Gun Pigs Fly Again

A squadron of venerable A-10 Wart Hogs is heading to the Middle East to help the fight against Islamic State forces.   The aircraft are from the 122nd Fighter Wing of the Indiana Air National Guard.

Their performance in Iraq or Syria should fuel opinions on whether these aerial battle tanks should be retired to make way for the far costlier and much less capable F-35.

The A-10 is famous for its devastating 30 mm. gatling gun shown here beside a VW beetle.

Unaffordable to Buy, Unaffordable to Fly

The overdue, overpriced and under performing F-35, light strike bomber, has hit another major snag.  The US government accounting office has released a report showing the F-35 will be upwards of 79% more costly to operate than the warplanes it is intended to replace.  The GAO concludes the F-35 may be unaffordable to operate.

Part of the reasons behind those higher costs can be found in these numbers cited by GAO. First, mean flight hours between critical failures: “As of March 2014, this metric was averaging well below its requirements at maturity, meeting an average of 42 percent of those requirements across all three variants,” the GAO says. And mean time to repair the aircraft “is worsening,” though the report does not offer a specific figure.

The GAO report points out throughout the draft report that CAPE estimates are substantially higher than those of the Joint Program Office, which manages the program, for almost everything to do with sustainment. The official CAPE estimate is $23 billion higher than the JPO’s. But the report says that the CAPE estimate for parts costs would be $120 billion higher than the JPO’s if “they used actual replacement rates being observed at F-35 sites.”

Also, the GAO says that DoD “has not fully addressed” aircraft reliability and technical data rights, which may affect sustainment.

RCMP + CSIS - Add Water and Stir. Voila, the Stasi Lives Again

They were East Germany's dreaded secret police.   They spied on ordinary East Germans, tapped their phones, intercepted their mail, assessed their 'reliability', used informants, kept dossiers on persons of interest and ordinary citizens alike.  

The hated Stasi fell with the Berlin Wall but they live on - in today's RCMP, the Royal Conservative Mounted Police, Harper's personal security apparatus. Today the RCMP, in conjunction with our official spy agency, CSIS, and the Canadian Border Service Agency, operate a domestic spying network called the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team, INSET.

And just whose security is INSET enforcing? Yours? Mine? Canada's? Hardly. Don't be naive. They're the taxpayer funded security service of the fossil fuelers and especially the tar sanders, corporations like Enbridge and Kinder Morgan.  Oh yeah, and the Peoples Republic of China.

71-year old Leslie Askin received a "visit" from state security officers.  Why? She had taken some photographs of what she thought were Kinder Morgan storage tanks in Burnaby, B.C.  She wasn't sneaking around.  She wasn't trespassing.  She stood a good distance away and took her photos.  She wanted to show the condition of the 60-year old tanks to the National Energy Board.

Askin was spotted by Kinder Morgan security and they, in turn, set Canada's secret police apparatus on her.

Kinder Morgan says it reports all potential threats to police to "ensure the security and safety of our facilities and the surrounding community is maintained."

"It is our security protocol to record and file an internal report of any suspicious activities surrounding our facilities and to inform the RCMP of the incident," the company says.

Ten days later Askin had RCMP officers on her doorstep demanding answers.

In a statement, a spokeseperson for E-INSET confirms they did visit an individual who was seen taking photographs of Kinder Morgan's storage terminal.

"The protection and security of critical infrastructure falls within the mandate of E-INSET. Any and all tips reported to us are followed up on to the fullest extent." But, in Askin'scase: "there were no issues and the file was concluded with no further action taken."

Askin has filed an access to information to try and find out what is in her police file.

"I am now in the INSET’s database and I will be there, I guess, until I drop dead," she said. 

When dealing with a state secret police agency, they're never entitled to the benefit of the doubt. Never.  They're thugs who operate in the shadows, in service not to the country but to powerful, immensely wealthy corporations who could easily do their own security.  But those corporations lack the intrusive powers of the state, they lack the professional spy apparatus, the very service that INSET serves up to them on a platter.

My father and my uncles went to war, sacrificed enormously, to fight this sort of thuggery.  We're damned poor Canadians if we fail to stand up to it in our own time.

I have an idea.  Let's catalogue Kinder Morgan and Enbridge facilities.  Then let's organize groups of people to individually visit those facilities, monitor them, record licence plate numbers, and take plenty of photographs.  20 or 30 monitors a day, new faces rotated in daily.  Nothing remotely illegal.  No trespassing, no obstruction, no heckling. Just maintain a vigil at a safe and legal distance, letting Kinder Morgan and Enbridge and the Canadian Stasi and our despotic government know that we will not be intimidated and we will respond in kind in keeping with our democratic and constitutional right of dissent.

They want to gather intelligence on us.  We should gather intelligence on them, every scrap we can collect.  To the Stasi, being exposed was like the noonday sun to a vampire.

They can intimidate us, one by one, but they'll have a hell of a hard time doing it if they have 20 or 40 or 100 new names each and every day, a list that could quickly grow into many hundreds, perhaps even thousands.  Watch, we can make them stand down, crawl back into the slime beneath their rocks. 

The RCMP has served notice that it is quite prepared to criminalize democratic dissent.  I won't have it.  No, not in my Canada.  What about yours? 

And if the goons demand your name, tell them "Leslie Askin."

It is Finished. Scotland Stays Put - For Now.

The BBC has called the Scottish independence referendum for the No side.  The pro-independence Yes side did win some notable victories, Glasgow for example, but not enough votes overall to succeed.

Now it falls to David Cameron to face down angry dissent in the Tory caucus and make good his promises to the Scottish people if they supported No.  That's not going to be easy and could lead to a Tory revolt but there'll be absolute hell to pay if the Scots who tipped the vote Cameron's way are given cause to feel they've been had by Whitehall.

Early Results Have Scotland Staying in the Union

From The Scotsman. 

Clackmannanshire and Orkney, two prime targets for the Yes campaign, have instead gone solidly to the No camp.  83.7% turnout in Orkney, 88.6% in Clackmannanshire.

Prime minister David Cameron is scheduled to make a televised statement around 11 p.m. PDT.  His devolution card, essentially a bribe to secure No votes, is causing a furor in England.  There's some talk about getting the same deal for England, including an English Parliament.

Gee, if the Brits wind up with a Scottish Parliament and an English Parliament and, presumably, a Welsh Parliament, there might not be much left of a United Kingdom at all.

Why the F-35 Was DOOMed From Birth

US Air Force Lt. Col. Dan Ward has  an interesting take on just when the F-35 light strike bomber went off the rails - right from the outset.

In February of 2014, Lt. Gen. Charles Davis, the Air Force’s top uniformed acquisition official, said big, audacious programs like the Joint Strike Fighter were “doomed the day the contract was signed.” As the former Program Executive Officer for the JSF, he brings a pretty credible perspective to the situation. Given his first-hand experience and the F-35’s track record of delays, cost overruns, technical problems, operational limitations, and the recent grounding of the entire fleet due to an engine fire, I am very much inclined to agree with him.

The phrasing of Lt. Gen. Davis’ assessment is important: He is not saying the F-35 was recently doomed, or is troubled because of late-breaking developments like sequestration, the Afghan drawdown, recent technical challenges, or the latest Chinese stealth fighter. Not at all. He is saying that America’s most expensive weapon system began its very existence behind the eight ball. It was doomed from the start.

The JSF malpractitioners chose to follow what we might call “the path of D.O.O.M.” – Delayed, Over-budget, Over-engineered, Marginally-effective — by establishing a massive bureaucracy, a distant delivery date, an enormous budget, and a highly complex technical architecture. This fostered an expansive culture where rising price tags and receding milestones were seen as inevitable and where the primary problem-solving strategy was to add time, money, and complexity to the project. Data from the GAO and other reliable analysts agree this is a demonstrably ineffective approach. Because it was on the Path of D.O.O.M., the JSF’s Nunn-McCurdy breaches in 2004 and 2010 were simply a matter of time.

...It didn’t have to be that way. There is an alternative path they could have followed which would have increased the likelihood of delivering an affordable system that is available when needed and effective when used. This better approach goes by many names, but I like to call it the FIRE method.

FIRE stands for Fast, Inexpensive, Restrained, and Elegant. Unlike the expansive D.O.O.M. culture, FIRE fosters a restrained approach to problem solving. Those who follow this path eschew large price tags and long timelines, instead placing a premium on speed and thrift as the Navy did with those Virginia-class submarines. Rear Admiral William Hilarides, the program executive officer for submarines, put it this way, “The Virginia-class program… was originally designed with cost effectiveness in mind. In order to reduce costs on this program, we have to change the way we build submarines, and that’s what we’re doing.”

...Restraint leads to an entirely different approach to solving problems than that followed by the D.O.O.M. method, and thus leads to different solutions. People who use approaches like FIRE leverage intellectual capital more than financial capital, and apply “reductive thinking methods” to prevent over-engineered solutions and requirements creep. Even before the contract is signed, they set up constraints and implement procedures designed to prevent the types of problems experienced on the JSF.

Is it too late to cancel the Joint Strike Fighter? Maybe, although an article by Col Michael Pietrucha in the May-June 2014 issue of Air & Space Power Journal made a strong case that it is not. But regardless of the future viability of that particular aircraft, it is certainly not too late to set other programs on a better path. Indeed, the Air Force seems interested in doing precisely that. In the same interview where Lt. Gen. Davis called the JSF doomed, he went on to point out that “we are not starting all the new audacious big programs that we were…” Instead, the Air Force is pursuing smaller, more restrained systems. Less D.O.O.M., more FIRE. Time will tell whether the shift towards less audacity and more restraint is permanent or effective, but it is certainly a step in the right direction.

  

If You're Going to Get Arrested for Beating Up Your Wife, Then...

Don't be sporting a T-shirt with the word "Obey" emblazoned on it when the cops show up to put you in cuffs.

Alleged NFL Abuser of the Day is Arizona Cardinals' running back Jonathan Dwyer. The cops say Dwyer head butted his wife when she refused his sexual advances and then punched her in the face the next day for good measure.

Jonathan, everything you wear may and will be used against you in a court of law - you abusive bastard.

Shove Down. We Need to Set a Lot More Places at the Table.

It seemed like a grim consolation prize in the global overpopulation sweepstakes, the notion that mankind's numbers would peak at somewhere in the vicinity of 9-billion before eventually ebbing to a more sustainable level.

Well, so much for that.

A new study says we're heading for 11-billion by 2100 and it could just keep going up after that.

A ground-breaking analysis released on Thursday shows there is a 70% chance that the number of people on the planet will rise continuously from 7bn today to 11bn in 2100.

The work overturns 20 years of consensus that global population, and the stresses it brings, will peak by 2050 at about 9bn people. “The previous projections said this problem was going to go away so it took the focus off the population issue,” said Prof Adrian Raftery, at the University of Washington, who led the international research team. “There is now a strong argument that population should return to the top of the international agenda. Population is the driver of just about everything else and rapid population growth can exacerbate all kinds of challenges.” Lack of healthcare, poverty, pollution and rising unrest and crime are all problems linked to booming populations, he said.

“Population policy has been abandoned in recent decades. It is barely mentioned in discussions on sustainability or development such as the UN-led sustainable development goals,” said Simon Ross, chief executive of Population Matters, a thinktank supported by naturalist Sir David Attenborough and scientist James Lovelock. “The significance of the new work is that it provides greater certainty. Specifically, it is highly likely that, given current policies, the world population will be between 40-75% larger than today in the lifetime of many of today’s children and will still be growing at that point,” Ross said.

It's no small irony that the UN is hosting summits on climate change and on overpopulation on successive days and yet no one expects either group to focus on the other.   There are several potentially existential challenges facing mankind this century and the odds of getting through them are not on our side.  We either perish or accept that the solution to these threats requires that we solve them all if we're to succeed in solving any of them.  It is really that cut and dried.  Overpopulation, over-consumption, climate change, the freshwater crisis, exhaustion of renewable resources, depletion of non-renewables, the collapse of global fisheries, species extinction and migration, disease and pest migration, inequality global and domestic (of income, wealth and opportunity), the spread of authoritarianism, terrorism, insurgencies and nuclear proliferation - on and on and on.  And yet, even at the UN, we can't acknowledge the obvious ties between overpopulation and climate change.

We're so screwed.

The Union May Survive Intact but Cameron Is Seriously Wounded

According to The Guardian, late polls show Scotland will stay in the United Kingdom.  As Scots went to cast their ballots the No side was up six points, 53 to 47 for the Yes secessionists.

Assuming those numbers hold, the onus is going to fall very heavily on London to come through with its 11th-hour promises of a new deal for the Scottish people.

Already Cameron is facing a rebellion in his caucus over what are seen as giveaways to the north that will have to be paid for by the south.

"Writing in the Wiltshire Gazette and Herald, [Cameron's rail minister, Claire Perry] warned against giving Scotland 'a whole raft of goodies' which would have to be 'paid for by us south of the border to try and appease the yes voters.'

"Perry wrote: 'The funding formula for Scotland, the rather cobbled together Barnett formula, already delivers per capita funding north of the border well in excess of that spent per head in other parts of the union, and if there is a proposal to allow devolution of local taxation, as well as maintaining the current level of funding from the UK parliament, than that can hardly be equitable for those of us in the Devizes constituency and all other areas in the non-Scottish union."

Like it or not, all three party leaders pretty much went along with the bribe and there'll be hell to pay if they renege in the aftermath.  A win for the No side is not going to end London's problems. They're only just getting started.

The Guardian's Gaby Hinsliff writes that many of Cameron's caucus colleagues wonder if he has any chance of winning the tough battles ahead.

For days now, the grumbling in Tory circles has been growing louder: a low, angry chorus muttering that, whatever happens, it’s all David Cameron’s flipping fault. Although flipping isn’t the word they use. When it first began looking as if Scotland might be heading for independence, his party’s anger with him was understandably intense. Even when the consensus shifted back to maybe no-by-a-whisker, his apparent complacency still annoyed them.

But what’s striking is that even when rumours began flying that it might be a firmer no, you could still find Tory MPs wholly unable to forgive a leader who many feel did too little for too long, before panicking and doing too much too late.

It’s not the fact that he offered Scotland extra powers at the last minute that has annoyed English Tories, so much as the back-of-a-fag-packet inelegance with which the deal was presented, and the fact that he seems to have kept so few bargaining chips in reserve.

Let's Not Get Too Gushy About Rob Ford

I get it, he's got cancer.  With the sludge that guy has pushed down his gullet and snorted up his nose, quelle surprise!

As our friend, The Salamander, pointed out, where's our concern for other cancer victims like the natives in the cancer villages near Fort Mac on the Athabasca river?  Those are people who have contracted terrible cancers and deformities that others, mainly very well to do just like Rob Ford, could get ever richer.

Unlike Rob Ford, those cancer victims of Athabasca are blameless for their plight.  The shit that got into their bodies wasn't of their doing.  Yet we write them off as collateral damage to what Ignatieff called "the beating heart of the Canadian economy."

As a society we are desperately in need of a recalibration of our moral compass.

What, Were They Completely Out of Helicopter Gunships?

Alright punks, recess is over!

Think of your gradeschool principal.  Now visualize that principal clad in body armour, kevlar, clutching a grenade launcher and perched behind the wheel of an armoured assault vehicle.  Why, Mrs. Krabapple, what lovely taste you have in camo.

The militarization of American society continues apace.  Now it's school districts getting the Pentagon's cast offs.  That's right, schools.  Machine guns and grenade launchers and armoured vehicles with run flat tires and bullet proof glass.

"School police departments across the US have taken advantage of free military surplus gear, stocking up on mine-resistant armoured vehicles, grenade launchers and scores of M16 rifles.

"...The Los Angeles unified school district, the nation's second-largest at 710 square miles with more than 900,000 students enrolled, said it would remove three grenade launchers it had acquired because they 'are not essential life-saving items within the scope, duties and mission' of the district's police force.  But the district would keep the 60 M16s and a military vehicle known as an MRAP used in Iraq and Afghanistan that was built to withstand mine blasts."

What kind of fucked-up society needs a school district police department to begin with much less one armed to the teeth with fully automatic assault rifles, armoured vehicles and grenade launchers?

What's Next for Canad's Armed Forces - Dumpster Diving?

Yes, That Old!

Hardly a week passes without another example of how Stephen Harper has neglected the armed forces he boastfully claims to revere.   The jumped up little shit doesn't hesitate to proclaim how he's going to buy this for them and that for them but, somehow, this and that never seem to show up.

BBC News reports that Canadian air force personnel had to cannibalize a C-130E Hercules on display at a base museum at CFB Trenton.

"They sort of called up and said, 'Hey, we have these two INUs (intertial navigation units) that we can't use.  Do you have any on yours?'" museum curator Kevin Windsor recalls.  He says they were lucky the parts were available and interchangeable, and took only half an hour to remove.

The former head of military procurement, Dan Ross, says it's embarrassing that the air force has to "cannibalize old stuff that's in museums" to keep up its rescue planes - eight Hercules and six Buffaloes - which are apparently on their last wings.  The planes respond to thousands of emergencies every year.  The government has been promising since 2002 to replace the planes but has kept putting it off  to make sure it's "getting the purchase right."

A Big Win for SpaceX

He may be the Charles Lindburgh of our day.  Elon Musk - born in South Africa to a Canadian mother.  Traveled to Canada, became a Canadian citizen, studied in Canada before moving on to the US where he is now an American citizen.  He has five sons by his Canadian first wife, twins followed by triplets, all of whom now live in the States.

Elon Musk broke into the big leagues by creating PayPal and growing it to the point where, in 2002, Ebay bought it for 1.5-billion dollars in stock.

Musk went on to found Tesla Motors and then made the company's electric battery technology freely available to competitors to encourage production of electric cars.  From there Musk went on to devise the concept for Solar City, operated by his cousins, which has become the largest provider of solar power systems in the US.  Solar City was springboarded on battery technologies developed for Tesla.

What might be the most ambitious venture Musk has undertaken, however, is SpaceX or Space Exploration Technologies.  Using his own money, Musk recruited experts from NASA and American aerospace giants to develop his own launch vehicles and capsules.  A breakthrough moment came in April with the successful docking of a SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule with the International Space Station.

Since the end of the Space Shuttle programme, NASA has relied on Russian Soyuz flights to ferry astronauts to the ISS.  However, with the breakdown of US-Russian relations over the Ukraine troubles, NASA has decided to go with a US alternative.

Until recently the contract would have gone to a major US defence contractor. SpaceX got into a similar situation with the Pentagon that ended when it sued to be allowed to compete.  NASA apparently got the message and this time, it split its space station shuttle contract between Boeing  ($4.2-billion) and SpaceX ($2.9-billion).  

Boeing's 5-seat capsule will compete with the 7-seat, Dragon-2 of SpaceX.  

Crew Seating Configuration

If I had to choose, I'd rather go on the Dragon 2.  The capsule comes with a launch escape system, eight rocket motors generating 120,000 lbs. of thrust that will speed the capsule to safety in case of an emergency any time between when the occupants strap in on the launch pad and when they reach orbit.

The system also allows the capsule to effect a soft landing on a prepared pad instead of having to resort to the standard US water landing.

Musk's next goal?  Mars.

Enough Talk About Inequality. It's Time Our Government Acted.

I don't expect Stephen Harper to take any effective action on inequality.   That's a problem facing the Canadian people, not the oil barons of Calgary or his chums in the Beijing politburo.  That said, I do expect our opposition leaders, Muclair and Trudeau to come up with some coherent and credible policies and well prior to the 2015 election.

Fixing this problem begins with acknowledging the problem - the full problem, inequality of wealth, inequality of income and inequality of opportunity.  Equally essential is acknowledgment of the fundamental role government plays in creating and empowering inequality.

The truth is that most inequality is legislated.  It arises out of enactments that create wealth - for a few - from grants, deferrals, tax breaks, subsidies and the transfer of rights to public property at far below fair value and sometimes free of charge.

The infamous "1%" we hear so much about?  It wouldn't be sitting anywhere near as fat and sassy if it wasn't for the political classes serving as its handmaiden.  Read Stiglitz, "The Price of Inequality", to see how Western governments have fallen into service of these elites at the direct expense of the electorates they're sworn to serve and protect.

This screed is brought to you courtesy of The Toronto Star and outgoing TD Bank chief, Ed Clark.  In his farewell speech, Clark referred to inequality in Canada as a "corrosive thing."  Clark also fingered regulators, central bankers, and politicians for helping to create the financial collapse of 2008.

The inequality problem is only going to deepen if the next prime minister plays it safe and seeks political cover in the status quo.  We need a leader who will change Canada's course economically, environmentally and socially.  That sort of change might have the appearance of being revolutionary but that has nothing to do with the imperative merit of change and everything to do with how far Canada has listed to the right.  We're heeled over so far now that the gunwales are kissing the water.

So, let's hear it Tom, let's hear it Justin.  Are you going to be Bay Street bumboys or are you actually going to lead this country to an even keel?

Hard Times on the Miramichi

When we think of a good run of sockeye salmon on the Fraser River, numbers of 20 to 30-million come to mind.  That's one run of one species of salmon on one river, albeit British Columbia's major salmon river.

In that context, this year's Atlantic salmon run on the Miramichi is hard to grasp. New Brunswicks' fabled salmon river accounts for 20 to 25% of all Atlantic salmon spawning in North American rivers.

This year's run on the Miramichi has been devastating, about 12,000 fish.  That's half the annual run in the preceding three years.  In the 1990s the run averaged 82,000 salmon.

Bad as conditions are on the Miramichi, other rivers in Atlantic Canada are reporting even weaker returns.  Atlantic Salmon Federation officials are calling on the federal government to act to save their fishery.  Oh that's right, I forgot, Harper has fired all the scientists at DFO who once dealt with these things.

Another Part of the Puzzle - Our Warming Oceans

The playpen of climate change denialists is on temperature change.  They like to cherry pick statistics, sweep the bulk of the data under the carpet, and declare that global warming has stopped.

Not so fast.

Here's an example of what the denialist mantra carefully omits.

This is a depiction of what's happening in the  North Pacific and Bering Sea.  The red areas such as the Bering Sea are up to 3 degrees Celsius warmer than normal. From the US Pacific Northwest along British Columbia up to the Gulf of Alaska it's 2-3C warmer.

As I've written several times before we in coastal BC are seeing species migrating into our waters that we rarely saw before - fish, marine mammals, sea birds.  This translates into massive schools of sardines, white sided dolphins, even brown pelicans.  We've even had an apparent influx of transient orca perhaps in pursuit of the larger dolphin newcomers. That is the face of climate change.

Here's a pod of transients that has herded a school of white-sided dolphins into the ferry dock at Nanaimo's Departure Bay.

 

In Alaskan waters newcomers include thresher sharks, skipjack tuna and the giant sunfish or Moa.

What's important is how this warming weather is building up.

Normally storms and winds roll through to cool off the surface of the Northern Pacific, but a weather pattern popped up for a few months in winter 2013 that inhibited those storms from developing, said Nate Mantua, a NOAA research scientist. Then, from October 2013 through January, the weather pattern came back as a ridge of high pressure (the same one connected to the California drought). All of that made the already warm waters in the Alaskan gulf even warmer, a layer about 100 meters thick, Mantua said.

In the spring, warm water started to develop in other Northern Pacific waters, namely the Bering Sea. There's also a chunk of warm water developing off the coast of California.

"You have lots of warm water, and it's due to weather patterns that basically don't take heat out of the ocean," Mantua said. "They are letting the ocean warm up rapidly, and stay warm."

The oceans are heating because the wind patterns have changed in the northern hemisphere.  It's the same wind pattern change that has brought severe drought to the west coast of the US, that brought the Polar Vortex slamming across eastern US and Canada last winter and that gave us a summer of flash flooding from southern California to Burlington to New England.

Some research suggests we should have had a powerful El Nino by now.  The water conditions changed as expected in the central Pacific but the winds associated with El Nino didn't appear to carry that warm water moisture up into California as hoped.  

We're just beginning to explore what these phenomena could mean in the long term.  Are El Ninos destined to become less frequent and less powerful just as we're discovering how dependent the ecology of the American southwest is on them?  What happens to all this heat that's accumulating in our oceans?  What does it do to the oceans and all life that lives in or depends on them?

The answer is as brief as it is troubling - right now, no one really knows.

Will Mike Duffy Call the Next Election?

Sure, it sounds far fetched, but the opposition parties had better be prepared for Harper to call a snap election.

Word I'm getting from Ottawa is that the evidence in the Duffy trial will directly implicate the prime minister in the under-the-table payment/bribery scheme.  If that happens, Stephen Harper's political career is essentially over.

Duffy is pushing for an early trial date, the sooner the better.  Given his circumstances - the cost, two open-heart surgeries, stress - he's apt to get a receptive response from the court.

From Harper's perspective the Duffy trial is a matter of optics and, for SJH, none of the possibilities is good, not good at all.  Harper is already damaged goods and, even if he escapes efforts to compel him to testify, what remains of his reputation will become a political pinata in the course of the trial.

The question becomes how badly does Harper want another term as prime minister?  His odds aren't good in any event but he's still got a shot, perhaps a minority at best, if he can trigger an election before the trial gets underway.

My take on it is that Harper will do a Mulroney.  He'll see the writing on the wall and bail out, leaving his successor to go up in flames.

I am left wondering whether these side pressures played a role in Harper's decision to ink the FIPA deal with his kindred spirits, the politburo in Beijing. He's done his damage.  Why hang around to take the heat for the fallout?

Scotland Would Hardly Be the First to Go Its Own Way

Back when Rule Brittania meant something, much, if not most, of the world's population was under British rule, part of the British Empire.  This handy map from TheCommonwealth.org shows how many countries have come to independence from the Empire.

If the Scottish people do vote this week to secede, they'll be in good company.

Duffy to Trial

Mike Duffy will be heading straight to trial.  Counsel appeared briefly in court today and were told to come back on the 23rd to set a date for trial.

That ups the ante for Stephen Harper, increasing the chances that the trial might happen before the general elections scheduled for October, 2015.  The evidence will expose the dirty dealing of Harper's Prime Minister's Office and his top officials as well as the corruption of the Conservative leadership in the Senate. The greatest risk for Harper is the prospect of being directly tied to the Duffy deal, something the prime minister has struggled to deny.

I think Harper would have an extremely tough time if compelled to take the stand and give evidence under oath.  Duffy's account of the $90,000 "gift" from Nigel Wright is remarkably solid.  By contrast, Harper has played fast and loose with the facts as is his way.

Harper has a habit of taking forceful, cut and dried positions on situations that turn into scandals.  As facts emerge Harper has to fall back and make contradictory and inconsistent statements.  He invents new lies when his initial lies collapse.  

A perfect example is Harper's handling of the Bruce Carson/PMO debacle when people began asking how a controversial character with multiple fraud convictions who had done prison time managed to get into a sensitive position inside the Prime Minister's Office.  

At first, Harper claimed he'd been blindsided.  He knew nothing about Carson's shady past.  Harper blamed it on the failure of his staff to properly vet the guy before he was hired.  Harper said if he'd known anything about Carson's past he'd have booted him straight out of the PMO.

Then it came out that somebody had waived the otherwise mandatory RCMP security check.  Who might have the power to do that?  Remember, at that time, the commissioner was a veteran Conservative backroom operator and career civil servant, Bill Elliott.  

As attention was drawn to senior PMO and Privy Council staffers and the top brass in the RCMP, Harper changed his tune.  He implicitly admitted he'd been lying.  Now, he said, he had known about Carson's criminal past - but only part of it - and yet he wanted to give the guy a second chance to rehabilitate himself. Call it Christian charity.

When the scandal broke Harper claimed to have been duped, let down by his staff, blindsided.  He denied knowing anything about Carson's past.

When the scandal closed in, Harper suddenly said he had known about Carson's past but wanted to do the guy a favour.  And, with that admission, Harper also admitted he'd been straight out lying all along.  

There's been enough of this sort of thing that Harper would have trouble defending his credibility under cross-examination by someone like Mr. Bayne.

It remains to be seen whether Bayne can persuade a judge that Harper's evidence is essential to the conduct of the trial.  A chronic liar like our prime minister won't submit without a fight.  

Last Month - Hottest August On Record

NASA has run the numbers.  August, 2014 was the hottest August since records were kept of these things starting about 130-years back.

May, 2014 was also the hottest May on record.  March, 2014 was the third hottest since 1880.

The powerful El Nino everyone, especially Californians, were hoping for hasn't materialized which leaves the Golden State with no end in sight to its already severe drought.