to struggle, perseverence, fierce loyalty, collective dedication and redemption. There's nothing sophisticated about it and it doesn't ascend any grand musical heights but it does enshrine what I like to believe are core, Canadian values. If you're not familiar with it, just click on this:



So what's your favourite Canadian song and why?

Are We On the Road to War?

We've all had that feeling. You're going down the wrong road, heading in the wrong direction. It's a predictable process that begins when you first suspect you're not on the right path but you don't stop and turn back on a mere doubt. You keep on going as that doubt steadily grows often hoping that another block or another mile will dispel that doubt even as it continues to build. Finally you reach the point of resignation where you accept that you need to go in another direction, you need to be on another road.

I think that stands as a metaphor that pretty much sums up the path our Western society has taken over the past three decades at least, perhaps more. It explains a great many misfortunes and perils that confront and, worse, confound us today. We've been travelling down the wrong road, in the wrong direction and we've been doing it just as fast as our feet will carry us.

Does a society have any greater core purpose than its own continuation? Surely that must be the sine qua non of our astonishingly intricate community of nations. Nations come and go but societies must continue for there to exist anything to replace the old, the dysfunctional, the obsolete.

If you accept the premise of continuation, ask yourself why, then, are we heading down a road that may well lead to the failure of our prime purpose? Why would any society or any community of nations pursue a path that may lead to rendering our one and only biosphere uninhabitable? We're heading down the wrong road and the doubt is far more than strong enough that we should be changing course, getting back on the right road, travelling in the right direction.

The apparently no longer scruffy, Scruffy Dan, sent me a link to a documentary series by Gwynne Dyer that aired on CBC radio's Ideas programme. The documentary consists of three segments. You can listen to it here: http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/features/climate-wars/index.html

The series, entitled "Climate Wars" examines global warming induced climate change from the military perspective. If you're planning on being around for another two or three decades or you've got kids or grandkids or the expectation of same, you really need to listen to these recordings.

Dyer shatters a number of lies we've been telling ourselves so that we can keep racing down this wrong road. The first is that we're somehow going to keep temperature increases within the 2 degree target. He concludes that we're going to 'blow right through that.' The next lie is the notion of achieving an effective, international consensus on fighting climate change. The third lie is that global warming is an environmental issue rather than a global security nightmare.

As Dyer quite rightly points out, most credible climate scientists are, to be crass, scared shitless. Again and again they're finding their most dire predictions proven unduly optimistic. This business is hitting us harder and much faster than anyone believed possible. Worse yet, our leaders are still shuffling along, hoping to reach some international action plan based on the 'best possible' predictions that are already long irrelevant. Essentially, we're all geared up to keep heading in the wrong direction and doing that knowingly. Because we're not meeting the problem head on, it's already getting out of our control. A likely outcome is 4 degree warming this century. We may see 2 degrees by 2040 which is when the wheels will begin falling off.

No international consensus, at least nothing that might work, is going to be achieved. That's because the impacts are already happening and what's already in the atmosphere is going to make conditions worse even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases entirely today. That, of course, is not going to happen. Ours is a carbon-based civilization. Now we have two nations representing a third of mankind transitioning from agrarian states to industrial powerhouses. Think the Chinese can run those factories and smelters on solar panels and windmills?

As Kyoto critics complain (quite correctly) really fighting global warming won't be fair and equitable. Those societies which are actually among the least affected would have to give up the most. That would be you and me and pretty much every other country where there's an abundance of white people. It's a tough sell, especially when we tend to see the really dire impacts as being a long way off, possibly a century. Maybe we would be more open to suggestions if we weren't the most affluent and the best armed.

And then there's the military face of global warming. (Here's a hint - it ain't the weather that's going to kill you) Dyer's calling them 'climate wars' and they've already begun. These are wars of survival and it's amazing what people are willing to resort to in order to save their own tribe. Right now it's pretty much limited to folks with sharp sticks and Kalashnikovs but that's not going to last.

Shift your attention to the Himalayan glaciers and then start thinking about Pakistan, India and China. They all have two things in common; (a), a looming, potentially existential water crisis and (b), nuclear arsenals. Dyer quite correctly notes that India is facing the loss of its key, agricultural rivers. This could leave the country with no food for upwards of 250,000,000 Indians. Now, do you think India is going to voluntarily share its declining water resources with Pakistan?

China faces a similar loss of agricultural production and the resultant instability caused by mass famine. One of the places that will actually benefit from global warming is Siberia, a region to which China has never relinquished its claim. That could be the next nuclear war.

Now I don't want to go into the theories of nuclear escalation. Believe me, if you don't know them, you probably don't want to. Nuclear Winter is not really an ideal answer to global warming.

Then there'll be enormous tensions between North and South America and regional issues within continents. As Dyer brilliantly put it, when it comes to global warming, each nation's greatest threat is the nation it borders that stands between it and the equator. All of us up here in the True North Strong and Free should dwell on that for a minute.

It's not going to take more than a couple of metres of sea level increase to create masses of climate refugees within the United States. That means the Americans are facing the prospect of having to relocate inland masses of their own people and a lot of that inland territory is facing either drought or freshwater exhaustion. There's nothing for them looking south so what do you think their alternative is? Yes they're hillbillies but those hillbillies have all the guns.

It's when you finally take the blinders off and have a good, long look around that it becomes brutally obvious that we're on the wrong road, headed in the wrong direction. Once you have that epiphany you'll never look at our political leaders the same way again. Suddenly stories about how the Tar Sands are Canada's path to prosperity through the 21st century and the key to national unity sound worse than idiotic gibberish.

Do yourself a favour. Follow that link and listen to those documentaries. It just might be the most valuable time you'll ever spend.

Ontario, Rest Easy

So, you're up against it. Our biggest, most populous and influential province has now slipped into the ranks of a Confederal 'have not.'

Looks like you're poised to become a real drain on Canadian prosperity. Oh dear, whatever shall we do with the Trillium Blight?

Maybe it's time that the rest of us - or at least the most advantaged in the current circumstances - paid our dues. After all, which among us hasn't been on the equalization dole, in one form or another, over these past many decades? And who, alone, has stood there and freely shared its treasure with everyone else? That, I believe, would be Ontario - Scotland's very 'Revenge" against the British.

Please, Ontario, don't feel bad about this. Proud British Columbia, with all our natural advantages, was on the 'have not' list not all that long ago. Alberta, our national and notional engine of energy superpowerdom, has slipped beneath the storm-tossed waves of hubris. Saskatchewan, it's jawbones warped by decades tethered to the public teat is now doing okay. Newfoundland too.

You've stood by us all through this and now you're perfectly entitled to call in your markers. Let's see if we're as generous in giving as we expected others to be while we were taking.

Susan Boyle - A One Hit Wonder?

If you fear that's even remotely possible, follow the link below to hear her sing "Cry Me a River" recorded in 1999 for a charity CD.

http://video.stv.tv/?bcpid=1610699553&bctid=20032283001

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jI2DxkrgpgQ

So, there were only 1,000 CDs sold by the charity involved. Question: What are they going to become worth to her fan base? I personally think they're going to fetch an awfully good price.

Another Step Backward for Canadian Society

If, while jogging down a forest trail, you run into a menacing, psychotic-looking stranger who starts running after you, don't wait until after someone else is murdered there to notify the authorities.

Wendy Ladner-Beaudry might well be alive today if any of the three witnesses who earlier encountered a scary stranger at the very murder scene had notified the cops. The three came forward as callers to a CBC radio on line programme discussing the case and the safety of the Spirit Regional Park near the University of British Columbia. If there were three witnesses who called a radio show, how many others must have seen this guy and also did nothing about it?

"We were chased by a man who initially was just hanging around near a trail intersection," said a caller who didn't want to be named.

"As soon as we went by the intersection and turned deeper into the woods, he went pounding after us," she said.

Another caller said she was walking through the park two days before the homicide and crossed paths with a man near the same spot where Ladner-Beaudry's body was found.
She said the man looked at her with a "chilling, almost psychotic expression" that left her shaken.

She said the encounter was so disturbing she reported it to police two days after news of the homicide was reported in the media.

With citizens this responsible I guess it's not surprising that the Vancouver Police still haven't come up with a suspect in the killing. As a society are we becoming so insular, so disengaged that we're losing the collective power to protect ourselves?

Don't Give Guns (or Tasers) To the Reality Challenged

A supposed 'expert' from the Vancouver Police force has told the Braidwood inquiry that his four RCMP colleagues acted reasonably in killing Robert Dziekanski.

If this is the way cops think, we've got a problem.

VPD sergeant Brad Fawcett told Justice Braidwood that, because the officers perceived Dziekanski was about to attack them, as all four so conveniently claimed in the post-killing debrief before they were aware a bystander had video recorded the events, then that's good enough for him.

Sergeant Brad said we shouldn't second guess the cops. If they said they were under attack, of course they must be telling the truth. No point letting some dumb video make them out to be total liars. But wait, there's more. The Toronto Star reports that Sarge Fawcett testified that the video (yes, the one we've all watched) corroborates the officers' accounts:

The inquiry has heard that those statements conflict with the video, but Fawcett found the officers' statements were supported by the video.


For example, his report appears to accept the officers' claims that Dziekanski remained standing immediately following the first Taser jolt, with his hands clenched around the stapler. The video shows Dziekanski flail about for a few seconds before collapsing on the ground.

When one of Dziekanski's arm lifts above his head, the stapler visibly flying away, Fawcett's report describes the action as ``consistent with striking or throwing."


The report brushes aside other inaccuracies – for example, that Dziekanski had to be wrestled to the ground – as "minor in nature."

Fawcett agreed with the officers that Dziekanski appeared to be fighting back after he collapsed to the floor.


He said it doesn't matter whether Dziekanski was actually resisting or if he was reacting to the pain of the Taser.

"If the officer perceived it to be a response to the push-stun (Taser deployment), that would be one thing," he testified.


"If the officer's perception was it was conscious resistance on the part of the subject, then that's another matter."

If this is the basis on which cops investigate cops, we have a very serious problem. You shoot 50,000 volts through a man's body and, when he spasms, you're entitled to claim he's resisting and shoot him again? Perhaps you can just keep going until the body is so stone cold dead it won't twitch any more when you blast it with electricity.

Memo to the cops. Perception isn't an excuse unless its entirely consistent with the evidence of what actually happened. You don't get to put people to death on misperception. "Oopsie" isn't good enough nor is perception to be a vehicle of convenient contrivance to mask culpability

If cops aren't able to mix it up when they're in a four on one situation with a guy holding a stapler, we're relying on a defective batch of cops and we'd do well to discard them and recruit replacements who can do the job without resorting to potentially lethal force at the hint of someone waving a stapler. These guys are useless, they're bums. Worse yet, none of us is safe with guys like these in our midst carrying guns. You just never know when they might have a perception.

Pumping Up (or should that be "Pimping") Steve On The Public Purse

This is outrageous. The prime minister's office is going to use Canadian taxpayers' money to boost Steve Harper's profile in the American media. Somewhat fittingly, they've even put Bush hack, Ari Fleischer, on the payroll to 'git'er done.' From (who else?) CanWest:

The Conservative government has hired two former White House communications strategists as part of a "sustained" effort to raise Canada's profile in the U.S. media - with Prime Minister Stephen Harper acting as salesman-in-chief, Canwest News Service has learned.

The Prime Minister's Office on Wednesday said it had retained Mike McCurry, a former press secretary to Bill Clinton, and Ari Fleischer, who held the same job during George W. Bush's first term, on temporary contracts to help Harper land interviews with leading American television networks and newspapers.

"Canada has a very good story to tell and it won't tell itself," said Kory Teneycke, Mr. Harper's spokesman.

"The person best-positioned to tell that story in the [American] media is the prime minister."

Perhaps CanWest is still hoping for a Harper bail out but this isn't about telling the Canadian story, it's about Steve Harper being positioned to promote Steve Harper. Once the Tory knives come out, Steve's pretty much washed up here at home. He's trolling for something lucrative down south and doing it on your dime.

If you're willing to risk losing your lunch, read the rest of this drivel here:

http://www.nationalpost.com/most-popular/story.html?id=1500144

Canada's Judicial Clown Car

One thing that makes civil litigation bearable, if not actually interesting, is the window it sometimes provides into the individuals who invoke it. Because cases can hinge on an individual's perception of grievance and, at times, inflated notions of what sort of compensation is deserved, a lot of bizarre cases wend their way through the court system. Some even make it to the top, to the Supreme Court of Canada. There, however, they really do sort the wheat from the chaff.

You don't have to be a lawyer to form a sometimes remarkably accurate, even vivid image of the litigant from reading a headnote of the case. Here are a few of the cases bounced today by the Supreme Court of Canada. Read'em and weep.

Monica Loughlin retained Maureen Murdoch, a lawyer, on October 23, 2002 to provide an opinion as to the merits of a potential defamation action against six individuals, including a psychologist who had been a court-appointed expert in a custody and access dispute. The lawyer prepared an opinion and concluded that Ms. Loughlin's defamation lawsuit had little chance of success. Ms. Loughlin sued the lawyer, alleging as negligence her failure to file a statement of claim within the applicable limitation period. A Master in chambers summarily dismissed that action. Ms. Loughlin sought to appeal the Master's decision, but failed to meet the deadline to do so, which deadline had already been extended by the Master. Ms. Loughlin then moved to extend the time to appeal from the Master's decision. A judge of the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench in chambers denied Ms. Loughlin's application for an extension of time. Ms. Loughlin filed an appeal from the decision of the chambers judge, but her appeal was struck on October 11, 2007 because she did not appear to speak to the list. Six months later, Ms. Loughlin filed an application to restore the appeal. That application was dismissed by the C.A., with reasons, on June 9, 2008. Ms. Loughlin's application for leave to appeal the June 9, 2008 decision was dismissed by the C.A. Monica Loughlin v. Maureen Murdoch (Alta. C.A., October 15, 2008)

Monica, your worst problem is - YOU. Dodgy defamation cases are hard to win, especially when you don't show up in court.

Ms. Kelly launched a human rights complaint after her request to lease a residential property was denied. The landlord alleged that he had refused her request after receiving a bad reference and after Ms. Kelly made repeated threats of litigation against him. The Chair of the Human Rights Commission dismissed the complaint, finding no evidence that the landlord had discriminated against Ms. Kelly on the grounds of sexual orientation or had known her sexual orientation. Ms. Kelly's application for judicial review was denied, based on a finding that the Chair of the Human Rights Commission had had before him evidence upon which he could make the decision he made. The C.A. dismissed her appeal.Deborah J. Kelly (formerly styled: Deborah J. Hawkes) v. Prince Edward Island Human Rights Commission (P.E.I. C.A., November 19, 2008)

Deborah - You took this all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada? I suppose you managed to find another apartment after all, eh?

McKay obtained Canadian Patent 2,371,155 for his method of separating rubber elastomer liners from the insides of metal stators. The elastomers are bonded with glue to the insides of stators, which are metal pipes used in the oil drilling industry. The adhesive is capable of withstanding tremendous pressures but when the elastomers become worn, and must be renewed, a method was required to break the adhesive bond in order to remove the worn rubber from the metal without harming the metal itself. Mackay developed a method of removing the worn elastomer from the stator, allowing the stator to be relined and reused, based on refrigeration techniques and the principle of differential shrinkage. When different materials exposed to extremes of heat or cold expand or contract at different rates, the elastomer liner shrinks and peels away from the metal stator housing, allowing the liner to be removed without any significant force. The elastomer and housing are exposed to an environment that is gradually lowered to cyrogenic temperatures. Under Mckay's patented method, the elastomer lining is easily separated from the metal stator housing at temperatures at or around -196 degrees Celcius. The Respondent companies also use refrigeration to remove elastomers from stator housings, but state that their technique involves having the elastomer only reach its "glass transition temperature" at which point the elastomer becomes brittle and can be removed by a mechanical shattering process. They claim to use temperatures at the -50 to -70 degrees Celsius range for their delining process. McKay commenced an action for patent infringement against the Respondents in 2003. The Respondents counter-claimed that the Mackay patent was invalid for obviousness. The Federal Court, Trial Division, dismissed the Applicant's action for patent infringement, and also dismissed the Respondent's counter-claim that the patent was invalid for obviousness. The C.A. dismissed the appeal.John Russell McKay v. Weatherford Canada Ltd., Weatherford Artificial Lift Systems Inc. and Weatherford Canada Partnership (Fed. C.A., November 26, 2008)

John, John, John - this is Canada! You didn't invent "cold."

The scourge of civil trial lawyers is the client who insists on proceeding with expensive litigation over a minor claim over "principle." Even if they win, they lose. Using the judicial system for vindication or retribution rarely works out well for the client or the lawyer. A lot of these types show just how much they value their principles when they get the inevitable legal bills.

- case summaries courtesy of Lang, Michener

Perils at Sea

This sounds hard to believe but a study claims that the world's 15-largest ships emit as much pollution as the planet's 760-million cars. From The Guardian:

Pressure is mounting on the UN's International Maritime Organisation and the EU to tighten laws governing ship emissions following the decision by the US government last week to impose a strict 230-mile buffer zone along the entire US coast, a move that is expected to be followed by Canada.

The setting up of a low emission shipping zone follows US academic research which showed that pollution from the world's 90,000 cargo ships leads to 60,000 deaths a year in the US alone and costs up to $330bn per year in health costs from lung and heart diseases. The US Environmental Protection Agency estimates the buffer zone, which could be in place by next year, will save more than 8,000 lives a year with new air quality standards cutting sulphur in fuel by 98%, particulate matter by 85% and nitrogen oxide emissions by 80%.

Shipping emissions have escalated in the past 15 years as China has emerged as the world's manufacturing capital. A new breed of intercontinental container ship has been developed which is extremely cost-efficient. However, it uses diesel engines as powerful as land-based power stations but with the lowest quality fuel.

The calculations of ship and car pollution are based on the world's largest 85,790KW ships' diesel engines which operate about 280 days a year generating roughly 5,200 tonnes of SOx a year, compared with diesel and petrol cars which drive 15,000km a year and emit approximately 101gm of SO2/SoX a year.

So, why is the global shipping industry using, and even today building, fleets of such lethally polluting vessels? Simple. They do it because we let them do it. Besides it probably shaves a few pennies off every item on those Wal-Mart shelves jam packed with crap from China that you pick up when you feel like shopping yourself out of a job.

(Photo caption. The granddaddy of them all, the Knock Nevis, which began life as the Viking Jahre. Just over 1,500 feet long, 650,000 tonnes fully loaded. Stood on end, it would be taller than the Sears Tower (sans antennae).

Don't Forget Perjury and Obstruction of Justice

It's the smell of election bacon fryin' in the pan.

BC A-G Wally Oppal has again suggested that the four RCMP officers who put Robert Dziekanski to death could still face criminal charges. What charges?

Murder - no, wouldn't stick. No evidence of intent. Manslaughter - too iffy. Criminal negligence causing death? That seems fitting. But wait, there's more!

These cops deserve to be prosecuted for what they did in the aftermath of this innocent man's death. They made up a blatant, Cover Their Collective Ass story, about being assaulted by a wild man with a stapler. Four cops, Canada's finest, professionals, trained in the art of observation - all told the same tall tale. Each of them conjured up the same exculpatory fantasy. Each corroborated each other. All of them did this and their corroboration probably would have been an end to the whole matter but for a bystander's video they knew nothing about when they gave their bogus accounts.

I think they've made the case against them for obstructing justice by trying to mislead investigators in the immediate wake of the killing. One guy could have been incompetent enough to get it flat out wrong but not all four.

Then they sought to perpetuate their fantasy, under oath, before the inquiry. That suggests that they've each committed perjury to boot.

I think they ought to face some charge, even if only criminal negligence, for the wrongful death but I think there's not the slightest doubt they need to be held criminally accountable for the outrageous conduct they displayed from the moment of Dziekanski's death to the end of their testimony before the Braidwood inquiry.

Wally Oppal's been around the block more than a few times. He knows what to make of this.

Pessimistic Sensationalism or Brutal Reality? Ask Gwynne Dyer

Forget all the other manmade plagues - deforestation, desertification, resource exhaustion, species extinction and so on. Just focus on global warming. So what's really in store for our kids and our grandkids and our great-grandkids? It depends who you ask except that it really doesn't. It's not what an alarmist will tell you nor is it what a global warming denialist will tell you. In situations like these I like to place some confidence in people I consider generally reliable and one of those is Gwynne Dyer.

Mr. Dyer holds a doctorate in war studies from the University of London. He has held academic positions at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst and at Oxford University. He sits on the Board of Governors of Canada's Royal Military College. Born in Newfoundland, he's served as an officer with the navies of Canada, the United States and Britain. He's not what anyone would call a screaming, left-wing nutjob.

Dr. Dyer gave an address on Saturday in the BC Interior in which he laid out dire predictions for the human race unless we quickly take drastic action to fight global warming (are you listening Mr. Ignatieff?). From the Arrow Lakes News:

The British Meteorological Office Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research’s latest predictions show the world’s average temperature will increase 4.5 degrees Celsius to 6C by 2100, Dyer said.

“At 4.5 to six degrees warmer average temperature the world’s remaining agriculture will be able to support 0.5 to one billion people. The remaining eight or so billion people around in 40 years will have to die,” he said. “What happens in the next 40 years is bad. What happens in the next 100 is not survivable for 90 per cent of the population. Countries that can’t feed themselves will not be able to buy themselves out of trouble, even if they have the money.”

“I began to take interest when the Pentagon and military began to look at what role they’ll have to play in a warming world,” Dyer said. “The Pentagon is fully convinced it will have to really close the Mexican border within 10 years. There will be waves of refugees. There will be failed states. There will be wars between upstream states and downstream states over water.”

In his research, Dyer came to four conclusions: climate change is real and coming quicker than people expect; the impact of climate change will cause massive global sociopolitical upheaval and war; there is a tipping point, two degrees Celsius increase in global average temperature, and “we’re going to blow right through it”; and there are ways to “cheat” and temporarily reduce global temperature to give humanity more time to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Political leaders today are writing the obituaries of the great mass of humanity, the billions upon billions, who will be dying off in four decades from now. That includes political leaders who believe that environmentally catastrophic ventures like the Tar Sands can be Canada's best hope for the future throughout the 21st century. We ought to have an institution on Ellesmere Island to hold people with that sort of mentality because they're far too dangerous to be allowed to roam freely among us.
Read more here:

http://www.bclocalnews.com/kootenay_rockies/arrowlakesnews/lifestyles/42937227.html

Steve's Cheatin' Heart

Stephen Harper has a Nixonesque regard for rules - if he doesn't make them, they don't matter .

That point is driven home in Elizabeth May's book, Losing Confidence. From the Toronto Star:

Elizabeth May felt like a schoolgirl when she glanced over at the powerful man sitting beside her and noticed he had broken the rules.

The Green party leader had fought hard to be included in the national televised debates during the campaign for last October's election, and remembers participants were told they would be provided with blank index cards for taking notes, but they were forbidden to bring their own background material.

"Stephen Harper's staff took care to print out background notes on index cards, but they picked the wrong-sized cards. And no one writes in printer font. Looking over from my seat, I remember the shock of realizing he was cheating," May writes in her new book. "I felt like I was back in grade school. Do you 'tattle' on a cheater? Now, all I can think is 'What were his staff thinking?' It is clear they thought he wouldn't be caught."

Steve, cheating on a debate? Looking the Canadian people straight in the eye and gaming hell out of them?

http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/617893

Waiting For a Beating

Climate change experts are becoming reluctant to speak their minds. Oh they're still plenty willing to talk about the endless river of data and research that steadily and consistently reinforces their scientific consensus. They're reluctant to give their views on mankind's political and social willingness to confront the challenges of climate change and our dwindling chances of meeting even dangerous limits on global warming in the 21st century.

The widely accepted consensus is that we have to limit warming to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the end of this century or face catastrophic climate change impacts. Four out of five climate change experts surveyed by The Guardian don't think we have much hope of staying within the 2 degree limit.

Today's Guardian poll of attendees at a climate conference last month in Copenhagen exposes the gulf between political rhetoric and scientific thinking. Of more than 250 experts surveyed, more than half said the 2C target could still be achieved but only 18 thought that it would be. By the end of the century, most thought average temperatures would rise by some 4C.

...Several scientists said the G20 summit in London, where climate change was barely considered, had convinced them the action required would not be taken. Simon Lewis, a climate researcher at the University of Leeds, said: "The summit shows that political leaders do not regard climate change as an urgent issue. They were tasked to re-configure the global economy and they chose to re-affirm the old model, and not move to a low-carbon economy as scientists have urged. The summit was more of an end-of-the-world order than a new world order."

Bob Doppelt, director of the climate leadership initiative at the University of Oregon, said: "One of the problems is that the issue is still being framed as a scientific and environmental issue. This is a major mistake. Climate change is just a symptom of dysfunctional social and economic practices and policies. It is a social and economic issue. The emphasis needs to shift away from the biophysical sciences now to the social sciences if we have any hope of solving this problem."

Others said it could take a series of extreme weather events similar to Hurricane Katrina and the 2003 European heatwave to force political action. One said a "9/11-type event" that could be traced to increased greenhouse gas emissions might break the political deadlock.

Put another way, mankind is waiting for a climate change beating of monumental proportions to spark the global consensus necessary to address the social and economic dimensions of global warming. Until and unless we reach that threshhold while we still have the strength and good fortune to even forge an international consensus, we seem bound to descend into an 'every nation for itself' regime that will then evolve into adversarial blocs. Once that happens, achieving any meaningful, comprehensive and effective consensus probably becomes a lost and unrecoverable opportunity. But don't take my word for it. This very endgame is reflected in the global warming studies conducted by both the Pentagon and the British Ministry of Defence.

Unfortunately, we're much more practised and comfortable with resorting to military solutions than social and economic restructuring.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/14/scientists-global-warming-conference-poll

Oppal Willing to Reconsider Dziekanski Prosecution

"We're Interested in Doing the Right Thing"

Then again, with an election looming large next month, what government official wouldn't be interested in doing "the right thing" in the face of public outrage over the death of Robert Dziekanski at the hands of four RCMP officers at Vancouver International Airport?

BC A-G and former Supreme Court Justice Wally Oppal says the Crown's decision not to prosecute the officers isn't all that final after all.

“Nothing is final . . . particularly where we’re getting more and more evidence elicited on a daily basis,” Oppal told the CBC, referring to the inquiry evidence. “So it may well be, at the end of the day, the people in the criminal justice branch could re-examine this.”

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/RCMP+officers+charged+Dziekanski+death/1492808/story.html

What Happens When Liberals Aren't

If you're curious what a future, federal Liberal government might look like you could do worse than to take a gander at British Columbia's provincial Liberal government. Take a close, hard look at what passes for our Liberal government. It's a useful object lesson in what happens when right-wingers take over a supposedly liberal political party. It's not a pretty sight.

Rafe Maier, himself a former Social Credit cabinet minister and subsequent political columnist and broadcaster, gives you an idea what to expect in his latest dissection of premier Gordon Campbell in The Tyee.

http://thetyee.ca/Views/2009/04/13/WhatsUp/?utm_source=mondayheadlines&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=130409

Phil Spector Hits the Wall

Legendary rock music producer Phil Spector has been convicted of 2nd degree murder in the shooting death of Lana Clarkson six years ago. The conviction means anything between 15 years to life in prison for the 68-year old eccentric.

Spector's lawyer has already announced the conviction will be appealed. There has been a lot of speculation that the judge made several questionable decisions on admissible evidence that may be enough to secure a new trial.

You Might Be A Republican Nutjob If...

Yes, you might be a rightwing nutjob - if you're into "teabagging."



Now, if you still don't understand what this is all about, Google "teabagging"

Surveillance Has Become a Two-Way Street

The erosion of public privacy by the spread of closed-circuit surveillance cameras has been a vexing problem in recent decades. Many years ago it was estimated that a downtown worker in Vancouver was recorded on tape an average 13-times every day. Police and security agencies have become fond of the electronic eye but not so much any more. Now that the citizenry is armed with cell phone video cams, it's the police who are often falling prey to video surveillance. Think Robert Dziekanski. There's even a term for it - "sousveillance." From The Guardian:

Who watches the watchmen? Or, to translate Juvenal another way: who polices the police? The answer this week was a New York fund manager, of all unlikely superheroes, who provided the Guardian with key footage of the minutes leading up to the death of Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protests in London. The man came forward because "it was clear the family were not getting any answers".

If there is anything to feel optimistic about today, perhaps it is the hope that we are witnessing the flowering of an effective inverse surveillance society. Inverse surveillance is a branch of sousveillance, the term coined by University of Toronto professor Steve Mann, and it emphasises "watchful vigilance from underneath", by citizens, of those who survey and control them.

Not that turning our cameras on those who train theirs on us is without risk. Indeed, one might judge it fairly miraculous that the man was not forcibly disarmed of his camera phone, given that it is now illegal to photograph police who may be engaged in activity connected to counterterrorism. And as we know, everything from escorting Beyoncé to parking on a double yellow while you nip in to Greggs for an iced bun can now be justified with that blight of a modern excuse - "security reasons".

Yet it will by now have dawned on even the most dimwitted Met officer that it is increasingly impossible for them to control the flow of information about their activities - to kettle it, if you will - no matter how big their army of press officers putting out misleading information in the immediate aftermath of any event may be.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/11/police-surveillance-marina-hyde

Britain's Ecological Deficit Begins Easter Sunday

Sometime in the second half of the 1980's the world went into ecological deficit. That was when man began consuming renewable resources faster than our planet could replenish them. In the two decades since then we've been meeting our increasing demands by 'eating our seed corn.' This has been evidenced by deforestation, desertification from overworking our arable lands (farmland), species extinction and resource exhaustion of renewables such as fresh water.

A study by the New Economics Foundation concludes that Britain arrives at its annual ecological deficit tomorrow, Easter Sunday. That is the point at which the British people will have consumed the entire annual stock of their nation's renewables. From The Guardian:

The recession may have slowed consumption but the New Economics Foundation (Nef) says we are now drawing deep on the cropland, pasture, forests and fisheries of other countries.
The research also shows that by tomorrow the country will have used the levels of resources it should consume in an entire year if it were to be ecologically self-sufficient.

Andrew Simms, Nef's policy director, said: "We are consuming more and more, and as our ecosystems become more stressed the day in the year on which we effectively go beyond our environmental means, and move into ecological debt, is moving ever earlier in the year. In 1961 it was 9 July, but this year it falls on Easter Sunday."

The UK's ecological debt and reliance on the rest of the world are revealed in our dependence on imports of food and energy, says Nef: "National food self-sufficiency is in long term decline, and we are increasingly dependent on imports at precisely the time when the guarantee of the rest of the world ability to provide for us is weakening."

This is unquestionably a candle burning from both ends. Even advanced nations are relying on a steady supply of consumables that is patently unsustainable. As the 'seed corn' stocks are becoming depleted, and they already are, supply will inevitably shrink forcing even more severe competition for what remains between the 'haves' and 'have nots.'

The denialists don't like to get into this subject because they can't argue it away. The evidence of these mounting shortages is patent, tangible. Our planet, the only biosphere we have, is under attack - from us.

Mulroney Ancient History? Hardly

You have to be pretty green sapwood to consider something very much ongoing 'ancient history' even if its origins do go back about 20-years. That's especially true when the revelations about the matter keep emerging, stripping away one layer of obfuscation after another.

Brian Mulroney desperately wants you to dismiss the Mulroney/Schreiber/Moores/Airbus business as ancient history. Nothing would make Stephen Harper and his caucus happier either. Harper dodged demands for an inquiry into Mulroney/Schreiber before he was forced to relent, causing his to sever his newfound friendship with his latter-day mentor. The Tories laughably claimed Mulroney was exonerated during last year's Commons ethics committee hearings.

Mulroney has seemed to slip off the hook several times over the years. He thought it was all dead and buried after the Liberal government settled his lawsuit. The former prime minister had, after all, given sworn testimony that his only dealings with Schreiber after he left office were just a few get togethers over cups of coffee. No money ever changed hands. And that seemed to be an end to it. Mulroney was exonerated, the Liberal government said so. It even paid him a tidy two million dollars, the cheque pinned to its letter of apology.

In the course of his victory, Mulroney made an enormous mistake. He disparaged his former friend, Karlheinz Schreiber. It appears that was entirely gratuitous, the sort of hubris that brings down so many highly placed people. It was easy to take a swipe at Schreiber. The German government was pursuing extradition proceedings against the man for bribery charges. Who are you going to believe, a guy who's on the run from the law in Germany or a former prime minister of impeccable character?

It's entirely likely Schreiber would have remained mute had he not been slammed by Mulroney. This mistake, however, revealed how Schreiber could retaliate. Armed with a trove of documents, Schreiber has played his hand brilliantly. He's released documents frugally and with calculated timing. In the process he's achieved two things. He's drawn in his fair weather friends and he's kept the process alive and moving in the direction of his choosing.

And oh how they've lied and lied and lied, the entire lot of them, each in his turn. Mulroney swore he'd had no business dealings with Schreiber. Then he scurries off to file a 'voluntary disclosure' with Revenue Canada when Schreiber hands The Fifth Estate his Swiss banking records. Those documents also seem to implicate Mulroney friend, former Newfoundland premier and Ottawa lobbyist Frank Moores who for some strange reason sees fit to make his own 'voluntary disclosure' to Revenue Canada.

The Fifth Estate and the Globe & Mail keep the story alive and churning to the annoyance and embarrassment of Stephen Harper who had embraced Mulroney as a mentor, a prime ministerial Big Brother. Harper's minority government was suddenly on the hook. It couldn't prevent the Commons ethics committee from holding hearings into the matter (atrociously amateurish in any case). Nor was he able to long resist demands for an official inquiry into Schreiber/Mulroney.

Two important things happened during the ethics committee hearings. Mulroney school chum, confidante and aide to the former prime minister, Fred Doucet, told the committee, unequivocally and under oath, that he'd never had anything to do with Airbus. The most important thing, however, was largely overlooked. It was Schreiber telling the committee that focusing on his dealings with Mulroney was missing the point, looking in the wrong direction. That statement confirmed my suspicions that the Airbus story wasn't about Mulroney and Schreiber. It was about Mulroney and Moores.

In the months following the ethics committee hearings, Schreiber has fed a trickle of documents to reporters that may be highly probative. First came documents from Mulroney's PMO aide Fred Doucet making enquiries about the very thing Doucet had sworn he'd had nothing to do with - Airbus.

Tonight, according to the latest Globe & Mail, The Fifth Estate, will air further revelations from a former Airbus official and a former employee of Frank Moores' lobbying firm, GCI.

In the years since Mr. Moores's 2005 death, documents have emerged, and a number of sources have come forward, that contradict his assertion that neither he nor his lobbying firm, Government Consultants International, was involved in the Airbus sale.

Interviews and notes written by Mr. Moores, as well as memos written by his former staffers, show the firm was intimately involved with the Airbus deal: making overseas trips to promote the European manufacturer to Canadian diplomats, strategizing on how to approach federal officials, as well as approaching officials in Air Canada, a Crown corporation at the time.

...In interviews with CBC's The Fifth Estate, which is airing a documentary tonight about the Airbus sale, two former salesmen for Airbus in the United States have said that Mr. Moores was lobbying on behalf of the European manufacturer.

Anthony Lawler, who was based out of Airbus's Virginia office, told the program he was in a meeting with an Air Canada official when he realized the manufacturer had an additional, unannounced campaign going on behind the scenes.

Mr. Lawler told the program that, in the middle of the meeting, which took place in the mid-1980s, the Air Canada official was beckoned out of his office by his secretary because of a telephone call.

“He came back and said ‘Oh, that was Frank Moores and he wanted to know which aircraft we were looking at,'” Mr. Lawler said. “It didn't mean anything to me at the time ... only after I learned he was in Ottawa and was a lobbyist.”

A former GCI lobbyist, who spoke to The Globe and Mail on condition that he not be identified, has said that staffers at Mr. Moores's firm were told to cloak their work for Airbus in secrecy, and were warned: “If anybody asks, we're not working for Airbus. Don't tell anyone we're working for Airbus.”

Mr. Moores's history of denials dates back to 1985, which is when Mr. Mulroney appointed him to the board of Air Canada.

The Oliphant inquiry's mandate is to examine only Schreiber's dealings with Mulroney not Mulroney/Moores or Moores/Airbus. Schreiber's biggest challenge yet may be to force Harper to widen the investigation.

Billy Bob's Meltdown

Does FOX News Want Obama Dead?

A few hard facts. America is a pistol-packin' land. Gunplay in America is commonplace as evidenced by the latest spate of shooting spree butchery. The greatest president in that nation's history was slaughtered by a bullet fired into the back of his head. In my lifetime, America has seen a president murdered, a presidential candidate murdered, the black leader of the country's civil rights movement murdered, a president wounded in an assassination attempt, a president who barely escaped an assassination plot in Blair House foiled only by good luck and the extraordinary heroism of the Secret Service, at least three presidents stalked by would-be assassins. There have been at least a dozen assassination attempts against American presidents, one in three successful, three of the four during the century just passed.

Why then would a major news organization broadcast blatantly and outrageously false accounts that depict their nation's first black president as a menace to American democracy, a quiet threat to the American way of life and, especially, the right to own guns, a man who won't stop until he has left America humbled and in ruins? Does FOX want Obama dead?

Now you won't hear Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly or the other denizens of the FOX clown car advocate or even sympathize with the idea of an assassination of the president. They would be slapped in irons if they did. But it's not necessary to expressly call for someone to be killed - to save the nation no less. Merely agitating for it is surely enough. Demonizing the president; deliberately warping his words and actions; making the lowest, most ignorant and gullible strata of their nation's society believe this man is plotting against them is surely enough.

Freedom of speech is cherished by the American people even if most of them don't really understand it's origins and meaning. But there must be some line to demarc free speech from encitement to sedition and murder. America truly needs to debate that question now before it's too late.

http://www.truthout.org/040909N

Dead Pols - In Missouri That's The Way They Like'em

John Ashcroft lost his senate seat to a dead man. Now the voters in a small Missouri town have shown the Ashcroft thing wasn't a fluke. They re-elected their mayor, four weeks after he departed this mortal coil. From The New York Times:

residents of the small town of Winfield, Mo., gave Harry Stonebraker 90 percent of the vote in a mayoral election on Tuesday, even though he died of a heart attack on March 11 at the age of 69. By finishing second, Mr. Stonebraker’s opponent, Alderman Bernie Panther, joined former Senator John Ashcroft on the list of Missouri politicians to lose elections to non-living opponents in recent years.

Lincoln County Clerk Elaine Luck said she wasn’t surprised, noting Stonebraker was a popular mayor who helped lead the community of 1,500 through the devastating 2008 flood, when a levee breach caused by a burrowing muskrat left about 100 homes with damage.
“I figured he’d win because he seemed to get even more popular after he died."

Well at least the good folks of Missouri know they're voting for dead guys. We just keep electing the same stiffs fooling ourselves into believing they're still alive.

A Real Hangover Cure?

This has nothing to do with progressive politics or the greater global scheme of things but I found it in The Telegraph and it was too good to pass up. At long last there's an effective cure for a hangover - a delicious bacon sandwich:

Elin Roberts, of Newcastle University's Centre for Life said: "Food doesn't soak up the alcohol but it does increase your metabolism helping you deal with the after-effects of over indulgence. So food will often help you feel better.

"Bread is high in carbohydrates and bacon is full of protein, which breaks down into amino acids. Your body needs these amino acids, so eating them will make you feel good."

Ms Roberts told The Mirror: "Bingeing on alcohol depletes neurotransmitters too, but bacon contains a high level of aminos which tops these up, giving you a clearer head."

Researchers also found a complex chemical interaction in the cooking of bacon produces the winning combination of taste and smell which is almost irresistible.

I wish we'd known about this when I was an undergrad.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/5118283/Bacon-sandwich-really-does-cure-a-hangover.html

American Sailors Overcome Somali Pirates

The Times reports that American crewmen of that shanghaied freighter overwhelmed their captors and recovered control of the ship.

An American crew has seized back control of a container ship that was commandeered by pirates in the Indian Ocean today, according to the Pentagon.

The military official said the crew was holding one pirate in custody while the others were reported to “be in the water”. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, would not confirm how the Somalis found their way into the ocean.

Somali pirates hijacked the US-flagged container ship off the Horn of Africa, the first such attack on American interests.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article6061399.ece

Cry Me a River, You Saudi Despots

The poor, poor House of Saud is dusting off the old begging bowl. That's right, they're pleading hardship and blending it with some sort of moral imperative that we come to their aid. From Reuters:

United Nations climate talks threaten Saudi Arabia's economic survival and the kingdom wants support for any shift from fossil fuels to other energy sources such as solar power, its lead climate negotiator said.

Contrasting interests of different countries are challenging faltering climate talks, meant to forge by December a new global deal in Copenhagen to curb man-made climate change.
Small island states say their survival is threatened by rising seas. But Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, says it could suffer from any pact which curbs oil demand by penalizing carbon emissions.

"It's a matter of survival for us, also. So we are among the most vulnerable countries, economically," Mohammad Al Sabban told Reuters on the fringes of talks which end on Wednesday, after the latest in a series of meetings meant to thrash out a deal to replace or extend the Kyoto Protocol after 2012.

So, let's get this straight. Saudi Arabia, with its history of unfathomable oil wealth, thinks the West owes it something if we ditch fossil fuels. Hmm, maybe if they'd stop spending all those millions funding Islamist extremists abroad they'd have more in the treasury to fund alternative energy programmes of their own - solar panels for example.

The Cat Is Among the Pigeons This Time

Word of advice to Somali pirates. Don't hijack a US-flagged ship with 21-American crewmen aboard. Don't hijack a ship that's operated under the Pentagon's Military Sealift Command to deliver supplies to US forces overseas. And whatever you do, don't put a newly elected president in such a terrible political spot. If you do, it probably won't turn out well.

So, barring some act of Sepuku by the Somali pirates, the ball is squarely in Obama's court. Now he really gets to find out what it's like to be Commander in Chief.

Only In Quebec? Let's Hope So. Daughter Sues Dad Over Class Outing - and Wins

Dad catches 12-year old daughter abusing internet privileges. Dad says daughter was chatting on sites he'd blocked and was posting inappropriate pictures of herself online. Dad tells daughter she's grounded. Dad refuses to give his permission for girl to attend her Grade 6 graduation trip to Quebec City.

Daughter strikes back. Seeks out lawyer who had represented her in her parents' divorce proceeding. Lawyer sues. Court holds Dad being unreasonable, girl goes on trip. Daughter/father relationship shattered.

Dad takes the case to the Quebec appeals court. Appeal dismissed.

The young girl's legal aid lawyer contends that the Dad's decision to withhold permission for the trip was really a power struggle between the parents.

My god, people with serious problems get turned away every day by legal aid because of lack of funding but in Quebec they've got money for this nonsense?

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2009/04/07/mtl-quebecgirl-sues-dad-0407.html?ref=rss

From the White Spot to House to the White House

Kumar, aka Kal Penn, hit the big time with a road movie in which he and fellow stoner, Harold, set off in quest of a White Spot hamburger joint. Another Harold & Kumar movie turned into a regular role on House. Well, from White Spot to House to White House, Kumar is putting show biz on hold to become associate director in the White House Office for Public Liaison.

Every Now and Then, Tom Friedman Gets It Right

There's something about the New York Times columnist Tom Friedman that can get my back up. At times he seems really patronizing, talking down to the wee folk. Once in a while, however, Tom gets something dead on and then - well, he's tolerable. This time it's his explanation of why the West ought to forget about cap and trade regimes and go for a straight forward carbon tax. Are you listening Iggy?

Representative John B. Larson, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, has circulated a draft bill that would impose “a per-unit tax on the carbon-dioxide content of fossil fuels, beginning at a rate of $15 per metric ton of CO2 and increasing by $10 each year.” The bill sets a goal, rather than a cap, on emissions at 80 percent below 2005 levels by 2050, and if the goal for the first five years is not met, the tax automatically increases by an additional $5 per metric ton. The bill implements a fee on carbon-intensive imports, as well, to press China to follow suit. Larson would use most of the income to reduce people’s payroll taxes: We tax your carbon sins and un-tax your payroll wins.

People get that — and simplicity matters. Americans will be willing to pay a tax for their children to be less threatened, breathe cleaner air and live in a more sustainable world with a stronger America. They are much less likely to support a firm in London trading offsets from an electric bill in Boston with a derivatives firm in New York in order to help fund an aluminum smelter in Beijing, which is what cap-and-trade is all about. People won’t support what they can’t explain.

...Climate change is a real threat to a healthy planet Earth — the only home we have. But because the worst effects are in the future, many Americans have more immediate concerns. That is why our energy policy should be focused around “American renewal,” not mitigating climate change.

We need a price on carbon because it will stimulate massive innovation in the next great global industry — E.T. — energy technology. In a warming world with huge population growth, clean power systems are going to be in huge demand. The scientific research and innovation needed for America to dominate E.T. the way it did I.T. could be the foundation for a second American industrial revolution, plus it would tip the whole planet onto a greener path. So American economic renewal is the goal, but mitigating climate change would be the great byproduct.

Now our supposedly enlightened Liberal Leader runs like a scalded cat at the mention of carbon taxes. He writes it off with facile excuses including the rank sophistry about how Canadians made a mature, informed decision to reject carbon taxes in the last election. Mr. Ignatieff is lying.

There was no mature, informed decision on carbon taxes in the last election. You can fault Mr. Dion for that. Mr. Dion stupidly (yes, stupidly) chose to make carbon taxes the cornerstone of the Liberal election platform. That was about as dumb an idea as any Liberal has sprung in memory. No cash-strapped opposition party can sell a policy of that magnitude, especially not in a general election. The Green Shift moniker was confusing and totally vulnerable to attack ads from both the Tories and the oh so concerned NDP. Dion exposed the policy before he unveiled it and his opponents put the boots to it before he was even prepared to try to explain it. As an electoral platform it was as stupid as mud.

Selling the public on the merits of carbon taxes is a chore that only a government can tackle. It takes a lot of time and a lot of money to get the requisite information to the public, to earn their support. In the run-up to the last election the Canadian public were never given a decent chance to make an informed, mature decision on carbon taxes. They were dizzy from being spun silly.

Mr. Dion's foolishness does not excuse Mr. Ignatieff's crass and misleading dismissal of what, as Friedman rightly points out, is probably the only effective means of confronting the existential threat of global warming. This is a problem that needs to be addressed now. We need a leader who understands that and is ready to act. Unfortunately neither the Libs nor the Tories have anyone of that stature right now.

Mr. Ignatieff needs to learn there's more to being a leader than getting elected prime minister. Mr. Harper has shown that.

Ed Stelmach - Meet Steve Harper, You've Got a Lot In Common

Ed Stelmach and Steve Harper both know how to govern - when they're awash in cash. What neither of them understood was that the good days don't last so you use them to prepare for the bad days to come.

When the RCMP installed Steve as prime monster he got more than a bigger, free house. He got a government with a balance budget and hefty surpluses. The first thing Steve did was get rid of those safety net surpluses. He trimmed two cents off the GST. Steve must've been looking down when he did that because he sure didn't see what was coming.

Special Ed Stelmach has just announced that the bestest, richest province in the whole damn country has fallen on its arse to the tune of a $4.7 billion deficit this year. Edward the Dim thought that he could go through Alberta's windfall because, after all, what could possibly happen to the world's dirtiest, most expensive oil? Dumb and Dumber, all in the same body.

When I saw pictures of Ed in the past I always had this urge to sort of pat him on the head and tell him to go outside to play. Now Ed's turned that goofy smile upside down. Apparently it has something to do with a $6.4-billion drop in oil revenues. So smokes are going up - three bucks a carton - and beer will cost an extra $1.30 a dozen. Worse yet, if you need a visit to the chiropractor or sex-change surgery (they aren't the same thing?) you're on your own.

It's tough Ed but, as Steve says, who could've seen it coming? I mean it's not like Alberta has gone through this before - is it?

Fishing the Oceans Empty

I see it with my own eyes, every year. For a day or two the local bay is full of boats, setting and hauling in their nets. They come from the north and leave heading south. It's the local herring fleet that harry the roe herring as they migrate south along the east coast of Vancouver Island.

What I also see with my own eyes is a vast stretch of water between the island and the mainland, its enormity marked by far distant mountain peaks, that was once teeming with fish and is now pretty much empty. What happened? Here's a clue. Salmon eat herring, that is unless we take those herring and their roe before they can feed those salmon.

It's a hallmark of our environmental degradation, the ecological deficit we're running that will very soon come home to roost. In oceans world wide we've fished our way down the food chain to the point where we're predating the prey fish stocks. From Environmental News Network:

Scientists are finding evidence of widespread malnutrition in commercial and recreational fish, marine mammals, and seabirds because of the global depletion of the small fish they need to survive, according to Oceana's new report, "Hungry Oceans: What Happens When the Prey is Gone?" These "prey fish" underpin marine food webs and are being steadily exhausted by heavy fishing, increasing demand for aquaculture feed, and climate change.

"We have caught all the big fish and now we are going after their food," said Margot Stiles, marine scientist at Oceana. "Until recently it has been widely believed that prey fish are impossible to overexploit because their populations grow so quickly. We are now proving that untrue as the demands of commercial fisheries and aquaculture outpace the ocean's ability to provide food for us and itself."

The future of valuable commercial and recreational fisheries is threatened by the loss of prey fish, especially those that are currently rebuilding from historic depletion. Hungry Oceans identifies bluefin tuna, striped bass, Pacific salmon, and Pacific halibut as key species dependent on prey fish.

"We're constantly making life difficult for endangered species from seabirds to whales, and going hungry is not going to help. Valuable fish like bluefin tuna are struggling, and we can't expect the fishery to recover when we are stealing their food supply. By taking food from the tuna we could end up hungry ourselves" said Stiles.

It's a bitch to sit there and watch this happening before your very eyes. But then again, if we really opened our eyes, there's no end of things we'd have to notice.

Afghanistan - National Toast Throws In The Towel!

Pass out the burqas. Those Asper Surrender Monkeys also known as the National Post are giving up on Afghanistan.

...given the increasingly evident reality that the country's corrupt and incompetent government isn't worth supporting -- acting as the Taliban-lite by considering enacting laws that make women the property of their husbands and male relatives -- the argument for our continued presence in Afghanistan now rests solely on our own security needs.

That means we should be open to a negotiated political solution in Afghanistan that would allow us to leave the country in the hands of any stable government committed to preventing the country from being used as a platform for international terrorism -- even if such a government included elements from the Taliban.

...It is too early to say Canada and NATO absolutely should leave in June 2011, when the current mission runs out. But if, in the intervening two years, Kabul does not do more to clean up corruption and contain radical Islamism, then we should look at any exit strategy that permits us to leave Afghanistan in a manner that does not compromise the security interests of Canada and its allies.

Whatever happened to "Support the Troops" and the firm assurances that victory was within our reach? I think the Aspers and their rag we all know and love as CanWest owe a lot of apologies to a lot of people they slimed over this.

Would You Buy a Car From This Man? Really???

No, seriously, would you? Well, if you buy a new Chrysler or GM vehicle, this guy - the Dark Prince of Transparency and Accountability - could be covering the warranty.

The federal government today announced warranty protection for new car buyers and more funds for parts makers.

The $185.3 million federal backup for warranties offered by GM and Chrysler mirrors a similar initiative taken last week by the United States.

Somehow I just wouldn't feel all that comfortable with a warranty from Uncle Steve's easy credit fiscal carwash.

http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/615028

Chris Hedges' Call for Revolution

Veteran war correspondent and divinity scholar Chris Hedges is about as progressive as they come.

Hedges argues that the only way remaining for Americans to save their country is to revolt:

America is devolving into a third-world nation. And if we do not immediately halt our elite's rapacious looting of the public treasury we will be left with trillions in debts, which can never be repaid, and widespread human misery which we will be helpless to ameliorate. Our anemic democracy will be replaced with a robust national police state. The elite will withdraw into heavily guarded gated communities where they will have access to security, goods and services that cannot be afforded by the rest of us. Tens of millions of people, brutally controlled, will live in perpetual poverty. This is the inevitable result of unchecked corporate capitalism. The stimulus and bailout plans are not about saving us. They are about saving them. We can resist, which means street protests, disruptions of the system and demonstrations, or become serfs.

The corporate state, and the political and intellectual class that served the corporate state, constructed a financial and political system based on illusions. Corporations engaged in pyramid lending that created fictitious assets. These fictitious assets became collateral for more bank lending. The elite skimmed off hundreds of millions in bonuses, commissions and salaries from this fictitious wealth. Politicians, who dutifully served corporate interests rather than those of citizens, were showered with campaign contributions and given lucrative jobs when they left office. Universities, knowing it was not good business to challenge corporatism, muted any voices of conscience while they went begging for corporate donations and grants. Deceptive loans and credit card debt fueled the binges of a consumer society and hid falling wages and the loss of manufacturing jobs.

The bullet to our head, inevitable if we do not radically alter course, will be sudden. We have been borrowing at the rate of more than $2 billion a day over the last 10 years, and at some point it has to stop. The moment China, the oil-rich states and other international investors stop buying treasury bonds the dollar will become junk. Inflation will rocket upward. We will become Weimar Germany. A furious and sustained backlash by a betrayed and angry populace, one unprepared intellectually and psychologically for collapse, will sweep aside the Democrats and most of the Republicans. A cabal of proto-fascist misfits, from Christian demagogues to simpletons like Sarah Palin to loudmouth talk show hosts, who we naively dismiss as buffoons, will find a following with promises of revenge and moral renewal. The elites, the ones with their Harvard Business School degrees and expensive vocabularies, will retreat into their sheltered enclaves of privilege and comfort. We will be left bereft and abandoned outside the gates.

Read the entire article here:

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/135414/who_should_resist%2C_and_who_will_become_serfs/

What Will Victory in Iraq Look Like?

It'll be the day that an American president makes a scheduled landing at Baghdad airport. It'll be the day when the White House press corps aren't kept in the dark about it or placed under strict embargoes. It'll be the day when the Iraqi people know the American president is coming and when he'll arrive.

It won't be anytime soon.

Is Iggy Playing in the Tory Litterbox?

I guess it was too good an opportunity to pass up. Michael Ignatieff appears to be doing what he can to stir up the animosity between the PC loyalists and the Reformers in the CPC ranks over Brian Mulroney.

Tories can blame Stephen Harper. Why not? He deserves it. In keeping with his Stalinist ways, Harper tried to 'disappear' Brian Mulroney, demanding that his entire caucus - including old friends of BMBM, sever all contacts with the Boy from Baie Comeau.

Mulroney, as we know, was more influential than Preston Manning in launching the Reform/Alliance/Conservative movement. It was Mulroney's scandal-wracked government that drove Progressive Conservatives in the West into the arms of Manning's Reform Party. Without Mulroney to kick start them, the Reform Party might have remained an angry bunch of Alberta social conservatives formerly known as the Progressive Conservative 'fringe'.

But the Reform movement had its own rot. That much was apparent when a guy like Stockwell Day was able to bump out Preston to become leader. And weren't those the days, if you were a Liberal. Kicking Stockwell to the curb became child's play. Any notion of uniting the right was out of the question with Day at the helm.

And then along came Steve. What a guy, both more and less than met the eye. A closet Southern Republican, baptized in social conservative ideology, he spent his public political career desperately trying not to be seen for what and who he is. The closest thing Canada has ever had to Tom Delay and Grover Norquist's love child.

Peter MacKay won the Tory leadership, on bended knee pledged never to surrender the Progressive Conservative brand, it's long and proud history. to the Alliance and then promptly did just that. A supposed 'merger' of the parties that was never more than an unconditional surrender. Even 'Progressive' had to go, it wouldn't be needed in the new Social Conservative Party of Canada. While he was at it, Harper moved to erase the vestiges of Preston Manning, especially his bent for participatory, "grass roots" democracy. Steve was all The Decider the new Conservatives would need, or at least all they would get while he was running the show.

Being a thoroughly unlikeable guy, a cold stiff, usually isn't a formula for success in democratic politics but, like a Newfie on a harp seal pup, Steve was able to use the Chretien-administration sponsorship scandal to bludgeon the Martin government into oblivion. Despite a Liberal Party leadership in disarray, Harper was never able to cinch the deal, never able to get beyond a minority.

Harper needed a solid majority win to cement his hold on the Conservative Party. He swallowed his pride and, along with it, his ideology and theocratic instincts, in order to play moderate centrist but he was never quite able to grab the brass ring. There were times that poll numbers suggested he could squeak out a bare majority but those moments passed as quickly as they came.

People like Harper have most to fear from those closest to them. Like Caesar, they get assassinated on the Senate floor. When you play emperor and reserve all powers to yourself, governing by dictate instead of consensus, you play a dangerous game. It's like telling everybody that, henceforth they're all going to prefer the same flavour of ice cream - your favourite. Which leads us to where we are today with Harper and Mulroney.

When Harper ordered the Conservative caucus to henceforth shun Mulroney it was a real 'him or me' moment, even if not fully comprehended. Harper drew a line in the sand but this time he might have gone too far. That's the danger with lingering resentments. They're smouldering fires that, given just a bit of breeze, can burst into flame.

Iggy is doing what he can to fan the embers. He sent Muldoon happy birthday wishes. He's now chiding Conservatives who've turned their back on Mulroney, siding with the dissidents in arguing that they at least owe their former leader a measure of respect and fellowship.

The Globe & Mail speculates, as I did the other day, that these surfacing tensions could be a harbinger of what's expected to come out at the Oliphant hearings into Mulroney's dealings with Schreiber:

...Mr. Harper's representatives went to great lengths to defend the former prime minister when the House of Commons ethics committee looked into the matter. Yet, based on Mr. Panetta's report, it appears that Mulroney loyalists within the Conservative caucus are still not satisfied. With one notable exception: Sen. Marjory LeBreton - the ultimate Mulroney loyalist - confirmed that Mr. Mulroney had asked that his membership be cancelled.

Is this simply because Ms. LeBreton - whose history in the party goes back to the Diefenbaker period - has always operated on the principle of loyalty to the leader? Or, might it be that she feels betrayed by what we already know about Mr. Mulroney's dealings with Mr. Schreiber? Most intriguingly, could Ms. LeBreton, who served as Mr. Mulroney's deputy chief of staff, have an inkling of what's to come as the inquiry unfolds?

Jesse Michaels at Canoe.ca, a self-professed "proud, former Progressive Conservative" ponders whether this could be the beginning of the end of the united right:

The Prime Minister’s Office has been at the forefront of the attacks, claiming that Mr. Mulroney was no longer a card-carrying member of the party and dispatching various mouthpieces to insist that Tories have no further contact with him. Shamefully, Senator Marjorie LeBreton acted on behalf of the PMO, even though she has been a Mulroney confident, spokesperson and supporter.

...It was only a matter of time for the shotgun wedding that created the “new” Conservative party to starting fraying at the seams. ...Anyone know the stats on shotgun weddings that lead to divorce?

I think Ignatieff has done about as much as he should to egg on the adversaries within the Tory ranks. From here on in it should be left to Harper, Mulroney, their supporters, and a judge named Oliphant.

Why Is Mulroney Such a Burr Under Harper's Saddle?

By all accounts it's a good thing we don't let Tory MPs and Senators carry knives or there would have been blood all over the lawns of Parliament when the subject of Brian Mulroney came up at their Conservative caucus meeting last week.

The Tories are split into two camps. One wants to shun the former pm who delivered their party two consecutive and massive majorities. The other side stubbornly insists on defending Brian as one of the flock. The Mulroney supporters appear to be defying Steve Harper's command that Mulroney be 'disappeared' from the party. According to the G&M, Harper has ordered all members of his government, including Mulroney friends, to sever all ties with his predecessor. The only thing Harper hasn't done is declare Mulroney a terrorist.

Steve is acting like a politician in full panic. He plainly sees his former mentor as lethally toxic to his government. Why? Harper must know something is coming Mulroney's way, probably in the Oliphant inquiry. Does Karlheinz Schreiber really have the goods on Mulroney, some smoking gun? Is there some aspect of the Mulroney business that could actually harm the Harper government?

Something is afoot here that's not being explained, at least not to the public. It's said that Karlheinz Schreiber is the next witness scheduled to testify at the inquiry. If there are to be any bombshells they'll probably be launched by Schreiber.

Karzai Supposedly to Scrap Rape Law

Funny what it takes to get us to sit up and notice, to tweak our collective conscience. We had one of those moments this week when an uproar of indignation arose over Afghan legislation said to sanction forced sex within marrriage. The idea that the Kabul government had the temerity to pass laws that obliged women to - well, oblige - their menfolks' carnal demands was too much for Western societies already a bit cranky from war-weariness.

Under scrutiny for having screwed up the global economy, our politicians positively jumped at the chance to heap a dose of righteous indignation on Hamid Karzai and his legislators. One by one, the leaders of NATO nations denounced the measures. Even Harper got into the act although I've always thought that fundamentalists of all stripes very quietly believe something along those same lines.

According to The Guardian, Britain's beleaguered PM, Gordo Brown, didn't hesitate to put the boots to Karzai:

"I phoned the president immediately about this because anybody who looks at Afghanistan will be worried if we are going to see laws brought in that discriminate against women and put women at risk," Brown said.

"I made it absolutely clear to the president that we could not tolerate that situation. You cannot have British troops fighting, and in some cases dying, to save a democracy where that democracy is infringing human rights.

"[Karzai] responded by saying this law would not be enacted in the way it has been presented."

Okay, so he's going to scrap the law 'in the way it has been presented.' What does that mean?

I don't see how revising this law is really going to change much on the ground for Afghan women and girls. The offending statute appears to be nothing more than a formal measure to decriminalize conduct that's already pretty widely tolerated. We seem to be acting as though it was going to oppress Afghan women. That's nonsense, they're already oppressed.

Western grandstanding doesn't obscure the plain fact that we really know just how bad things are and will remain for Afghan women. The Guardian article noted this:

Fears have also been raised about the safety of the female parliamentarians who have spoken out on the issue. Foreign ambassadors met in Kabul today to consider a request to pay for bodyguards to protect them.

Protect them from whom? Here's a hint - they're not talking about the Taliban.

Yusuf Islam's - GREATEST HITS!

Just cause every now and then it actually works -

The Only Warren That Ever Was Worth a Goddamn

The late, truly great Zevon with Jackson Browne. The rest really is just a load of crap.

Canada's Crumbling Parliamentary Democracy

The two acts of the Harper government that have most infuriated me were the gagging of the public and armed services and the installation of political commissars in the PMO to ensure that the information flow from government to the public is suitably shaped in order to advance Mr. Harper's political ambitions. Fortunately for Harper and unfortunately for Canada, the issue has never gained traction. There's been no stirring anger, no lasting controversy over a policy that seems positively Stalinist.

James Travers has a 'must read' article today on the same theme, the unravelling of Canadian democracy.

Laughter or disbelief would have been my '80s response to any gloomy prediction that within the next 20 odd years Canada's iconic police force would twist the outcome of a federal election. I would have rejected out of hand the suggestion that Parliament would become a largely ceremonial body incapable of performing its defining functions of safeguarding public spending and holding ministers to account. I would have treated as ridiculous any forecast that the senior bureaucracy would become politicized, that many of the powers of a monarch would flow from Parliament to the prime minister or that the authority of the Governor General, the de facto head of state, would be openly challenged.

Yet every one has happened and each has chipped away another brick of the democratic foundations underpinning Parliament. Incrementally and by stealth, Canada has become a situational democracy. What matters now is what works. Precedents, procedures and even laws have given way to the political doctrine of expediency.

Politics and politicians being what they are, the reflex response is to grasp for all remaining power. Once secured, it can be used to exercise political will more easily by overruling rules and rewriting or simply ignoring laws. Power alone is effective in cross-cutting through the silo walls that isolate departments and frustrate co-ordinated policies. Important to all administrations, unfettered manoeuvring room is that much more important to minority governments desperate to maximize limited options and minimize opposition influence.

Read more of this thought provoking article here:

http://www.thestar.com/News/Insight/article/613535

Stelmach Screwing the Pooch

Alberta's oh-so Conservative premier is screwing up, big time. Mardi Gras is over and 'Special Ed' Stelmach has woken up in an alley with his pants around his knees, surrounded by empties. From the Calgary Herald:

The Stelmach government is stuck in the same financial quicksand as the 1980s Getty era and is facing similar "dire consequences" of prolonged deficits and draconian spending cuts due to its over-reliance on energy revenues, warns a new University of Calgary study.

...Former premier Don Getty's regime made two key errors in the mid-to late 1980s of relying too heavily on volatile oil and gas revenues to fund its budget, and then failing to cut spending accordingly when energy prices collapsed -- instead hoping markets would rebound in the short term.

The Stelmach government is headed down an identical path, cautions the report.
"We criticize (the government) for allowing its budget to become so heavily dependent on volatile, energy-related revenues--that is a high-risk strategy;it has been tried before and has failed, with dire consequences," the report states.

In December, 2006, the Financial Post warned Alberta to start acting like grown ups with the Tar Sands Bonanza:

"Alberta’s blue-eyed sheikhs offered a plaintive prayer in the early 1990s as sliding oil prices plunged the energy-rich Canadian province into recession. “Dear God,” ran their plea, featured on a popular bumper sticker. 'Let there be another oil boom and I promise not to piss it away this time.'"

Yet, for all the benefits, a frisson of nervousness has recently emerged that short-term growth may be taking precedence over long-term prudence. Mr Vander Ploeg estimates that the province’s Progressive Conservative government has saved just 8.6 per cent of the C$120bn it has collected in non-renewable resource royalties over the past 30 years."By contrast, Alaska has set aside about one-quarter of its resource revenues in “permanent” and “reserve” funds. Norway has tucked almost two-thirds of its North Sea riches into a rainy-day petroleum fund.

One surprising critic is Peter Lougheed, Alberta’s premier from 1971 to 1985 and now a respected elder statesman. He says his eyes were opened by a recent helicopter trip over the 'oilsands projects. 'I felt it was just really bad,' he says. 'It was the opposite of orderly.'

Although he belongs to Mr Klein’s party, Mr Lougheed puts much of the blame on the laisser-faire approach to oilsands development. 'The thing that’s being completely missed,' he says, 'is: what is the benefit to the citizens from the overheating of the economy?'”

Well Peter that's what happens when you put the Trailer Park Boys in charge of the provincial treasury.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/crisis+feared+Alberta+report+warns/1460066/story.html

Consume NOW!

h/t www.bonfireofthebrands.com

Michelle Obama Wows Elizabeth Windsor

America's First Lady and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth have certainly hit it off. Associated Press reports the Queen displayed real affection to Michelle Obama:

Mrs. Obama clearly made an impression with the 82-year-old monarch — so much that the smiling queen strayed slightly from protocol and briefly wrapped her arm around the first lady in a rare public show of affection.

It was the first time Mrs. Obama — who is nearly a foot taller — had met the queen. The first lady also wrapped her arm around the monarch's shoulder and back.

A Buckingham Palace spokesman who asked not to be identified because of palace policy said he could not remember the last time the queen had displayed such public affection with a first lady or dignitary.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iU2_BrNBSIf8q7Dpe7TZaCq11qeAD97AFO700

You Poor, Poor Lawyers

We pay a lot of attention to certain victims of the global recession - Third Worlders who are seeing their rise out of poverty dramatically reversed, autoworkers who have to watch as their job security evaporates, the list goes on. But who ever gives a fig about lawyers and the really dire straits befalling them? According to the New York Times, the legal profession is taking a hammering:

The economic downturn is hitting the legal world hard. American Lawyer is calling it “the fire this time” and warning that big firms may be hurtling toward “a paradigm-shifting, blood-in-the-suites” future. The Law Shucks blog has a “layoff tracker,” and it is grim reading. Top firms are rapidly thinning their ranks, and several — including Heller Ehrman, a venerable 500-plus-lawyer firm founded in 1890 — have closed.

The employment pains of the legal elite may not elicit a lot of sympathy in the broader context of the recession, but a lot of hard-working lawyers have been blindsided, including young associates who are suddenly finding themselves with six-figure student-loan debts and no source of income.


Read more of the desperate plight of the legal profession here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/opinion/02thu4.html?em

"We have all been surprised. He is so . . . American!"

Robert Kagan has an interesting article in today's WaPo describing Europe's uncomfortable embrace of Barack Obama:

...Europeans want to be left in peace. They experienced enough turmoil in the 20th century to last a millennium: the two world wars that devastated the continent and took tens of millions of lives; the Holocaust, which still inspires deep guilt, and not only in Germany; the rampant inflations and depressions of the 1920s and 1930s; the wild political swings from romantic and belligerent nationalism to fascism to socialism to flirtations with communism to democracy; the Cold War that divided the continent, not only along the Iron Curtain but also within and between the nations of Western Europe. Just beneath the skin, all of Europe remains deeply scarred.

So how surprising is it that what Europeans yearn for in their self-contained world is stability and predictability, a little peace and quiet? They don't want more excitement. The most revolutionary innovation in the history of geopolitics, the European Union, was paradoxically brought to fruition not by a desire for revolution but by a deep conservatism -- a mortal fear of the turmoil that can be caused by unconstrained ambitions, both national and individual. The German people, for whom and by whom the European Union was consecrated, want to be constrained. The E.U.'s economic strictures, which now act as a barrier to Keynesian deficit spending, were put there by the Germans, for whom memories of inflation, not depression, are the great nightmare. The Germans and French prefer welfare payments to government stimulus spending, for they are part of the passive system of social safety nets on which their citizens have grown so comfortably dependent. The creative destruction of the business-oriented political economies of the Anglo-Americans is too violent and unstable, too brutal and unpredictable. Better to regulate more tightly the international capitalists who can cause havoc through their inventiveness. Better to be less rich than less secure.

... It is into this Europe that President Obama has flown, with what Europeans regard as some radical and frightening plans for the economy; with a new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan that is far more aggressive, militaristic and success-oriented than they would prefer; with ideas about Iran that are welcome (the promise to talk) but also unnerving (the threat to impose more sanctions). As one savvy French journalist told me, "We have all been surprised. He is so . . . American!"

Americans are creators of turmoil. Europeans see them the way the ancient Greeks saw the Athenians, as "incapable of either living a quiet life themselves or of allowing anyone else to do so."

...Europeans love Obama, but European leaders have been fretting ever since his election. George W. Bush did the Europeans a huge favor by giving them the best excuse for inaction in transatlantic history. Now comes Obama, so much more compelling and yet, still, American.

Read more here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/01/AR2009040103060.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter

Mohamed Kohail's Death Sentence Reaffirmed

Mohamed Kohail has again been ordered to be publicly beheaded for his part in a Saudi schoolyard brawl in 2007 that left one young man dead.

Convicted and condemned in March, 2008, by a lower court, it looked as though Kahail would be spared following the February ruling of the Supreme Judicial Council, Saudi Arabia's highest court, which ordered the lower court to reconsider its decision.

The lower court reconsidered but decided to reaffirm its judgment and order Kohail beheaded.

The New, New World Order

A very important skill in the 18th century was the ability to discern that point when the natives realized we white folks were only humans, just like them. That was always a decisive moment that forever altered social, political, economic and sometimes even military relationships. When a bunch of people think you're a god, a snap of the fingers or a barked command can produce wonderful results. When those people see you as just another mortal, not so much.

We're witnessing that shifting dynamic being played out again in the course of the global meltdown. In the postwar era, most of the Third World and developing world took its economic marching orders from those super bright white guys we call the West, especially the biggest and strongest and richest of those super bright white guys, the United States. And then along came the global meltdown and a look under the carpet where the US had swept its subprime mortgage derivatives and its credit default swaps. That was one of 'those moments' of awakening.

From The Guardian:

The run-up to the G-20 meeting has been interesting and colorful. President Lula Da Silva of Brazil declared that "this crisis was caused by the irrational behavior of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything and now demonstrate that they know nothing." His full remarks made it clear that he was not promoting biological race theories but calling attention to the injustice that the vast majority of the world, who happen to be both poor and non-white, should suffer for the greed and stupidity of a few. China also let loose with an uncharacteristic broadside against the United States, basically saying that we (the Chinese) have gotten our act together and are mobilizing massive resources internally to counter the downturn; now how about you clowns who made this mess step up to the plate, before we take more losses on your stinking treasury bonds? It was worded somewhat less rudely, but still a stunning departure from the "hide brilliance, cherish obscurity" motto that has guided Chinese foreign policy.

... U.S. leadership is taking an immediate hit because it was at the forefront in creating the current world recession. It's hard to believe that Nicolas Sarkozy won the presidency of France barely two years ago by promising to make French capitalism more like the American brand. The idea that the "American model" was superior in economic terms has been promoted for years by the European press even though the statistical evidence has always been weak or non-existent (e.g. France has a productivity level about the same as the United States). But from now on these ideas will be a much harder sell.

You really can't blame them for their anger. For decades 'we've' been using the International Monetary Fund like some sort of travelling Bible show for these 3rd Worlders, always ready to preach our gospel of fiscal responsibility and economic prudence which usually took the form of IMF loans in exchange for often painful compliance to our dictates. For a few million dollars here or there, barely more than shiny beads, we got to snap our fingers and bark commands just like the old days. We even got to restructure little nations' economies to conform to our own.

And then George Bush, the Republican Congress and the immortals of Wall Street had to go and bugger it all up. Now the Third World, which never really saw the Promised Land we said they'd reach by following our rules, is reeling from our wanton excesses and greed. Now the third and second-tier states are seeing they had jumped into the car with a drunk driver - us. They want out. They don't want to ride with us anymore. They're looking to park their trust with someone else, China perhaps.

Remember that neo-con outfit that brazenly called itself "The Project for The New American Century"? Those guys were so deranged as to believe that America really had the right to use its military superiority to thwart potential economic rivals. America was going to cruise through the 21st century as Number One and if you thought otherwise, they were going to whack you silly.

Then along came Afghanistan and along came Iraq and the world's illusions about America's military prowess were shattered on the streets of Fallujah and Baghdad. The quagmires that followed exposed America, left it looking plainly vulnerable, incapable of achieving victory by the application of brute force. That was the first mistake. Then came the US meltdown that triggered the global meltdown. That was the second mistake.

Suddenly it's become clear that America isn't going to just jump back up on its perch this time. From here on in it's going to be among us, no longer above us, an equal but no longer the 'first among equals' stature it had claimed going straight back to the days when Hitler was still winning WWII.

'The New American Century' has morphed into the 'Last Picture Show of American Superpowerdom.' It's sort of fitting in a way. We white guys, The West, have had a pretty good run these past two millenia or more going back to the Greeks and Romans, through the Middle Ages and into the rockstars of the Industrial Revolution where we really learned to throw our weight around. We got astonishingly good at sucking the wealth out of everybody else, taking for ourselves the lion's share of world resources to ensure our prosperity. We had a pretty good run while it lasted but we took far too much for granted. We blew it.

There's a new order emerging, one in which the West will no longer have exclusive control. It'll be a world in which the third-tier countries suddenly have options, new suitors vying for their loyalty. The funny thing is, this was all our own doing.

Global Warming Theory Disproved - RealClimate.Org Shuts Down

I'm just too upset to comment so I'll simply post the latest from their website:

We would like to apologize to our loyal readers who have provided us so much support since we first went online in December 2004. However, after listening to the compelling arguments of the distinguished speakers who participated in the Heartland Institute's recent global warming contrarian conference, we have decided that the science is settled — in favor of the contrarians. Indeed, even IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri has now admitted that anthropogenic climate change was a massive hoax after all. Accordingly, RealClimate no longer has a reason for existence. The contrarians have made a convincing case that (a) global warming isn't happening, (b) even if it is, its entirely natural and within the bounds of natural variability, (c) well, even if its not natural, it is modest in nature and not a threat, (d) even if anthropogenic warming should turn out to be pronounced as projected, it will sure be good for us, leading to abundant crops and a healthy environment, and (e) well, it might actually be really bad, but hey, its unstoppable anyway. (Can we get our check now?)

Benny's Loose Cannon

It was obvious that when newly-minted Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed ultra-right nutjob Avigdor Lieberman to be his country's foreign minister it wouldn't take long for the sparks to fly.

As though Israel has something to gain from poking a sharp stick in Washington's eye, Liberman wasted no time announcing that Israel was not bound by understandings on the creation of a Palestinian state reached at a U.S.-sponsored conference at Annapolis in November 2007. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz recently reported on a secret side deal between Netanyahu and Lieberman that could make the possibility of a Palestinian state in the West Bank all but hopeless:

Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu has struck a secret deal with Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman for highly contentious construction on West Bank land known as E1, Army Radio reported Wednesday. A source close to the negotiations between the pair told Army Radio that the plan had been agreed upon even though it did not appear in the official document detailing the coalition deal between Yisrael Beiteinu and Netanyahu's Likud.

Construction in the area is particularly sensitive because it would create contiguity between the settlement and the capital, which in turn would prevent Palestinian construction between East Jerusalem and Ramallah. This would also make it difficult to reach agreement between Israel and the Palestinians on the question of permanent borders.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1073771.html

Night Light Linked to Breast Cancer

An Israeli study has found that women living in areas with the worst light pollution have a 73% greater incidence of breast cancer than women from areas with the least night lighting.

I suppose it could be explained away by noting that light pollution is found in urban areas where people are exposed to more pollution and contaminants than rural dwellers except that an earlier study found the same thing in women working the night shift in hospitals. From the Environmental News Network:

The report, published in Cancer Research, suggests that melatonin - or rather the lack of it-may be the cause. Melatonin is an essential hormone that our bodies make at night while we sleep. It requires darkness and plays a critical role in regulating our internal clocks. For women, the light-sensitive hormone is particularly important since scientists suspect that melatonin helps to reduce estrogen levels-higher estrogen levels being a factor in developing breast cancer.

And melatonin levels drop precipitously in the presence of artificial light.

This research helps to explain two stark facts that epidemiologists have long known: breast cancer rates are three to five times higher in industrialized countries and, that breast cancer rates are 20 to 50 percent less in blind women.

http://www.enn.com/health/article/39559

Oh Sure, Blame the Recession

B'nai Brith Canada claims the recession is behind what it claims is a marked increase in anti-Semitism in this country.

"Any time there's bad economic times, the Jews get blamed for it," said Marvin Kurz, national legal counsel for B'nai Brith Canada, which released yesterday an audit of reports of anti-Semitic incidents made to the group.

"The ancient tie between Jews and money that predates Shakespeare and Shylock continues to be stuck in some aspect of our collective memories."

In the audit released, B'nai Brith stated that anti-Semitic incidents in Canada jumped by 8.9 per cent last year to 1,135, a high for the 27 years the group has recorded the reports. Almost half, 547, were in the last four months of the year as the economy worsened.

Define "incident." With the new, improved and vastly expanded definition of "anti-Semitic" that includes legitimate criticism of Israel's policies toward the Palestinians. Having blamed the increase of anti-Semitism on the recession, Mr. Kurtz seemed to trip and stumble when he then blamed it on anger toward Israel:

"Whenever something happens in Israel, anti-Semitism in Canada and around the world increases," added Kurz.

Middle East tensions – often a trigger for anti-Semitic behaviour in past years – were largely absent throughout the fall, the audit states. However, once fighting broke out in Gaza in December, there was another spike in incidents.

Across Canada, there were 151 incidents in December, 70 of which coincided with fighting in Gaza and 36 of which occurred in the closing days of the year, as tensions in the war-torn area heightened.

...In the audit, B'nai Brith calls for tougher restrictions on racist groups and their symbols, and suggests that racist motivations be given greater prominence during the investigation of a crime, rather than just at sentencing.

Sign of the Times - Free Boats!

Along coastal America, yachtsmen are seeing the unmistakable signs of just how bad America's recession has become - abandoned boats. In some states, it's become a real problem:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/business/01boats.html?pagewanted=2&em

Somewhat Less General Motors?

No more General Motors? Just "Motors"? According to The New York Times, that's what might lie in store for the now insolvent GM.

The best brands - Cadillac and Chevy - go to the new company, NewCo. The rest - Hummer and the like - stay in the old GM, OldCo, for liquidation. GM's creditors are stuck with the plundered OldCo's assets when it's put out of its misery in a bankruptcy.

NewCo pays OldCo and its creditors with NewCo shares. Creditors are transformed into shareholders. Then NewCo with all the best assets, including the best brands, and shed of OldCo's deadwood and debt, forges ahead and lives (we hope) happily ever after.

Creditors are always reluctant to have their strict legal rights washed away but, when it's all over, they may actually come out ahead as shareholders of the new, improved, laundered and pressed, Somewhat Less General Motors.

The Guardian Ditching Newsprint

The legendary English newspaper, The Guardian, is giving up and following many American papers into an electronic-only publication:

Consolidating its position at the cutting edge of new media technology, the Guardian today announces that it will become the first newspaper in the world to be published exclusively via Twitter, the sensationally popular social networking service that has transformed online communication.

The move, described as "epochal" by media commentators, will see all Guardian content tailored to fit the format of Twitter's brief text messages, known as "tweets", which are limited to 140 characters each. Boosted by the involvement of celebrity "twitterers", such as Madonna, Britney Spears and Stephen Fry, Twitter's profile has surged in recent months, attracting more than 5m users who send, read and reply to tweets via the web or their mobile phones.

Read more here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/apr/01/guardian-twitter-media-technology