World Heritage - Wrestling?

The United Nations culture and education agency, UNESCO, has unveiled a list of what it describes as "intangible world heritages" that must be preserved.

The 42-new items added this year include French gourmet cooking, Croatian ginger bread, and Turkey's Kirkpinar oil wrestling festival where big, muscular guys are oiled up and go at it, apparently often putting their hands down their opponent's pants.

Other entries include the Peking Opera, Belgium's winter fair and its end-of-winter bread and fire feast, Alencon lace making from France, no less than three Indian dance forms.   Even Lithuania and Luxembourg got the nod as did Mexican cuisine.  Canada?   No, nothing.

UNESCO's list comprises traditions that must be deemed to spread knowledge of intangible cultural heritage and require that protective measures be taken to promote them.  Well then, what about this one?

Help Stop Food Speculators

With a billion people living with chronic hunger and global agriculture beset by the dual ravages of climate change and the freshwater crisis it is morally reprehensible to tolerate the investment sector gaming global food prices.  This has to stop.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is warning that the poorest, most vulnerable people (as in "human beings") are facing severe food problems this year and potentially far worse conditions in 2011.

In the latest edition of its Food Outlook report, the agency also issued a warning to the international community to prepare for harder times ahead unless production of major food crops increases significantly in 2011.

Food import bills for the world’s poorest countries are predicted to rise 11 percent in 2010 and by 20 percent for low-income food-deficit countries.

This means, by passing a trillion dollars, the global import food bill will likely rise to a level not seen since food prices peaked at record levels in 2008. 


...Contrary to earlier predictions, world cereal production is now forecast to contract by two percent rather than to expand by 1.2 percent as anticipated in June. Unexpected supply shortfalls due to unfavourable weather events were responsible for this change in direction, according to the report.   

Global cereal stocks are forecast to decline sharply and Food Outlook makes a strong call for production to be stepped up to replenish inventories. World cereals stocks are anticipated to shrink by seven percent according to FAO, with barley plunging 35 percent, maize 12 percent and wheat 10 percent.

It has been widely reported that Goldman Sachs, just one Wall Street firm, made a billion dollars this year through global food speculation.  The Independent accused Goldman of gambling on starvation.  

There was a time when commodity trading was a vehicle to assist farmers by getting money into their hands that they needed to be able to plant their crops.  But when there's a chronic shortage of food it's no longer about helping the farmer but rather gaming the market.

The World Development Movement is waging a campaign in the U.K. seeking government intervention to block food speculators.  Our government should be acting, both domestically and internationally, to put the boots to these food speculators.  Write your MP.  Write Ignatieff and Layton.  Tell them this has to stop and they have to make that happen.

Washington Pot Slags Beijing Kettle

I guess when you're actually the pot, the only black thing you can see is the kettle.

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (okay, before today I didn't know it even existed either) has released a scathing assessment of those perfidious Chinese fellas.  Today's report to Congress was the Commission's eighth missive since its creation in 2000.

At a press conference, Chairman Dan Slane unloaded on the wily Chinese:

The Chinese government quite simply intends to wall off a majority of its economy from international competition.

 China certainly needs to address its environmental problems, which include severe air and water contamination. However, the goal of maintaining eight percent GDP growth per year hinders China’s ability to enact effective environmental policies. China may be more interested in developing a world class green technology export sector rather than cleaning up its environment.

Remind me, what country has the greatest per capita greenhouse gas emissions?  What country's government won't be approving any measures to combat global warming?  Sorry to interrupt.

China is now capable of producing both advanced commercial and military aircraft. Unfortunately this improvement is primarily due to strong Chinese government support which often excludes foreign firms, and a requirement for
technology offsets from Boeing and Airbus, in return for market access in China. Two days ago China announced its first 100 orders for its large commercial aircraft, an aircraft expressly designed to compete with Boeing and Airbus. Alarmingly, China appears to be directly transferring improvements in commercial aviation to its defense aviation sector.

Boeing - meet the F-18.  Oh, you've already met?  Oh, you actually make the F-18 and lots of other military stuff.  Okay, I get it.

And, from the "Whistling Past the Graveyard" file, there's this:

We considered whether America’s growing debt implies that China, as America’s largest foreign creditor, has gained political leverage over the U.S. government. We found that there is no economic justification to believe that China has gained political leverage over the United States or that a decision by China to scale back or even to cease its purchases of U.S. Treasuries should be viewed with alarm.


Finally, China’s currency manipulation continues to harm U.S. manufacturing and
employment. There appears to be no real motivation by the Chinese to adopt market based approaches with regard to its currency.

And this is from a country that just conjured up 600-billion dollars of magic money?  600-billion?

And just who named this committee anyway?  It's supposed to be the U.S.-China Review Commission but it doesn't seem to want to review anything the U.S. is doing or factor that into its critique of China.

America has already fired the first broadside in its currency war with China.  It seems like this commission's report is ammunition for a second round.

Training More Afghan Soldiers is A Waste of Time

A waste of time, money and lives.   Conservative Steve Harper and Progressive Conservative Liberal Mike Ignatieff may think it's just dandy to keep anteing up to stay at the table with the big boys but they're a perfect pair of silly arses.

Somebody has to have the courage to accept that Afghanistan is a lost cause.  That takes moral and political courage on a level not even remotely approached by the prime minister and his reluctant sidekick.

Training Afghan soldiers is a farce.   How many soldiers have we already trained over the past ten years?   How many of them are still in the Afghan National Army?  For Harper, Ignatieff and all those deadheads at National Defence HQ those two questions define "don't ask, don't tell."   Because if you asked and if they told you how many Afghans have been trained and how few of them remain they wouldn't be able to conceal the utter futility of it.

Train them to do what exactly?  Banging away on their fellow Afghans?   That part is logical enough until you ask, "but why?"   Fighting is all well and good and the Afghans are about as warlike as any people on the planet.  But fighting for the sake of fighting is just stupid.  You have to fight for something.  If you don't have something worthwhile to justify the carnage, fighting is merely an obscenity.

Look at the war being fought.  Maybe there's an answer there.   Well, it's a civil war now.  It stopped being an insurgency when the Talibs began controlling territory, establishing their own political, judicial and security apparatus.  They've been doing that for quite a while.  We do chase them out from time to time at this place or that but they come back.

So what is the point of a civil war?  The rebels are fighting to oust the government and take over.  The government side is fighting to, well, to remain the government side.  So the raison d'etre of the Afghan National Army is to defend the existing government from Hamid Karzai on down through the legislature, the judiciary, the bureaucracy and themselves, the security services.  The question then becomes is there really anything worth defending?

We know the sitting regime is corrupt.   We know the bureaucracy is corrupt.   We know the national police service is corrupt.  So there's nothing really worth defending there but what about the judiciary?   While you still cling to the rule of law there exists a vehicle for setting straight what ails the politicians, bureaucrats and police.  There is hope!  What's that you say?  The judiciary is just as rotten as the others?  Oh dear.

The International Crisis Group has just released  a report on Afghanistan's judicary.  Here's the opening line, "Afghanistan's justice system is in a catastrophic state of repair."    Oh, oh, don't like the sound of that.

" Despite repeated pledges over the last nine years, the majority of Afghans still have little or no access to judicial institutions. Lack of justice has destabilized the country and judicial institutions have withered to near non-existence. Many courts are inoperable and those that do function are understaffed. Insecurity, lack of proper training and low salaries have driven many judges and prosecutors from their jobs. Those who remain are highly susceptible to corruption. Indeed, there is very little that is systematic about the legal system, and there is little evidence that the Afghan government has the resources or political will to tackle the challenge. The public, consequently, has no confidence in the formal justice sector amid an atmosphere of impunity. A growing majority of Afghans have been forced to accept the rough justice of Taliban and criminal powerbrokers in areas of the country that lie beyond government control. 

 ...The courts, for years, have suffered manipulation from an executive branch that has abused the law to fortify its position in the ongoing tussles between the secular and religious, the centre and periphery, the rich and poor. The Afghan government’s historic inability and persistent unwillingness to resolve conflicts between state codes, Islamic law and customary justice embedded in the legal culture have further destabilized the country. The critical leverage provided to fundamentalists in the constitution has concurrently had a deep impact on the evolution of legal institutions.

...The lack of a clearly defined arbiter of the constitution has undercut the authority of the Supreme Court and transformed the court into a puppet of President Hamid Karzai. Given the wide range of powers granted the president and lack of checks and balances in the system, it is unrealistic to expect change will come from his quarter. The international community, meanwhile, has done little to create incentives for political restraint and accountability within the executive.

Well at least the Afghan people have us, the Western forces, to provide an example of law and order and the way things should be done.  What's that?  No?

...Extrajudicial actions by the U.S. and its coalition partners against Afghan citizens have also distorted the justice system and are fuelling the insurgency. U.S. and NATO actions must conform to national and international laws, including an end to arbitrary detentions. There should be no expectation that Afghan officials and institutions will realign the justice system to conform to international norms until U.S. and NATO allies adjust their own policies and practices."

A corrupt government, a corrupt judiciary, a corrupt bureaucracy, a corrupt police service and a wobbly army seeking to hold off an ideologically driven rebel force.   Wait, haven't I seen that movie before?   Yes, of course.  Vietnam!  How did that one end?

We can train more soldiers, scores of thousands of them, but unless they have a government and a judiciary and a bureaucracy and a police service they truly believe are worth dying to defend, we're just wasting our time.  The American commander in Afghanistan claims the current desertion rate is 23%.  Others maintain it is even higher.  That is not an army that's willing or able to defend the criminal enterprise known as the Afghan government.

As the Vietnamese would put it, it's time for us to di di mau out of there.

How Long Before Canadian Jetliners are Forced to Land in the U.S.?

Hang'em High Vic Toews wasted no time defending the right of American authorities to demand the passenger manifests of all Canadian aircraft passing through U.S. airspace.

Canadian carriers would be required to give the U.S. Transportation Security Administration lists of all passengers including names, gender and birth dates.  The idea is that passengers the Americans have on their watch list could either be subjected to additional security or denied passage.

But what if the Americans spotted a name on the list that was the same as a person they really wanted to get to or perhaps had a warrant out for his apprehension?  If the stakes were high enough would they allow the individual aboard the flight and then compel the airliner to land at some U.S. airport to snatch the passenger?  After the Maher Arar case can anyone really believe that to be unlikely?

And what about reciprocation?  Do the Americans have any intention of preclearing their flight manifests with our authorities for Canada overflights?  Didn't think so.

"No Deal" on Climate Change

We're all Easter Islanders now.   There's another climate change summit coming up, this time in Cancun, but don't hold your breath waiting for a global agreement to combat greenhouse-gas emissions and anthropogenic global warming.  Well, if nothing else, summit delegates have had some wonderful travel opportunities - Rio de Janeiro, Rome, Bonn, Kyoto, Bali, New York, Copenhagen and now Cancun.

So where's the global agreement, the deal to cap and reduce carbon emissions to keep the world on the safe side of potential global warming tipping points?  Nowhere, that's where.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was created to find a deal to stabilize carbon emissions but even the head of that organization has thrown in the towel.   In July, Costa Rican Christiana Figueres was appointed to head the UNFCCC.  But she came to the job convinced there would be no deal.

As Bloomberg reported in June,  " Figueres, 53, told reporters today in
Bonn, where the latest two-week round of talks is taking place. "I do not believe we will ever have a final agreement on climate change, certainly not in my lifetime," Figueres said. "If we ever have a final, conclusive, all-answering agreement,
then we will have solved this problem. I don't think that's in
the cards." 

Ms. Figures is banking on "incremental" action to curb carbon emissions over the next 20, 30 or 40 years at the national or regional level.  That's like a blind person trying to herd cats.

University of East Anglia climate science prof Mike Hulme writing in today's Guardian says the international approach to global warming represents a break from the past:

"..there has been a re-framing of climate change. The simple linear frame of "here's the consensus science, now let's make climate policy" has lost out to the more ambiguous frame: "What combination of contested political values, diverse human ideals and emergent scientific evidence can drive climate policy?" The events of the past year have finally buried the notion that scientific predictions about future climate change can be certain or precise enough to force global policy-making.The meta-framing of climate change has therefore moved from being bi-polar – that either the scientific evidence is strong enough for action or else it is too weak for action – to being multi-polar – that narratives of climate change mobilise widely differing values which can't be homogenised through appeals to science. 

Those actors who have long favoured a linear connection between climate science and climate policy – spanning environmentalists, contrarians and some scientists and politicians – have been forced to rethink. It is clearer today that the battle lines around climate change have to be drawn using the language of politics, values and ethics rather than the one-dimensional language of scientific consensus or lack thereof."

One thing that's inescapable in Figueres' and Hulme's comments is that climate geo-engineering is no longer merely a contingency, but an imperative.  We're going to have to fall back on a mix of remediation (curbing carbon emissions); adaptation (technologies and political responses to global warming impacts already en route); and geo-engineering to try to defend our civilization from runaway global warming feedbacks.

There is something overlooked in Figueres' and Hulme's remarks, the greater picture.  They're focused on one thing - global warming, man-made climate change caused by excessive greenhouse gas emissions.  What they don't take into account is that global warming is but one of several potentially existential threats now facing mankind.

Global warming has a bevy of parallel or associated problems - deforestation, desertification, unstable precipitation patterns, an increase in number and intensity of major storm events, overpopulation, over-dependence on finite freshwater resources, species migration and extinction, fisheries collapse, air/soil/water contamination, resource depletion and exhaustion, global security threats including nuclear proliferation and terrorism.

Anthropologist Jared Diamond in his book "Collapse" convincingly argues that you cannot cherry pick among these challenges.   To solve any of them, you must tackle all of them.  There's a common thread that runs through these problems - they're all global.  They don't readily admit themselves to national or even regional solutions.  They require global action, effective global solutions.

Resiling from a unified, global treaty on climate change all but guarantees we will not be able to find global consensus on any of these other issues that threaten our civilization and are certain to destabilize our world.   As Gwynne Dyer points out in his book "Climate Wars" it won't be global warming that kills you.   It will be war.

Ireland - Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings

The Celtic Tiger is wounded and bleeding but is still desperately trying to stay ahead of the European Union that it fears has castration on its mind.

Ireland is broke, it is insolvent, it cannot meet its debts.  The country breezed through its own supposed economic miracle days, refusing the see the bubble until it burst with a collapsing housing market and a devastating bank crisis.   The Irish government moved to salvage the country's financial institutions, underwriting their weakness by guaranteeing bondholder claims without having the financial strength to make good on those promises as the bailout swelled to almost half of Ireland's GDP.

The European Central Bank is trying to pressure Ireland into allowing itself to be bailed out, fearing the repercussions of a total Irish collapse on the greater EU economy.  If the Irish bleeding isn't staunched some believe it could have a domino effect, sending the Spanish and even the Italian economies into the same freefall.

So what's stopping Ireland?   Why won't it take the EU's helping hand?  Because it stands to lose sovereign control over its own economy.  The European Financial Stability Facility operates like an in-house IMF.   It comes through with funding to get an economy afloat again but expects the borrower to swallow some bitter fiscal medicine.  Part of that would require tax increases.  Part of Ireland's economic miracle rested on luring companies to the republic with a 12.5% corporate tax rate.  Bring corporate tax rates in line with the rest of Europe and Ireland could see some big departures.  On the other hand, an Irish collapse could see even more companies returning to Britain.

Ireland lept into the arms of the E.U. to free itself of British domination.  Then it went on a fiscal binge of casino capitalism.   Like the great Irish famines of the 19th century, Ireland's 21st century collapse is being marked by the flight of Irish youth abroad in search of a better life.  Many of them realize that Ireland's once vaunted prosperity was all an illusion carried out through a collusion of government and banks.

$23-Million Is Now "Small Potatoes"?

Apparently, defrauding 70-people out of 23-million dollars is no longer worth prosecuting in Toronto.   A Crown Attorney told one of the victims that there aren't sufficient resources to prosecute the case. 

 "... an email from Crown attorney Christine McGoey obtained by CBC News, the Crown said one of the reasons it decided not to pursue the case was because of the competition over trial time.

"There are very serious criminal matters competing for limited trial time, with cases being stayed because of delay," wrote McGoey.   "And we have to consider the impact of any delay that might occur throughout the process and the variety of factors that are taken into account in assessing which cases will go to trial before others."


Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/11/15/tzvi-erez.html?ref=rss&loomia_si=t0:a16:g4:r2:c0:b39539038#ixzz15SWULPfF

Shoot, Ready, Aim - Madness on the Arctic Seabed

A warning from the Pew Environment Group.  Big Oil is pressing to get Arctic seabed oil drilling underway this summer even though they have no way of effectively dealing with spills or other mishaps.   Think Deepwater Horizon but then factor in sub-zero temperatures, hurricane force winds, 30 foot seas and months of constant darkness.

"There is a lot of pressure by Shell to drill this summer," Marilyn Heiman, director of the US Arctic programme at Pew said. "But the oil companies are just not prepared for the Arctic. The spill plans are thoroughly inadequate."

Trying to clean up a spill in the extreme conditions of the Arctic would be on an entirely different order of magnitude. "The risks, difficulties, and unknowns of oil exploration in the Arctic … are far greater than in any other area," the report said.

The consequences for the Arctic's environment would be dire, it said, wiping out populations of walrus, seal and polar bear and destroying the isolated indigenous communities that depend on hunting to survive.

Getting to the scene of a spill would be a challenge. The nearest major port, Dutch Harbor, is 1,300 nautical miles away from the drilling areas in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, and what few air landing strips exist are not connected to any road system. There are no coast guard vessels in either sea, and the nearest coast guard station is 950 miles by air away in Kodiak Alaska.

Response teams would confront gale-force winds, massive blocks of ice and turbulent seas, total darkness for six weeks of the year, and extreme cold. Cranes would freeze and chemical dispersants, such as those used to break up the BP spill, might not work.

Then there is the ice. Left undetected, a pipeline leak could spread oil beneath the surface of sea ice. Ice floes could carry oil hundreds of miles away from the source. At freeze-up, oil can become trapped within ice within the space of four hours, remaining there until spring. If it becomes trapped within multi-year ice, oil could stay in the environment for years, or even a decade, the report said.

To my mind, if we allow Arctic seabed drilling, without first establishing "worst scenario" precautions, properly deployed, equipped and staffed, we have indeed taken leave of our senses.   That would be a horrid rejection of the imperative that man find ways to live in harmony with our environment.

Just because we can, doesn't mean we should.   Just because we can get at unconventional sources of fossil fuels, doesn't mean that justifies the risks and consequences.  As climate scientist James Hansen puts it, some of this oil should just be left safely in the ground.

The Tea Party Disease - Anti-Intellectualism

It's hard work.  Trying to conjure up rational explanations for irrational behaviour, especially mass irrational behaviour, is hard and frustrating work.  But that's the Herculean chore that befalls anyone trying to make sense of modern American, rightwing populism exemplified in the Tea Party movement.

In his new book, Griftopia, journalist Matt Taibbi warns that there has evolved, among the American people, a powerful bloc of angry voters happily wallowing in willful ignorance, simpletons who are puppets in the hands of his country's genuine "elite", the powerful few at the very top.  Here are some excerpts:

"...it’s so pathetically easy in the TV age to set big groups of voters off angrily chasing their own tails in response to media-manufactured nonsense, with the Tea Party being a classic example of the phenomenon. If you want to understand why America is such a paradise for high-class thieves, just look at the way a manufactured movement like the Tea Party corrals and neutralizes public anger that otherwise should be sending pitchforks in the direction of downtown Manhattan.

There are two reasons why Tea Party voters will probably never get wise to the Ponzi-scheme reality of bubble economics. One has to do with the basic sales pitch of Tea Party rhetoric, which cleverly exploits Main Street frustrations over genuinely intrusive state and local governments that are constantly in the pockets of small businesses for fees and fines and permits.

The other reason is obvious: the bubble economy is hard as hell to understand. To even have a chance at grasping how it works, you need to commit large chunks of time to learning about things like securitization, credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations, etc., stuff that’s fiendishly complicated and that if ingested too quickly can feature a truly toxic boredom factor."

So long as this stuff is not widely understood by the public, the Grifter class is going to skate on almost anything it does -- because the tendency of most voters, in particular conservative voters, is to assume that Wall Street makes its money engaging in normal capitalist business and that any attempt to restrain that sector of the economy is thinly disguised socialism.

That’s why it’s so brilliant for the Tea Party to put forward as its leaders some of the most egregiously stupid morons on our great green earth. By rallying behind dingbats like Palin and Michele Bachmann -- the Minnesota congresswoman who thought the movie Aladdin promoted witchcraft and insisted global warming wasn’t a threat because "carbon dioxide is natural" -- the Tea Party has made anti-intellectualism itself a rallying cry. The Tea Party is arguing against the very idea that it’s even necessary to ask the kinds of questions you need to ask to grasp bubble economics."

" ...Our world isn’t about ideology anymore. It’s about complexity. We live in a complex bureaucratic state with complex laws and complex business practices, and the few organizations with the corporate will power to master these complexities will inevitably own the political power. On the other hand, movements like the Tea Party more than anything else reflect a widespread longing for simpler times and simple solutions -- just throw the U.S. Constitution at the whole mess and everything will be jake. For immigration, build a big fence. Abolish the Federal Reserve, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Education. At times the overt longing for simple answers that you get from Tea Party leaders is so earnest and touching, it almost makes you forget how insane most of them are."

A G20 Lament

The G20 summit has come and gone but without solving the currency crisis that absorbs the developed world, the latest spasm in our global meltdown.   We've heard endless theories about what is really wrong with the system but here's a fresh, and compelling, explanation from renowned academic David Harvey.   He takes a Marxist scalpel to dissect the beast:



If David Harvey's perspective has left you in a funk, take heart.  The fiscal wizards remain alive and well.   Here's a British take on the subprime collapse.   This will cheer you up:

The 14 Steps to Fascism, or, America This Way

"Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism

because it is the merger of state and corporate power."

- Benito Mussolini

Mussolini's notion of fascism is becoming well and truly implanted in the United States.   America's "bought and paid for" Congress is a manifestation of the merger of state and corporate power.   The Roberts U.S. Supreme Court and, in particular, its ruling in the Citizens United case granted judicial sanction to this marriage of interests.   The recent mid-term elections and the vast amounts of money and muscle thrown in to skew the result by prominent multi-billionaires like the Koch brothers is a plain expression of fascism at work.   So too is America's far right, corporate media that keeps a population befuddled and misled.

But what is fascism really and why should we care?   Professor Laurence Britt analyzed traits common to the notable fascist regimes in 20th century Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Chile and Indonesia.  He came up with a shortlist of 14 features of modern fascism:

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.  

2. Disdain for the importance of human rights.  
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause.  
4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism.  
5. Rampant sexism.  
6. A controlled mass media.  
7. Obsession with national security.  
8. Religion and ruling elite tied together. 
9. Power of corporations protected.  
10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated.  
11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts.  
12. Obsession with crime and punishment.  
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption. 
14. Fraudulent elections. 

That pretty much sums up 21st century America.  You see in today's Tea Partiers the very same sort of maniacal morons that once succumbed to fits of apoplexy at rallies in public squares in Bavaria.   The mindless rage fueled by fear, frustration and bitter anger. 

Missing from the good professor's commentary on fascism is the inevitable devastation it leaves in its wake.   Lord knows it has certainly filled hundreds of graveyards in Afghanistan and Iraq and seems poised to add even more soon in Iran.

On this special day it's good to remember that our fathers and grandfathers fought, and in their droves died, to free the world from the poisoned grip of fascism.  We do them no honour if we become complacent to this same scourge ourselves. 

The Continuing Corporatism of America's Bought & Paid For Congress

Sometimes you know it but you still have to see it to believe it.  That's where the Center for Public Integrity comes in.   It has published a look at the 25 senior GOP lawmakers expected to move into power positions in the U.S. House.   The expose details each man's direct financial bonds with the companies they're going to be representing in the new year.   Take a look, find a face, click and see for yourself.

Exposing the High Seas Black Marketeers

When you're a fish that can bring as much as $100,000 delivered to the market, your days are numbered.   That, of course, would be the eastern Atlantic bluefin tuna.  It's a monstrous beast that can live for 40-years and weigh as much as 500 kilograms.  It fetches top dollar in Japan where consumers account for 80 per cent of all bluefin consumed.   When they're willing to part with a hundred grand for a single fish, you can be sure they'll keep arriving.

The Center for Public Integrity's International Consortium of Journalists has just released a report, The Black Market in Bluefin.   The report is the result of a 7-month project looking into the black marketeers who are pillaging the endangered species and the government officials who look the other way.

 "Led by the French, Spanish, and Italians, joined by Turks and others, Mediterranean fishermen violated official quotas at will and engaged in an array of illegal practices: misreporting catch size, hiring banned spotter planes, catching undersized fish, and plundering tuna from North African waters where EU inspectors are refused entry. An illicit market even arose in trading quotas — when regulators finally started enforcing the rules — in which one vessel sells its nation’s quota to a foreign vessel that had overfished."

The report that exposes the corruption that surrounds the pirate fishermen and the officials who collude with them to empty the seas of the bluefin.

Suddenly We're Back in the 60's.

This is beginning to feel like a time warp.

1950's Russian propeller bombers lurking at the borders of Canadian airspace ready to strike.

An aging Mafia don gunned down at his own home.

A Russian spymaster defects to the West with assassins in hot pursuit.

The Russian newspaper, Kommersant, reports that the head of Russia's deep-cover spy ring in the U.S., a Colonel Shcherbakov, unmasked the gang of spies arrested in June and then bolted for safety just before American authorities moved in.

"There has never been such a failure by Section S, the American department that Shcherbakov directed," said Gennady Gudkov, deputy chairman of the Russian parliament's security committee, confirming that Kommersant's report was accurate.

The paper said Shcherbakov had left Russia days before U.S. authorities announced the spy ring arrests on June 28 -- and quoted a Kremlin official as saying a Russian hit squad was probably already planning to kill him.

"  We know who he is and where he is," the unidentified official was quoted as saying.   "Do not doubt that a Mercader has been sent after him already."

Ramon Mercader was the Russian agent who murdered exiled Bolshevik Leon Trotsky with an ice axe in Mexico in 1940.

Other Than That, Mrs. Lincoln, How Did You Like the Play?

The World Bank has released a report warning that the cost of coping with natural disasters could triple to - wait for it - $185-billion a year by the end of the century.

The report was written by a pair of economists who, to their credit, admit that their calculations don't include the cost of climate change impacts.   Which makes me ask, "why bother?"

If climate scientists are right, by the end of this century the last thing we'll be worrying about is a paltry $185-billion a year.

Canadian Conservatives Have Lost Their Way

This is a message for all Canadian conservatives, including those who now pass themselves off as Liberals.   In fact, it's a message to every rank Petro-pol, Oilhead and Tar Sander on Parliament Hill.

It's not my message.  No, I'm merely relaying a message from a Conservative, a true Conservative by the name of Paul Foote who explains why, if protecting the environment isn't your priority, you're not a decent conservative:

As the grandfather of modern conservative political thinking, Edmund Burke, put it: we are "  temporary possessors or life renters"  of this world and have a moral obligation not to squander our natural inheritance, lest we  ""leave to those who come after … a ruin instead of a habitation."   Respect for the past and responsibility to future generations creates a duty to conserve our resources and protect the environment.

The actions now required to protect the future also have more immediate benefits. It supports our national security. A shift to decentralised, renewable energy sources makes the UK less dependent on foreign countries and less susceptible to the changes in energy markets. It is a self-sufficiency that would undoubtedly appeal to the conservative.

A shift to greener energy sources also creates big opportunities for business. This year, for the first time, investment in renewable energy outstripped investment in conventional energy. Our economic competitiveness is bound to our ability to become leaders in green technologies. The green agenda is the growth agenda.

For centuries, political momentum has been primarily concerned with raising people's standard of living, which has focused overwhelmingly on material advantage. We have come to a point in history where we can no longer view the good life so narrowly. Protecting the environment is about protecting and improving the quality of people's lives. This task not only includes defending ourselves against global threats like climate change, it also means taking responsibility for more local environmental problems such as flood risk, graffiti and litter.

Everything Foote is saying you would have heard a century ago from another true conservative - Teddy Roosevelt.   But conservatism is no longer conservatism, it's corporatism and to corporatism environmentalism is an unwanted fetter on the bottom line.   As we've seen in America's bought and paid for Congress and in our own Parliament, the stooges of corporatism sit on both sides of the aisle.

Romeo Dallaire's Remembrance Day

"This Remembrance Day I choose to honour the sacrifice of our men and women in uniform, past and present, and their families, by imagining the world they’ve fought to make possible.

It is a world without child soldiers; where cluster munitions and landmines no longer litter countrysides. It is a world where the threat of nuclear proliferation and future genocides have ceased to exist.

These ideas may seem bold. Even unbelievable. But consider this.

Until 1957, the soldier was known only as an instrument of war. That year, a Canadian, Lester B. Pearson, imagined a soldier could be an instrument of peacekeeping, too.

One bold idea, one cause, and one nation had the power to change how peace is kept.

This Remembrance Day, we can choose to honour our men and women in uniform, and their families, by recognizing their sacrifice. But we can also do more than that.

We can imagine that the world our soldiers fight and die to protect is possible.

And we can build it to honour their sacrifice. Because that, too, is a choice.

 Sincerely,

LGen the Honourable Roméo Dallaire, (ret’d), Senator (Quebec)

Saving the Rainforest, One Juicy Steak at a Time

Brazil is the world's second largest producer of soy beans.  It provides almost 24% of global production compared to Canada at 1.3%.   The United States reigns supreme with 41% of annual worldwide soy bean production.

But Brazil?  Second place?   How can that be?   Well the picture below is how that can be, how it is.

That used to be Amazon rainforest at Santarem, Brazil until it was cleared to make way for soy bean plantations.   Yeah, that Amazon rainforest, the "lungs of the planet" forest, one and the same or at least it used to be.

The Brits don't grow a lot of soy but they sure use a lot, especially for cattle feed.  And most of that cattle feed is coming from South America, from fields like the one pictured above.   But that may be coming to an end.

When British MPs return to work tomorrow they'll be debating a Labour private members' bill to require government to act to limit wildlife and rainforest destruction from the production of animal feed.

Many prominent British chefs are speaking out in favour of the Sustainable Livestock Bill and surveys show a solid majority of Brits favour measures to make food producers more accountable for the impact of their livestock products.  There's been one outspoken opponent, the National Farmers' Union, that thinks Parliament should keep its nose out of their business.

Canada Wasn't Ready For Afghanistan Casualties

Then again it's not like we're not in our tenth year of the Afghan War.   Harpo's Veterans Affairs minister, Jean-Pierre Blackburn, admits his department wasn't prepared to handle the 'influx' of wounded from Afghanistan and is now 'scrambling' to meet the new demands.

And Blackburn places the blame squarely where it belongs - on his staff.  “This department was functioning with traditional veterans. With the Afghanistan situation, this department was not ready.”

What?   They only had 'traditional' veterans? What in hell is this jerk on about?  Wait, there's more:

“Now we are doing those changes to be sure that our new modern veteran will obtain all the services that they should obtain.  The situation in 2010 is not the same one in 1945 or 1953,” he said, referring to World War II and the Korean War.

Oh yeah, of course.   A guy who gets his foot blown off in 2010, he's not remotely like a guy who got his foot blown off in some French forest or some Korean hillside.   He's a  modern veteran or, as we like to call them, a "ModVet."

Blackburn is right, though.  The situation in 2010 isn't the same as 1945 or 1953.  Back then we understood that war generates a lot of severely wounded soldiers and we prepared for that.  In 1945 and 1953 Canada and our soldiers didn't have to contend with both fighting an enemy abroad and the Harper government once they got home.   That greaseball Harper made full and shameless use of our soldiers for partisan advantage while he could but now it's all he can do to force his lips to say "Afghanistan."