Is Vic Toews Blowing a Smoke Screen?

Vic Toews, apparently desperate to divert attention from his lurid past, is now saying that he's been the victim of "criminal acts and threats of future criminal acts" against him.  He subsequently expanded that to include his brand new wife and his new child too, the one he sowed while still with his old wife and his old family.   Toews assured his constituents that these threats would not dissuade him from carrying out his duties as Minister of Public Surveillance and Family Values.

Threats against Vic Toews and (new) family?  I suppose anything is possible and the sanctimonious little prick does get under a lot of peoples' skin but, then again, Toews and his parliamentary companions were awfully quick to falsely claim disclosure of information from court records was "criminal" when it was nothing of the sort.   And Toews is from the government that, rightly as it turned out, assessed the Canadian public stupid enough to believe that a Liberal-NDP coalition would be an unconstitutional coup d'etat.  In other words, the HarperCons have demonstrated a deep and abiding faith that one can never go wrong by underestimating the intelligence of their supporters.

Scientists Attack Harper Ventriloquist Act

A convention of scientists has asked our Furious Leader to be less of an authoritarian, undemocratic asshole.  There, I said it.

In an open letter to His Majesty, King Steve, the American Association for the Advancement of Science has asked that he stop muzzling federal researchers.

"Despite promises that your majority government would follow principles of accountability and transparency, federal scientists in Canada are still not allowed to speak to reporters without the 'consent' of media relations officers," the letter read.

 ...The Prime Minister's Office referred questions Friday to the office of Gary Goodyear, minister of state for science and technology.

In an email, spokesperson Jay Jacobson said the government's communications policy is designed to ensure that "interviews or technical information on specialized subjects, are directed to knowledgeable managers or staff designated to speak as official representatives."

[Postmedia science writer, Margaret] Munro described how, in the past, reporters could get interviews with government scientists within an hour of submitting a request.

That began to change in late 2007, she said, when Environment Canada issued a new "media relations protocol" that required scientists to refer media inquiries first to communications officers, who would help craft responses to reporters' questions.

Yes, that's "craft" as in filter and direct.  Harper's communications commissars determine which questions may be answered, which questions shall not, and how the answer is to be framed to comport with government policy.   In other words, the Harper government has neatly transformed the public service into a political agency of the prime minister's office.  It's a ventriloquist's act and nothing more.

Tutu Targets Tar Sands

Archbishop Desmond Tutu and seven other Nobel laureates have written British prime minister David Cameron warning that Athabasca Tar Sands bitumen "threatens the health of the planet."  The group is urging the UK to support European moves to classify Athabasca bitumen as highly polluting.

 
Last November, the Guardian revealed that the UK government has been actively supporting Canada's attempts to stop the tar sands oil being designated by Europe as emitting 22% more greenhouse gas emissions than that from conventional fuels. The proposal, the Fuel Quality Directive, could effectively ban tar sands oil from Europe and would set a precedent of officially labelling tar sands oil as dirtier than conventional oil.

Baker has defended the UK's stance on the grounds that all different types of crude oil – not just tar sands oil – should be assessed as low, medium and high emissions. "To be clear, we are not delaying action in any way, but are seeking an effective solution to address the carbon emissions from all highly polluting crudes, not simply those from one particular country," he has said.  The foreign office has admitted such a system "may take some time" and would effectively kick the proposal into the long grass.

Has American Aristocracy Created a Monarchy?

Is the American presidency being transformed into a quasi-monarchy?  What else do you call it when 196 enormously rich people can use their money to elect the president of their choice?

At a time when it’s become a cliché to say that Occupy Wall Street has changed the nation’s political conversation — drawing long overdue attention to the struggles of the 99 percent — electoral politics and the 2012 presidential election have become almost exclusively defined by the 1 percent. Or, to be more precise, the .0000063 percent. Those are the 196 individual donors who have provided nearly 80 percent of the money raised by super PACs in 2011 by giving $100,000 or more each.

These political action committees, spawned by the Supreme Court’s 5-4 Citizens United decision in January 2010, can raise unlimited amounts of money from individuals, corporations or unions for the purpose of supporting or opposing a political candidate. In theory, super PACs are legally prohibited from coordinating directly with a candidate, though in practice they’re just a murkier extension of political campaigns, performing all the functions of a traditional campaign without any of the corresponding accountability.

Of course their money doesn't stop at the White House.  They're also vying to skew Congress their way and the success of backroom organizations like APEC shows they're winning, big time.   This is, effectively, the rise of corporatism to displace democracy in the United States.

But Not For Want of Trying

An integral part of America's decline is its faltering ability to impose its will on the world, by force if necessary.  Its colossal failures in both Iraq and Afghanistan are proof positive.  For Washington, and the Pentagon, that's going to take some getting used to and it's an important shift that the rest of us, America's allies, need to grasp.

Noam Chomsky says the United States has lost the capacity, but not the will, to rule the world.

In the past decade, for the first time in 500 years, South America has taken successful steps to free itself from western domination, another serious loss. The region has moved towards integration, and has begun to address some of the terrible internal problems of societies ruled by mostly Europeanized elites, tiny islands of extreme wealth in a sea of misery. They have also rid themselves of all US military bases and of IMF controls.

Even more serious would be the loss of the MENA countries – Middle East/North Africa – which have been regarded by planners since the 1940s as "a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history". Control of MENA energy reserves would yield "substantial control of the world", in the words of the influential Roosevelt advisor AA Berle.

...The Arab Spring, another development of historic importance, might portend at least a partial "loss" of MENA. The US and its allies have tried hard to prevent that outcome – so far, with considerable success. Their policy towards the popular uprisings has kept closely to the standard guidelines: support the forces most amenable to US influence and control. 


...While the principles of imperial domination have undergone little change, the capacity to implement them has markedly declined as power has become more broadly distributed in a diversifying world. Consequences are many. It is, however, very important to bear in mind that, unfortunately, none lifts the two dark clouds that hover over all consideration of global order: nuclear war and environmental catastrophe, both literally threatening the decent survival of the species.

Quite the contrary. Both threats are ominous, and increasing.

Canada needs to adapt to this quickly shifting balance of power.  As America's global authority wanes it is logical that it will call upon its allies to bolster its foreign adventures.  Washington may well expect us to form its 21st century Foreign Legion and shift the balance of our own forces from primarily defensive to predominantly offensive posture.  It could be argued that the F-35 is part and parcel of such a transformation.

The CF-18 was a true, multi-role aircraft - fast, agile, capable of carrying plenty of ordinance and extra fuel.   The F-35 is much more an offensive weapon, a light bomber that uses stealth technology to survive missions into heavily defended, hostile airspace.   With its limited performance and lack of external weaponry or fuel tanks, it's a damned poor choice to defend against any enemy that doesn't choose to fly straight into its path.

Here's something that is rarely mentioned.   To work its magic, the F-35 needs another aircraft, an airplane we don't have nor, seemingly, plan to acquire.   That is a large, 4-engined AWACS, aerial warning and command aircraft.   It operates the radar to scan the battlefield while the F-35 flies in, blind.  It transmits the necessary data to the F-35 to enable it to do its job, undetected.   Without that command ship, the F-35 is all but useless because, instantly it has to turn on its own radar, every bad guy knows right where it is.

Who has the missing ingredient, the AWACS aircraft?   They're the preserve of the US Air Force and NATO.   That means if the F-35 goes to war, it will have to be in conjunction with the USAF or NATO.  In any other circumstance it's virtually useless.

Here's something else to consider.   We now know that the F-35 operating costs will be $30,000 an hour, at least double that of the latest European aircraft.   But, if it is to operate in defence of the north, it won't be operating alone.   Because of its limited range it will probably require tanker support if it is to make it home safely.  And you can expect the Russians will be quick to test our appetite for running regular intercepts against their aircraft.

With the clown car of candidates vying for the Republican nomination and their bizarre, radical rants, we should decide whether we really want to enlist as Washington's spear carriers.  This might be a really good time to find our own path again.

FOX News Mouthpiece Dismisses Rape in US Military

This FOX News correspondent has a message to US women soldiers who fall victim to rape - enough already.   And, of course, she kept her job at FOX.
  

Harper Knows How to Walk Away from International Commitments, Why Is He Stuck On the F-35?

Steve Harper knows how to weasel out of commitments.   Remember how we were in Afghanistan "to stay" until we had the Taliban crushed and the country safe for democracy?   Harper wrung every drop of political gravy he could squeeze out of that one and then walked way.  Then he upped and walked out on the Kyoto climate change pact, making Canada the first and only signatory to bail.

Yet he still claims to be firmly behind the proposed purchase of the Lockheed Martin F-35.   Italy has just announced it will be paring its order, if and when that comes, by 30%.  Then again, Italy claimed it was going to get 131 F-35s for 15 billion Euros. That was wishful thinking.  Britain has cut its intended buy and has said it will hold its decision on a go ahead until 2015.  Australia is holding.   Even America, which was to have ordered 2,400 of the damned things has postponed an initial order of 175 aircraft to allow "more time for testing."

Each delay, each cancellation bumps the price of F-35s that are ordered, eventually, sometime, maybe.   Lockheed has told Canada that the US postponement of its initial order will increase our price by an unspecified "single digit."   Single digit indeed.

Now, in a sane world, the supplier who delays delivery gets dinged for the costs of not performing.  The buyer doesn't pay for that.  He's pissed off enough already because he hasn't got his stuff.  But, when it comes to the F-35, Lockheed somehow gets to add its screw ups to the customer's tab?

Just last week the Pentagon's purchasing agent, Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, Frank Kendall, lambasted the F-35 programme as "acquisition malpractice."  He said America will pay a bloated price for ordering the F-35 into production years before its first test flight.   And they'll be passing along that bloated price for their malpractice to other nations still willing to buy the F-35, nations such as Canada.

Question.   If the American military-industrial complex screwed up, why should it get to lay part of the costs of that onto its allies?  Why should we be asked to clean up the Pentagon's mess?  Isn't that sort of like asking the patient to help pay for the doctor's malpractice?

Bear in mind that bloated costs are just one problem for the F-35 buyers.   Anytime you're paying a big premium for the "latest and greatest" technology, you're buying a thoroughbred race horse.  It only has a limited number of years when it can possibly be a winner and, after that, it has to be put out to pasture (or worse).   The F-35 is already getting long in the tooth for a technology that was supposed to be delivered and in service years ago.  It's still years off, possibly many years distant.   That gives its potential adversaries all the time in the world to prepare for the day it does pose them any threat.

But time is not on Harper's or the F-35's side.  We're already hearing faint rumblings about maybe cutting Canada's order.   Fewer jets for the same money.  That sounds like a bargain doesn't it?  That makes a joke out of Harper's claim that the 65-aircraft were just enough to do the job.   Hell, if the Arctic does heat up as expected, 265 probably won't be enough.   This is as farcical as trying to control Kandahar province with just 1,000 fighting soldiers and we all know how well that turned out.

The big question now is what country is going to run cover for Harper?   He hasn't got the guts to do this himself, notwithstanding Kyoto.   No, this means messing with the Americanos, the same bunch he's been beating over the head with threats to divert Athabasca bitumen to China.   Leading a F-35 walkout would make Harper look like the most anti-American Canadian prime minister of all time.  

Check This Out

Want a good idea of what's happening in our world?  Two views of the same spot in Shanghai, one as it was in 1990, the other as it was just 20-years later.

Last Night's New Rules from Bill Maher's Real Time

Who Shipwrecked America's Economy?

Bill Moyers points a finger


Bill Moyers Essay: Who Shipwrecked Our Economy? from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

Is Mutiny Waiting in London for Rupe Murdoch?

What happens when you have a newspaper mired in scandal, several of its key personnel arrested, and a gaggle of unruly journalists suspicious that you're about to throw them to the wolves?  That's the predicament that has Rupert Murdoch winging his way to London to supposedly rescue his beleaguered Sun newspaper.

The Murdoch conglomerate has stumped up tens of millions of dollars in compensation payments in an attempt to contain the phone hacking scandal that besets the empire, but the impact of the latest arrests in the highly sensitive areas of the Defence Ministry and the military are expected to inflame opposition to Murdoch and News Ltd in Britain.

...the anger was almost palpable among journalists because the arrests were reportedly the result of millions of emails that News Ltd had given to the police investigation into the phone hacking scandal and payments to police. Paying police for information is illegal in Britain.
Journalists and the National Union of Journalists interpreted the arrests - 10 staff from The Sun so far - as tantamount to staff being thrown to the wolves in an attempt by the company to distance itself from practices that were said to have been widespread across all British media for decades.

Murdoch, of course, has demonstrated his ease at dodging blame and laying it all at the feet of his trusted employees when he appeared before a Parliamentary committee over the News of the World scandal.   As far as Rupe is concerned, "the buck stops here" principle in no way applies to himself, never, ever.  Team Rupe has good reason to be leery of the bossman.

A Central American Free Drug Corridor?

Guatemalan president Otto Perez Molina is proposing that Central America become a zone where drugs are legal to make, possess and transport.


Mr Perez Molina will test the waters by discussing the subject with Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes when Mr Funes visits today.

 

The Guatemalan president said the war on drugs and all the money and technology received from the US has not diminished drug trafficking in the area.

He said drug cartels are to blame for the high rates of violence in Guatemala, which has a homicide rate of 45 per 100,000 people.

 

The Fantastic Voyage of the Rubber Duckie

20-years ago off the Aleutians a cargo ship lost some containers in a heavy storm.   Among that cargo were nearly 30,000 bath toys.   Since then some of these toys have circumnavigated the world.

Tracking the several paths those toys wound up taking has given science valuable insights into ocean currents.   But at the end of the day, those toys and the plastic debris that now fills vast tracts of ocean will take their toll.

Never mind that only 5% of plastics actually ends up getting recycled. Never mind that the plastics industry stamps those little triangles of chasing arrows into plastics for which no viable recycling method exists. Never mind that plastics consume 400m tons of oil and gas every year and that oil and gas will in the not-too-distant future run out. Never mind that so-called green plastics made of biochemicals release greenhouse gases when they break down. What's most nefarious about plastic is the way it pretends to deny the laws of matter, as if something could be made from nothing; the way it is intended to be thrown away but chemically engineered to last. By offering the false promise of disposability, of consumption without cost, it has helped create a culture of wasteful make-believe, an economy of forgetting.

Britain May Be In a Deep Freeze But It Remains In Drought

Soggy old Britain is facing the prospect of mega-drought.  Even at the height of winter, aquifers are being used to keep English rivers and lakes from running dry.

Andrew Chapman, a senior environment planning officer with the agency warns, '...the position is becoming very serious. In simple terms, unless we get a downpour that lasts for several weeks in the very near future, we are in trouble. There could be severe water shortages in many parts of the country.' Worst affected areas would include the Midlands, East Anglia and the south-east of England, say agency officials.

...The impending water crisis is particularly worrying for farmers. At this time of year, many build storage lagoons to hold water that they can use later in the year to irrigate crops. But to be allowed to dam up water that would otherwise flow into rivers, farmers have to be given permits by the Environment Agency
.
So far this year, 345 applications for such stores have had restrictions placed on them by the agency, limiting the powers of farmers to provide water for their crops during the forthcoming growing season.
"We are facing drastic reductions in yield," said Andrew Nottage, who runs the Russell Smith farm at Duxford, Cambridgeshire. Among the crops grown by Nottage are potatoes and onions – vegetables that have a high demand for water. "We can switch crops to less water-intensive types, but there is a problem doing that," he said. "Farmers are locked into long-term contracts with supermarkets to provide them with the vegetables they want to provide for the British public later in the year.

"It is therefore difficult to switch crops even if you know that you are going to be in trouble when it comes to supplying water for them."

The problem for Britain is that East Anglia is one of the nation's principal food-producing regions. It is also the driest in the country. "Rainfall patterns here are similar to Israel," said Nottage. "That makes farming a tricky business some years."

The Real Hoax Behind Global Warming

Oh there's a hoax all right, a well-funded, carefully scripted hoax that's being played out by the denialist community and its backers, the fossil fuelers.   And, as the pieces continue to fall into place, the scam becomes so obvious the deniers are being faced with something they won't be able to deny, their own perfidy.

The beginning of the end for the deniers and their enormously wealthy and powerful patrons arrived quietly in 2009 when scientists calculated our atmosphere's CCC or climate carrying capacity.   They worked out the maximum atmospheric CO2 we could sustain without probably sending our biosphere straight through the 2C limit.  That's not the safe limit, it's not a limit we can live with, it's the maximum limit we must stay below before beginning to drop atmospheric carbon levels until they're below 350 parts per million, ppm.  Independent teams came at the CCC figure in different ways but arrived at a remarkably similar figure of 565 gigatons of CO2 as the remaining capacity.   565 gigatons more and we're at our CCC.

This calculation set the cat among the pigeons.  It meant the debate could move beyond abstract and all but meaningless emission reduction targets of some percent or another by some distant year or another.   The Germans and others argued the remaining capacity should be allocated to nations by population.   After all the atmosphere belongs to no one and, hence, everyone, no?   The developed world wasn't keen on that at all because an equitable sharing would leave them having to virtually decarbonize their economies and their societies almost overnight.  Blah, blah, blah - and the predictable (and in some corners, desired) deadlock ensued.

But the CCC factor popped up again in a remarkable new way early this year.  Some bright lights had compared the magic 565 number to the CO2 emissions values of existing known oil reserves, the stuff Big Oil is sitting on.   What they found was that burning the remaining oil reserves would add 2,800 gigatons of CO2 emissions to the atmosphere, five times the maximum remaining capacity.

And so the other shoe drops.  Big Oil is sitting on oil reserves the lion's share of which will have to be left in the ground if our grandkids are going to stand much chance of ever seeing grandkids of their own.

So now let us return to the denialist community and take a closer look at these characters.    The denialists are a motley crew of shills, hacks and whack jobs sprinkled with a thin and stale layer of actual scientists or former scientists of sorts.  I use "denialists" rather than "deniers" because it has evolved into something of a refined art form.

The denialists carry out a variety of functions that share one trait - none of them is grounded in actual science.   Their objective is to undermine public confidence in climate change science and to give the frightened and gullible false assurance.   Some contrive non-carbon emission explanations for the current warming (i.e. the "sunspot" brigade).   Others deny the fact of warming all together.  A sub-species maintain the Earth is actually cooling.  Others still allege conspiracies and hoaxes supposedly rampant through the scientific community.   Some maintain that there exists somewhere (curiously never specified quite where) a mountain of scientific research that refutes mainstream climate science and, hence, the "science isn't settled."  Others argue it's all a Socialist plot to transfer enormous wealth out of the hands of those who earned it and into the grubby mitts of the undeserving Third Worlders.  It goes on and on.

How to decide?  That's actually pretty easy when you even briefly consider the wildly different approaches taken by the climate science community and the denialist community.

It should be a given that anthropogenic global warming is a question of science.  It involves geology, hydrology, physics, math, biology, zoology, atmospherics, chemistry - all that stuff you probably hated in high school.  It's a scientific question, plain and simple, albeit the question itself is complex and challenging.   Ever since man stopped sharing caves with dinosaurs, you know - six thousand years ago, we have focused on separating wheat from chaff.   This often involved a scientific technique - trial and error.   Over centuries this sort of approach evolved into what we today call the "scientific method."   I look into a question.  I run a bunch of tests.  I record results (data).  From the data I draw conclusions, even theories sometimes.  Then I present my findings, my genius to my adoring and worshipful colleagues.   Now, to be taken seriously, I must also reveal my research, how I came to be such a genius.  I must do this so that others can replicate my research and come up with their own data that will confirm or refute my conclusions.   It's called "peer review." Consider it the opposite of bluffing.

The climate science community works on the scientific method.  But what of the denialist community?   If they're right, the easiest and surest avenue for them is also the scientific method.  Take the research, take the supporting data and simply show where it's wrong.  Blow holes in it.   That's the easiest and surest way but only if they genuinely believe the science is wrong.   If this really is a hoax it'll unravel like a three-dollar sweater.   But they don't have any interest in the scientific method.  No, they're happier with something remarkably akin to the "legal method."

The legal method doesn't always get at the truth.   O.J. walked, didn't he?   But it is a terrific vehicle for obscuring truth and delaying outcomes.   Any experienced civil litigator can attest to these things.   And if you've watched even a few cop shows, you know how far some people get by simply denying everything.  It's the one place where "the dog ate my homework" actually has legs.

The denialists get to deny everything.   They get to treat proven stuff as unproven - because they say so.   They don't have to disprove it, they just have to deny it in ways that will convince enough people to produce results.

Never underestimate the intrinsic value of delay.   Sometimes the delay factor is enough to decide the outcome of a case.   Rich parties sometimes get to run weak adversaries into the ground, broke. (sorry, you only get as much justice as you can afford) Problem solved.  In other circumstances delay affords a welcome postponement of a day of reckoning.  It can be a way to buy valuable time to do or keep doing things the outcome of the case could otherwise stop.

The denialist community uses the legal approach but with one added and invaluable advantage - no judge.  A judge would narrow the question to be decided, evaluate evidence according to relevance, and keep the case moving toward resolution.   But there's no judge in the denialists' case which means, like the movie Groundhog Day, every day is a fresh repeat of all the days before it.  Like the snake oil salesman of the medicine show, it just goes on from town to town.

If you're still in doubt, let's play "follow the money."   A common denialist claim is that scientists keep running bogus research in order to reap the bounty of government grants.   They're in it for the easy dough.  You believe that?  Just how much do you think a research scientists takes in?  It's amazing what people will do for a high-5, low-6 figure income.

But why not follow the money on the denialist side.  That's where the interesting stuff is.  Check out the leading denialists and explore how much funding they receive, directly and indirectly, from the fossil fuelers and associated interests.

Then check out the US Congress.   Take a look at how much each congressman gets from the energy industry and associated interests.  Call that X.  Then look at how much they get from the climate science community.   Call that Y.   Now deduct Y from X and what do you have?  Surprise, it's still X.

But there's an even bigger money telltale in all this and it goes back to the 565 versus 2,800 gigaton issue.  Big Oil is said to be sitting on reserves equivalent to 2,800 gigatons of CO2 emissions.  Yet that's more than 2,200 gigatons over the supposedly safe limits.  That means Big Oil should be leaving almost four out of five barrels of its reserves in the ground, permanently.

What are those reserves worth today?   Trillions of dollars.  So what is four fifths of that worth?   Still trillions of dollars.   That is what's at stake for Big Oil, almost.   But there's more.  If people come to realize that we can't use most of that oil, Big Oil finds itself with a glut of oil on its hands.   And, with that, the per-barrel price plummets along with Big Oil's share price.  Oh dear.  That's why a group of leading British investment, science and political types wrote the governor of the Bank of England warning that oil reserves are the new "sub-prime" assets.

So here's the thing.  Why is Big Oil responding to what is virtually an existential threat with a clown car full of shills, hacks and whack jobs?   Why isn't Big Oil spending tens of billions of dollars on its own peer-reviewable research to disprove the climate science community.  Why isn't it fighting back in the scientific method forum, the one place where, if the science community is wrong, it can score a decisive victory, safeguard world oil prices and ensure the future of all those massive oil reserves?   Sometimes what's not happening speaks louder than what is.

If Big Oil isn't pouring tens of billions of dollars into research to dispel the powerful consensus of the climate science community, you're left to draw just one conclusion.   Big Oil knows the climate scientists have it right.

If Big Oil knows the climate science community is right, what's with all those guys with the baggy pants, long shoes and bright red noses, the denialists?   Again there's just one conclusion.   They're a distraction, a way to muddy the waters of public opinion and a great way for Big Oil and its political minions to buy time and forestall the day of reckoning.   And that alone is worth countless billions to the bottom line.

By now you should be getting an "us and them" sort of feeling about this.  You probably should be getting mad about this.  The fossil fuelers are at war, at war with humanity, in a war they cannot win.   So what they're going to do is to make this as bloody as possible, to drag this out for as long as they can.   The only side delay harms is ours, humanity's.

What we need now is a "put up or shut up" event.   If the fossil fuelers can't win their case in the scientific method forum, they must shut the hell up.  In the meantime we are entitled, even prudent, to consider the fossil fuelers to be lying their asses off, utterly indifferent to the harm they're causing us.   And it is at this point that we're entitled to turn to our elected representatives to, well, represent us for a change.   Let's get these issues settled, let's use our sovereign powers to find out if there's a petro-con game being played, one that will have serious consequences for us down the road if it's not stopped soon.

What this post lays out is, I believe, a compelling prima facie case for Big Oil and the rest of the fossil fuelers to answer.   Isn't it time your political leaders saw to it they did?

Update  - As with a previous post, I have sent this via e-mail to the offices of Bob Rae.   I will post any response he may provide.

What Business Does a Sitting Government Have Proclaiming Policies Another Government Would Have to Introduce?

When Harper was in Davos he was practically busting to tell the high priced nobs that he was going to trim Canada's sails, especially our nation's Old Age Security programme.   That promptly backfired sending Tory MPs slithering for cover into their favourite dark places.

Not to worry.  Tiny Jim Flaherty, Harper's pet leprechaun, now assures us that old age pension security won't be cut until 2020 at least, maybe not even until 2025.   What?  In other words, some future government will have to implement the legislation, not Harper's.

Gee, I'd really like what passes for a government today to focus on the very real problems confronting our land today and stop dicking around with something some future government may or may not do.  Sheesh.

Okay, I Get It. Harper Needs China to Buy Bitumen So Canada Can Buy F-35s to Defend Canada Against China.

Okay, now it all makes sense.

According to PostMedia's howler, Matthew Fisher, Canada needs the F-35 to defend Canada against the creeping Red Menace, China:

Despite its staggering cost, the jets' capabilities have appealed to western governments deeply concerned with how quickly China is acquiring aircraft carriers and expanding its blue water and sub-surface navy to project military power far out into the Pacific Ocean. Beijing is also building a fleet of icebreakers to operate in the Arctic Ocean.

But when you're talking F-35, you're talking mega-bucks.   Canada as we know is running a structural deficit Harper created by shaving points off the GST so we're going to have to get bucks by the boatload from somewhere.   Now where would that be?  Oh, I know, China!   That's why Harpo has gone to China to ink all those deals, so the Chinese will give us the money we need to buy airplanes to defend ourselves against the Chinese.  And China gets the Canadian fuel it needs to run those aircraft carriers and ice breakers that we need the fighters to keep us safe from. Makes perfect sense, doesn't it?  My brain hurts.

What Were We Thinking? Libya Dissolves.

Steve Harper likes to boast how Canada and our NATO allies saved Libya by bombing the hell out of Gaddafi's forces.   It sounds nice but it's hogwash.

As the United States and coaltion did in Iraq, as we all did in Afghanistan, so we got into the Libyan war utterly indifferent to realities on the ground.

In our hubris we ignored a lesson that's been repeatedly taught to us over the past decade, one we've paid in blood to learn.   You can't build a stable Muslim state without first overcoming the two-punch scourge of warlordism and tribalism.   If you don't suppress warlordism and tribalism, when you topple the ruling strongman all you're left with is warlordism and tribalism.   Those people are all about wielding power, not giving it up.

So Libya, quite predictably, stands poised on the verge of a civil war that's probably inevitable at this point.

The government of the interim Prime Minister, Abdel Rahim el-Keeb, is virtually paralysed by rivalries that have forced it to divide power along lines of regions and personalities, by unreachable expectations that Muammar Gaddafi's fall would bring prosperity and by powerlessness so marked the national army is treated like another of the many warring militias.

 This week one militia assaulted another militia at a seaside base in Tripoli to rescue a woman who had been abducted.

 

When the guns fell silent, briefly, the scene that unfolded felt as chaotic as Libya's revolution - a government whose authority extends no farther than its offices, militias whose swagger comes from plentiful guns and residents whose patience fades with every volley of gunfire that cracks at night.

This didn't have to happen.   There was an alternative, one that would have quickly ousted Gaddafi and left no room for the warlords and religious extremists to undermine Libya's future.   Instead we let the Libyan problem fall into the hands of the West's astonishingly incompetent military and political leadership to achieve the predictable result that besets the Libyan people today.

How Screwed Up Is Afghanistan? Look at Their Schoolbooks.

The Afghans have figured out a way to produce a history textbook that everyone can accept.   Make sure it stops at 1973.

Afghanistan's newly approved history textbook is free of the last four decades of the country's history.   No Soviet invasion, no Mujaheddin, no Taliban, no American invasion, all the stuff Afghan leaders feel gets in the way of forging a national identity.

''Our recent history tears us apart,'' Afghanistan's Education Minister, Farooq Wardak, said. ''We've created a curriculum based on the older history that brings us together, with figures universally recognised as being great. These are the first books in decades that are depoliticised and de-ethnicised.''

Great.   The best way to learn about Afghanistan is to not learn about Afghanistan.   Makes perfect sense, no?  You betcha.

Are the Petro-Pols Setting Canada Up For a Crash?

Michael Ignatieff referred to it as the "beating heart of the Canadian economy in the 21st century."  Prime ministers, Liberal and Conservative alike, have dared to dream of Canada as a global "energy superpower."   Stephen Harper has led the charge as no other, championing high-risk pipeline projects to the American south and British Columbia's pristine northern coast.

The temptation must have been irresistible.  Like latter day Jed Clampett's, they saw "black gold" in massive quantities just lying there for the taking.   Who needs a real economy when they've got such a vast treasure right beneath their feet and Big Oil companies from around the world vying for the rights to extract it?

And so our prime ministers and premiers have done the Petro-dance with Big Oil, settling for minimal royalties, lining the industry's pockets with tax breaks, subsidies and free natural resources, deferring both environmental costs and Canada's 'fair share' of the plunder.   And we've done this based on a conviction that today's world oil prices are solid and they're only going one way, straight up.  After all, it's tomorrow's world oil prices from which we'll reap our share of the bounty.

But what if we've been had?   What if we have deluded ourselves about world oil prices for the rest of this century?   What if we've made an enormous and potentially disastrous bad bet?   What if world oil prices collapse, permanently, instead of soaring?  You see, when it comes to the Tar Sands, there's no way to cover the downside.   That's a bet you can't lay off, not that anyone in Ottawa is even interested - yet.

The warnings are sounding.   Oil assets are "sub prime", as toxic as the overvalued house mortgages that brought America's economy low and sent the world into meltdown in 2008.  If oil assets are sub-prime, our leaders are building Canada's economy on a house of cards just waiting to blow down.  Shit, oh dear.

So what's all this "sub prime" business?   Why should oil reserves ever be worth less than today's world prices?   And what about the notion of "peak oil"?

The viability of world oil assets was quietly dealt a mortal blow a few years ago when teams of researchers began looking into the carbon-carrying capacity of our atmosphere.   They wanted to know how much more CO2 our atmosphere could hold if we were to stay within the 2C safety zone for global warming.   How much CO2 could we put in the air before we risked triggering natural feedback mechanisms, also known as runaway global warming, nature's very own civilization crusher.   These teams, operating independently, came up with surprisingly consistent numbers.   We have, by their calculations, about 565-gigatons of atmospheric CO2 capacity remaining.   565, that's the number.   So, what does that have to do with world oil prices?

Big Oil is big because it holds rights to untapped oil reserves around the world.   These reserves are carried on Big Oil's books as assets.  At today's prices, they're worth trillions.  But those reserves, if extracted and consumed, will generate 2,800 gigatons of CO2.   The "do not exceed" figure is 565.   The oil reserves number is 2,800.  565, 2,800.  So, if we're to attempt to leave a habitable world for our grandkids, we're going to be able to use just one-fifth of those oil reserves.   The other four-fifths are going to have to be left in the ground.   That's the price we'll pay if we want our civilization to survive.

Is this for real?  Yep.  Two weeks ago a group of senior British investment, science and political types sent a warning letter to the governor of the Bank of England.   They said oil reserves are "sub prime" assets and urged the Bank to rein in oil speculation.  Big Oil, they said, had created a "carbon bubble".   And, as Bill McKibbin points out, Big Oil is fighting hard to keep that carbon bubble from bursting.

So if these warnings are right and Big Oil is truly just fighting for time that's bad news for the fossil fuel industry and for countries with petro-economies.   It's bad news for Iraq and for Saudi Arabia and for Venezuela.   But it would have special repercussions for Canada.   That's because what we're producing in Athabasca isn't conventional crude.  It's not the Middle East product that's easy to pump out of the ground, easy to refine, easy to transport.   No, we have bitumen laced sands.   Hard to get out of the ground, hard to refine, a real bitch to transport.   Compared to the competition it's expensive, carbon filthy and ecologically devastating.

So if the world wakes up one day and accepts we can only consume just one-fifth of known oil reserves, what's it going to be - sweet Saudi crude that comes out of the ground so pure it goes straight into tankers - or the filthiest, most expensive fossil fuel on the planet?   See where this is going?

Canada, Canadians, you and me - we need some straight talk about the future of oil in the 21st century.   We need to figure out what our exposure may be, both economically and environmentally, if the markets come to treat oil as a sub-prime asset.   Even if we should just treat this as a possibility, we need to explore and implement precautionary measures to safeguard the Canadian economy against a worst possible outcome.

One thing you need to keep in mind.   If there is a global carbon bubble, it's first going to burst right here in Canada.

Update

I e-mailed this piece to Bob Rae.   I'll post any response I receive.