There's More to Schreiber Than Meets the Eye

Until Tuesday, Conservatives were warning all and sundry not to believe a word that came out of Karlheinz Schreiber's mouth. That all changed when Schreiber said the money he gave Mulroney had nothing to do with the Airbus affair. Suddenly the clouds have parted, the sun is shining and Schreiber is telling the God's honest truth. Mulroney's exonerated, happy days are here again! Ya think?

Except that Mulroney isn't off the hook yet. Not hardly. We still have to get through the basics. Why did he accept money from Schreiber? What did he do in exchange? Why did he say, under oath, that his only involvement with Schreiber after leaving office was to have a coffee with the guy a couple of times? Why didn't he declare that money as income for tax purposes until years later after Schreiber had refused to provide a statement that no money had ever been paid by him to Mulroney? Those are some very big questions. Each of them stands in the way of any exoneration of Martin Brian Mulroney. Big Chin has a good deal of explaining to do.

But is that all there is? Are we to take Schreiber's word at face value? Why?

Curiously enough, the National Post has finally taken an interest in this story and it's begun asking some pretty interesting questions. William Kaplan says the ethics committee needs to get a proper investigator to follow the money:

"In the real world -- that is to say, somewhere not inhabited by credulous Members of Parliament who apparently believe everything they hear, even from witnesses with an obvious agenda -- there might have been a follow-up question. The truth of Schreiber's evidence might have been put to the test. For instance, Schreiber might then have been reminded about exactly what his lawyer had testified to under oath. His memory could have been refreshed. It might have gone something like this:

"In December, 2002, your German attorney, Olaf Liesner, testified in your extradition hearing. He told Mr. Justice Watt, when you were sitting in a Toronto courtroom, that, until 1999, paying bribes to secure export business was perfectly lawful in Germany provided they were paid to "foreigners of influence." Do you remember that, Mr. Schreiber? And do you remember when your lawyer told reporters outside the courtroom, when you were standing next to him, that Canadians -- not a single solitary Canadian but Canadians -- were among the influential foreigners who had received lawful -- in Germany that is -- bribes between 1988 and 1993?"

Apparently, Liesner testified that Schreiber had doled out about $10-million in bribes in trying to influence Canadian politicians. That would be about half the schmiergelder he got under the table from Airbus Industries.

And then there's the late, great Frank Moores, former Newfoundland premier, pal of Brian Mulroney, associate of Schreiber, Mulroney appointed director to the board of Air Canada and founder of the lobbyist firm Government Consultants International.

In a letter to Mulroney last spring, Schreiber said he was ready to expose payments made to the former prime minister by Moores' once prominent lobbying firm.

"I am prepared to disclose: that you received payments from GCI, Frank Moores, Fred Doucet, Gary Ouellet, that I was asked by Fred Doucet to transfer funds to your lawyer in Geneva, [Airbus] what the reason was for your trip to Zurich in 1998, that you asked me through my lawyers to commit perjury to protect you, that you supported fraud related to the Thyssen project and more."

Has Schreiber's testimony settled any questions that dog Brian Mulroney? No, not by a long shot. If anything, he's only added to them.

Latimer Denied Day Parole

The national parole board has done themselves proud this time. They decided to deny day parole to Robert Latimer.

The board panel had to assess Latimer's risk to re-offend. In a word, it's "nonexistant." Well, best leave that aside. Instead, the board said they were left with the feeling Mr. Latimer has not developed sufficient insight and understanding of his actions.

Latimer was told he can apply for day parole again in two years.

What a farce. If you're angry about this, why not tell the National Parole Board.

info@npb-cnlc.gc.ca

On Baird and Bali

So just where does Canada stand in the eyes of the nations now gathered at Bali? Tony Burman at CBC has an interesting perspective:

"Canada is attending the Bali conference not long after two developments placed an uncomfortable spotlight on Canada’s official hypocrisy about how to deal with the devastating effects of global warming.Last week, the UN Development Program severely criticized Canada for its failure to address climate change. It described Canada as an “extreme case” of ‘all talk’ and ‘no action’ and noted that Canadians leave the second largest ‘carbon footprint’ per capita in the world after the United States. According to the UN report, it would require nine planets if everyone on Earth had the same footprint.

According to Environment Minister John Baird, Canada has gone to Bali to push for a “constructive” agreement involving all countries, but it is hard to fathom what credibility Canada has left to achieve this. On this issue — and not only this issue — Canada seems more and more isolated on the world stage.

There have been other positions taken recently on international issues by Canada’s Conservative government that have alarmed some of this country’s allies. In addition to the Commonwealth controversy over climate change, Canada was one of only four countries to vote against the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. It refused to co-sponsor a resolution on a moratorium on the death penalty. There is also still anger throughout the Arab world about Canada’s unqualified support of Israel during its war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Even though the U.S. Bush Administration is in its final year and has largely been discredited in many parts of the world because of Iraq, there are increasing signs that Canada is becoming closer to the United States on many key issues.

There Are Secret Weapons Programmes and There Are Secret Weapons Programmes

So, it seems that Iran did have a secret programme to develop nuclear weapons. It seems that Iran dropped that project in 2003. George w. Bush says that, because Iran did have a nuclear weapons programme, it remains a threat to the world.

Think about that. There are secret weapons programmes and there are secret weapons programmes. The process to create a nuclear weapon is long and arduous. It takes years. Even when BushCheney kept telling us (i.e. lying to us) that Iran was still working on building a nuke, even if it had been true they still would've been five years away from testing anything. But it wasn't true.

Remember that Libyan dictator Moammar Ghadaffi also had a "nuclear weapons programme." What did that amount to? Well, he'd bought some of the equipment he'd need to set up a centrifuge operation. It's sort of like buying a car by mail order. You've got two doors and a steering wheel and a trunk lid. Okay, you've got a programme to build a car. It's taken you years to get that much. Can I expect to see you racing down my street anytime soon? Of course not.

But Bush won't let this go. He still insists that Iran is a great threat to the Middle East. Why? What country has Iran attacked? It's been attacked. Saddam, with a great deal of assistance from the US, was able to attack Iran and even use chemical WMDs in the process. Attacking and being attacked just aren't the same.

Now, Iran is a problem for the US, a huge problem. It has come out, hands down, the big winner from Bush's maniacal decision to conquer Iraq. It has refused to be servile to Washington. It has stood defiant against BushCheney time and again. It now leads a greatly empowered Shia Muslim bloc with ties that reach into Lebanon and Gaza. George w Bush made all that possible and he's got to be fuming about that.

So I think Iran is a threat - it's a huge threat to what remains of BushCheney's integrity and credibility. Iran has been the tipping point at which BushCheney no longer control the message coming out of Washington. They've lied their way into their last war.

Parole for Latimer Today?

Robert Latimer has a date with the national parole board today at William Head minimum security prison in Victoria. The question the board will have to decide is whether Latimer is likely to kill again if he's released.

Is Latimer likely to kill again? Of course not. He took his daughter's life out of a genuine compulsion to end her suffering. Tracy Latimer had severe cerebral palsy. She'd gone through a series of operations and was in near constant pain. Her father just couldn't stand to see her suffer.

Now that's not my leftie spin on it. It is the conclusion of both the jury and the judge who sat on Latimer's murder trial. From the G&M:

"A jury found Mr. Latimer guilty in 1997 on a charge of second-degree murder, but recommended that he serve only one year in jail and another under house arrest at his farm near Wilkie, Sask.

The trial judge, Mr. Justice Ted Noble, found that Mr. Latimer's motive was to relieve what he saw as his daughter's terrible and unremitting pain and described the killing as a "compassionate" homicide."

If the seven years Latimer has served can be called justice, then justice has been more than satisfied. I hope he's back with his family for Christmas.

The NAFTA Superhighway

I kind of mocked this idea the other day by suggesting it would lead to Winnipeg Wetbacks dodging Portage & Main by sneaking into Mexico.

I got this post in response and, duly chastened, I'll invite you to check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br31mdP8-Ug

What Were They Expecting, Pictures?

Conservative MPs seem to be breathing a huge sigh of relief that Karlheinz Schreiber hasn't nailed Brian Mulroney with stories of the former PM plotting with Schreiber to swing the Air Canada deal to Airbus Industries. They're beside themselves that Schreiber hasn't confessed to bribing the prime minister of Canada. Wowee, zowee!

"Based on everything we've heard so far, there appears to be no violation of the code of conduct that was in place at the time or any other wrongdoing. It just appears to be a failed business deal between Mr. Mulroney and Mr. Schreiber," said British Columbia Conservative MP Russ Hiebert.

What a difference a day makes. Before Schreiber testified, Tories were howling how the elf from the Schwarzwald was an awful man who, no matter what he said, wasn't to be trusted. No way, no how. Now that this supposedly dishonest conman has said Mulroney wasn't in on the Airbus deal, it's suddenly, "move along, nothing to see here."

Just another business deal, eh Russ? Then why did Mulroney go so far out of his way to conceal it? Why did he state, under oath, that he'd had no dealings with Schreiber except to meet the guy a couple of times for a cup of coffee? It was on the basis of that claim that Mulroney pocketed $2-million tax dollars. But what Schreiber is saying is that your pal, Mulroney, was lying through his teeth - then and ever since.

Why did Mulroney take Schreiber's money - as part of just another business deal - and then not report it on his tax return? What about the business of Mulroney contacting Schreiber's lawyer, Robert Hladun, asking for a written statement denying that any money had passed between the two? What about the curious "voluntary disclosure" to Revenue Canada after that statement wasn't forthcoming?

Just another "failed business deal"? Say what? Sorry, nothing Schreiber's said takes Mulroney off the hook. If anything, it sets that barb just a little deeper.

Trudeau - A Real Friend of Canada's Military

If there is an afterlife, Pierre Trudea must be chuckling at the sight of The National Disgrace having to set right one of the rightwing's biggest lies about PET, the one that has him undermining Canada's armed forces.

Never was true. It's a complete lie. Just more rightwing slander. From NatPo itself:

Former prime minister Pierre Trudeau may still be widely reviled in the military community as a "pinko" who slashed the budget of the Canadian Forces in the '70s, but a new analysis done by Parliament's research branch ranks him as the top spender on defence in the last 37 years.

The figures, detailing the defence budget as a percentage of the country's gross domestic product, indicates Trudeau even outspent Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney, who brought in a hawkish defence policy in the late '80s.

The figures also show the Harper Conservatives, who have portrayed themselves as being strong on defence, have a long way to go to match Trudeau's levels.

The spending dipped only slightly in the first few years of Mulroney's tenure and then started dropping as cutbacks were brought in under the Conservatives.

Liberal Senator Colin Kenny said the figures show the Harper government has to start doing more in terms of military spending.

"They talk the talk but when it comes time to walk the walk they're just not there," said Kenny. "They don't even come close to the so-called pinko days of Mr. Trudeau. Mr. Harper's got a long long way to go to match that."

In terms of spending on national defence as a percentage of federal government expenditures, Trudeau again leads the pack at 13.3% in 1970.

The Defence Department has made presentations to Treasury Board which would see its budget increased from a little more than $18-billion to $36-billion by 2025.
That figure would be about 1.3% of the country's projected GDP.

By comparison, Trudeau's defence spending came in at 2% of Canada's GDP.

So what have we learned, kids? We've learned that the rightwing spreads all sorts of malicious nonsense. They just like to make stuff up as it suits them. They're kind of scummy that way.

Schreiber Refuses to Hang Himself - Quelle Surprise!

Karlheinz Schreiber has told the Commons ethics committee that Brian Mulroney had nothing to do with the Air Canada Airbus purchase and the money he gave Mulroney had nothing to do with Airbus either.

I actually believe the little munchkin from the Black Forest but, and here's the but, even if he was paying off Mulroney as some suspect, what would Schreiber be doing to himself by admitting it?

Why, he'd be admitting that he bribed the prime minister of Canada. He'd be admitting to the commission of a pretty serious offence that bears more than passing resemblance to what he's accused of having done in Germany during those same years. An admission like that wouldn't help him a lot when he arrives back in the Fatherland, would it?

I'm just saying that it probably isn't wise to put too much importance on this particular claim by Schreiber. He's got a big vested interest in what he's saying on this point.

If the committee is stumped for questions here are some they might toss out. How much did Airbus give Schreiber in Schmiergelder for the Air Canada deal? To whom did he disburse those monies and what connection did they have with the Air Canada purchase? And then, let's let the chips fall where they may.

The Fact We've Been Lying to You Proves Iran is a Menace to World Peace

The sphincters running around the White House can't help themselves. I guess their credibility is already shot to hell so what have they got to lose? That's how they manage to keep pulling s__t out of their backsides and presenting it to their dwindling base for fawning consumption.

So, let's see. BushCheney have known for over a year that their intelligence services found out that Iran halted its nuclear weapons programe four years ago but they kept peddling the same lies, time and again anyway. If you know the truth and you tell people the opposite - you're a damned liar. Bush is a liar, Rice is a liar, and Cheney - well he's a diseased, bald-headed, chronic liar.

The Clown Prince Shrub, hisself, took advantage of the intelligence to say, why, that it proves his point:

"I view this report as a warning signal," Bush told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. "Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous, and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."

Hey George. The knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon is available on the tubes! You dork. But you know he's right about one thing. The report is a warning signal. It's a reminder that BushCheney will lie right through their teeth to the American people and the world and they'll do as much lying as it takes to drag us all into yet another war. It's a warning signal that we'll have to live with these murderous bastards for another year yet and we'd do well to question everything they say between now and then. It's a warning that giving these fiends the benefit of the doubt winds up with tens of thousands of dead people, all for nothing except their demented fantasies and messianic delusions.

Hotel Advisory

Do you stay in many hotels? Ever use the drinking glasses? Watch this before you do it again:

http://www.divinecaroline.com/article/22178/39039-hidden-truth-hotel-drinking-glasses

Don't say you haven't been warned

Federal Court of Canada - US Not Safe for Refugees

This one seemed to escape our English-language media. It came from Le Devoir and to my attention through the American website, Truthout.

A justice of the Federal Court of Canada has ruled the United States is not a "safe country" for refugees. The upshot of the ruling, if it stands up on appeal, is a huge black eye for Washington and would force Canada to rewrite its "safe third country agreement" with the US. The agreement provides that a refugee may seek refuge in whichever of our two countries he first reaches. If he lands in the US, he's the Americans, if he reaches Canada first, he's ours.

Refugee defense groups have criticized the deal as leaving Latin Americans to the mercy of the US which too often has cozy relationships with some very nasty people in their homelands.

Federal Court judge Michael Phelan, in a 124-page decision, has ruled that the US should not be considered a safe country because it does not respect the Convention on Torture, regularly returning refugees to homelands where they face precisely that fate.

"Although the Maher Arar case is not at issue here," the judge wrote, "the Court takes note of the Arar Report's conclusions. Even if the United States did not participate in the acts, it indicated to the commission that it respected Article Three of the Convention against Torture. The facts surrounding the Arar case furnish us with cause to seriously doubt that assertion."

It will be fascinating to see if Ottawa or Washington takes this ruling on appeal. That might simply invite further unwelcome controversy. It would certainly see the hearing room packed with reporters from Canada's English media.

Another Way to Get to Carbon Caps

We've long since lost our understanding of the genuinely positive aspects of tariffs and duties. The free trade mantra has led us to see tariffs as counterproductive and of no social utility whatsoever. Of course we've shown ourselves willing to believe almost any line if enough people say it often enough - remember dot.coms or weapons of mass destruction or subprime derivatives or Iran's covert nuclear weapons programme?

Maybe we need to take a fresh look at what tariffs might actually do to sort out some of the world's problems.

How about a carbon tariff? Strike a deal. It doesn't matter if certain countries refuse to take part. The remainder would take a global carbon emissions pie and divvy it up, nation by nation. Canada would be allowed so many tonnes of GHG emissions, Germany would have another number, India and China would get theirs too. It could be negotiated equitably taking into account the state of development of each country and its historical contribution to the mess we're in today. The developed world would be expected to do more but the emerging economies would also have to do their bit.

The carbon tariff would come into effect when a particular nation exceeded its quota. A cost would be assigned to the excess emissions which would be recovered by tariffs on that nation's exports. The tariff would then be remitted to be used in carbon reduction projects.

The idea is that the offending nation would see fairly quickly that it could use the tariff penalties to clean up its own act at home, doing itself and the world a big favour. This is, perhaps, a carrot and stick approach that might actually work.

I certainly claim no expertise on tariffs and trade but I think the basic principle would be workable with the consent of a suitable majority of the community of nations. I have often wondered why the West has allowed China to fuel its economic miracle with dirty coal power (really primitive plants) while it has amassed enormous foreign reserves which could have and, in my view, should have been reinvested in that nation's infrastructure in the form of energy-efficient power plants. If they want us to buy their goods, and they surely do, why not remember the line about the customer always being right?

The Bali Deadlock

The most important participant at the Bali climate change summit is the United States.

The most important objective of the Bali summit, the key to a workable international agreement, is acceptance, by the United States, of hard caps on its carbon emissions.

So far, the United States is rejecting the hard cap option, still clinging to the "intensity-based" voodoo that will doom the entire venture in a world already pushing out far too much greenhouse gas.

Canada and the United States, in digging in on the intensity-based concept, are saying they reserve the right to increase their nations' total carbon emissions. They ignore the reality that the world is already producing far too much carbon. They implicity reject that science and maintain the atmosphere can actually take considerably greater carbon emissions. Their approach could be described as short-term gain for long-term devastation.

What the rest of the world, the sane nations, ought to be doing is to approach the problem differently. They ought to ask the United States what terms it would want to get it to accept binding hard caps. What would it expect to see from China, from India, from the rest of Asia and from Africa?

Shifting the focus from "will you do it?" to "what will it take to get you to do it?" could do a number of things that are essential to moving forward, quickly. If Washington says there is no deal that would get it to accept carbon caps, there it is - out in the open. America becomes the global pariah - and gets there entirely of its own doing. It will lose what remains of its treasured world leadership and the rest of the world can begin looking elsewhere - Europe and China, for example. You see, I don't think America can actually afford to say no to caps if they're really pressed on it.

However if Washington does come up with a carbon cap proposal the conditions will exist to then engage both India and China on a compromise that will still allow them strong economic growth by investing some of China's vast cash reserves in cleaner energy generation. That, by the way is a "win/win" deal for China where its coal-fired economic miracle is poisoning the country itself. Even if Kyoto or Bali had never existed, China is facing an environmental catastrophe at home that will be its ruin if not dealt with effectively. China knows that. India knows it faces the very same problems.

America comes to Bali unbowed but also disarmed. Decades of fiscal madness from the Savings & Loans fiasco, to the Dot.Com sham to the Subprime Mortgage disaster coupled with insane federal deficit spending; a military left bent and nearly broken by two relatively small wars; dependent on foreign oil and even more dependent on foreign lendersm, America has lost a lot of its clout and a lot of the respect it once commanded.

Despite the swagger of American exceptionalism, Bali may be the moment when the rest of the world simply stops noticing. Want to bring the United States to the table? Start buying their debt in Euros. Start selling them oil in Euros. Let them know the greenback isn't going to rule in a world they're bent on destroying. And then sit back and watch how fast they scramble to get on board.

SHarper Takes Another Page Out of Bush's Book

When it comes to the consequences of global warming, the standard approach of the far right is to keep that under wraps. Either understate it or lie about it or just don't mention it at all. The Bush White House has been playing that despicable con on the American people since Shrub took power and Stephen Harper is showing he's got the same amount of respect for the Canadian people.

CanWest news service reports that the Harper government is hiding a potentially embarassing report on the damage facing Canada as a result of climate change. Gee, really?

A new federal report is warning of an international scramble for oil and minerals under melting Arctic ice and water scarcity in the Great Lakes, but the Harper government is keeping the study on the shelf, CanWest News Service has learned.

Jim Bruce, a founding member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said "That is going to cause a scramble for resources in the North and is going to have a significant impact on the ecosystems of the North and the people of the North."

Meantime, another climate scientist who contributed to the federal report said that fisheries, including one of B.C.'s most valuable fish species, could be threatened by global warming.
"As the climate warms, there will be a change in certain fish species at both the east and west coasts," said Gordon McBean, a professor at the University of Western Ontario in London. "Cold water will move northward and will eventually result in the Sockeye (salmon) not returning to B.C. coastal waters."

A decent prime minister would put the Canadian people and their future wellbeing ahead of Big Oil and the Tar Sands. Unfortunately we don't have one of those at the moment. We've got Stephen Harper and more's the pity.

Yet Another Crisis - This Time, Food.

The International Food Research Institute says the next couple of years will see the world experience food shortages worse than anything in the past half century.

Joachim von Braun, head of the institute, told The Guardian that the world can expect food riots and malnutrition to surge over the next two years and said the problems won't get any better until there's a "fundamental shift" to boost production of staple foods.

"Demand is running away. The world has been consuming more than it produces for five years now. Stocks of grain - of rice, wheat and maize - are down at levels not seen since the early 80s," said von Braun, whose organisation is the world's largest alliance of agricultural researchers, economists, and policy experts.

So far, crises have been averted because states have eaten into national stocks, but this could be set to change because China, in particular, has run down its supplies.

One problem identified by von Braun is the diversion of agricultural resources into biofuel production. Another problem, especially for poorer nations, is cash-rich China which can afford to go onto the world markets and buy grain supplies at prices the weaker countries simply can't meet.

The social tensions caused by rising food prices are already evident, says von Braun. "The first sign was the tortilla riot in Mexico city, where 70,000 took to the streets. I think that was only the beginning - there will be more," said von Braun. "For a year or two countries can stabilise with stocks. But the risk comes in the next 12 to 24 months. The countries that cannot afford to buy will be the losers, while those with huge foreign exchange reserves will bid up the world market."

And, yes, droughts associated with global warming are also causing enormous disruptions in food production on every continent and in a number of hot spots such as Afghanistan.

Just How Bad is America's Credit Crisis? Really?

I tend to be a bit pessimistic. You get that way after you've been on the planet long enough. But even I am a bit shaken at the pessimism I find at every turn when the discussion turns to America's current fiscal plight.

Economics prof and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman didn't pull any punches today:

"I’ve never seen financial insiders this spooked — not even during the Asian crisis of 1997-98, when economic dominoes seemed to be falling all around the world.

This time, market players seem truly horrified — because they’ve suddenly realized that they don’t understand the complex financial system they created.

“What we are witnessing,” says Bill Gross of the bond manager Pimco, “is essentially the breakdown of our modern-day banking system, a complex of leveraged lending so hard to understand that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke required a face-to-face refresher course from hedge fund managers in mid-August.”

Behind the disappearance of liquidity lies a collapse of trust: market players don’t want to lend to each other, because they’re not sure they’ll be repaid.

In a direct sense, this collapse of trust has been caused by the bursting of the housing bubble. The run-up of home prices made even less sense than the dot-com bubble — I mean, there wasn’t even a glamorous new technology to justify claims that old rules no longer applied — but somehow financial markets accepted crazy home prices as the new normal. And when the bubble burst, a lot of investments that were labeled AAA turned out to be junk.

...what has really undermined trust is the fact that nobody knows where the financial toxic waste is buried. Citigroup wasn’t supposed to have tens of billions of dollars in subprime exposure; it did. Florida’s Local Government Investment Pool, which acts as a bank for the state’s school districts, was supposed to be risk-free; it wasn’t (and now schools don’t have the money to pay teachers).

How did things get so opaque? The answer is “financial innovation” — two words that should, from now on, strike fear into investors’ hearts.

...the innovations of recent years — the alphabet soup of C.D.O.’s and S.I.V.’s, R.M.B.S. and A.B.C.P. — were sold on false pretenses. They were promoted as ways to spread risk, making investment safer. What they did instead — aside from making their creators a lot of money, which they didn’t have to repay when it all went bust — was to spread confusion, luring investors into taking on more risk than they realized.
Why was this allowed to happen? At a deep level, I believe that the problem was ideological: policy makers, committed to the view that the market is always right, simply ignored the warning signs.

With liquidity drying up, confidence in the greenback falling, the housing market heading for "correction", federal debt mounting at $1.4-billion each day and expected to reach a total of $10-trillion by the time Bush is finally gone, America is on very shakey ground. Read the financials. One after another, commentators are forecasting a hard recession looming and don't get smug - Canada will very likely be swept up and carried along for the ride.

Standing Ovation for Australia at Bali

The United Nations climate change talks at Bali opened with a standing ovation for Australia which, under newly minted prime minister Kevin Rudd, signed on to the Kyoto Protocol yesterday.

"I think I can speak for all present here by expressing a sigh of relief," conference host and Indonesian Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar told the opening session .

Well, not everyone Rachmat. There are two spoilers at Bali who are left merely to sigh in resignation - that would be Canada and the United States of America.

"It was an emotional and spontaneous reaction to a very significant decision to ratify the Kyoto Protocol," Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Secretariat, said of the ovation.

De Boer told delegates rich nations had to agree to axe emissions from burning fossil fuels to encourage poor countries to start braking their own rising emissions.

"Bold action in the north can fuel clean growth in the south," he said, urging a sharing of clean energy technologies such as solar or wind power. "I fervently hope you will make a breakthrough here in Bali by adopting a negotiating agenda."

Death Row Racism - Louisiana Style

If you need another reason for abolishing the death penalty, take good ol' boy Jim Williams.

Jim is a prosecutor down in New Orleans who really gets into capital crime trials. He once told a reporter, "It got to the point where there was no thrill for me unless there was a chance for the death penalty."

Now consider the case of Allen Snyder, a black man currently awaiting execution. Tomorrow the US Supreme Court will decide whether Jim violated the condemned man's constitutional rights by removing all potential black jurors from his trial.

Allen Snyder had the misfortune of having his trial held in Jefferson parish. As the LA Times reports, that's not a great place for a black man at the best of times:

"Named for Thomas Jefferson, the parish is "familiar with racial divisions and appeals to race," noted veteran defense lawyer Stephen B. Bright in his Supreme Court brief on Snyder's behalf. David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was elected to the Legislature from the parish in 1989 as a Republican.

The parish is considered a particularly tough place to be a defendant in a criminal trial. In the mid-1990s, the Louisiana Supreme Court Task Force on Racial and Ethnic Fairness in the Courts held a hearing where Denise LeBoeuf testified about her experiences as a public defender in Jefferson. "Sitting judges used the 'n-word' in conversation in the courtroom," she said.

At the end of the trial, Williams exhorted the all-white jury to give Snyder a death sentence because the case was "very, very similar" to the "most famous murder case" just a year earlier, in which former football star O.J. Simpson "got away with it."

Unbelievable. Only in Jim Crow America.

Astrology Debunked?

For years astrologers have claimed that when we're born can affect our personalities. That's how they peddle horoscopes.

But what if it was true? Scientists now believe it may be but it has nothing to do with the alignment of the heavens. From the Sydney Morning Herald:

"Research has revealed the time of year a person is born can influence his or her personality, health and even whether they are male or female. But rather than being written in the stars, studies are showing that it is the season of birth that predisposes individuals to different traits.
In the northern hemisphere, women born in May will display more impulsive behaviour while those whose birthday falls in November will be more reflective. Men born in the spring will show greater persistence than those born in winter.

Other research has shown that people born in the autumn will tend to be physically active and excel in football while those born in the spring will be more cerebral and may be better suited to chess.

Those born between September and December are more prone to panic attacks while there is growing evidence that schizophrenia is higher among those born in the late winter and early spring.

"It is exactly what you would expect if it were temperature related," said Richard Wiseman, a professor of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, who has examined the link between luck and the season of birth. "Many of the effects reverse in the two hemispheres."

So, what gives? Not surprisingly, the scientists have a scientific answer.

Professor John Eagle, a psychiatrist at Aberdeen University who has studied the relationships between season of birth and mental health, added: "The two main culprits are diet and the seasonal fluctuations in nutrition, and the increase in infections during the winter."

All the More Reason to Bomb'em Into the Stone Age

Dick Cheney couldn't have been clearer when he recently warned that Iran would face "serious consequences" if they didn't abandon their nuclear weapons programme.

What that sly, bald-headed, diseased devil wasn't letting on was that his own government's intelligence services reported that Iran halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003.

Well that's perfect. They've had it shut down for four years. Why, after that long, they must be getting ready to get their bomb factories up and running again any day now. Best we bomb'em flat first, huh? Just to be on the safe side.

Uber-weasel, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, spun this bad news as only a devout neo-con could:

"It confirms that we were right to be worried about Iran seeking to develop nuclear weapons. It tells us that we have made progress in trying to ensure that this does not happen. But the intelligence also tells us that the risk of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon remains a very serious problem."

Reality Check

SHarper and Baird know they're going to be under plenty of scrutiny at the Bali summit and they know there could well be an election within the next six months. That's why you can expect to hear all sorts of nonsense and enviro-spin from those clowns this week. Just keep this in mind. Unless and until SHarper abandons "intensity-based" emission targets and embraces hard caps on carbon emissions, he's just pulling your chain. Really, he's having you on.

Mexico Braces for Flood of Illegal Immigrants from Winnipeg

Republican presidential candidates are all atwitter about the evil "Nafta Superhighway", a diabolical scheme to directly link Winnipeg to Mexico to facilitate the transfer of wealth and jobs out of the United States.

"There is no such highway being planned," says Ian Grossman, spokesman for the Federal Highway Administration, flatly. The most he will concede is that "improvements are always being planned to the highway system, to move freight more effectively, both east-west and north-south."

That isn't stopping Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter from sponsoring a resolution in the House of Representatives denouncing the Nafta superhighway in any case. Seems there isn't a shred of xenophobia these guys won't mine for everything they can extract from it.

Their big concern is illegal immigration. Hey, wait a minute. Winter's coming and it's going to be a real bitch in Winnipeg. Oh I get it, all those 'peggers are going to be sneaking across the Rio Grande heading for sunny Monterrey.

Taking the Fight to the Taliban

That was the title of a BBC documentary on the Queen's Company of the Grenadier Guards in Afghanistan that aired on CBC last night. It presented a troubling look at the Taliban, seen through a NATO gunsight.

The Brits are trying to control Helmand province just as Canada has responsibility for Kandahar province. Like Canada, the Brits are heavy on firepower and light on manpower.

The 90-minute documentary followed about 60-British soldiers patrolling for the Taliban. They found them. When the Brits fixed the insurgents' positions, they brought in gunship helicopters, mortars, heavy machine guns and, finally, jet fighters to pulverize their hopelessly outgunned guerrilla adversaries.

What happened? Time after time the Brits called down the best of Western killing technology on the Taliban. They rocketed houses where the bad guys were sited. They even blew entire housing compounds completely to rubble with 500-pound bombs. They lobbed mortar rounds at them and raked their positions with heavy machine gun fire. It was spectacular. And then there was calm and the Brits and their Afghan army counterparts began to relax and walk around. Within minutes the Taliban opened up again, sending them scrambling for cover.

This happened over and over. They must have been killing the Taliban in large numbers but, each time, it was the Taliban who brought the fight back to the Brits, attacking their vastly superior enemies.

I was left wondering how a handful of insurgents, armed with only 50s vintage assault rifles and a few rocket-propelled grenades, could stand their ground, again and again, against such withering fire? Why didn't they run?

Eventually sunset arrived and the Taliban did leave, on their own terms and with their weapons and casualties. When the Brits patrolled the area the following morning they found neither bodies nor abandoned weapons.

If this is the enemy we're up against, we can get rid of any illusions about breaking these people. Rockets and bombs and artillery aren't going to decide this conflict. I think we'd better figure out a new approach.

It's a Lonely Planet for SHarper

At least Harper could pretend he had Australia at his side at the Commonwealth summit but these things can change pretty quickly. Now Canada stands pretty much alone - save for the US - on global warming. Actually we're not so much standing as sitting in Papa Bush's lap.

Australia's new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, wasted no time on being sworn in yesterday to sign the documents bringing Australia into the Kyoto Protocol. Meanwhile the Clown Prince of Sussex Drive plods on regardless, faithfully running interference for Big Oil and Athabasca.

What's incredible is that SHarper and his EnviroMin mouthpiece, Baird, are still going to paint China ahd India as the problem. That's because they can. Canadians are as dumb as bricks when it comes to environmental matters inside China and India and SHarper wants to keep it that way. His kind need a whipping boy.

India is already making real strides to curb its carbon footprint and, as for China? The Chinese are coming to the reality that they have an urgent need for effective action not "to save the world" but to save their own backsides, their own people, their own cities and countryside from a looming environmental calamity. First and foremost, China is poisoning China and the Chinese know it and they know it is probably the greatest obstacle to their dreams of becoming a genuine, economic superpower.

We don't hear much about it but the Chinese are working very closely with the EU on new environmental policies, standards and technologies.

But all this isn't going to stop SHarper and Baird using every scummy trick in the book to fight a rearguard action for Big Oil and the Tar Sands.

A Clear Course for the Liberals

The Liberals, it seems, are not going to fall into the trap that has consumed the Democratic Party in the US - they're not going to portray themselves as conservatives.

In fact, the LPC has decided to campaign to the left, into Layton territory, to try to draw away NDP support or at least enough of it to get a winning edge on Harper's Conservatives.

Will it work? It had better. The Liberals need to reclaim their hold on Canada's political centre by robustly pushing the NDP toward their true base out on the left and the SoCons of Harper back where they know they really want to be - out of the far right limb.

Harper has been playing directly from the Bush/Rove playbook - lifting policies, even buzzwords, from the Repugs over the war on terror, global warming and the economy. The Bush/Rove policies lie in tatters, their nation enfeebled and its future more than uncertain. Maybe it's time SHarper was depicted for what he really is - Bush's sycophant.

America's Debt Time Bomb

When you do most of your business with one customer, the financial health of that customer can impact mightily on your own, no matter how frugal or responsible you may be. That's why the following item from today's Guardian ought to be chilling to Canadians. It's about America's debt time bomb. It's about George w. Bush and his profligate ways. It's about how Bush has driven America's debt up from $5.7 trillion when he took office to $9.3 trillion today and which will top $10 trillion by the time he leaves the White House for good.

Like a ticking time bomb, the national debt is an explosion waiting to happen. It's expanding by about $1.4 billion a day - or nearly $1 million a minute.

It means almost $30,000 in debt for each man, woman, child and infant in the United States.
...like homeowners who took out adjustable-rate mortgages, the government faces the prospect of seeing this debt - now at relatively low interest rates - rolling over to higher rates, multiplying the financial pain.

So long as somebody is willing to keep loaning the U.S. government money, the debt is largely out of sight, out of mind.

But the interest payments keep compounding, and could in time squeeze out most other government spending - leading to sharply higher taxes or a cut in basic services like Social Security and other government benefit programs. Or all of the above.

A major economic slowdown, as some economists suggest may be looming, could hasten the day of reckoning.

Over the next 25 years, the number of Americans aged 65 and up is expected to almost double. The work population will shrink and more and more baby boomers will be drawing Social Security and Medicare benefits, putting new demands on the government's resources.
These guaranteed retirement and health benefit programs now make up the largest component of federal spending. Defense is next. And moving up fast in third place is interest on the national debt, which totaled $430 billion last year.

Aggravating the debt picture: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates could cost $2.4 trillion over the next decade.

"The problem is going forward,'' said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard and Poors, a major credit-rating agency.

"Our estimate is that the national debt will hit 350 percent of the GDP by 2050 under unchanged policy. Something has to change, because if you look at what's going to happen to expenditures for entitlement programs after us baby boomers start to retire, at the current tax rates, it doesn't work,'' Wyss said.

"The government is in the same predicament as the average homeowner who took out an adjustable mortgage,'' said Stanley Collender, a former congressional budget analyst and now managing director at Qorvis Communications, a business consulting firm.

"The first day the Chinese or the Japanese or the Saudis say, `we've bought enough of your paper,' then the debt - whatever level it is at that point - becomes unmanageable,'' said Collender."

This isn't just America's problem any longer. We in Canada can see the possibility of this train wreck coming. Isn't it time we tried to figure out what might be in store for us?

Leading Thinkers Speak Out on Bali Summit

The Guardian today features the views of a number of leading figures, each suggesting what will really boost the fight against climate change.

Kofi Annan:

They must sustain a two-pronged approach: mitigation and adaptation. The only suitable response is a binding international framework to curb greenhouse gas emissions beyond the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012. We have to take steps to increase the resilience of vulnerable communities to the impact of climate change.

Richard Branson:

The most positive but realistic thing that governments could agree in Bali is to halt the cutting down of virgin tropical rainforests with immediate effect and agree a method by which the major economies, big multinationals and other carbon offset groups could pay for it. The next five years of carbon emissions from burning rainforests will alone be greater than all the emissions from air travel since the Wright brothers first flight in 1903 until at least 2025.

Leon Feurth, Security Advisor to Vice-Pres. Al Gore:

The single breakthrough that would be a game-changer is technological: it would involve an efficient method for trapping carbon dioxide as it is generated, before it can enter the atmosphere. But even such a breakthrough would have to be coupled with a profound change of mind about relying on massive consumption of carbon-based fuels.

Isabel Hilton, Editor, Chinadialogue and Open Democracy:

The most important breakthrough - which must form the basis of action - would be acknowledgment that policy must follow science, however difficult that is. We must agree that concentrations of greenhouse gases should not be allowed to rise above 400-450 parts per million, CO2 equivalent. Few leaders have had the courage to make this commitment. Without it, we are plagued by shifting targets and lack of clarity.

George Monbiot - Columnist and Author of "Heat"

There should be an equal allocation, worldwide, of the right to produce carbon dioxide. Our rations can be tradeable - people may use more than their share if they are prepared to buy it - but the revenue should be returned to those who use less. This system works because it is just, easy to understand, requires very little policing, and creates powerful incentives to use low-carbon technologies.

Sir Nicholas Stern

We need a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with the rich countries leading the way on targets and trading. The rich countries should aim for at least 80% - either made directly or bought via a global mechanism for trading emissions. Trade in emissions has the benefit of keeping costs down and providing glue for the global deal.

In reading these views and the others in the Guardian article, I thought about which of them was right. The simple fact is they all are.

Sunni Insurgency on R&R in Iraq

The White House eagerly portrays the 30,000 soldier "surge" of the past few months as a great success and there have indeed been positive signs, especially a decline in sectarian butchery in Baghdad and a sharp reduction in attacks on American troops. But not everyone has been certain just what the surge actually accomplished. There has been a lot of speculation that the warring parties, the Shia militias and the Sunni insurgency, just decided to lay low and wait it out, relying on reports that the surge would only be temporary. Now, a senior member of the Sunni insurgency has told The Guardian that was indeed the case.

Iraq's main Sunni-led resistance groups have scaled back their attacks on US forces in Baghdad and parts of Anbar province in a deliberate strategy aimed at regrouping, retraining, and waiting out George Bush's "surge", a key insurgent leader has told the Guardian.
US officials recently reported a 55% drop in attacks across Iraq. One explanation they give is the presence of 30,000 extra US troops deployed this summer. The other is the decision by dozens of Sunni tribal leaders to accept money and weapons from the Americans in return for confronting al-Qaida militants who attack civilians. They call their movement al-Sahwa (the Awakening).

The resistance groups are another factor in the complex equation in Iraq's Sunni areas. "We oppose al-Qaida as well as al-Sahwa," the director of the political department of the 1920 Revolution Brigades told the Guardian in Damascus in a rare interview with a western reporter.

Using the nom de guerre Dr Abdallah Suleiman Omary, he went on: "Al-Sahwa has made a deal with the US to take charge of their local areas and not hit US troops, while the resistance's purpose is to drive the occupiers out of Iraq. We are waiting in al-Sahwa areas. We disagree with them but do not fight them. We have shifted our operations to other areas".

Omary predicts the deal negotiated last week between Bush and the Shia prime minister al Maliki for a permanent American military presence in Iraq will fracture the American's cease-fire with al-Shawa.

If Omary is right, the surge may have accomplished very little perhaps save for giving everyone involved a much needed respite.

RUDD RATIFIES KYOTO PROTOCOL

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has ratified the Kyoto Protocol. The New York Times;

"This is the first official act of the new Australian government, demonstrating my government's commitment to tackling climate change," Rudd said in a statement issued hours after he and his Cabinet were officially sworn in after Nov. 24 elections.

Rudd said that he had signed the "instrument of ratification" of the Kyoto Protocol and that it would come into force 90 days after the paperwork was received by the United Nations.

"Australia will become a full member of the Kyoto Protocol before the end of March 2008," Rudd said.

Hillary Hits The Dumps?

I don't hate Hillary Clinton. I'm sure that in another time and another place she'd make a dandy president. It's just that I don't think two families should control the White House for - the better part of three decades. It's just not right. The world needs a break from the Bush dynasty but not in the form of a Clinton dynasty.

Okay, having gotten that out of the way, Hillary seems to be tanking, fast. Not only do a lot of American voters not like her (50% have already said they would never, ever vote for Hillary - nohow, no way) but her support in Iowa seems to be sliding with the primary just five weeks away.

A poll conducted by (or on behalf of) the Des Moines Register found Clinton staring Obama eye to eye, a statistical dead heat.

The poll sent Hillary's people into a tizzy. They got up this morning, brushed their teeth and proceeded to gnash away at Obama. I mean it got really petty. From the New York Times:

...the Clinton campaign accused Mr. Obama of “re-writing history” by saying that he had not been planning for years to run for president like “some of the other candidates.” The campaign included news articles and statements of friends or relatives of Mr. Obama saying that he had been thinking of running for president for at least a decade.

Don't the Clintonistas realize just how cheesy that sounds? I think she just upped her "sooner burn in Hell than vote for Clinton" demographic another two, maybe three percent.

The latest Zogby poll found the biggest difference between Clinton and either Obama or Edwards is that she couldn't beat any of the five leading Republican candidates but her Democratic rivals could beat them all.

Can Hillary bounce back? I expect if anyone can it's her. Still I think she's got a limited shelf life and her best before date may not go to November.

Debunking Harper/Baird's Economic Environmentalism

On the eve of the Bali summit, I thought it might be useful to consider what's wrong with Harper/Baird's key argument on environmental restraint. This is an excerpt from Jared Diamond, "Collapse".

"The environment has to be balanced against the economy."

"This quote portrays environmental concerns as a luxury, views measures to solve environmental problems as incurring a net cost, and considers leaving environmental problems unsolved to be a money-saving device. This one-liner puts the truth exactly backwards.

Environmental messes cost us huge sums of money both in the short run and in the long run'; cleaning up or preventing those messes saves us huge sums in the long run, and often in the short run as well.

In caring for the health of our surroundings, just as of our bodies, it is cheaper and preferable to avoid getting sick than to try to cure illnesses after they have developed. Just think of the damage caused by agricultural weeds and pests, non-agricultural pests like water hyacinths and zebra mussels, the recurrent annual costs of combating those pests, the value of lost time when we are stuck in traffic, the financial costs resulting from people getting sick or dying from environmental toxins, cleanup costs for toxic chemicals, the steep increase in fish prices due to depletion of fish stocks, and the value of farmland damaged or ruined by erosion and salination. It adds up to a few hundred million dollars per year here, tens of billions of dollars there, another billion dollars over here, and so on for hundreds of different problems.

For instance, the value of "one statistical life" in the U.S. - i.e. the cost to the U.S. economy resulting from the death of an average American whom society has gone to the expense of rearing and educating but who dies before a lifetime of contributing to the national economy - is usually estimated at around $5 million. Even if one takes the conservative estimate of annual U.S. deaths due to air pollution as 130,000, then deaths due to air pollution cost us about $652-billion a year. That illustrates why the U.S. Clean Air Act of 1970, although its cleanup measures do cost money, has yielded net health savings (benefits in excess of costs) of about $1 trillion per year, due to saved lives and reduced health costs."

So, when Harper or Baird give you their economic claptrap or any of their gullible followers call you a leftie loon who's just out to ruin the economy, ask them to give you the true and full cost to the economy, long-term and short-term, if we don't act on global warming and the rest of the environmental challenges that now confront us.

The Corporate President Holds Court

George w. Bush is a friend of Big Business, the very best kind of friend. Big Business fully appreciates how they've gotten away with murder - not to mention resource and tax exploitation; environmental degradation; stock and investment manipulation; and labour suppression while Bush/Cheney have sat, stacked one atop each other, on the White House throne.

Yet Big Business knows these heady, freewheeling days may be coming to an end with the election of a new administration next November and they're determined to make the most of what they can get while there's still time. It's a bloody bacchanal, according to the New York Times:

Hoping to lock in policies backed by a pro-business administration, poultry farmers are seeking an exemption for the smelly fumes produced by tons of chicken manure. Businesses are lobbying the Bush administration to roll back rules that let employees take time off for family needs and medical problems. And electric power companies are pushing the government to relax pollution-control requirements.

At the Transportation Department, trucking companies are trying to get final approval for a rule increasing the maximum number of hours commercial truck drivers can work. And automakers are trying to persuade officials to set new standards for the strength of car roofs — standards far less stringent than what consumer advocates say is needed to protect riders in a rollover.

At the Interior Department, coal companies are lobbying for a regulation that would allow them to dump rock and dirt from mountaintop mining operations into nearby streams and valleys. It would be prohibitively expensive to haul away the material, they say, and there are no waste sites in the area. Luke Popovich, a vice president of the National Mining Association, said that a Democratic president was more likely to side with “the greens.”

A priority for many employers in 2008 is to secure changes in the rules for family and medical leave. Under a 1993 law, people who work for a company with 50 or more employees are generally entitled to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for newborn children or sick relatives or to tend to medical problems of their own.

On another issue, the Environmental Protection Agency is drafting final rules that would allow utility companies to modify coal-fired power plants and increase their emissions without installing new pollution-control equipment.

The way the Bush gang operates, it's no wonder they were so nonplussed at the looting of Baghdad. That was kidstuff to them.

Saving Indonesia's Endangered Orangutan

It should have been great news. The orangutan is an endangered species in Indonesian Borneo. The good news was the recent discovery of a colony of 500 of the primates. The bad news is that they were discovered in the course of preparations to clear their tropical forest refuge for a palm oil plantation.

Palm oil is one of the sweetheart crops for the production of biofuels. From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Global warming might just save the [orangutans and their] ecosystem. Not only are environmentalists outraged by their possible destruction, but these trees spring from carbon-rich, metres-deep peat - potentially worth millions of dollars under a proposed post-Kyoto Protocol deal to fund the preservation of forests.

Clearing peat forests has made Indonesia the world's third-largest greenhouse gas emitter, sending more than 3000-million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere a year. It is driven by greed, with palm oil and timber barons lining the pockets of officials from Kalimantan to Jakarta - even the Forestry Minister has blocked prosecution of illegal loggers.

Flushing Out Beijing's Open Sewers

They're canals actually but they're stagnant and fetid, just the sort of thing you don't want to display to Olympic visitors.

The answer? A massive public works project intended to flush'em out before the games. From the Sydney Morning Herald:

To replenish Beijing's dead waterways, 3 billion cubic metres of water will be pumped 300 kilometres from four dams near the capital of neighbouring Hebei province. It was a mammoth but temporary measure designed to make Beijing sparkle for foreign tourists, said Wang Jian, an official at the Haidian information centre.

"This water diversion will make the water in Beijing's rivers all clear and clean," Mr Wang said. "We can't let foreigners come and look at the water when it is still dark and stinky."

The engineering feat will help transform one of the world's driest capitals into an international oasis when the Games begin on August 8.

Beijing residents consume only one-eighth as much water as the average Chinese person and one-thirtieth of the global average.

And after the games? Back to the good old "dark and stinky." Beijing is now home to 18-million people, four times its population in the 60s.

What Harper and Rex Murphy Can't Grasp

I watched the clip of Rex Murphy endorsing Stephen Harper's policy on cutting carbon emissions. The policy, as I've heard Harper explain it, is that all nations must commit to binding cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

On its face it has the same appeal as the flat tax proposals that get bandied about. From our perspective in the advantaged, industrialized world, Harper's carbon policy makes plain sense.

What we don't want to consider is how this policy is seen by the emerging economies and the Third World and we certainly don't want to consider how it makes them see us. Only once we look at it from their perspective does the manifest inequity of the Harper proposal become apparent. From their perspective the policy looks patently racist.

The Harper policy embraced so warmly by Rex Murphy is a policy considered in a void. Completely left out are some unfortunate realities these people would rather not have mentioned. For example, North Americans create so much greenhouse gas because we use a disproportionate amount of fossil fuels.

It's easiest to look at the American example. Our numbers are pretty close so we can fall under the US example. Americans represent about 5% of the world's population. Americans consume more than 25% of the world's fossil fuels. That means Americans use five times the world average in fossil fuels and produce five times the world average in greenhouse gases.

Now, let's take India. Indians use considerably less than the world average in fossil fuels and produce commensurately less greenhouse gas emissions. Ballpark it at about one-tenth of the American numbers.

The big difference is that there are 1,130,000,000 Indians, give or take a few million. The same source (the CIA) estimates America's population as of July, 2007 at 301,000,000. So, India is nearly four times as populous as the United States. China comes in at 1,322,000,000.

India and China are considered emerging economies and that means industrialization and that means fossil fuels and that means greenhouse gas emissions. Still, on a per capita basis, their fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions are a small fraction of our own.

Now, let's say we decide that everyone should agree to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 50%. Let's say an Indian, on a per capita basis, produces about 10% of the per capita American emissions figure. So, by cutting 50% across the board, we're in effect preserving our ratio discrepancies in perpetuity. We're locking in our right to continue consuming the lion's share of the world's energy and to continue pumping out the lion's share of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. What's more, we expect them to agree to that. If you were the little guy on the receiving end of that ultimatum, would you agree to it? You're lying if you said you would.

There has to be accommodation on this problem. We emit vastly more so we should have to cut at least somewhat more. Measures do need to be taken by India and China but we in the advantaged, industrialized world have to do more than we expect of them, a lot more.

Overall, what we need to do is determine, on the best scientific evidence available, a global emissions target. That'll be the pie. And then we have to work out how much of that pie each nation should be allocated based on a variety of factors including population. It's a form of global carbon rationing but there's no other way to make this work through international co-operation.

This is not some "off the wall" concept. It's actually the very basis of the Bali Communique of 150-major British and European corporations.

Harper can't hide behind his simplistic reasoning any longer, and there's no excuse for Rex Murphy following suit either.

Karl Rove - Lies From the Grave

Former Bush political advisor, Karl Rove, has probably done more than any other presidential aide to confound, confuse, deceive, distract and mislead the American people and he won't quit even long after he's left the White House.

Rove has been trying to polish Bush's apple by rewriting history about the vote in congress authorizing war on Iraq. This guy has had the gall to claim it was Democrats in Congress who forced Bush to act prematurely. For the record, Karl Rove is a complete and shameless liar.

This is the pile that Rove dumped on Charlie Rose last week: "The administration was opposed to voting on it in the fall of 2002," Rove said. Asked why, he said: "Because we didn't think it belonged within the confines of the election. There was an election coming up within a matter of weeks. We thought it made it too political. We wanted it outside the confines of it. It seemed to make things move too fast. There were things that needed to be done to bring along allies and potential allies abroad."

Ex-Senate majority leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) had an entirely different take on it. In an interview, Daschle said he asked Bush during a breakfast to delay the vote until after the election. "They told us time was of the essence and they needed the vote and they were going to move forward," he said.

The Washington Post went to the archives and found - surprise, surprise - Rove was lying through his teeth. Among the goodies was this line from noneother than Incurious George himself:

"Asked on Sept. 13, 2002, about Democrats who did not want to vote until after the UN Security Council acted, Bush said, 'If I were running for office, I'm not sure how I'd explain to the American people -- say, 'Vote for me, and, oh, by the way, on a matter of national security, I think I'm going to wait for somebody else to act.' "

Rover couldn't even get a break from former White House Press Secretar Ari Fleischer who said,
"It was definitely the Bush administration that set it in motion and determined the timing, not the Congress," he said. "I think Karl in this instance just has his facts wrong."

Even former White House chief of staff, Andrew Card couldn't keep a straight face. Card laughed and said that "sometimes his mouth gets ahead of his brain."

Karl Rove, an utterly shameless liar. And, please, don't think for a minute that he just got his facts wrong - unintentionally that is.

150 Big Fat Pinkos Sign Bali Communique

So, just what is the Bali Communique? It's the product of The Prince of Wales's Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change. So, what do they want? It's simple:

The Bali Communiqué calls for:

- a comprehensive, legally binding United Nations framework to tackle climate change
- emission reduction targets to be guided primarily by science
- those countries that have already industrialised to make the greatest effort
- world leaders to seize the window of opportunity and agree a work plan of negotiations to ensure an agreement can come into force post 2012 (when the existing Kyoto Protocol expires)

So, just who are these leftie loons who've signed this thing? Well they're the chief executives of 150-major British and European corporations and the list just keeps getting longer. We're talking about the heavy duty pinkos here like AIG, Centrica, Philips, Lloyds, Shell, Sky, Sun Microsystems, Unilever, Adidas, Barclay, Cadbury Schweppes, Continental, Dupont, HSBC, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Kodak, Nokia, Nike, that ever pink News Corporation, Perelli, Roche, Rolls Royce, Sony Ericsson, United Technologies, Virgin and Volkswagen.

Curious, isn't it, how these corporate giants just don't see eye to eye with our knuckledragging boneheads, Harper and Baird. Wonder what to make of that?

Expert Disputes Bush Shooting Report

An expert witness has slammed the findings of RCMP complains commissioner Paul Kennedy exonerating Constable Paul Koester in the shooting death of Ian Bush.

Blood stain expert, Edmonton Constable Joseph Slemko, says Kennedy got it wrong on the evidence and in the way he dismissed Slemko's conclusions. Kennedy said Slemko's evidence was undermined because he did not agree that there had been a significant struggle between Bush and Constable Koester that preceded the shooting. That's nonsense, says Slemko:

"I have never disputed that there was a physical altercation between Bush and Koester," said Const. Slemko yesterday. "My opinons were directed at the point in time when the blood-letting injury was generated. That is what bloodstain pattern analysis is based upon - blood evidence."

It sounds as though Commissioner Kennedy was grasping at straws, any straw, to get out from under Slemko's expert evidence. It was essential for him to discredit Slemko's evidence in order to uphold Koester's account of how he came to shoot Bush in the back of the head.

Just what did this internationally-recognized blood expert find? He concluded that Koester was probably either at the side of Bush or behind the young man when he fired.

"Unlike the RCMP, I actually conducted a reconstruction with actual human models to try and prove or disprove Const. Koester's version of the positioning in the context of the observed blood stain evidence. I was not able to prove his version and I am still waiting for someone to show me otherwise," Const. Slemko said.

The blood pattern expert testified at the coroner's inquest that there was no blood transfer evidence consistent with Const. Koester escaping out from Mr. Bush after he was shot. Kennedy concluded that Koester could have extracted himself from under the dead man's body without getting even a trace of blood on him.

I don't think Kennedy's report is worth the paper it's printed on. He has done backflips to get around critical evidence that doesn't support his finding of justifiable homicide, a self-defence shooting.

Don't Lose Sight of the Big Picture

I've repeatedly stressed the dangers we invite if we focus on global warming to the exclusion of other environmental issues. Jared Diamond in his book "Collapse" identifies twelve, serious environmental problems we need to tackle.

1. Destruction of natural habitat. We're causing immense damage and loss to our forests, wetlands, coral reefs and ocean floors. Deforestation is accelerating.

2. Wild foods are being depleted. In particular, global fish stocks are reaching the point of exhaustion through over-fishing and related problems such as enormously wasteful by-catches.

3. Species extinction. "Elimination of lots of lousy little species regularly causes big harmful consequences for humans, just as does randomly knocking out many of the lousy little rivets holding together an airplane."

4. Soil degradation. "Soils of farmlands used for growing crops are being carried away by water and wind erosion at rates between 10 and 40-times the rates of soil formation. Other threats included salinization, losses of soil fertility through crop exhaustion, excessive acidification or, alternately, alkalinization."

5. Fossil fuel depletion. We're using far too much fossil fuel, particularly oil and natural gas, and the result is not only excessive GHG emissions but an increasing dependency on coal.

6. Freshwater exhaustion. Both surface water and groundwater resources are overstressed in many parts of the world, a problem that is being compounded by precipitation pattern changes.

7. The photosynthetic ceiling. This is one you don't hear about but it remains an environmental problem. "The first calculation of this photosynthetic ceiling, carried out in 1986, estimated that humans then already used or diverted or wasted about half of the Earth's photosynthetic capacity. Given the rate of increase of human population, and especially of population impact, since 1986, we are projected to be utilizing most of the world's terrestrial photosynthetic capacity by the middle of this century."

8. Soil and water pollution. "The culprits include not only insecticides, pesticides, and herbicides, but also mercury and other metals, fire-retardant chemicals, refrigerator coolants, detergents and components of plastics. We swallow them in our food and water, breathe them in the air and absorb them through our skin."

9. Alien species. These are lifeforms - animal, vegetable, viral, natural and manmade, "that we transfer, intentionally or inadvertently, from a place where they are native to another place where they are not native."

10. Human generated greenhouse gas emissions. Finally, there it is, carbon emissions and global warming.

11. Overpopulation. More people need more food, space, water, energy, and other resources. "There is long built-in momentum to human population growth because of what is termed the "demographic bulge" or "population momentum," i.e. a disproportionate number of children and young reproductive-age people in today's population, as a result of recent population growth."

and -

12. Growing per-capita population impact. "...low impact people are becoming high impact people for two reasons: rises in living standards in Third World countries whose inhabitants see and covet First World lifestyles; and immigration, both legal and illegal, of individual Third World inhabitants into the First world. ...There are many optimists who argue that the world could support double its human population. But I have not met anyone who seriously argues that the world could support 12-times its current impact, although an increase of that factor would result from all Third World inhabitants adopting First World living standards."

After reciting these twelve problems, Diamond points out the obvious - they're all interwoven. Each is linked to and compounds all the others.

"They are like time bombs with fuses of less than 50-years. For example, destruction of accessible lowland tropical rainforest outside national parks is already virtually complete in Peninsular Malaysia, will be complete at current rates within less than a decade in the Solomon Islands, the Philippines, on Sumatra and on Sulawest, and will be complete around the world except perhaps for parts of the Amazon Basin and Congo Basin within 25 years. At current rates, we shall have depleted or destroyed most of the world's remaining marine fisheries, depleted clean or cheap or readily accessible reserves of oil and natural gas, and approached the photosynthetic ceiling within a few decades. Global warming is projected to have reached a degree Centigrade or more, and a substantial fraction of the world's wild animal and plant species are projected to be endangered or past the point of no return, within half a century. People often ask, "what is the single most important environmental/population problem facing the world today?" A flip answer would be, "The single most important problem is our misguided focus on identifying the single most important problem." ...If we solved 11 of the problems, but not the 12th, we would still be in trouble, whichever was the problem that remained unsolved. We have to solve them all."

"...the world's environmental problems will get resolved, in one way or another, within the lifetimes of the children and young adults alive today. The only question is whether they will become resolved in pleasant ways of our own choice, or in unpleasant ways not of our choice, such as warfare, genocide, starvation, disease epidemics and collapse of societies."

Is Mulroney Circling the Wagons?

Luc Lavoie says he is no longer Brian Mulroney's spokesman:

"Mr. Mulroney is fighting for his integrity and the integrity of his family, and I'm fully sympathetic to what he's going through and I wish him the best, believe me, and I still consider him a dear friend and always will."

"I wish him the best, believe me." Why wouldn't we believe that and why does Lavoie think he needs to ask us to believe him? So, he'll always be Mulroney's dear friend - does that mean he'll stay loyal even if Mulroney hangs Lavoie out to dry for the apparent admissions Luc has already made?

Lavoie has given yoeman service to Mulroney for fifteen years, so why would he bail out on the guy now in his moment of greatest need?

As I said earlier, I don't believe that Lavoie's resignation or the timing of it are haphazard. I don't believe these things aren't integrated into the next round of posturing we'll see from Brian Mulroney. I suspect (and I am guessing here) that Mulroney wants time to distance himself from Lavoie and you can probably expect a total information lockdown from the Mulroney camp until he testifies. He may be planning to dodge the ethics committee by saying he'll give his evidence to the public inquiry next year. We'll just have to watch how this unfolds.

So what is Mulroney going to say when it becomes his turn to talk? Believe it or not, I don't think he knows just yet. Schreiber is supposed to be back for two more days of testimony before the committee. Documents should begin appearing at some point. And then there are other potential witnesses such as Robert Hladun whose evidence, if reports are credible, could be damning to Mulroney's credibility.

Mulroney factum filed this week. From Canada.com:

"Mr. Schreiber does not say in his 7 November 2007 affidavit that his previous statements were inaccurate or untrue," the factum filed by Mulroney states. "He does not say that his letter of 20 July 2006 is inaccurate or untrue. He does not say that his statements to Mr. (William) Kaplan (the book author) or others were inaccurate or untrue. He makes no effort to explain the inconsistencies between his 7 November 2007 statement and his previous statements."

It adds: "Mr. Schreiber's evidence in prior proceedings was accepted by the court" - a reference to the Eurocopter fraud case where an Ottawa judge denied the Crown's request to have Schreiber declared a hostile witness and found his account credible.

Mulroney's latest court filing deliberately does not deal with two other new and damaging allegations Schreiber made in his most recent affidavit: namely that in 1998 he spoke to the former prime minister in Zurich about transferring money to his Geneva lawyer "related to the Airbus deal;" and that he hoped Mulroney would take his 2006 letter to Harper to secure his help avoiding extradition.

"For the most part, the matters to which Mr. Schreiber deposes have nothing to do with this motion, and will not be responded to," Mulroney's jurisdiction motion states.

Notice this factum gives absolutely nothing away. It is all about Schreiber and his inconsistencies. Nothing more.

I think you can expect to see that approach figure strongly in any public testimony Mulroney may give. Attack your accuser. Draw on Schreiber's inconsistencies, paint him as an abject liar and then say nothing that comes from Schreiber warrants rebuttal. The second approach is to slice and dice the facts and challenge as many as possible as irrelevant. Narrow the case you have to meet on relevance and credibility.

That's not to say that Mulroney still doesn't have a lot of explaining to do. He does. But it's far easier to explain away one set of facts than two.